There is no alternative

TINA or 'there is no alternative' is a terminology I grew up with. I had developed an interest for the flavour of Indian politics around the time when Indira Gandhi returned to power at the fag end of 1979.

Her return demonstrated the incompatibility of the non-Congress parties. TINA was a common parlance used by the political commentators then. The Congress enjoyed the benefits of the TINA-factor during the regimes of Rajiv Gandhi, who came to power with a historic majority, and P V Narsimha Rao, who completed a full term virtually running a minority government.

Politics they say make strange bedfellows. But nothing is stranger than the bedfellows Indian political parties are making in an era of coalition politics. So much so, that probably the TINA-factor hardly holds any ground in Indian politics now.

It is, however, not the case in the UK, although on a different context.

The recent local government elections in England, Wales and Scotland have shown that the electorates hardly have any alternative.

The Labour Party may have won a few hundred seats in local councils up and down the country, not unusual after the incumbent in Westminster is midway through its tenure, but the policies of its sheepish leader in Ed Miliband are not good enough to drag UK out of the current crises.

A careful scrutiny of the major policies of the ruling coalition and the main opposition would reveal no radical difference, only to show why the current state of politics in the country is more based on rhetoric and spin, rather than on substance.

This also explains the apathy of the electorate to vote.

When I decided to abstain from voting on Thursday night (3 May), hardly did I know that only 32 per cent of the voters would care to cast their ballots, the lowest since 2000.

The fact that voters in Manchester, Nottingham, Bradford and Coventry have rejected the proposal of having a directly elected Mayor, also shows that the people do not want any more powers for the politicians.

With the British electorate struggling with their lives, jobs and the future, David Cameron's "bright ideas" are thrown out of the window. 

I remember Nick Clegg often telling the voters during the last general election campaign that he came to politics only to change it. As the past two years of the coalition government would show, politics has hardly changed, leave aside changing for the better.

The street smart politicians are only interested in scoring brownie points, not with their actions but with  words. Mr Clegg is now seen more as an opportunist, interested only in personal political (not even for the party) gains, rather than bringing about good for the society.

Despite the Big Society argument of Mr Cameron, it is the ordinary man who is the least powerful and at the receiving end of the politics of the day.

The Labour Party on the other hand suffers from policy paralysis. Lack of innovative ideas make them indistinguishable from the ruling formation they are opposing.

Given the crises the Britons are facing, UK badly needs a leader who can bring about radical changes while taking the British public into confidence about his or her sincerity. The array of leaders at their disposal would hardly inspire the electorate of any crisis-ridden nation.

Unfortunately, there is no alternative available to the British people.

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Tirthankar.Bandyopadhyay.Blog@gmail.com