{"id":3202,"date":"2009-03-03T16:06:27","date_gmt":"2009-03-03T10:36:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/?p=3202"},"modified":"2009-03-03T16:06:27","modified_gmt":"2009-03-03T10:36:27","slug":"the-turning-point","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/classic\/200903\/the-turning-point\/","title":{"rendered":"The Turning Point?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last May I had <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/classic\/200805\/the-decline-and-fall-of-the-indian-national-congress\/\">written<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>So, a weak Congress with allies will do quite well for some time. In\u00a0a First Past the Post electoral system, the parties in the first\u00a0and second place tend to look stronger than they are, because like Vali\u00a0in the Ramayana, they will gain strength from their opponents.\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This analogy is unfortunately inaccurate.\u00a0 Vali gained his strength from the <em>strength<\/em> of his opponents. In a FPTP system, the second strongest party gains strength from the <em>weakness<\/em> of the stronger party. Your organization could be in a complete mess, but as long as you are the main alternative to the stronger party, the ruling party&#8217;s missteps and the anti-incumbency factor will cause you to gain strength.<\/p>\n<p>My point, though is still valid. I believe that the Congress is in an irreversible decline.\u00a0\u00a0If\u00a0ever it happens that the third front gains enough to form a government on its own, then the extinction will be quite rapid. The BJP is also in a decline, but I am not sure if it is irreversible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last May I had written: So, a weak Congress with allies will do quite well for some time. In\u00a0a First Past the Post electoral system, the parties in the first\u00a0and second place tend to look stronger than they are, because like Vali\u00a0in the Ramayana, they will gain strength from their opponents.\u00a0 This analogy is unfortunately [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[105,273,159,53],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3202"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3202"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3202\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3203,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3202\/revisions\/3203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}