By The Editor: Siddharth Sehgal

Looking at your mistakes takes great courage, not everyone has it and sometimes when you are living in a bubble of success and unchallenged praise, its all the more difficult to look at the hard reality. Pride in politics is a very dangerous thing. BJP in its hubris did not cared and Congress in its enthusiasm will not care.

BJP had fallen into a complacency trap. In an effort to please everyone they pushed their core voter base too far away which in turn contributed greatly to their downfall. Many BJP supporters among farmers and middle class did not even bother to go to the polling booth and many who did go; they opted to press NOTA instead of voting for the Saffron party, in many of the seats the margin of victory was few hundred votes. This pattern will reemerge in Loksabha because any course correction is not on the horizon from the BJP. In its taken for granted attitude BJP forgot that people can show their displeasure by simply not going to vote. Whether agriculture & farmers’ distress, reservation, education, development, SC/ST act or anything else, on every issue the things just came to a stand still under BJP. Even Hindutva groups are having their doubts on BJP’s stance on Ram temple issue. Even though they have been absolved from the Supreme Court on Rafael, I don’t think it’ll have any bearing on the Loksabha. People care more about things that concern their day to day lives.

Now coming to Congress, if someone thinks that electing back the party to power which was reviled and kicked out of power due to its corruption barely four years back will now solve all their problems – without causing any more problems – then probably they are in for a familiar but unsavory surprise. Another very big obstacle in Congress’s way is their infighting. I don’t think Rahul Gandhi’s decision to ignore the likes of Jyotiraditya Scindia or Sachin Pilot, who have done so much work in rebuilding Congress party in their respective states and had seen fruits of their labor going to someone else, will go down well with these leaders and their supporters. Trouble is bound to follow. Moreover, people expect them to deliver fast and especially in Rajasthan and MP where BJP trail by a very narrow margin, getting the opposition’s cooperation will be very difficult.

People have a tendency to forget and the people they chose today may fell out of favor tomorrow, politics in democracy is cyclic in nature. Only the king changes, crown, throne and the subjects remain the same.