A sweeping victory for BJP in the 2014 Lok Sabha Polls. The rival ‘Congress party’ was mauled under the BJP Rath. Out of the 543 seats for elections, BJP and its allies gained a whooping 335, while the Congress and its allies had to make do with a shameful 58. Out of the 336, BJP alone got 284 seats that count to 52.3% of the total seats. The once popular AAP bit the dust by managing to win just 4 seats out of the 434 they had vied for. Thus now the BJP can form a much speculated stable government in India while there’s no clarity on which party would be in the opposition.
What went wrong for the Congress? Congress is present in free India since 1947. BJP in comparison is a relatively new party. It was in power from 1998 to 2004 after which Congress took over again. Throughout the history of Independent India, Congress party has been in power for all but two terms. Immediately after Independence, most of the India was marred with extreme poverty, illiteracy and religious divide. Most of the population lived in villages and lacked means to satisfy even the most basic of the needs viz. food, clothing and shelter. The policies formed back then were aimed at ensuring the betterment of such people. Few were concerned about competing economically globally. The congress at that lime launched various schemes for the upliftment of the poor and the backward. Over the course of years, as the Congress lost its main political leaders who were replaced by arguably morally lesser individuals, the poverty and divisions in the Society became trump cards for votes for the Congress. People fell for the false promises initially but as the schemes rarely benefited the end user, given the rampant corruption among the middlemen, they started losing their faith in Congress Party. But the biggest insulation for the party was the absence of any other credible party to challenge them. BJP, the next big party, had Hindutva as its agenda, it being the political wing of the RSS. It wasn’t considered as secular and thus had almost no support from the biggest minority of India – Muslims. Congress, on the other hand, always maintained a ‘secular’ agenda thus garnering support from the populous Muslim community.
Post the economic reforms of 1991, the economy got a tremendous boost. Foreign investments started pouring in resulting in creation of jobs and increase in per capita income. The middle class was rising. Common people started taking interest in the economy of the Nation and became aware of how their own economic gains were based upon it. Their materialistic ambitions increased. Television, internet, mobile phones connected them to the world and gave them a Global outlook. The media gave them updates of everything that happened around them and in the world. Education made them aware of their rights and responsibilities in the society and their capacity as wealth generators. Today more than 70% of India’s population is under the age of 35. By 2020, the median age for India will be just 29, as per the recent report by UN. These youths are the driving force of the India today. They demand good and affordable education, equality in opportunity, good governance, good jobs and good infrastructure. They want to see India in the forefront in the race for Global economic supremacy.
Congress failed to realize where India had come. It failed to realize what the people want. It became complacent and assumed that people were too weak to show them the door. It failed to realize that the aspirations of the public had changed drastically from the needs to the wants. It still tried to handle the people with its old rusty strategy of making the same old promises which people were sick of listening to. They held themselves as the Nazi officers in the concentration camps and the public as the helpless Jews who were at the mercy of the officers for their survival. They failed to realize the gravity of the threat looking them in their face, that of the NaMo. They failed to realize how all this time they had come to the power only because of the lack of any better alternative with the people. With NaMo, the situation was no longer the same. NaMo appealed to the desires of the people to see India as the Superpower. While Rahul Gandhi couldn’t speak beyond food security, secularism and women empowerment in his childish speeches, Modi addressed all the different issues which lie in the path of achieving the national dream of economic prosperity. His popular ‘Gujarat Model’, was the brightest feather in his cap. He promised efforts for the economic prosperity for all and went beyond the stale, hollow promises of the past. Rahul Gandhi, by the time, continued to falter and show his ignorance, proving his inability as a prospective successful administrator. He who calls himself a youth leader and a youth icon is well beyond the upper age limit of ‘youth’. Congress thus, made the mistake of fielding in one of its weakest candidates against the BJP’s most popular one, thus digging half of its grave.
The numerous scandals that marred the UPA-1 and UPA-2 proved to be the final nails in the coffin. The coal scam, the 2G spectrum scam, the chopper scam, the Commonwealth games scam, the Tatra truck scam, the cash-for-vote scam, the Adarsh scam and many other scams bombed the nation during UPA rule. These ‘achievements’ in the Congress’s resume rendered them unemployable.
Today, the nation hopes that NaMo does not take it for granted as the UPA did and deliver realistically on most, if not every, of the promises made. The people of the nation, for the first time ever in the history of India, have come in support of one Individual who they see as the final hope of this Great Country.