HYPOCRISY OF BLIND BJP-SUPPORTERS

It is completely hypocritical to rightly condemn the Congress for blocking legislative debates in parliament, demanding resignations, now and not condemn the BJP for having done so earlier. It is plain hypocritical to rightly criticize the Congress for not appointing a strong lokpal but being silent on the BJP following the same trend (if one believes in corruption to be an issue, one should earnestly demand systemic changes, irrespective of whoever may be in power). It is hypocritical to criticize the Congress for the suicides by farmers during their tenure and to not criticize the hundreds of farmers’ suicides that have taken place in Modi’s tenure, the pittance given as compensation in very many cases in a time of drought and a BJP agriculture minister in Haryana calling farmers committing suicide cowards and criminals. It is hypocritical to rightly condemn the Congress for not repealing Section 66A of the Information Technology (IT) Act that made the not-defined “causing annoyance or inconvenience” online a crime punishable by an imprisonment term of up to three years, but not condemning the BJP that also refused to repeal it (though the judiciary did strike it down, as I had most humbly predicted it will).  It is hypocritical to condemn the Congress for not bringing back black money and to not condemn the BJP for dismissing its promise of doing so within a hundred days as a ‘jumla’. It is hypocritical to condemn the Congress for not declassifying the Netaji files (those of them available with the central government and not the West Bengal government) and Henderson Brooks Report and not condemn the BJP, which has explicitly gone back on its promise to declassify them. We must choose the political party to vote for based on policies, rather than just blindly repose faith in any party and irrationally defend it, come what may. It is a misfortune of our nation that we vote for change, but unfortunately, often get continuity in many respects, and this is not to say that the Modi government should not be appreciated for whatever good work it has done so far, like introducing self-attestation of documents and simplifying forms to start a company as also efforts at integrating the northeast and promoting scientific research. However, for those touting transparent allocation of spectrum and coal blocks as a significant achievement of this government, it must be noted that transparent allocation of natural resources is expected, not particularly a great achievement. In fact, given the public scrutiny this was bound to arouse after what the UPA did on this front and after the Supreme Court having issued guidelines on natural resource allocation, the BJP had no choice but to perform this task transparently.