Reference Auto

Should India change to a two or three party system just like the American or the British way of governance in order to add succour to decision making?

The recent election for the American President saw Barack Obama trump Mitt Romney to re-enter the White House in Washington DC.

Romney humbly accepted defeat, congratulated Obama and vowed to work for the American people (how often do we see something like this happen in India?).

There is a clear mandate in the US on who will call the shots (under a democratic set-up).

Also, our neighbour China has undergone a leadership change to give a push to young blood. Hu Jintao has stepped down to pave the way for the entry of Xi Jinping at the helm.

Even China has a central decision authority (though under a non-democratic set up) and has witnessed exponential overall growth in the last decade.

But coming back to the scenario in the country, we have noticed that the two biggest national parties – the BJP and the Congress – have been sucked into controversies and scams and this is going to make their prospects in the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections in 2014 bleak.

If BJP was to argue that the Congress is a corrupt party (with the names of Salman Khurshid and Sonia Gandhi’s son-in-law Robert Vadra surfacing in various scandals), the Congress could hit back, saying that the BJP’s own president is a corrupt man being involved in several scams, including grabbing of farmers’ land, irrigation scandal and for undertaking murky transactions through various fictitious companies.

Even BJP leader and former Karnataka chief minister Yeddyurappa is the de facto CM today despite being involved in a slew of corruption cases.

The old hags want to hang on, make even more money and not allow the youth to step in. None of our parties are willing to clear the way for the youth (unless of course it is a son or a daughter).

So, what could we see in the forthcoming Lok Sabha polls? We would surely not see any party or even alliance bag majority votes.

In fact, there are rumours doing the rounds that the combination of votes bagged by both the Congress and the BJP could fall well short of the magic figure (274 seats needed for a majority in the Lok Sabha).

The electorate would be fragmented like never before and we would see regional and micro parties bagging votes and new parties foraying into Parliament.

The end result: Rampant horse-trading and fragmented decision making, which would stall every development project in the country and bring progress to a virtual halt.

Also, the India Against Corruption party or IAC, set up by former Anna Hazare aide Arvind Kejriwal, despite exposing the likes of Gadkari and Vadra, would make little headway into the Indian polity.

So, in order to bring about strong decision making into governance and development thereafter, we need to have a two or a three party system, but is anyone listening?