MYSURU: Pointing to the perils of queering the pitch of the political debate ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections by turning it into a Hindu-Muslim question, Swaraj India founder and president, and psephologist Yogendra Yadav on Monday said that the welfare of farmers, and opportunities for youngsters, must be the plank on which the polls are fought.Yadav, who participated at the Swaraj India Karnataka committee’s convention here, made a strong case for an alternative political force in the country besides the well-established parties currently holding sway in India. “The next year’s Lok Sabha elections will be an acid test. Political parties are preparing for the hustings, and the BJP is raising issues such as ‘Triple Talaq’, the National Registry of Citizens (NRC) ahead of the elections. The opposition parties, meanwhile, are busy working out coalition arithmetic. Traditional parties are not coming forward with an alternative political agenda for the elections,” he said.Yadav opined that, if pressing issues such as the agrarian crisis, and the distress that it concomitantly plunged farmers in, income and debts faced by the community and employment of youngsters, became the talking points during the election campaign, India would progress regardless of the political outfit, which succeeded in coming to power. “Instead, if the election is fought on the Hindu-Muslim question, it would mean a defeat for India. This does not appear to concern either the BJP or the opposition,” Yadav rued.However, Yadav admitted that the BJP‘s ideology posed a threat to the country’s secular ethos . “There is a vacuum in the opposition space both in Karnataka, and at the national level. The BJP-led central government is out to dismantle the framework of the Constitution , and the idea of secularism enshrined in it. The very idea of India is being corroded, which is that of ‘Swadharma’,” said Yadav, who has left an indelible mark in the world of academics prior to his stint in politics.He added that the three major pillars on which the idea of India rested were being slowly chipped away. Echoing acclaimed writer Devanooru Mahadeva’s observations about the condition in India being akin to that of an undeclared Emergency , Yadav said, “We hear about incidents wherein people are being lynched and killed for being members of a different community, and this is alarming.”Calling for a concerted effort to work towards the overall development of the masses, Yadav dubbed the alliance between the Congress and JD(S) in the state as an ‘opportunistic’ one, which lacked an agenda. “Every day, chief minister HD Kumaraswamy is seen crying, and expressing helplessness about his inability to manage the government,” Yadav said.Swaraj India, Yadav said, was the alternative political force in India. “We should use the election to give a thrust to the alternative force. The poll agenda must focus on the needs and aspirations of 99% of the populace – the farmers, workers, women, marginalised communities and the urban middle classes. Instead, the focus is entirely on the 1% of the demographic, which constitutes the elite classes,” he added.Mahadeva, meanwhile, lamented that most political parties were chiefly concerned with making money.

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