Voters perspectives for the 2024 Lok Sabha Elections

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Voters perspectives for the 2024 Lok Sabha Elections

 

By: Dr VK Bahuguna 

The cacophonies of political leaders have started all over India for the next Lok Sabha elections to be held in the year 2024. This time the fractured polity of the country has also reached abroad where the Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has been giving vitriolic anti Modi speeches and inviting the people abroad to help protect Indian democracy. On the other hand Prime Minister Modi had addressed the Indian Diaspora in Sydney about his governments’ achievements in last 9 years recently while on an official tour to Australia during May 2023 and his party has started the campaigns in right earnest with Amit Shah claiming that BJP will win 300 seats. The Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar who ran the state government for more than 20 years with BJP is now spearheading a movement along with R Chandrasekhar Rao Telangana Chief Minister to unite the opposition and strategising to unseat the BJP led NDA from power. The Congress and its allies are upbeat after winning a thumping majority in the May 2023 Karnataka Assembly elections. West-Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Bannerji is also eyeing the leadership of opposition in case the BJP is sidelined in the race of power. Thus all political parties had already started their campaigns both for the upcoming assembly elections in 2023 in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Telangana and the 2024 Lok Sabha Election. The freebies and Dharna and road blockage policy announcements had again surfaced with Kisan panchayats and others busy in making announcements to focus on capturing powers to get through these means of attracting the attention of the voters. The population of the country had already crossed to over 142 crore and India had surpassed China as the world’s number one country in terms of population. In a democracy with such a varied landscape and a huge population of young unemployed people in the waiting political subterfuge and mobilizations of people by political parties by morally unfair means like freebies is not uncommon. In such situation the common man-the voter has to analyse the rhetoric of politicians and to choose their rulers. However, the Indian voters have the uncanny habit of fooling the political leaders by exercising their votes in a very subtle and intelligent manner to choose the best possible option right from the days of post Emergency. However, this character of voters has seen a change in recent years when they have been falling for the allurements of freebies. From the perspective of our informed voters let us analyse what are the issues of national importance in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

Today the biggest hindrance of equitable distribution of fruits of development is the rising population and unequal distribution of wealth and thus poverty removal. Because of this the people fall for promises of freebies. Nothing can be free in a vibrant economy as the tax payers’ money political parties are promising to squander without calculating the capacity of the exchequer to shoulder the burden. Indian economy is viable and largely unaffected by global events because of fiscal prudence we exercise. The freebies going to damage the economical stability very badly and election commission or the Supreme Court must come out to stop it ‘suo motu’ as the protector of our constitutional propriety. It is misuse of electoral process and morally unconstitutional except for free education and health care but no political party is promising to provide free quality education and health care. The country needs a law on population control to strictly enforce punitive measures for population control. The government with 73rd Constitutional Amendment had already enforced it by denying opportunity to parents with more than two children from contesting the Panchayat elections. The second important issue is adherence of our political parties to true democratic values for the long term survival of the democracy both in the intra party dialogues as well as inter-party confabulations and in the assemblies and parliament. Our politicians have often been criticizing the Judiciary for its outreach to executive functions but they forget that it is their biased and uncalled for actions the judiciary had to intervene when the warring politicians move High Courts and Supreme Court on small matters like calling the session of state assemblies to prove majority etc. It thus calls for massive electoral reforms. The third issue is the control influx of foreigners in a planned manner in the country by the foreigners by procuring documents and sectarian agendas of political parties play a key role in this regard. Such influx had in the past created tension in many states and the time has come to firmly deal with such illegal immigrants through appropriate and strong legal means which should fix punitive accountability for the government servants for issuing or helping in procurement of documents. Fourth issue is de-criminalizing the politics as most political parties have not only been taking help of criminals but the criminals responsible for heinous crimes are getting repeatedly elected to parliament and state assemblies and are slur in the name of democracy. If this trend is not checked it will pose the greatest threat for the rule of law in the country which is evident in many ways now. Fifth issue from the citizens’ point of view is the use of money and muscle power in the elections. Even national political parties are taking money for issuing tickets to aspirants and even after monitoring by election commission a middle class person cannot think of standing in Lok Sabha and Assembly elections. Once these moneyed people win they go for rampant corruption and therefore, this is another great threat to our democracy.

Sixth is ignorance of providing forums and solutions for the regional aspirations and for this the voters are to be blamed also as they fail to put forward their demands or they give way to propaganda machine during elections. Seventh important issue is relating to the demand of old pension scheme which the opposition is milking in recent state elections and the ruling BJP is oblivious. Old pension scheme should be opted with certain conditions like eligibility after 25 years and cutting down the flab or else NPS should guarantee 50 % of the last pay as pension. Eighth is to focus on creation of employment and reforms in bureaucracy to end red tapism and bias decision making. Hope some of these issues on behalf of voters find a place in the forthcoming elections this year and in 2024. (1125 words)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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