Basically this election is a crucial one for our constitution and democracy. If Modi comes back to power, I’m very doubtful if we will even have another election. Even if there is one, things are going to be exponentially more difficult than this year. We are already seeing the border between government and religion blurring. It is important we understand the current political situation and we cannot operate in a vacuum. I think we all need to step in to save our constitution and democracy.
My broader view is that none of the current political factions are truly democratic. Undemocratic organisations are subject to single points of failure - like Emergency under the Congress and the erosion of constitutional values under the BJP.
Any short term measure will wholly be dependent on the current factions (specially the opposition) coming together. I don’t a tiny group like ours has any hope to make any dent.
I think if we already rule out anything we can do, that will naturally point to a specific action. I think it would be foolish to look at this is a 0 or 1 binary game (fully democratic ideal party vs all parties are equally undemocratic only options). We will have to look at temporary emergency response at this point and that does not mean we have to continue doing that forever. Why do we put a band-aid when we have bleeding when we know we have to reach a hospital? We have to do some things that can make us survive till we reach the hospital.
So you are looking at it in reverse order. Do we take concrete steps is only useful depending on the answer to some other questions.
Do we think the constitution and democratic institutions are under attack? If we don’t see there is any imminent danger, then obviously we don’t need to do any emergency actions. So what is your estimation of the current state of our constitution and democratic institutions?
Once we are clear about this part, we can think of what we can do. I think everyone is looking at everyone else and thinking who will bell the cat. If we feel there is urgency, there are many things we can do, even if we don’t have a guarantee of success.
Once we have volunteers, we can work on more specific tasks like reaching out to different groups across India and convincing people that remaining neutral is siding with the powerful. Just an example, BJP received 90% of electoral bonds (anyone can independently verify this), that shows they are a clear favourite of the big corporates. Remaining neutral is leaving this game to the big corporates and surely they are expecting something in return from the BJP as well.