Communal Politics & Caste Politics in India

India is a nation of variety. Variations are a constant trend here. Variety in language, variety in culture, religion, credos, caste, community. And the democratic government which should ideally normalize these variety and provide a quality governance usually gets entangled in the dirt of politics. Communal, regional and caste based politics. The whole theory of politics revolves around two concepts retaining power by creating vote bank and creating vote bank by exploiting the diversity and differences. And it's quite evident in the way Indian politics act.

If we take a closer look the federal republic governing system in India is distributed over regions/states poles apart from each other from the language, and cultural practice point of view. Hence the regional political parties have made their way into the big picture capitalizing on these regional needs. For instance Uttar Pradesh the most populous state of India with more than 170 million of population, 88 parliament upper house seats is ruled and re-ruled by parties whose single agenda is communal and cast based politics. Mayawati Beheji has been elected chief minister with overwhelming majority 3 times. She represents Bahujan Samaaj Party, fundamentally a party for the dalits of UP. So is the opposition party which is headed by a backward caste leader Mulayam Singh, Samajwadi party. Most of the UP population resides in villages depending on agriculture. And in India most of the villages are still strict about caste system. When a party makes it a agenda to provide employment to all dalits, propmotions and social respect for the backward caste. It hits directly into the fish eye of the emotion of the mass residing in villages under strict caste rules. This creates a vote back as good as 30% of the total voters. The reason why Mayawati never cared to speak about good governance, social walefare, price or economics. She enjoyed the assured vote of almost 35% of toal voter just by pointing out that they are lower caste and making it a single point agenda.

Similarly in Haryana Jat community is targeted by parties and hence the whole community's vote is assured. In Maharastra MNS is targeting on language basis. Hence to ctreate a safe vote bank of Marathi speaking people. In Rajasthan Juggars are provided with reservation as it ensured a safe vpte bank. In the national picture BJP the Hindu fundamentalist party makes Hindutva an agenda to win elections, as In India 80% of the population is hindu. While the congress at times has shown favoritism to muslims by granting subsidies and reservations, just to create a vote bank. Voters do get biased with the feel of favor by a particular party as for them it's a sense of security. But of late we have forgotten the Indian constitution proclaims India to eb a socialist, republic, secular democracy. Which is defied by such cheap vote bank politics.
The politicians make the fragile sentiments of common man as a soft target to instill insecurity and hence a false assurance to gain the vote. Providing them with short term benefits at times like reservation, partial or temporary employment. The mass mostly poor and lower middle class in India never enjoyed a respectable social status, when this hurt emotion is targeted they get exploited and the voting opinion is biased. Caste and communal politics has certainly influenced the voters to cast biased votes while being driven away by false rhetoric.
And finally it has hampered the actually development and meeting the real needs. This needs a mass awareness which can be incorporated in a slow process to bring in the transformation and making the voters immune to caste or community based politics.