Personality Driven Politics: A Contradictory truth of today’s India

On 14^th February 2015, it was a sunny morning in Delhi. Thousands of people flocked to a rally at historical Ramlila Maidan, not because they were asked to, but because they wanted to be a part of the jubilation, the ecstasy of a victory, the celebration of a man who had created history. And the moment in which the man himself arrived, the crowd which was holding its breath for long, roared in approval. The decibel levels reached a feverish pitch with the crowd chanting in unison. Yes, here the man is none other than Arvind Kejriwal, Chief Minister of Delhi.

The whole nation has witnessed the same charisma for Narendra Modi during the 2014 general elections. This throws up an important question. Has the electorate evolved over vote bank politics and has moved towards leader driven politics?

Be it Narendra Modi, Arvind Kejriwal, Nitish Kumar or Jayalalitha, they all possess some sort of magnetism which attracts people towards them. Be it on a national level or state level, all the elections won by any of the parties have one common thing; the party having the more face value won the election. And this is the reason, day by day Congress is downgrading to its lowest since formation because it has failed to build up Rahul Gandhi as leader of the masses.

Even if you could bring your attention towards the slogans chooses by parties during elections; ‘Har Har Modi’, ‘Abki Baar Modi Sarkar’, ‘Paanch Saal Kejriwal’, etc makes convincing that election nowadays fought in-between personalities not parties or ideologies.

It is well understood that people have become more mature with their political understanding and now they want a credible leader. But that credibility should be counted by the way in which leader follows his party’s ideology? What’s happening is completely different, wherever elections have won on a leader’s face value, that leader is dictating and deciding on which ideology the party and government will run.

Many think that Narendra Modi has come like a savior for BJP and is being too lucky for the party but later in time, people will realize its consequences. BJP, largely described as ‘Party with a Difference’ has completely lost all of its ‘Differences’ under Modi’s rule. There remains no democracy inside the party, galaxy of leadership has been sidelined and it will not be premature to say now ‘Modi is BJP & BJP is Modi’. It speaks a lot about a party largely known as a political offshoot of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.

It’s not just about BJP, every other political party works under a ‘Boss’ these days. It would suffice to say that the outcome of all recent elections was largely polarized by the voter’s faith in one man. A political pundit will tell you that Indira Gandhi and her son Rajiv Gandhi had done it in the past. But it was past and India has seen so many colors of politics after that.

However, this might be the beginning of a new era in Indian politics. An era where individual leaders with public backing might be more influential than a group of convincing leaders, where the concentration of leadership in the hands of a select few might be the way forward, where coalitions might not make as much sense as they used to, where the electorate is more volatile and demanding than ever.

With a great mandate comes an even greater level of expectation.