Amidst the rubble of Indian Democracy

On 26th Jan 1950, India emerged as a democractic nation.

In democratic governance, theory states that the candidates preferred by maximum number of votes get to rule.

As India is indeed a very large country with so many distinctions amidst voters. Politicians face enormous problem of coming up strategies to ensure that they get enough votes to win.

Instead of rising above the din to create their own identity, these leaders opted to subterfuge the democratic process.

Each soon realized that it is very hard to gain majority by the most honest means. It would require one to live up to ideals that are way too difficult.

So each aspiring politician did the next best thing.

They strived to identify a group of voter that was large enough for them to have some hold.

In order to achieve maximum number of votes from this small subsection of populace, they looked for ideas that would appeal to everyone within that group and enable them to present as one homogenous identity.

Once the homogenous group with its own identity is established, some time is devoted in figuring out the issues that will make this group resonate as one.

Sometimes issues are all too self-evident. Sometimes issues have to be created out of nowhere.
Sometimes core issues have to distilled out of diverse range of real problems identified.

With the list of core issues, Politicians present themselves as the first person in India to be able to identify the issue and starts offering promises to resolve the issue. Shower of appeasement begins.

Appeasing a small group was only smaller part of the solution.

Larger part of problem was to ensure that the small group somehow managed to appear taller than rest when it came to counting of votes.

Since the homogenous group cannot be made drastically big, the next obvious thing is to make break all those that will not definitely not blend or are too large.

Rest of the voters that cannot clearly resonate with target homogenous group is hammered.

It is to be hammered and broken down into pieces in such a manner that each new piece is smaller than the target homogenous peice.

Thus, the lofty ideals of Democracy were reduced to game of chafing and hammering.

Each Politician continues along different variations of the same general theme and keeps coming up with different group from populace to appease and break the rest.

At every election, different homogenous group needs to be carved out. The group that is being appeased is showered with gifts such as reservations, guaranted employment, lowering of academic standards.

Sometimes its Muslims vs Hindus
Sometimes its Sikh Vs Hindus
Sometimes its Ram Janmabhoomi
Sometimes its Dalit
Sometimes its Women and domestic violence
Sometimes its Marathi vs rest of India

After all it is lot cheaper to shower 10 people with lavish gifts to secure entry than to work hard and gain trust of 100s.