As India prepares to conduct general elections in a few months from now, there’s one big question doing the rounds in the newsrooms, drawing rooms and streets alike: who will be the next prime minister of this gigantic country of over 1.25 billion people?
With the Congress formally launching Priyanka Gandhi into the political fray, the party’s president and her brother, Rahul Gandhi appeared to have played what is being touted as his ‘masterstroke’.
Just when the frantic Indian news channels began to give a lion’s share of their airtime to the Congress, the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) –led government helmed by PM Narendra Modi, seemed to pull the airwaves and hence the political debate back towards itself by conferring the country’s highest civilian honour on India’s former president, Pranab Mukherjee, who has been a lifelong Congress worker, albeit not too averse to the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS).
It is said that the visit he paid to the RSS headquarters in Nagpur in the not-too-distant past, is instrumental in weighing upon Mr Modi and his home minister Rajnath Singh to announce the Bharat Ratna for Mr Mukherjee on the eve of India’s Republic Day.
Add to this, the all-new political moorings that opposition forces like Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party and Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party seem to be fastening, give India’s kingmaker state, Uttar Pradesh, a whole new equation.
L-R: Former Congress president Sonia Gandhi with her daughter and Congress General Secretary, Priyanka Gandhi and son, Congress President Rahul Gandhi. Source: Pankaj Nangia/India Today Group/Getty Images
And while reviewing India’s political theatre, one needs to look east too, especially at a time when the Mahagthbandhan, a grand alliance of anti-BJP, rather anti-Modi political parties, has taken shape in a huge rally anchored by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Bannerjee.
SBS Punjabi discussed these issues in detail with well-regarded political analyst Harcharan Singh, who joined us from Chandigarh over the phone. Mr Singh writes weekly columns in several Punjabi newspapers and also appears as a panelist on Punjabi news channels, on the politics and economy of Punjab and India as well.
On whom will the spotlight shine at the curtain call in this great dance of democracy?
To listen to this feature in Punjabi, click on the player at the top of this page.
