As I write, I am as much in the dark as you vis-a-vis the poll outcome. But by the time you read almost all the cats would be out of the EVMs, imparting a redundancy to the ensuing words that’s no fault of mine. Of course, I can muster the guts to advance guesses, and either hope to be hailed a great prophet or risk being dubbed a gross fool. But then the 700 million of us have already performed our democratic karma and outsourced our fate to 500 odd characters. Now, do we have any say any longer? The ball is beyond our court.
In any case, the guessing game has become the sole prerogative of prime-time pundits. Given past goof-ups, one would expect the exit-pollsters to have exited by now, but the tribe steadfastly defies extinction. The motive of the Election Commission in restricting the exit polls may have been to avoid the vitiation of a multi-phased polling exercise. But such statistical adventures themselves are flawed. For one, the exit polls in most booths are completed even before the actual polls are over. So what about the trends of the votes polled after the exit polls? Again, how many voters would want to reveal their choice, that too, right outside the booth and to a total stranger? Such discretion is also in enlightened self-interst if the constituency is a tense one, which most are in these do or die battle fields. For instance, how many voters in Madurai would confide without looking over their shoulders to confirm if Big Brother is’nt looking or listening? And what is the guarantee that the exit pollster himself is not a party agent? And even if all such hesitations are overcome, there is no assurance that the voter did not lie! Like politico, like people!
The prime-time pundits and psephologists doubtless know all these. Yet they have no qualms in building edificies of opinions on the foundation of such falsehood. Their hubris is monumental and their haste, most repulsive. What is the crying need for so many exit polls, each with a different projection despite a common ‘scientific basis’, when the ‘real’ results themselves will be out in a day? But in these two days, post poll and pre-results, the pollsters have already formed and even dissolved many governments! Several alliances have been clinched, many broken and quite a few PMs have taken oath, all on screen. A Parliament without MPs is verily on session, by the hour, presided over, not by the speaker, but by a loud-mouthed anchor, even as the ticker at the bottom keeps breaking news, views and and what not. A guess is floated, it becomes gospel in no time, we then have the honchos of virtually every party gossipping over it in all seriousness and an entire nation’s energies are consumed in petty pep talk, even as there is nary a stir at ground zero. And with so many kites being flown by all and sundry, it is possible that one or two may be on mark by fluke; after all, there are only this many options. That would be reason enough for another round of ear-splitting trumpeting. And what of the predictions that bombed? Well, it’s time for a commercial break!
The farcical exit polls apart, the real polls themselves were a jumbo job, unmatched in magnitude anywhere in the world. Manning around eight and a half lakh polling stations and nearly thirteen lakh EVMs in an exercise spread over a month and spanning a vast geographical area is no mean task. For the first time, Photo Electoral Rolls were used in 522 of the 543 constituencies besides extensive use of Electors’ Photo Identity Cards (EPIC) to match the rolls. The obvious purpose was to prevent impersonation and bogus voting. Needless to add there are a plethora of complaints; I went missing from the list and could not locate ‘me’ even on the morning of the poll day. And just when I was on the verge of believing that I am probably yet to be eighteen, I surfaced in a supplementary list to the original supplementary list to the final list. I voted happily and walked out, without a single exit pollster blocking my exit. Either I was not on the sampling list or I will likely figure under the head ‘sampling error’.
Identification of voter, which is a key factor in delivering democracy to him, will surely be achieved as electoral processes evolve, but there is cause for concern on macro issues like voter turnout and money power. TN posted a healthy 72% but the national average of 58% is still pathetic and frustrates all the efforts taken so far to create voter interest and involvement. Indeed, the non-voting forty percent will again end up deciding the nation’s fate by default. Mumbai’s 42% turnout stands out as a crime against the nation; given that city’s recent turbulent experiences, its denizens had the most reasons to rush to the booth. Alas, most did not stir. After all there’s more to participative democracy than lighting candles, exhausting lung power before TV cameras and celebrity breast-beating. So much for the ‘enough is enough’ and ‘angry India’ hysteria post Nov 26!
The EC remains powerless against money power. The Rs 25 lakh ceiling for candidates is a joke. The commission’s selective obsession with the model code is probably an alibi for its glossing over obvious financial excesses by candidates and parties. The very starting point, the declaration of assets by contestants is the biggest humbug in most cases. One must have the intellect of a goat to believe that many well-heeled candidates and many-time MPs are only worth what they have claimed. Again, in TN for instance, the distribution of cash to voters ‘according to their needs’ by parties ‘according to their capacity’ happened on a systematic scale with the aid of a well-oiled machinery. There are widespread doubts if the three hour power cut in some parts of Chennai on the eve of the elections was to facilitate the clandestine disbursal of money under the cover of darkness. Well, the power supply resumed in time, though there’s still no light on the issue of mis-spending.
The simulated shadow-shows on prime time would soon be overshadowed by the real-time tamasha in the Indian political theatre. Trust it to be the same play, same players and the same pranks that we are so familiar with. In eternal Bharath, even change leads to status quo!
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