Politics of convenience at work again

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I was recording vox pops of some young voters from Nasik during the recent Lok Sabha elections. A young MBA student in this Maharashtrian town told me that she will vote for the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) as she found Raj Thackeray the most charismatic and fashion-savvy young leader. She also admitted to not having voted in any of the past elections although she was eligible. This is only an example of a few million first-time voters.

With this, I was taken into flashback mode of my journey as a journalist to witness the state of the 12.5 crore people, nowadays regarded as nomadic or de-notified tribes but treated for the last 152 years as "notified criminal tribes". Not a single living soul of this population (which is equal to the population of the UK) has a right to have a birth certificate or a residence or domicile certificate or even a death certificate. Twelve-and-a-half crore people in India do not have the basic fundamental rights and are only treated as criminals and parasites. Nearly 9 commissions have worked on this shocking fact in the past 60 years and have suggested many recommendations to the Union government. But the petty politics has kept these 543 members of Parliament so busy that none of the recommendations in the last 60 years have got an approval to treat this population as citizens of India. So these 12.5 crore people do not exist in the voter list and hence, the political parties neither need them nor fear them. At the same time, the so-called sensitive, emotional and passionate Indian voter has also forgotten this gross injustice as an electoral issue.

We have also been witnessing and actively taking part in the innumerable discussions about the open market economy that happened since 1991, the era of market liberalisation. I had been to all the 59 families of the farmers who had committed suicides in one year in Nasik district. It was to witness and understand the families' sufferings due to the suicides of their most hardworking beloved. The crux of the farmers' suicides was never their loans --it was the inability to repay the loan and the reasons of the inability are many. The cost of production is very high, the prices of all the agricultural produce in India are never decided by the producers; the people who decide the prices never do it on the basis of production cost and many more. Sixty-four per cent population of the nation cannot decide the price of their produce and we still call it "open market economy" or "market liberalisation". But the politicians have preferred to sideline this issue, and the voters who are eating the fruits of the otherwise liberated economy have remained ignorant about the issues that concern 64 crore of their fellow nationals.

The issue of disparity in the credit policy is also a matter of concern. If I approach a bank for a loan to purchase a luxury car; I am followed up by the bank for months with various options of finance and interests from 6 per cent to 8 per cent. If I were to approach a bank for a loan to buy a tractor, I am not entertained below 19 per cent interest. Actually, a tractor is a productive vehicle which generates money but the disparity continues.

Another big issue of concern is the chain adopted for giving loans to rural borrowers. RBI gives loan to NABARD, NABARD gives loan to the state cooperative bank, then the state cooperative bank gives loan to the district cooperative bank, which in turn, gives loan to the rural credit society. At every step, the operating cost of the respective finance institution is added to the interest and finally, when a farmer borrows from the rural credit society; he gets it at 14 per cent interest. If he applies, for say Rs 10,000, he is given Rs 9,000 and his thousand rupees is deducted against the shares of the society. But he is charged interest on all the ten thousand and has to repay ten thousand as principal amount and interest on that. Thus at every step, the poor farmer is burdened. In most cases, it is observed that majority of the operating cost of the state cooperative and the district cooperative bank account towards the air-conditioned cars and rest-houses of their directors. But again, being a non-vocal crowd, this issue of the rural Indian has been completely neglected.

Another issue is of the Jawaharlal Nehru Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM). The Union government plans to spend in lakhs of crores for the infrastructural development in the select (10-million plus) cities in India. The principle of Private Public Partnership (PPP) is stated to be of vital importance in this but none of the projects in any of the cities is getting implemented with this PPP. The Government has declared various committees, monitoring committees and steering committees for the implementation of JNNURM but the committees do not have a presence of the people's representative. All the committees at all levels, be at city level or at national level; are completely dominated by the bureaucrats. The voice and the choice of the people in this gigantic project is getting neglected along with the issues.

These are just a few issues of concern that should have been addressed by all the political parties and the voters should have thought over these issues with empathy. The issues do have a merit to be national issues for the parliamentary elections but have been kept aside by the politicians and the people as well.

The voters of the largest and the youngest democracy in the world have completely sidelined these issues and the mandate will be decided without the long-pending decisions on these. Ultimately, the politics of convenience has always won and will again for the 15th time.