Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Middle Class Nuisance - A cynical View

Ever wonder why our gov.- & indeed our political class -  is dilly-dallying with the Lokpal, despite all the surrounding din. The supposed 'constitutional sacrosanctness' may be only a felicitous facade facilitating the gov to hide behind. Maybe, the gov/admin & the political leadership feel that the worst-case-scenario-electoral-math arising out of adverse anti-corruption-movement results - will not be sufficient to cause significant damage to the electoral equations, after all. Esp. considering that skeletons rolling out, should a Jan-Lokpal-like-bill be actually operationalized - will adversely impact most parties equally!
What else explains the current postures?
Come election time, the usual arithmetic of caste, religion, region will take over - esp. in the vast non-middle-class non-urban base. And how many LS seats - the politicos may calculate -  could be crucially impacted by this movement? And even in the impacted constituencies - so the strategists may think - there will always be enough to split the votes and manage the math.- keeping in perspective, the historical poll percentage in middle-class-areas.
So, working backwards from this position,  are the chances of a strong anti-corruption bill being passed, really bright? That's anybody's guess.