Here, in brief, is the argument of the new independent: if after electing 15 Parliaments a majority of our people are still so poor, suffer so much injustice and corruption, and if our vast security machinery cannot protect us from 26/11, something has to change. The tricky part, however, is: how do you bring about that change? By joining, and reforming the (democratic) system from within, or by challenging and wrecking it from outside, and then building a new one? Their current sentiment is to go with the latter. So party politics is vile. It promotes vote-bank politics, casteism and communalism, personality cult and sycophancy, and keeps the really talented individual out. So, the same smart individuals can now enter the contest as independents and rock the “politician’s” boat, probably by riding the anti-politician mood so stunningly underlined on Barkha Dutt’s We the People every Sunday. This argument won’t go much further than Malabar Hill living rooms, and not merely because most of these angry “we the people” were most likely not seen among the 40-odd per cent who turned out to vote in South Bombay, preferring to escape to Alibaug, Madh Island or Goa: who wastes a four-day weekend for a mere vote?

It will not work because, fundamentally, the notion that you can invent a new politics where independents displace parties is not only fanciful, it is also undemocratic. The essence of parliamentary democracy is the party system. All democracies are built around competing parties, ideologies, mass leaders, manifestos. Imagine a Parliament of 543 individuals, or where even 10 per cent of the members have no party affiliation. Imagine the incoherence, the sheer anarchy. Such a thing has only been tried in the past by military dictators! Thrice in Pakistan, once each by Ayub Khan (guided democracy in the ’60s), Zia (in the party-less election that elected Junejo as prime minister in the ’80s) and then Musharraf after he had sent the top leadership of all major parties into exile. We all know how successful these attempts have been. The other fallacious notion is that the world of politics is filled with stupid, uneducated, lazy and corrupt people, usually of a criminal bent. That comes from an unquestioning acceptance of the Bollywood caricature of the neta.

... contd.