Barren pollscape
If there was ever an issueless election in India it is this time. The aam admi has crossed the limit of tolerance without breaking up and learnt to live with almost everything that has made for a searing issue in previous elections.
He is largely unmoved by daal-chawal-sabzi mehngai; crime has become an evil companion; terror, too, has gone beyond the pale of outrage and the rigours of recession have been prudently slotted by him as global, not Indian or political.
Today’s voter has learnt to be scornful of promises as much as he is cynical of the seat-sharing farce that various parties have been intensely engaged in.
If the hardcore Hindu voter has all but given up on the BJP’s Temple promise, the Congress voter has learnt to live with false pledges and falser projections which have been the traditional tool of the party ever since the first election was held in 1952.
Talking of projections, the most ridiculous of them all has been that of a zero-negative inflation rate which has fallen from a high of 12.91 per cent a few months back to the now 0.44 per cent.
In election time, this vertical plummet, along with the fallen LPG and petrol prices, would have been regarded such a major favour to the common man that it would have had potential to attract the penalties for violating the Election Commission’s model code of conduct!
But fact is that this ridiculously low inflation has neither brought down the moong daal price from the whopping Rs 62 a kg nor has it led to goods being sold at a subsidy.
So, what is it that today’s voter — which is said to be more young and passionate than old and seasoned — can be swayed with? Actually nothing at all. For, the young generation is as issueless as the political parties it is scheduled to vote for. As for the old ones, “all parties are battling performance impotence” is a fact that pushes them into franchise ennui.
And that’s the reason why this election will be bereft of many more things and colours that an adamant Election Commission has been taking away from it since T N Seshan decided to add teeth and muscle to this watchdog body.
Had the national mood not been so reconciled to all ills, the 26/11 terror strike would have given the BJP some identity in Delhi and a continuance in Rajasthan during the recently-held Assembly elections. But the result in Delhi surprised even Sheila Dikshit who had all but packed up from the Chief Minister’s bungalow after a decade-long rule. She got Congress a landslide in the Assembly election and pointed out with mirth that her party had won all the seats along the much-maligned BRT corridor. Experts may explain this away to all votes from the bus-riding public going to the Congress and the car-owners not walking to the booths, but fact is that the poorer section was also paying through its teeth for groceries and gas and living with scantier pockets but still did not feel the need to change the party at the helm.
So, if safety and security, price rise and urban stress, rural suicides and flattening agriculture are no longer election stirrers, then what is? While we mull on this one, we should also see what the major parties are doing in the run-up to the General Election.
BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate L K Advani is not talking about a temple but of an Internet connected Bharat on a superhighway right from the remotest hamlet in Bastar to the silicon cities of a vibrant India, and beyond the seven seas. He is talking about plugging corruption through technology, about blogs and websites, about feeder lines and supply chains, about the need for safety. At 80 plus, this rath yatra “iron” man clubbed with Hindu nationalism is re-imaging himself and his party. Also, he is battling internal fueds, lack of faces in his second generation leadership and also the age factor which has suddenly become the talk of the voting billion as an issue above per capita income, poverty, joblessness and rising MRPs.
But if Advani is battling the snide remarks on the age front, Congress’ Prime Minister- in-waiting, Rahul Gandhi, is fighting his youngness and the related inexperience which has consigned him to the transitional tunnel he needs to traverse to reach the top slot, at least for the next five years.
Congress’ best till now on the General Election front has been its Jai Ho coup. It is yet to talk of viable development, tackling recession, saving jobs, building roads, hosting Games, or even showing up what it has done in the last five years.
It’s Prime Ministerial face for now is Manmohan Singh who is 70 plus and trying to live with a third bypass surgery.
To add to public scorn is the list of PM candidates propping up from everywhere else. If there is a regional queen in Mayawati who wants to rule India, there is a seasoned satrap in Sharad Pawar who wants the same, though more silently and with just 12 Members of Parliament.
That brings us to the Third Front and the negative publicity it got even when it was struggling to get out of the incubator. Of course, the Left is still assessing which spoils it should gather to become the bargain king for the next Government.
Simply put, the credibility of all parties is in question — be it the two major ones in the Congress and the BJP, or their regional proppers who are known to turn black-mailers at the drop of a, say, ministerial berth.
Under the circumstances, and in the absence of any new and attractive offer from any dispensation old or just born, the Indian voter for the 2009 election would be doing two things — helping one or the other party by staying away or pushing the nation into yet another hung situation with coalition politics holding governance to ransom.
Come to think of it, there are really no crowd-pullers in this election. Advani is fiery but predictable; Manmohan is boring or, should we say, poll mute; Rahul not a man for today but for the future; Sonia a mere propeller for another man as PM; Karat and gang blustering power-brokers; Mayawati a national novice; Mulayam a prisoner of his Kalyan folly; Jayalalithaa unusually silent and biding her time (though she is said to be on her way to dismantling the DMK in Tamil Nadu this time round); Lalu nothing more than a Central berth aiming to be a coalition kingmaker (though Nitish’s good governance has made things difficult for him despite Paswan); Pawar despite flexing muscles confined to broad-basing his party in Maharashtra; Bal Thackeray too old for the rough and tumble of an Indian election; and the good old Deve Gowdas and I K Gujrals the jokers without the pack.
Under the circumstances, Indian politics needs a mesmeriser, a crowd-puller, a fresh face, a clean personality, an honest intention and a promise that is perceived to be fulfill-able. The way the great Indian democracy has shaped up over the years (even Nehru hated the compromises he had to make in choosing candidates for the first election), it is neither looking at nor about to get a pollution-free breed of politicians.
The nation has to choose from best among the worst — and the irony is none of us minds that.
He is largely unmoved by daal-chawal-sabzi mehngai; crime has become an evil companion; terror, too, has gone beyond the pale of outrage and the rigours of recession have been prudently slotted by him as global, not Indian or political.
Today’s voter has learnt to be scornful of promises as much as he is cynical of the seat-sharing farce that various parties have been intensely engaged in.
If the hardcore Hindu voter has all but given up on the BJP’s Temple promise, the Congress voter has learnt to live with false pledges and falser projections which have been the traditional tool of the party ever since the first election was held in 1952.
Talking of projections, the most ridiculous of them all has been that of a zero-negative inflation rate which has fallen from a high of 12.91 per cent a few months back to the now 0.44 per cent.
In election time, this vertical plummet, along with the fallen LPG and petrol prices, would have been regarded such a major favour to the common man that it would have had potential to attract the penalties for violating the Election Commission’s model code of conduct!
But fact is that this ridiculously low inflation has neither brought down the moong daal price from the whopping Rs 62 a kg nor has it led to goods being sold at a subsidy.
So, what is it that today’s voter — which is said to be more young and passionate than old and seasoned — can be swayed with? Actually nothing at all. For, the young generation is as issueless as the political parties it is scheduled to vote for. As for the old ones, “all parties are battling performance impotence” is a fact that pushes them into franchise ennui.
And that’s the reason why this election will be bereft of many more things and colours that an adamant Election Commission has been taking away from it since T N Seshan decided to add teeth and muscle to this watchdog body.
Had the national mood not been so reconciled to all ills, the 26/11 terror strike would have given the BJP some identity in Delhi and a continuance in Rajasthan during the recently-held Assembly elections. But the result in Delhi surprised even Sheila Dikshit who had all but packed up from the Chief Minister’s bungalow after a decade-long rule. She got Congress a landslide in the Assembly election and pointed out with mirth that her party had won all the seats along the much-maligned BRT corridor. Experts may explain this away to all votes from the bus-riding public going to the Congress and the car-owners not walking to the booths, but fact is that the poorer section was also paying through its teeth for groceries and gas and living with scantier pockets but still did not feel the need to change the party at the helm.
So, if safety and security, price rise and urban stress, rural suicides and flattening agriculture are no longer election stirrers, then what is? While we mull on this one, we should also see what the major parties are doing in the run-up to the General Election.
BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate L K Advani is not talking about a temple but of an Internet connected Bharat on a superhighway right from the remotest hamlet in Bastar to the silicon cities of a vibrant India, and beyond the seven seas. He is talking about plugging corruption through technology, about blogs and websites, about feeder lines and supply chains, about the need for safety. At 80 plus, this rath yatra “iron” man clubbed with Hindu nationalism is re-imaging himself and his party. Also, he is battling internal fueds, lack of faces in his second generation leadership and also the age factor which has suddenly become the talk of the voting billion as an issue above per capita income, poverty, joblessness and rising MRPs.
But if Advani is battling the snide remarks on the age front, Congress’ Prime Minister- in-waiting, Rahul Gandhi, is fighting his youngness and the related inexperience which has consigned him to the transitional tunnel he needs to traverse to reach the top slot, at least for the next five years.
Congress’ best till now on the General Election front has been its Jai Ho coup. It is yet to talk of viable development, tackling recession, saving jobs, building roads, hosting Games, or even showing up what it has done in the last five years.
It’s Prime Ministerial face for now is Manmohan Singh who is 70 plus and trying to live with a third bypass surgery.
To add to public scorn is the list of PM candidates propping up from everywhere else. If there is a regional queen in Mayawati who wants to rule India, there is a seasoned satrap in Sharad Pawar who wants the same, though more silently and with just 12 Members of Parliament.
That brings us to the Third Front and the negative publicity it got even when it was struggling to get out of the incubator. Of course, the Left is still assessing which spoils it should gather to become the bargain king for the next Government.
Simply put, the credibility of all parties is in question — be it the two major ones in the Congress and the BJP, or their regional proppers who are known to turn black-mailers at the drop of a, say, ministerial berth.
Under the circumstances, and in the absence of any new and attractive offer from any dispensation old or just born, the Indian voter for the 2009 election would be doing two things — helping one or the other party by staying away or pushing the nation into yet another hung situation with coalition politics holding governance to ransom.
Come to think of it, there are really no crowd-pullers in this election. Advani is fiery but predictable; Manmohan is boring or, should we say, poll mute; Rahul not a man for today but for the future; Sonia a mere propeller for another man as PM; Karat and gang blustering power-brokers; Mayawati a national novice; Mulayam a prisoner of his Kalyan folly; Jayalalithaa unusually silent and biding her time (though she is said to be on her way to dismantling the DMK in Tamil Nadu this time round); Lalu nothing more than a Central berth aiming to be a coalition kingmaker (though Nitish’s good governance has made things difficult for him despite Paswan); Pawar despite flexing muscles confined to broad-basing his party in Maharashtra; Bal Thackeray too old for the rough and tumble of an Indian election; and the good old Deve Gowdas and I K Gujrals the jokers without the pack.
Under the circumstances, Indian politics needs a mesmeriser, a crowd-puller, a fresh face, a clean personality, an honest intention and a promise that is perceived to be fulfill-able. The way the great Indian democracy has shaped up over the years (even Nehru hated the compromises he had to make in choosing candidates for the first election), it is neither looking at nor about to get a pollution-free breed of politicians.
The nation has to choose from best among the worst — and the irony is none of us minds that.
Published in Sunday Pioneer on March 22, 2009; http://www.dailypioneer.com/164125/Barren-pollscape.html
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