Let a thousand flowers bloom Saturday, September 5, 2009

Swapan's thought provoking article may suffer from a fatal flaw - the either / or presentation.
Either have the RSS and be restricted to 80 seats,
OR, become an umbrella and look for an all India presence.

Let us say the BJP takes in plan B, and becomes an umbrella.
The more sensible questions are:
1. Will the 'leadership' allow free and fair elections to all party and legislative posts?
2. Will they continue with the nomination culture?
3. Will the BJP prevent RSS sympathisers from becoming members of the party?

In fact, the only way to prevent the RSS philosophy from influencing the BJP is to continue business as usual - Continue to have self seeking party leaders.

Now, if the party becomes democratic - all of the points raised by Swapan are redundant. Elected leaders are responsible to their electorate - the members. Elections also ensure a larger participation for a number of people - a thousand flowers will bloom.

The RSS is influencing the BJP only because the BJP central leadership has proved to be inept and completely selfish.

I will give an example. BJP heavyweights are President of two cricket committees - Delhi and Himachal. Now, why should a political person be a chairman of a sports body? What about the one man one post doctrine? What about the arms length doctrine? India is a populous country so what is the need for one person to occupy more than one post? This is the Indian culture, I know, but then the BJP could have been different ! Did the RSS force these gentlemen to become Presidents of the sports associations?

Just change the functioning of the party to a democratic environment and see the spring come in.