The Election Results

The election results today confirmed a long held belief for me. I believe that barring exceptions the next 15 years or so will see the party in power losing every major election. And this is going to happen regardless of performance or other populist measures that politicians adopt. The reasons are simple enough, India is changing very fast- for a small number it is progressing faster and they are getting ever richer. For the rest the lack of speed in progress (this is not be confused with no progress) when compared with the richer section is glaring and the government of the day will have to take the blame for it. And as every political combination is promising the same thing it is easy for voters to shift allegiance.

Knowledge that a party is only going to survive in power for one term can be both a blessing and a curse. A curse because there is no incentive for a politician do his job well if he knows that he is not going to survive the next election? But then I would not worry too much about the curse. When was the last time you saw an MLA or MP do a decent job in their domain? I would rather think of it as a blessing for honest politicians (I do hope politicians like Manmohan Singh take note of this) because it frees them from taking on populist measures in the name of vote bank politics. Why pander to vote banks if you know that you will only last one term.