THE GREAT INDIAN CIRCUS
The apathy and lethargy is unmistakable. The voters of India are today a very tired lot. And an indifferent lot too. With the great democratic exercise becoming a routine affair the people cannot really be blamed for their fatigue. Elections no longer enthuse them. Gone are the days when people voted with gusto and with a feeling of involvement that they are determining the fate of the nation. Their vote today is just a token that they are still prajas of this land called Bharat. True, their franchise still writes the fate of the nation, but it could now also be rewritten, in Parliament, by strange interpretations of the mandate and by an even stranger phenomenon called ‘post poll re-alignment of political forces’. And worse, the people will be told that this is what they voted for!
The voters do not really look for any virtues in the candidates or the parties, when they cast their vote. They know the futility of such an exercise and are well aware of the credentials of those seeking their support. Yet they vote, because they may not want even worse elements to make it to power. The negative vote or the anti vote, invariably works against the incumbents in office because their misdeeds are the freshest in people’s memory and they are seen as the cause for all their present woes.
The absence of a decisive, positive vote is quite disturbing and does not auger well for the country’s future. Barring the votes cast by loyal partymen or by those guided by extraneous factors like charisma, the majority of votes are negative votes cast against someone, which tend to get scattered among his opponents, thereby even enabling the most hated person to win. At the national level it is again this vote of the people that gets vitiated by the aforesaid ‘re-alignment’ when parties cobble up unprincipled post-poll alliances and the voters most often find in power a party for which a majority of them had actually voted ‘against’.
Such accidents occurred in 1989 and again in 1996, when all rejected parties joined hands to grab power, just to keep two political formations out. And tragically, this blatant negation of the people’s will was touted as a victory of coalitions and federalism and the assortment was able to pass muster albeit temporarily. First it was V.P.Singh and the next time it was his brainchild, the UF, that played the proverbial monkey in cheating the cats of their cake. The two major parties had no choice but to tend outside support primarily because they wanted to keep the other out. And secondly, it may have led to another election. And they bided their time to pull the rug which they did at the earlier opportunities. But this time around, the cats are unlikely to allow the monkey to hijack their cake.
Such apathy and adventurism on the part of the people and politicians respectively have already landed the nation in a mess. Unless the people of the country team to cast positive votes, despite the compulsive provocations to the contrary, the walk up to the polling booth may become an annual ritual. There may not even be time for the indelible ink on the left hand forefinger to disappear.
The psephologists, the harbingers of political bad news, singularly point towards such a portent. Unless, of course, the serial blasts that rocked the city of Kovai a couple of days ago had also blown apart their predictions.
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