The sudden phone call from Durlov Baruah, a co-founder of Prodyut Bora's Liberal Democratic Party(LDP) was totally unexpected. This was first instance when I was approached 'seriously' by any political party. I had been following the developments of LDP and was quite aware of the happenings though. But my final decision not to join the party has following rationales:
1) Apprehension about Bora's motive: In the current political scenario of Assam (election in 2016, Akhil's new party etc) creating a new political party with some unknown faces, an English name and with complete absence from media, Prodyut Bora might be having a different idea in his mind. Of course, he is no fool to expect LDP will play a significant role in coming election. He might try to negotiate deals with other parties, which will give him upper edge, leaving the workers stranded. I should have met Bora once personally before assuming this, but I do not expect that he would share his game plan with me.
2) Disconnect: My conversations with Mr Durlov Barua clearly depicted his disconnect from the ground level issues. He has recently come back to Assam and I can only expect he would gain more knowledge as time goes. Prodyut Bora's disconnect is a well-known fact; I browsed through the profiles of a few others in LDP and failed to grasp the 'connection to ground' significantly (of course, with my limited knowledge). Social media and internet can't give votes, but issues and personalities do, in a place like Assam. I believe LDP will be a 'floating concept'- good for intellectual policymaking, but bad for winning elections.
3) Personal: I believe I need to prove my policy knowledge by working with an organization as I am just a fresh policy graduate now. Anybody can doubt my caliber at this juncture; from my experience so far, lower-middle class villager like me has to be super defensive as anybody will try to throw away my ideologies, just because I don't inherit a 'parental elitism'. Hence, direct politics ( does not pay also) is not on my card right now.
4) Media boycott: There is absolutely no news about LDP in Assamese media. Even the event of party formation (29th March 2015) was not featured in any newspaper/TV channel. I don't assume that LDP can't manage to publish a news, but it might have some other strategy. But whatever that strategy is, I believe this is wrong strategy (people don't take new party formation news very positively, but 80% unaware janata of Assamese society will not give credit to the subsequent news apprehending their earlier unawareness ). As Bihu is coming, Assamese TV media will stop showing debates as well- how will they find a platform?
Nevertheless, LDP is something I would love to keep track in future.
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