Dr. Manoj Dash, Bhubaneswar, 10 June 2024
The election results of Odisha that came in on June 4, 2024, were startling in many ways. It brought cheers to BJP and its supporters while it generated disappointment among the supporters of BJD. Surprisingly, the outgoing Chief Minister and head of BJD since its inception, appeared fairly balanced as if he had reconciled with the unexpected results effortlessly. No doubt Naveen Patnaik has earned all-round appreciation nationally for the way he behaves and carries himself which is rare these days. Politicians take pride in unfairly demolishing others using derogatory language and by weaponising easily accessible social media platforms. The recent election results offer many lessons for different stakeholder groups such as voters, political parties and politicians, officials and people in general.
Lessons for Voters:
Voters must know that no political party or person ever seeks to protect their interests judiciously. It is the voters themselves who can serve their own interests. Their smartness in understanding government schemes and policies, and their intended long-term effects on the voters and the society, is what matters the most.
Voters must learn to be wary of political parties who take recourse to desperately offer meaningless free schemes to remain in power by any means. A party’s continuance in power disempowers citizens and voters, while on the other hand, it breeds arrogance in those in power who take voters for granted. Voters and society will gain the most if they vote out parties in power every five years.
Voters also must recognize the fact that in a democracy concentrated power in the hands of one political party will never maximize their interests. Hence, they must take care of creating situations where political balance remains stronger and different political parties watch one another’s activities and governance styles to keep excesses under reasonable check. If one party becomes politically way stronger than the others, it tries to muzzle voices who raise genuine concerns. A disproportionately dominant political party is a threat to citizens because it deliberately vitiates the level playing field that ultimately affects the best interests of voters.
A political party or the head of a government doesn’t govern in isolation. They are aided by constitutional provisions, laws and rules. There is a system in place duly funded by the people to take care of society and the individuals. To consider that some politician is a saviour of society would be a great blunder! It is much safer to consider that everyone is guided by self-interest. Voters can save themselves from unholy and dishonest alliances taking deeper roots by exercising their power to vote once in five years to throw out the party in power. It has been very well realized by all stakeholders in Odisha as to how a group of individuals cornered all power and appointed themselves as exclusive saviours of people. This has come too late but the effect on the collective psyche, and the strong message that it has sent out, would be highly effective.
Lessons for Political Parties and Politicians:
Political parties would be better positioned if they always remain aware of greedy bureaucrats who want to corner more power. Many officials always go by the rule book and perform their duties. However, there are some who run after specific postings and create situations that would allow them to earn outside their salary. They manipulate systems and try to capture politicians with an aim to form a dishonest nexus for generating private benefits in contrast to their primary role of working for the public. They forget that they have been given their jobs to work for the people and to always put people’s collective benefits above everything else while simultaneously protecting laws and national interests.
When bureaucrats continue in one position for long they develop a deep sense of entitlement and consider the temporary official position as their own property. They start developing private networks and work to serve the interests of private parties whose only focus remains on making money by diverting public resources or by creating situations in which public resources and systems work for the public at a sub-optimal level thereby creating scope and space to serve private interests of a cartel. This ultimately hurts the interests and image of the party in power which prompts disgusted voters to boot them out with a high level of contempt.
A regional party like BJD must remember that working in close coordination with a national party like the BJP, which is eternally hungry to acquire more power, would ultimately hurt its own interest. BJD’s supremo and his other colleagues used to always claim that they are maintaining a distance from the BJP but in reality they always ended up becoming an extended arm of the latter. This strategy was of very limited value and it gradually eroded BJD’s political heft among the electorate. Just because people praise a leader and vote for his party in great numbers doesn’t mean they would always do so. Votes are cast after evaluating a party’s behaviour and approach in the larger political context. Ultimately, peoples’ will shall triumph and they can easily decimate all types of so-called powerful people.
Politicians from a party in power must always maintain enough caution to ensure that bureaucrats do not unfairly invade their space with an evil intention to corner power and accumulate wealth through corrupt practices. The way an interloper from the bureaucracy in Odisha usurped their space in the last few years was alarming. It was baffling to see that most of them did not even raise their voice because they were apprehensive of losing their position and power! They should have pushed back the interloper in the beginning when he tried to invade their space and collective action would have been successful. When they didn’t do what was required to protect their own turf, they got totally eclipsed by losing power and people’s trust.
Lessons for Officials:
Most officials generally maintain silence when someone from their own rank and file attempts to disrupt the system and corner more power and authority by taking advantage of the informal trust they enjoy from a powerful political boss. This tarnishes the image of officials as a whole because ordinary people lose their faith in them and get genuinely disappointed when their interests are not protected. When officials are appointed to serve people, digressing from their assigned trajectory would create trust deficits. When this type of situation is prolonged, it demoralizes the citizens and puts the society under unnecessary stress. Public spirited and conscientious officials must leverage the informal relations they enjoy with different stakeholders to share their concerns while taking adequate precautions to keep their jobs protected. This would keep power-hungry cartels under check or break their network before they acquire enough strength to subvert public interest.
Lessons for People in General:
General people, especially those who can raise a voice and articulate their opinion on the state of affairs, have a great role to play. It never pays in a democracy to remain silent. The longer the silence, the deeper-rooted the vested interests will become! There are many platforms and forums where they can voice their concern including talking to their community and especially the youth to do things that would genuinely brighten their future and protect the long-term interests of the society. Politicians and vested interests often target the youth because they are aware that it is easy to attract youth towards temporary benefits. They create attractive traps that create an illusion for the youth that the people seeking more power are talking about protecting the interest of young people. But that innocuous-looking trap leads them to a life of addiction to drugs, alcohol, and unfair, as well as, unlawful practices that permanently jeopardize their entire career.
The party that was voted out of power in the recent elections unleashed its top political leadership to trap millions of youth in a web of drugs only to get their votes! The party has intentionally broken families with the power of deceit so that people get disempowered and the party gains power. People must remember that no politician would come to their rescue when they face troubles regularly in their day-to-day lives. It is their family, their friends, and the informal networks in the community that provide genuine and lasting help. A relationship built on transactions and secretive power-sharing agreements is useless at its best. Voting must be enjoyed as a civic right and it should be left at that! Becoming a part of endless political and social conspiracies to garner votes ultimately reduce the power of people once they start dealing with such unethical practices. It only empowers a select few, helps them to acquire more power and disempowers the collective.
It must be kept in mind that power in a democracy is only meant for doing good for the public. Any other use or misuse of such power needs to be resisted without any procrastination. The concentration of prolonged power in one party’s hand could be broken in the recent elections in a matter of few weeks! But it was achieved by the rival political party which resorted to an ugly and unpalatable political contest that Odisha had never witnessed before! It is good that inertia has been broken at last and change has been embraced by the people of Odisha. This proves that power is never static and it is transferable in a democracy. All efforts and propaganda of a group to cling on to power must be seen with suspicion and must be thwarted for achieving greater public good.
This transfer of power should never mean that the winning party is any different or better than the one that was booted out of power! The incoming party could actually be worse, when seen from the lens of public interest. If citizens want to keep control in their own hands, they must participate, raise their voice, always support others who voice genuine concerns, motivate other citizens who question the people in power and, above all, be ready to vote out the party in power at the end of five years. That would be a fabulous contribution to protect their own interests, safeguard democratic values, create enormous deterrent against formation of unholy cartels, and, above all else, promote genuine national interest!
