Ashwani Kumar Chrungoo
Most people in politics and public life make investments of varied nature ranging from time, energy, intellectual investment to financial, moral and even spiritual investments. These investments are sacrosanct up to the time their motivations remain the larger public good. But as soon as they get converted into implied and expressed self-interests alone, they are deemed to be unholy and detrimental to the sanctity of public interests. A plethora of ideas and situations govern the vicissitudes of politics and political history yet the fundamental postulates remain the same.
People are supposed to have short memory, consequently politicians also love to live by short term measures. Most of the people in public life live by short sessions and hardly think of a long term goal or aspiration. Our earlier five year plans were considered the longest period of vision in consonance with the five year term of the legislative bodies. So five-year period was deemed to be the longest version of public vision in India post freedom and politicians also made their schedule of priorities accordingly. Hardly would a person in public life visualise a dream of more than ten or twenty years or plan to suit the needs and requirements of 50 years ahead. The people who would talk in those terms in public life, in political parties or in administrative forums would be considered a non-practical and non-pragmatic leader the followers of whom were supposed to go down the drain along with him.
The politicians while asking people to vote for them would mostly make the voters comfortable by promising them ‘easy peanuts’ and ‘readymade solutions’. These were generally workable for all sorts of politicians because they would, immediately after their elections keep up their promises during the next six months and would get relieved for the left over 54 months. Accountability, transparency and service would be the actual causality thereafter, however, the politicians and people in public life would go scotfree up to the next elections.
The advent of Narendra Modi brought a shift in thinking and approach when he assumed power at the centre. He made it known that he was a man of vision and action, so should be the people around him. His planning as chalked out by him before his cabinet colleagues and MPs envisaged a minimum term of planning as five years and would talk in terms of the next fifty years as the maximum term of political and administrative vision and action. The bright students pick up the rules of the game in the very first lesson and act accordingly.
Electoral politics is the fundamental battle ground for any politician however big or small he or she may be. If one carries his or her voters in the constituency along with in the second term as well, the politician is deemed to be the real leader and fit to visualise big and bigger. In order to take your voters along with, a politician or a person in public life needs to shun the perception that “the public has a short memory”. There are hundreds of examples to prove that the voters reward those who keep them in their touch and work for them all five years. There are classic examples to suggest that people who form the voters on the fateful day for the politicians are more intelligent and visionary than the leaders and politicians who represent them. It is only a matter of time and action for politicians to learn lessons of public life publicly.
Among all constituencies in the country, three of them have assumed the status of exploration and research coupled with evaluation and assessment about the arithmetic and chemistry of them. These have become subject of great study in context of psyphology, vote permutation & combination, voter psychology and response, candidate profile and work and five years’ development agenda of the area. The connect and its degree with the people of the Constituency coupled with people’s aspirations and delivery by the MP have formed a part of the comprehensive agenda of the Constituency for research and evaluation by the analysts and authors, students and pundits of politics, electoral history and parliamentary democracy in India and outside India. The three constituencies include Varanasi, Amethi and Udhampur. In all these three constituencies, the BJP has achieved an expressed positive value addition during the Mandate 2019.
In Varanasi, the Modi phenomenon was a pertinent factor but the fact of the matter is that Narendra Modi changed the whole complexion of the constituency’s geography. Whether it was Ganga or the landscapes, Ghats or the Railway Station, Gas connexions or the subsidised houses, toilets or the roads, the voters lived and ate, slept and drank development by all means. A vote strength of five lakhs last time went crossing seven lakhs in favour of Modi this time in the constituency.
Amethi is another example where a candidate who lost by fifty thousand votes last time won this time by one lakh and fifty thousand votes with a net value addition of two lakh of votes in favour of Smriti Irani. Not needed to mention that Smriti all these five years was seen either in Parliament or in Amethi. Even as a loser last time, she made it sure that she lived among her voters with projects of development for the area and a valid promise for the future.
Udhampur Constituency has achieved a unique distinction in context of voter turnout and lead of the winning candidate. Dr. Jitendra Singh won by a margin of around 60,000 votes in 2014 and during the election of 2019, his lead grew by six times. His margin of more than three lakh fifty thousand votes is in itself a record. Secondly, he probably achieved a distinction of a first time winner in J&K to have won by more than three and a half lakh votes in the Lok Sabha elections. All negative campaigning by certain vested interests against the doctor fell apart and his clear, big and historic win in the Mandate 2019 straightaway took him to fill in the gap created by the absence of the veterns in public life and the retirement of the leading figures in BJP as the voice of Jammu at national level. Surprisingly for some, BJP, unlike in the other five constituencies of the state, attracted a good number of Muslim votes in favour of its candidate in the Udhampur constituency. It is an added value addition in a polarised voting scenario in favour of Dr. Jitendra Singh due to his consistent efforts in the constituency for the last five years irrespective of caste, creed and religious considerations. At last, after a hectic exercise and ideological battle with the sparkle of political pragmatism and commitment to party and Government, Jammu region gets a leader-spokesperson in the persona of Dr. Jitendra Singh with this huge victory, courtesy, the voters of the contituency. The whole Jammu region can call him as it’s own son of the soil. His proximity with Modi has brought so much for his Constituency as well as for the Jammu constituency represented by Jugal Kishore Sharma over the last five years.
Nothing succeeds like success, but there is a promise and intent that need to be translated into action. The neglect, apathy and discrimination with the Jammu region for the last sixty to seventy years has to end and the next five years are there to write a fresh history with a promising future.
The inaugurated, pipelined, visualised, partly implemented or the would-be projects have to be implemented with one hundred percent success rate. The tourism, employment generation and the infrastructure have to come to the region for bringing it at par in a year’s time. The huge Mandate beckons the leader, that ultimately Jammu got, to deliver with precision in the background of his five years achievements in the constituency.
The moral of the story is that the voters are the ultimate judges and make one capable to have the last laugh. Their role and vision is unparalleled in electoral politics. They have a better assessment of one’s work, consistency, commitment and vision for them. In order to trust them, one has to nourish them with absolute zeal and devotion. The trust a politician reposes in them is verily paid, and the repayment comes duly, after five years, surely and safely.
(Feedback: ashwanikc2012@gmail.com)
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