28

Nov

Naushad khan's interview of Pradeep Mathur

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Today's Edition

New Delhi, 28 November 2023

Caste-based Census Will Be A Major Issue in 2024 Polls

Mohd Naushad Khan

Prof Pradeep Mathur is a veteran journalist and Media Guru. A well-known political commentator , Prof Mathur is at editor of Mediamap news network . In an interview on the current assembly elections in five states he said that elections are very important for democratic polity but elections are not end all and be all of democracy. Democracy is much more than elections. For democracy the most important thing is democratic temper. Excerpts

Question : As we can see, assembly elections are on, the campaign is going on and some states have already polled, some states will poll afterward .So what is your reading from the campaign trail about the Assembly elections?

Answer : Now a days it has become a little difficult to understand what is happening on the ground. One thing is that I am not of an age to do field reporting and the other thing is that it has become rather difficult to believe what the media is reporting. You never know what the media is reporting is fair and objective or is biased. In fact the credibility of media has of late suffered a lot these days and therefore it has become very difficult to analyse a situation on the basis of what you learn from media.

However, by an overall assessment of the situation and by our understanding, I feel that BJP is in a very tight corner. As such it has been losing ground for the simple reason that the grip of the top party leadership in the states has weakened and issues like unemployment and price rise have made a big dent in its appeal among the masses.

People are also very conscious of the fact that all the promises that were made by the BJP government at the center of the states have not been fulfilled. There are two or three things that have severely damaged the reputation of this government. One thing is that the Prime Minster hasn't spoken a word about Manipur. Another thing is that he hasn't spoken a word about Adani. So now you are not speaking on these things and still, you are criticizing another party, ridiculing Congress leaders, and telling things that are not true. All these things have slowly eroded the credibility of the BJP. Now our middle-class people who were all full of prayers for Modi, are having serious doubts in their minds about his intentions. So I think our prospects for the BJP are not good. And if the Congress campaign has really picked up and the crowds in the meetings of Congress leaders are really that big s, then I think BJP is going to lose.

Q : Either way of Assembly election results, how do you think it is going to impact the 2024 election?

A : It is going to impact. This is wrong to say that assembly elections won't have any impact on the Lok Sabha election. It never happens this way. It was a question of image. What has happened is that Modi somehow was able to create a larger-than-life-size image for himself. If this image is dented then I'm sure it is going to have an impact in the 24 elections also.

Also, his image has not worked in Bengal and Karnataka it is also not working in these assembly elections. So how will it work in Lok Sabha elections? The central government has done nothing to satisfy people other than giving these five kg ration free to poor people; nothing has been done for the people in this country. So I don't subscribe to the view that Assembly election results are going to be different and Lok Sabha elections are going to be different.

Q : what do you think are going to be the issues before 2024, which issues are going to dominate?

A : As far as Congress is concerned, they are talking about unemployment price rises and some other issues. But I have a different view and I feel that earlier people came to vote for the BJP on basically three issues. One was corruption, the second was Ram Mandir divide and the third thing was a sort of image of a very efficient and committed party. Now corruption is useless for them because we can see that in this government too, a lot of people are getting into this corruption thing. So I think this government can't go to the next election and say that we are not corrupt and others are corrupt. If they say so nobody is going to listen to them. Second, the image of a very strong united party determined to do things for the country is also not going to work because everybody knows that a lot of dissension in the BJP itself. The third thing is when the BJP will accuse other governments it may not be appealing because they have lost credibility as they have not been able to solve any problem. The BJP government has not been able to fulfill many of the promises made earlier. So they are not getting any benefit out of the present scenario.

Q : So how do you think the caste-based census is going to play out before 2024?

A : Oh, this is a very important issue. When this castebased census came into the public domain I was not able to appreciate it. But the problem is that the benefits of economic development have been most unevenly distributed. This was a problem before also and now it is a much bigger problem because only certain people are getting so though caste-based census is going to expose the real economic situation or the real economic scenario of the people in this country.

And I think this is going to damage the BJP because so many castes have not benefited even one bit from this economic development. Now one can say that sale of cars has gone up, air tickets are not available but it is only a certain section of society which is getting all these benefits. Larger people are not getting it. So I think cast-based censorship is going to expose the myth of this overall prosperity.

Q : Will the caste-based census overshadow BJP’s Ram Mandir rhetoric and Euphoria?

A : Sure, it is going to overshadow many issues. This is a very good device to break the BJP’s hold on this say Hindu community. But I must tell you there is one very big mistake which all of us are making. It is generally said that the BJP is in power because it is getting the majority of Hindu votes and it is not a fact. In the 2014 election and 2019 elections in both elections, the overall percentage of BJP’s votes was below 40 percent.

Now let us take a situation when no person from a minority has voted for BJP, no Muslim, no Christian, no Sikh has voted. If we take 80 percent Hindus which means that out of the 80 percent, 43 percent are those who voted against BJP. This is what I say; it was a sort of a juncture in which emotions played. Congress was inefficient totally.

Q : Do you think that the opposition will remain united together till 2024?

A : Opposition parties must come together and they must fight together. They have to remain united because it is the compulsion of an opposition party to come together. After all, they have got an existential threat. They will have to remain together. I do not doubt that they will fight against this government.

Q : Keeping in mind the 2024 polls election what according to you are the challenges before our democracy?

A : Elections are important for democracy and there is no doubt about it. But democracy as a whole is not only elections. Democracy is many times bigger than elections. For democracy, the most important thing is democratic temper. If you don’t have a democratic temper then only casting a vote will make any difference. For a democratic temper, there should be a sense of equality, compassion, and tolerance for dissent. In the recent past, there has been a steep decline in democratic temper.

Elections are held and governments are formed in our country but the true essence of democratic temper is missing. Our democracy has been borrowed from the West and democracy became successful in the West because they adopted democracy after the social revolution. On the contrary, In India, we had a feudal system and democracy was imposed on us. The good thing about the king of the feudal system was despite all kinds of oppression against people the king used to protect their people from any external enemies and problems. Post Independent rulers were of democratic temper and they had no problems with the dissent. But today no one can think to dissent even I have to think twice before writing anything these days.

The best thing India has its diversity and without realizing diversity one cannot understand the democratic temper. The present ruling dispensation does not understand diversity. The biggest challenge before the 2024 elections is to raise the issue of diversity. It is important to educate people about diversity and its importance and also ensure political education among people to ensure a democratic temper in the people to strengthen our democracy. -----------

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