Third Force in elections is that of people; louder in villages
In the middle of high pitch rhetoric by the rival political parties - the two main alliances of BJP- led NDA and Congress- steered INDIA - there is a third powerful voice being heard in the entire rural landscape of the country. This assertive voice is not only seeking accountability from the candidates and their parties fielded for the Lok Sabha elections but also showing a mirror of rural distress that has reached a level of grave proportions
In the middle of high pitch rhetoric by the rival political parties - the two main alliances of BJP- led NDA and Congress- steered INDIA - there is a third powerful voice being heard in the entire rural landscape of the country. This assertive voice is not only seeking accountability from the candidates and their parties fielded for the Lok Sabha elections but also showing a mirror of rural distress that has reached a level of grave proportions.
The third voice piercing the ears of political parties and those maneuvering them is that of people in the villages of India. Mapping the landscape of Haryana, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh and Maharashtra, the vocal voice of the people is certainly disconcerting the political establishment , mainly the BJP which has been in power at the Centre for the last 10 years under Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Modi runs the government and his party in a manner that the elected representatives, MPs in the Lok Sabha and MLAs in the state assemblies find themselves somehow disconnected or are made to remain disconnected with the people in the streets and farms. They remain aloof from the ground reality of daily lives of farmers and landless labourers who manage to eke out a living by rearing a cow or buffalo and toiling in the fields for meagre wages in cash or kind .
Surely, the 5 kg per member free ration is a protective government gear or as the BJP would like to call it, ' Modi guarantee' but the beneficiaries need and rightly aspire for much more than the staples. They need complete protection and welfare in terms of the health and education of their children, their hygiene, and better lives for their youth. Schemes like Ayushman Bharat are not working well on the ground. Keeping them on a subsistence level by free ration is not okay for them and they are speaking it loudly and clearly. No confusion prevails when it comes to airing their grievances , as is visible in the alternative media of YouTube, Twitter or X and other platforms. Their anguish against the so-called media is palpable , in far from Delhi, say in Rohtak or Muzaffarnagar.
Essentially the real issues relate to livelihood and welfare. The livelihood issue revolves around rising input costs for crops, be it urea, water, seeds, pesticides and fodder on the one hand, and distress price in the market for their produce. While the distressed prices could be the result of the vagaries of the market, the distortions in the form of different controls like export restrictions , stock limits etc are nothing but taking away the money from the farmers and helping consumers who again are in a different kind of stress like rising cost of transport, education, health and housing.
To their chagrin, the candidates, especially of the BJP, are facing such loud and angry voices as they venture out in the heat and dust of Hindi heartland. Their expectations that somehow these real issues would be swept away by abstract national and religious sentiments are not seen to be playing out. Sentiments around building of Ram Temple at Ayodhya or abrogation of Article 370 of the Constitution with regard to Jammu and Kashmir are not helping the BJP, with the result that the Congress and other INDIA partners get ammunition of livelihood issues in their spirited campaigns.
Well- off people in the big cities, enjoying big fat salaries and packages and owning wealth , at times going to the level of vulgarity, are often seen grumbling over the so-called freebies being offered by the parties, including the BJP. Such a thing is not good for the nation in the long run, they eloquently argue. They can afford to say , as a large chunk of them belong to a class which lives on a different planet . It is this class which has been beneficiaries of the free market, distorted by policy makers. Can you believe a top real estate conglomerate of Gurgaon is launching super luxury flats, each costing , yes you heard it right, Rs 40 crore. Do not really know whether those booking the same ever go to a polling booth .
Anyways, the third voice of the Indian political space, that of people, is loud and clear; let us wait how it plays out on June 4.
