BJP & Inner Party Democracy

The recent debacle of Shri Advani‘s resignation and then reverting his decision after consultations proves once again that it is only in BJP people can agree to disagree and an individual’s will not to be imposed on others unlike Congress. In an era where political parties are run like family businesses, BJP is the only party to reckon with when it comes to putting basic tenets of democracy in to practice. Though I would not be able to comment on what made Advani to take his resignation back, but the very resignation in firstly place is ill timed and did not go well with current situation. There is no one man decision, it is all decided by a group of members – Parliamentary Board whose collective majority decision stands, at least that is how it appears. Elders always want the younger to take cue from their gestures and they do not prefer to say it explicitly and the younger want to pretend as if they have not understood these gestures though they do. It is hard to believe that because of one specific incident he took that extreme action but it is a compounded reaction of acts over a period time which he did not like.

All the while BJP has been talking about Inner party democracy, meaning which if parliamentary board consists of 9 members for example and 8 members agree with a decision then it simply becomes a collective decision it should not matter if one (Advani ?) disagrees. By putting his papers Advani has sent out a wrong message that all these days that it was only he who took the decision unilaterally and other had to just agree on it. So this time nobody agreed and he resigned? One of my friends recently told me that if a politician writes a memoir he must not continue in active politics, I am not sure how relevant it is but that seems to be the practice. So I think he must have gracefully stepped down after publishing “My Life My country” but he remained. I can understand why Swapan Das Gupta burst out after Advani’s resignation. I am too deeply anguished by this.

Even after I have grown up and I am on my own but if I do not listen to an advice of my parent’s and act on my own volition, elders do not like it. They complain to neighbors that their son is not heeding to their advice, without realizing the fact that they are weakening their own and family’s prestige in society. Advani did exactly the same, he has been saying few things to the younger ones with in the four walls, and then he started to complain to neighbors ie., attacking his own party in blogs for quite some time and once he realized that it did not work out, at the right moment he pulled the rug. All the while younger ones pretended that the father is happy because he did not say it explicitly what his problems are.

At times elders too misjudge, opposing Modi’s elevation is one such example. There is no question of whether he is a popular leader and there is no interest to debate on how he has become so popular, it is enough that people started to picture him as one solution for all their woes. When a foreigner/s is looting the country with the help of locals we needed a full strength to counter them and his act was a shocker to all.

Nobody denies you are a father of your daughter or son but expecting them to behave the way you like or do what you want even after they have attained the capability to take independent decisions for the benefit of whole family is uncalled for.