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Bharat Uday Ke Bad Bhi, Neta Hamara So Raha

Maal Itna Kha Liya, Ki Feel Good Good Ho Raha

JINGLES and jokes often tell us more about how our electorate views the forthcoming hustings than either the many psephological projections doing the rounds or the intuitive forecasts by our innumerable political pundits.

It hardly seems to matter that candidate lists of each major party are, at the time of writing, only partially fixed and announced, that they will go through many revisions before the final date of withdrawal. Or that alliances/adjustments are still to be firmed up, particularly in the crucial state of Uttar Pradesh. It is also evident to all but the diehards or propagandists that there is no all-India wave and that despite immense (public) resources being sunk in an ‘India Shining’ campaign, the ‘feel good’ factor is shared by only a few.

Nevertheless, the bulk of our political analysts have already declared these elections as a ‘no contest’, citing in their support numerous opinion polls. Even the fact that so many of them have so often proved wide off the mark fails to dampen their enthusiasm. Like astrologers, psephologists too refuse to be dissuaded by repeated failure.

Despite the more sophisticated deploying a vast array of data to buttress their claims – vote shares in previous elections, caste/community projections, the arithmetic logic of alliances, likely swings based on the ‘incumbency factor’, and so on – and putting a scientific gloss on what essentially is inspired guesswork, the simple fact is that it is much too early to hawk final results. Making forecasting even more hazardous is the inordinately long drawn out nature of the current contest, for no one knows what shifts and turns are in store. It almost appears that we are unwilling to accept that elections are, in the end, an open process and that our voters have a nasty habit of springing surprises.

Accompanying this ‘meaningless’ obsession with end results is the veritable absence of debate over issues. Of course, all ruling regimes make inflated claims about their ‘record’ in office and when that proves difficult, promise that unattended concerns will claim priority if only they are voted back to power. Equally, those seeking to unseat them paint a uniformly negative picture. We are bombarded with allegations of scams (past and present), of the (mis)use of official machinery, whisper campaigns about the private life of individuals, but rarely a worthwhile debate on policies and programmes.

Take for instance the issue of water – its availability, distribution, pricing, cleanliness. In a country where so much of agriculture is rain dependant and climate changes induced by global warming are playing havoc with monsoon patterns, ground water levels have dipped to alarming depths and surface water sources are polluted and destroyed, one would have expected a more vigorous engagement with the grandiose plan of linking rivers, garland canals and inter-basin transfer of waters. Despite dozens of researches predicting that conflicts over water use may soon replace even ethnic conflicts as the biggest source of tension, our political establishment has so far refused to share with us the plans, if any, for meeting anticipated challenges.

Is it that the electoral battle ground is an inappropriate site to discuss substantive issues? Did not the BSP (bijli, sadak, pani) factor play an important role in the recent assembly elections? So why the reluctance, even in these early days when campaigning is still to reach a fever pitch, to introduce manifestos and policy details to the electorate to help meaningful choice.

Is it that the recent defeats of Digvijay Singh and Ashok Gehlot despite their ‘commendable’ efforts at drought management, decentralization of power to local bodies and education guarantee, have persuaded the political class that it is safer to stick to emotive issues of dynasty, foreign origin and family sacrifice? To reduce the democratic process to a mix of tamasha, concerted propaganda and micro-management of caste demographics in constituencies is only to lose out on one of the few possibilities we as citizens have to hold our elected rulers to account.

This is the time to demand details on policy and performance, to explore the worldviews of our leaders rather than discuss their conversations on the dining table. It is a testimony to the times we live in that leading lights of our media, both TV and print, prefer to question the leader of the Opposition, not on key issues, but on her relationship with her mother-in-law and the likelihood of her children contesting elections. This after many tedious articles on the ‘Silent Sphinx’ and the unapproachability of the lady. But then, with each political party parading their latest catch of celebrities and the media dutifully reporting it as ‘news’, this is all we can possibly expect.

Harsh Sethi