It was in these circumstances in 1959 that an elderly citizen named C. Rajagopalachari decided to create a genuine and principled opposition by bringing to the electoral system good citizens who believed in the primacy of freedom and liberty. That he only partially succeeded in this effort does not diminish the enormous value of his attempt at good citizenship, undertaken at age 80. After the demise of the Swatantra party in 1973, no such attempt was even contemplated, let alone implemented, for a very long time.
From 1973 to 1994 when the Swatantra Bharat Party was launched by Sharad Joshi we had a period where almost all "good" citizens chose to become gods or idiots. They felt they had no role to play in this country. Many of their children had started leaving India anyway, and it became normal for all "good" citizens (idiots) to point fingers at the kind of people who were being elected, and never ask themselves why they were not performing their fundamental obligation as citizens.
While it would sound improper to state that good people have not been entering electoral politics since 1973 on the demise of Swatantra Party, it would probably be proper to state that people of integrity have almost without exception, strictly avoided electoral politics. The chief representatives of human goodness over the past 30 years have been found in the Communist parties, where people of humble means and humble ambitions have toiled under their own ideal conception of good politics. For the most part though, almost all existing parties have been a gathering ground for people who often failed in the simple tests of basic goodness. Of course they were citizens, and we must give them full credit for that. Citizenship always comes first, goodness later. Finally comes policy.
Beyond goodness is good policy, for good policy is often a sustainer of goodness, and vice versa. So, good Indians did not engage in electoral politics which enabled bad policy to be implemented, and bad policy sustained the growth of evil. This vicious cycle became so deeply entrenched in India's psyche, that most parents or allegedly 'decent' families would never permit their children or family members to engage in electoral politics today. The futility of such engagement became widely accepted.
