Intellectuals like the writer are fond of speaking about the “idea of India”, intolerance, majoritarianism, centralisation of power and other perceived evils of the present regime (“ >The Left’s winding road ahead ”, July 20). But to most of us ordinary voters, the fruits of tolerance and a purportedly secular, democratic dispensation of over 65 years have been seen in the form of poor infrastructure, pathetic health services and education, poverty which has not been eliminated but ineffectively subsidised, and the hypocrisy of a one-great-day-in-five-years democracy. The most prominent images of the present idea of India are women walking for kilometres to fetch undrinkable water, stinking hospital wards overflowing with patients and schools lacking blackboards. It was not that Narendra Modi won due to the failure of the Left and other secular parties, but that the latter lost due to their history of incompetence, internecine strife and chaos, and corruption cutting across ideologies. If Mr. Modi loses power in 2019, it will not be due to the coming together of “secular” parties to defeat him but due to his failure, like Rajiv Gandhi’s in 1989, to deliver on the new hopes of a frustrated nation.
A. Ramachandran,
Palakkad
