Onsen mein sab nange hain!

Onsen or Hot Springs are quite common in Japan and Japanese like their hot springs so much that apart from the many natural ones, you now have man –made, indoor ones and even in households. On my 1^st trip (on work of course) to Japan way back in 1999, I went to the picturesque city of Nagano which had just hosted the winter Olympics in 98.  The travel from Tokyo to Nagano to cover a distance of about 240 Km took less than 1.5 hours by Shinkansen. Yes, the same bullet train system which is being questioned mindlessly in India, now that the government in Maharashtra has changed!

That evening, after the day’s meetings were over, our host asked us to join him at the lobby at 5.10 pm (as typically it is with the Japanese w.r.t time!) to take us to an Onsen for a relaxing bath. The excitement of having a nice, natural hot spring bath experience vanished completely when our host revealed that as per Japanese culture one doesn’t wear a piece of cloth when inside an Onsen!! We could also see the reservations among a few westerners when they were told of this!

For Japanese though, as per their culture it was quite common to have group baths naked in these hot springs. For, they believed that ‘Onsen mein sab nange hain’! I guess that the popular Hindi phrase – ‘Hamam mein sab Nange Hain’ owes its origin to the Japanese hot spring bath culture. This gained quite a bit of traction In Maharashtra in the aftermath of the assembly elections in October!! With the drama over government formation getting over finally this week, one can safely conclude that none of the political parties involved, came out of the bath covering itself with glory!  This is notwithstanding the virtues being peddled out by journalists of all hue in favour of the parties they endear themselves to!

For the BJP, which took moral high ground and adopted a wait and watch approach initially just when Sena started acting truant, the cookie crumbled when the Sena was about to crack a deal with the NCP and the Congress! By rushing itself to align with Ajit Pawar of the NCP, BJP had egg all over its face, when Ajit Pawar back tracked and couldn’t bring in the required numbers. Even if the BJP had managed to form the government by breaking the NCP, it would have had to deal with the permanent stain of having aligned with a leader who it had dubbed corrupt all along!  Only in Surf ads, Daag Ache Hain! Not in politics. Today, even the most loyal bhakt is questioning the Saturday morning wisdom of the BJP for taking oath in stealth!  Chanakya in his grave must be cursing the BJP for bringing a bad name to him!

For the Congress, which didn’t even take this election seriously, this was an opportunity too good to miss, to just have a crack at shared power! For all its grandiose pretensions of being the vanguard of secularism and the binding force for all secular forces in India, it just needed a few days to shake off all its ideological moorings and tie up with Shiv Sena!  Suddenly we were fed with how Bal Thackeray supported the Emergency and how he liked the authoritarian streak of Indira Gandhi and so on!

As far as NCP was concerned, since 2014, it was a facing an existential crisis. And since the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, not a day would pass without a NCP leader jumping ship either to the BJP or the Sena. In the elections, it came 3^rd in terms of number of seats after BJP and Shiv Sena. Its strong hold remained in the Western Maharashtra/Sugar Belt areas.

When the results were out, Sharad Pawar kept saying that the mandate for them was to sit in the opposition and would happily sit in the opposition benches. At the same time, NCP was in the forefront of discussions in cementing an alliance between Shiv Sena, Congress and itself. In a small, close knit party like the NCP, it is difficult to believe that Sharad Pawar didn’t have a whiff of the defection being engineered by Ajit Pawar to align with the BJP. Probably, this was plan B for NCP which got aborted when the terms were not in its favour!

This probably explains why there was not a single strong condemnation, leave alone expulsion of Ajit Pawar when he did what he did. Contrast this to what Karunanidhi, the DMP leader did to his son Azhagiri when the latter revolted. Azhagiri was summarily expelled from the party just for opposing the leadership. Here, the nephew does the unthinkable act of breaking the party and still he is welcomed back to the party just in a few days in public display of bonhomie. And it is rumoured that Ajit Pawar may still end up becoming the Deputy Chief Minister after all!

And coming to the last actor in this drama – the Shiv Sena, less said the better. Clearly, the whole drama was precipitated in the 1^st place by the Sena. Having gone to the voter with a pre-poll alliance with BJP and got the numbers it eventually did, the Sena did not have any qualms in betraying the electorate. It might have managed to achieve its ulterior objective of having its person on the Chief ministerial chair, but it would be very difficult to shake off this image of a petulant partner in a coalition for long.

We have seen parties fighting against each other virulently during polls and then coming together to form a government through a post poll alliance. Now in another twist, parties fighting under a pre-poll alliance, win the mandate and then decide to separate and align with other parties whom they opposed, to form a government. For the common voter, it is clear that – What you see is NOT what you get! This raises a few pertinent questions. Is democracy just about conducting elections timely and getting people to vote? Is it not ultimately about mirroring what they need? There needs to be a debate and eventually changes in the constitution which will not make voter feel slighted at the end of the election process!  Looking at what has happened in the past few elections, this is a SOS need.

On the positive side, my Japanese friends can be now happy to see that in India also – ‘Onsen mein sab nange hain’ just like in their wonderful country!