India goes to polls to choose its 14th Parliament in a few days
time. This is a five stages poll spread over 20 days. There
are many notable features of this poll. For the first time
the whole nation is going to vote using electronic voting machines.
There are almost a million electronic voting machines and
there are about 650 million eligible voters to vote in this
election. Even US does not have this kind of advanced polling
facility for its entire country. Also, this is the first
time that there is a huge time gap between the announcement
of election dates and the last stage of polling (almost 2 months).
We
must ponder for a moment to analyze whether these would qualify
our democracy as the matured democracy. As long as the people's
issues and development of the nation are not occupying the center
- stage of
electoral debate, we can not claim our democracy to be
a matured democracy. We can claim ,our nation to be the largest
democracy but not a matured democracy. The surrogate advertisements
aired through private television channels and the print media,
the personalized allegations against the opposition party leaders,
the 180 degree U-turns of the political parties and its leaders
to their proclaimed pre-stated positions closer to the time
of election, going after the glamour (our actors and actresses)
to attract the attention of voters ,contentions over family-based
politics (call it 'family raj' or heir-based politics), huge
scale money laundering in the name of election expenditure,
engineered opinion polls, and anticipated violence during election
- all these point to the fact that we are still not a matured
democracy.
It
is difficult to comprehend why Sonia's foreign origin like the
Ayodhya issue is raised only during the election times. If there
was a consensus on this matter, the 13th Parliament could have
enacted a legislation .
On the one hand we talk about offering dual citizenship and
on the other hand we blame Sonia for her Italian origin. On one
hand, we criticize the proposal by J & K government that
denies a J & K person the right to own property in that land
if he/she marries outside that State. This is not to suggest that
a non-natural Indian can become the Prime Minister or President of
this nation. It is upto the consensus or majority view of the
citizens of this great country. But it is extremely cheating to
raise this issue only during elections just to flare up the
emotions. Any election won on the basis
of emotions- be it sympathy, hatred, or blind affiliations- cannot
help us become a matured democracy.
Right
now, the country needs a visionary Prime Minister not a political
Leader to lead the ruling party. It is highly unfortunate that
BJP and its alliance partners resorted to cheap gimmicks and
election stunts when they started realizing that "India
Shining" and the so called "feel good factor" are
not enough to win the election. In stead of presenting a very well
articulated strategy to take forward the good schemes and programs
of the government, BJP pushed back the success stories of its own
government in its list of election campaign themes and resorted to
personalized attacks on Sonia. The political parties must
understand that the original lands of "Ram" and Sonia
are not the burning issues for
a common man.
Even
the higher estimated GDPs in the last two quarters were not very
well analyzed by the media or by the political parties. Is it
simply due to the favourable monsoon
and service sector blooming? Or is it something to do with
our liberalization policies? Even the well-educated economists are
not clarifying the mist around this question. In the last 25
years this is one of the general elections (apart from 1996 and
1999) when nation's development should have taken priority over
any other issues. It is unfortunate that it seems to fall out
this time too. In 1977 general election, it was the emergency that
took the center -stage. In 1979, 1991, and 1998 it was the
failures of non-congress/coalition governments that took the
center -stage. In 1984 and partly in 1991 (i.e. the second half of
the 1991 election), the assassinations of Indira Gandhi and Rajiv
Gandhi respectively sent the sympathy wave all across the nation
and the Congress-I took advantage of the emotional weakness of the
voters. No constructive and development related issues could be
debated in those elections. In 1989, it was the Bofors (corruption
at the highest office) that took the dominance over any other
issues.
Although
in 1996 and 1999, the issue of national development came up
for a debate during election, Sonia's foreign origin (in 1999)
and Ayodhya issue (in 1996) tried to suppress the
nation's development as a core issue. In short, the 'nation's
development' has been crying for its due attention for almost
three decades. As any other sensible citizen, this author
was praying for the well-being of the leaders belonging to all
political parties (so that no assassination or the natural death
of a leader can submerge the debate on development-related issues)
and prayed Lord Ram to seed some wisdom in the minds of religion-based
parties so that HE is left alone for some time. God seems to
have heard this author's prayers. However, our political leaders
are adamant about not discussing about nation's development
as the core issue during this election also.
Our
Election Commission is busy every day clearing the garbage created
by the surrogate advertisements and opinion polls. As this article
is being drafted ,Election Commission is contemplating to ban
all opinion and exit polls. It has ordered the political parties
to air surrogate advertisements only after getting the clearance
from the Election Commission .Even after getting the EC clearance,
it should be ordered that the surrogate advertisements should
mention at the end of the advertisement that "this is sponsored
by so and so political party". Even today there are
millions of voters who think that anything aired on TV/radio
is official. There are not many who can distinguish the politically
motivated versions of the news items aired by say, Sun TV or
Jaya TV. With a sizable population, these private channels enjoy
as much authenticity as
Doordarshan. Simply for this reason, there must
be a note after every surrogate political advertisements
that they are sponsored by such and such political party.
(To
be Continued)
