In the Legislative Assembly Elections of 2014 none of the parties got the minimum required seats to form the government. The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) emerged as the single largest part and the Bhartiya Janta Party(BJP) secured the second position. The PDP had fought the elections with the first and main objective of keep the BJP out of the power. So it was expected that the party will make no compromises in its election manifesto and form government with the help of other secular parties. Even the National Conference, the fierce rival of the PDP, had offered the support to keep the BJP out.
Proving the dictum right that there are no permanent enemies in politics, the PDP took an unexpected decision and went with the BJP. This was a merger of the North-Pole and South Pole for the simple reason that the PDP had described the two parties as poles apart in their ideologies and manifestoes. The same party which described the merger impossibility belied itself and formed the coalition with the BJP giving an idea about the fact that how far the politicians and political parties can go, and how low can they stoop.
Nevertheless, if the party at the last instant had realized that by going with the BJP the interests of the people, and the state, could be served in the best possible manner then it could be called and expedient decision. But, if the performance of the government in the more than three years of its existence is any indication then it can be safely stated that the PDP is the only political party in the history of politics which is in a coalition despite the fact that neither its party interests, nor the interests of the people, nor even of the state are served.
True the party is succeeded in its getting some ministerial berths in the Council of Ministers but there the party is clear in a subservient and subdued position. True the party has been able to give some lower rung posts to some of its workers but there too the majority of the workers have become disillusioned with the performance of the party and the preference that the party is giving to some workers and neglecting the rest. The people are moving apart and disassociating them from the party.
This North Pole-South Pole coalition has rendered the North Pole (the PDP) completely toothless. With each passing day, the PDP is losing its constituency at the behest of BJP’s anti-Kashmir policy and surprisingly, and painfully for the faithful followers of the party, the party is showing no resistance towards this policy. Instead the party is covertly or overtly helping the BJP in its anti-Kashmir moves.
The brazen display of military heroism in Kashmir, unabated killings, human right violations, mass arrests, political detentions, blinding and maiming of the children including young girls have dented the image of the PDP badly. Four years back the same very party, which was presenting itself as the only savoir of the human rights and human dignity, is acting in a manner where the rights of humans and their dignity is marauded under the boots of cruelty with the explicit approval of this party.
The image of the PDP is badly deformed in the eyes of the same very people who supported this party. The urge for some paltry gains and greed to remain in power has damaged the party and its future prospects badly. The playboys of that the party had chosen to counsel the ministers and decisions makers have implicitly or explicitly tied their knots with the BJP and are defending the policies of the BJP which are nowhere in the interest of the party and in the interests of the Kashmiri people. They are the worst of the enemies of the party and the actual mission of the party but who cares.
Actually, the BJP wanted to demolish this party for the simple reason that the PDP was the only hurdle in the mission of the former to gain power in the state. There was no better option than to damage the PDP by its own actions. Today the BJP alone is in the power in the state; in Jammu its own ministers are doing the job and in Kashmir it makes the PDP people to do that Job. The PDP has simple surrendered before the BJP and amazingly the authorities of this party seem happy about the situation.
The PDP now doesn’t seem to have any roadmap or ideology, it has lost that and the BJP made it to lose that. What this party is doing is to prove faithful to get some crumbs out of the feast that the BJP is enjoying. Just the other day another power project was handed over to the central government by the same government which claims to get the two of the previous ones back. By the handing over of this project all the claims fall flat, this really is a disappointing state of affairs.
Drabu was made a scapegoat for saying things explicitly which the party now believes in implicitly. He actually said which the current stand of the PDP is. We can go to the extent of saying that it was all scripted to give an appearance that the party holds a moral high ground when actually the party has fallen to the depths of immoral practices. It was a plot to befool the Kashmiri people but the plot faced and utter failure.
The current status is that the party is disconnected from the people. It’s MLA’s can’t even visit their constituencies and they cannot live in their homes. The same is the true few of the jokers of the party who survive by their praises that they invoke upon the BJP. They are survived more by the BJP than the PDP.
The PDP is acting such a way that as if this party has no chance of coming to power anywhere in the history of the state. They act as if only to fill their coffers which would aid them to survive once they are out of power. Had that not been the case then the coalition would have been broken long back. Nay, it would have ended the moment the BJP failed to cooperate upon the implementation of the agreed upon Agenda of Alliance. There can be nothing as immoral as this coalition and the working of the coalition is. The coalition is the living example of two betrayals; one is the betrayal with the fundamental objectives and ideology of the PDP and the other the betrayal with the fundamentals on which the coalition was built.
Nonetheless, it can be said at the end that the PDP as the party is the only loser in the coalition. The people representing the party in the government are there to serve their own personal parochial ends. The PDP as an ideology and as a movement has perhaps already handed over to the pages of the history. Short history it was as there are no hopes of its revival, at least in the near future. With the same set of people it is not possible. Written in the interest of the PDP but nobody among them will understand as long as their eyes are shut.
The author can be reached at arshad9708@gmail.com
