A vibrant bipolar dispensation
Apropos of the article ?Change and its limits? (FE, January 6), lasting democracies need to be bipolar, much like a battery where current flows only when both poles are healthy and stay connected through the consumer. Depending upon which polarity collapses, it is either a rebellion or an autocracy, leading to dysfunction. Take the JP movement that seeded the Emergency and, in turn, the rout of Indira Congress after which democracy was re-railed. The post-2009 scenario, however, ushered in an era of inexplicable and simultaneous dereliction, both by the ruling dispensation and the Opposition. Each was content and even happy for reasons of its own to see the other go callously non-functional. Political discourse in that very epitome of free democracies, the Parliament, was calculatedly undermined by both the Congress and BJP. That this could go on for as long as two years amidst a depressed global economy was inexcusable. An inactive battery was bleeding power without fresh charge and every economic index was tumbling down. With both the poles in inert decay, mercifully this democracy had found resurgence from within to restore a state of political normalcy. This new-found genre of a democratic backlash comes unannounced. How the new polarities would be managed to meet both political and economic ends in these turbulent times should be a matter of concern. So long as we are able to restore a strong bipolar polity, even with parties in a coalition, to a nation in desperate need of a firm and sensible direction, it would remain a question of toil, never of dread.
Janaki Narayanan, Ghaziabad
