'Democracy in India has lost its morals'.

Dubai: "Main focus for political parties today is on how to grab the 'chair' and so I think that our democracy has lost its morals," said the former editor of Indian Express and veteran columnist and journalist Kuldip Nayar on Tuesday.

With the first phase of voting underway in India, Nayar who is in Dubai spoke to Gulf News Radio 2 on much needed electoral reforms, the calibre of candidates in the current elections and campaigning strategies being applied by political parties in the country.

According to Nayar, it is very difficult to predict the final winner in the elections.

"This is because there is not going to be one winner. There will be many winners and they will come together to form a coalition. India has for many years have been witnessing a period of coalition government. It is difficult to say as to who is going to come out as a winner. It could be anyone of them because nobody is set to get a clear majority. In my opinion not even a near majority. The maximum seats that a party would be able to muster will be 160 or 170 seats out of the total 543 seats. These parties will get together after elections, and then see as to which group is more viable and which group will be able to offer more."

India, he said has 714 million voters and out of that the new voters are 230 million, and there is no guarantee on how many of them will exercise their voting rights.

Nayar said that it is disappointing that politics in India has shifted from issues to personalities, and now to power.

"You see when the Congress party was in power under the leadership of the first prime minister, late Jawaharlal Nehru, he would talk to the nation whether we should have larger private sector or a smaller one, should we focus on agriculture first or industry, all basic questions were being discussed. Until then there was no one to challenge the Congress party. When his daughter Indira Gandhi came to power, the focus shifted to personalities. The slogan that she gave out was 'you give me your vote I shall remove poverty' and then she became authoritarian. Thus authoritarinism came to our democratic set up. Today all small and big political parties are working how to get near to the 272 seats in total 543 seats in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of the Indian parliament."

In reply to a question on security, Nayar said that security is an issue at the back of the people's mind.

"All parties could be heard saying that we should do something to tackle terrorism, but nobody is saying that we will be less lenient towards terrorism. The issue that could be problematic to our democratic set up is an attempt made by some political parties or at least one party which is trying to say that members of one community are at risk and more terrorists are found in that community," added Nayar.

The full interview will be broadcast on 99.3FM Gulf News Radio 2 at 11am on Wednesday.

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