Letter to the editor
Your editorial, One party, two visions (January 21), is indulgence in appearances, characteristic of much of mainstream journalism today. It ignores the inherent unity that apparent “oppositions” entail in the political market and competition. The ideal of a two-party (or even multi-party) system is nurtured to structure and limit political choices in a bourgeois system, transforming the electorate from a referee in the match to a football. Political parties, irrespective of their political ideologies, come to nurture the same within themselves, too. Like a firm in a commodity economy, their success depends on how many incarnations (choices) they themselves can take, even if it means to change just the colour of the packaging. BJP has been remarkably successful in this regard – earlier, if it was Vajpayee vs Advani, today it is Advani vs Singh. The extent of its success is evident from the fact that even The Hindu’s sensible journalism has been mesmerised.
The published version: Changing the packaging (January 23 2006)
An early comment on ADVANI’S JINNAH DRAMA (June 2005)
Beyond Capital 