By D.N. Singh
Elections are usually fought on issues and party symbols. But, now, given the scenario in Odisha, the entire exercise rest on three faces only – Naveen Patnaik, Narendra Modi and Rahul Gandhi – and nothing else is in existence. Whether it is good or bad politics is a separate debate, but parties and ideologies have reduced to become redundant.
When one closely watches the deliberations of leaders of any party and of any age, the usual takeaway is one of the three names only. Each and every leader exposes a tendency of invertebrates. So, the leader or the candidate matters nowhere. As if each one of them is walking on the crutches only.
One would not find any political leader in Odisha who does not suffer from this syndrome of identity crisis. As if, individually they have no selling point at all. That, of course, make one thing easy for the electorate that whom to vote for and that is where the symbol becomes pivotal and canvassing bit more easy also.
No damn bio data of a candidate remains relevant or what is the detail that can describe a leaders’ credentials. What is hidden before, after or beneath him hardly matters.
If you are voting for BJD, every candidate has only one inescapable route and that is to buoy on the name of Naveen Patnaik. So you are there. If it is BJP, then Narendra Modi is the only name each BJP cadre banks upon to sail through the electoral turbulence. Which vividly exposes the paucity of popularity of either any leader at the state level or at the national sphere.
Irony is no less chronic in the Congress party either. Every Congress leader is heard singing paeans praising the political foresight of Rahul Gandhi only.
There was a time when the image of an individual leader was getting the preference to the party. But now it is no more in vogue. What a fanstatic yet sad spectacle of the ‘largest festival of democracy’ that walks on crutches only.
