Political paradox

Political paradox

BJP and Congress pour invective on each other, but their policies mirror each other
It turns out that chief ministers Yogi Adityanath and Kamal Nath have more in common than they may care to admit. Three Muslims accused of cow slaughter in MP’s Khandwa district have been slapped with the stringent National Security Act. It is reminiscent of UP’s Bulandhshahr district invoking NSA to deny bail to Muslim men already booked under the state’s cow slaughter prohibition law. NSA is a draconian preventive detention law meant to be used sparingly – not for ordinary crimes or for punishing minorities but specifically in case of threats to national security. Its inapplicability in such cases constitutes a clear instance of abuse of power. It is also a sign that India’s two national parties mirror each other when in power.

Take the case of cow protection. A bad idea that has killed the cattle trade, diminished farm incomes, created a stray cow menace, and promoted overgrazing should have been allowed to die a natural death once Congress replaced BJP in MP. The invoking of NSA and zeal for cow protection reveal the contagion of bad ideas. Congress appropriates BJP’s bad ideas and vice versa. Consequently, BJP tries to beat Congress at its welfarist, big state solutions instead of focussing on enhancing productivity and jobs. Forgotten in this race to the bottom is the axiom that only growth and booming private investment creates jobs, while redistribution sans such growth merely redistributes poverty.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi rode to power railing against the handout culture Congress spawned but has mirrored the statist UPA template instead of harking back to NDA-1, which laid a roadmap for growth through aggressive reforms. MGNREGA, a Modi bugbear during the 2013-14 campaign, has earned its biggest ever allocation in the 2019-20 interim budget. NDA has stuck to UPA’s legacy of costly central schemes in agriculture, rural development, and social infrastructure with poor outcomes to show for its efforts.

If national parties stick to a narrow band of policies and have nothing different to offer, politics will naturally fragment and regional and caste parties will benefit. Regional parties have done well in many states and are putting up a strong fight in 2019. Dislodging AIADMK, DMK, TDP, TRS, BJD, and TMC from their respective bastions is a tough task for BJP and Congress, precisely because despite boasting national presence they do not bring much cutting edge national or global perspective and turn out as parochial as the rest.