Barun Roy in his column "And now, back to the future" (Asia File, January 9) has raised pertinent questions on the character of our democracy that has been taken hostage by self-serving politicians who have succeeded in exploiting the voters and grabbing power on the basis of identity vote banks of cast, community, religion, gender, and by promising quotas, subsidies and freebies to various vote banks. The Congress' massive defeat in the recently concluded Assembly elections shows that voters can no longer be fooled by such tactics. The Aam Aadmi Party has set the cat among the pigeons by pursuing a different kind of politics. However, it still seems too far for India to emerge as a classless and casteless democracy.
M C Joshi, Lucknow
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