The world’s largest democratic exercise is marred by a lack of substance
As in all spheres, in electing a new government too, the process is more important than the substance. It is a Herculean task to organize elections in this subcontinent with its humungous population. For the Election Commission, itself riven by controversy, it is a dauntingly complicated task. The election stretches over five phases lasting a month of scorching summer heat, with an electorate of 714 million using more than 828,000 polling booths and 1.3 million voting machines, which will commandeer 6.1 million civilian and security personnel (in some areas facing terrorist threats internally from Naxalites and externally from jehadists). It is truly an enterprise of epic proportions which should warm the cockles of the hearts of all those who believe in free choice and have faith in democracy as a political system.
Alas, as the campaign has unfolded, it is more and more evident that the epic scale of the democracy in action is not matched by its political content. It seems that the Titans have become extinct with the arena taken over by political pygmies of all hues and shapes with only one ideology – grabbing any power at any cost and holding on to it and, for most, thereafter bolstering their personal fortunes. It brings home in a sickening way what one observer remarked – whenever Indians try to copy Western ideas and concepts, they make them parodies of the original!
The political space for each party or combination of parties has over time become so constricted that candidates are chosen less on the basis of proven ability or sustained record of governance and more on the basis of other extraneous considerations: ethnic, caste, linguistic, regional and religious. As a result, the candidates encompass the entire spectrum of society from criminals with a long history of brushes with the law, to known venal and corrupt individuals, and religious and racial zealots, with entertainers from Bollywood and the cricketing world thrown in for glamour! With such a cast, little wonder that the standard of debate and scrutiny of the executive by Parliament has fallen to all-time lows in recent times.
People all over the country are trying to grapple with the most difficult question: to vote or not to vote for the party they traditionally supported. The situation has become murkier because of the quicksand of complicated and shifting alliances
In such a situation, people all over the country are trying to grapple with the most difficult question: to vote or not to vote for the party they traditionally supported. The situation has become murkier because of the quicksand of complicated and shifting alliances. Of the two big blocs, the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance has more or less disintegrated while the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance has lost a major ally. The Third Front, comprising the left plus some motley regional formations, is still evolving with a Fourth Front within itself. Besides, there are the as yet unaffiliated parties and individual entrepreneurs who would like to join a winning coalition when one emerges. All this has led to unprecedented horse-trading and political promiscuity.
To compound the confusion, the campaigning has neither thrown up any grand issues at stake nor any major ideological contentions. It has been so puerile that even school or college debates would shine in comparison. It has largely consisted of personal attacks of the tu-tu-main-main variety. Even the Prime Minister has uncharacteristically succumbed to this form of campaigning, stung by charges of being a weak PM. It is a different matter whether one can consider calling somebody a weak Prime Minister as a personal attack for this kind of charge is part of the normal vocabulary of campaign politics all over the democratic world.
Besides being personal, the campaigning has been even abusive and stretched the limits of political decency. Rabri Devi’s outburst against Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and Varun Gandhi’s volatile speech against Muslims are prime examples. Such behavioural lapses force the Election Commision to act more like a schoolmaster than pay attention to weightier matters.
We also saw unprecedented pandering to regional xenophobia. The Tamil Nadu Chief Minister’s assertion that the LTTE was not a terrorist organization stretched one’s credibility. In a similar vein was External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee’s statement demanding restraint on the part of the Sri Lanka government against the LTTE when India is asking Pakistan to stop terrorists from operating from its territory. To appear to shed tears for Sri Lankan Tamils who are not Indian citizens seems bizarre when the Congress, by attacking the BJP over the Kandahar episode, is by implication sending out the message that it would not have acted to save the Indian citizens caught in the middle.
Policies and programmes are curiously absent from the campaigning as if slogans are enough to win elections! The weighty (in the literal sense only)
The people of India would normally want to know how the next government would address matters such as the impact on the economy of the global financial meltdown, the issues of terrorism and the creeping Talibanisation of Pakistan, the rise of China, and the internal Naxal threat. Instead, we have the spectacle of each issue being trivialized with no substantive debate. Policies and programmes are curiously absent from the campaigning as if slogans are enough to win elections!
manifestos of the parties are more or less rehashes of earlier ones, irrelevant to contemporary needs…. The Samajwadi Party’s manifesto took the cake by promising to take India back to the Middle Ages!
The weighty (in the literal sense only) manifestos of the parties are more or less rehashes of earlier ones, irrelevant to contemporary needs and offering nothing more than sops and blandishments to the electorate at its expense for ultimately it is taxpayers who foot the bill for such open bribery! The Samajwadi Party’s manifesto took the cake by promising to take India back to the Middle Ages!
Comparison to the gruelling political campaigns and intense public scrutiny politicians undergo in the US, the world’s second largest democracy after us, shows how far India has to travel to become a truly modern democracy and a nation of substance. India will always be left aspiring to be a superpower if it continues to be ruled by politicians with a feudal bent of mind.
Notwithstanding the above, election time always brings us good news about the prosperity of our leaders! Every five years, their wealth seems to increase sizeably more than the national average, even when they do not seem to have any visible means of earning such amounts. We are only told by how much their wealth has grown, never how it has grown! Some take pains to point out humbly that they do not even own a house and car, when all and sundry know that they turn to the taxpayer for such amenities for generations.
