‘We have wasted seven decades on symbolism’

Election 2019 will go down in the annals of democratic India as one of the most deplorable polls. Not just Congress leader, Roshan Baig, we have had one candidate after another campaign in a way that is violative of the letter and spirit of the Constitution.

We have wasted seven decades  on symbolisms of inclusive growth rather than striking at the root of our developmental challenges. The idea that a person from a particular religion can only represent people of that religion shows how narrow minded we have become. One candidate while campaigning in Uttar Pradesh even warned a people of a particular religion that she would not do their work if they didn’t vote for her in large numbers. These are not isolated incidents, but have become the bane of our divisive electoral politics.

Once elected, each representative should strive to represent  every voter of his/her constituency and not just those who voted for him/her. Unless we separate campaigning from the process of representing the constituency, we will keep dividing our votebanks into narrower and narrower slices. And any further degradation in our electoral discourse will only result in killing the letter and spirit of our Constitution.

— The author is a Chief Enabler, Centre For Inclusive Governance