The show begins…

THE GREAT INDIAN CIRCUS

It was certainly not a hit show in all its earlier releases recently and the people were not the least humoured despite it hogging all the limelight. But then it keeps hitting us too often that we have little choice but to put up with it. The election circus is now back on stage, with all the accompanying dust and din already gathering speed, heralding the advent of yet another no-holds-barred battle at the hustings that promises to be replete with stunts, slogans, sops et al.

A year and half back the curtains came down on the elections literally with a bang, with the city of Kovai getting blasted by secular fundamentalists and one shudders to speculate what is in store this time around. Of course, from the time the BJP government fell to the present, so much muck has already flowed under all bridges that the polls were really the last thing on one’s mind.

First there was the World Cup which overflowed with joy when India trounced Pakistan and then eventually dried up after our ignominious exit.

The coup in the Congress kept that partymen on tenterhooks and had the countrymen in splits, a welcome mid-summer comedy to relieve the heat. Needless, to add, it was a happy ending for the party, though one cannot be sure if it is so for the nation too.

Then there was Kargil, with India finding itself burdened with a few uninvited guests well inside its borders. Over three hundred jawans paid with their lives and many more with their limbs for the lapses of the rulers and their political opponents alike, for Kargil may not have been so bloody had the politicos shed their egos and self-interest, and concentrated on the nation instead.

There is a silver lining too with FM Sinha’s promise of economic recovery, come September, coming true, albeit a year late. Though honey and milk are yet to inundate the nation, there is cause for cheer as evidenced by the impressive industrial growth and the booming bourses- sure indications that the economy and the tipsy stock markets are slowly getting immune to the political and other developments around.

With the dust beginning to settle down on the border, at least, seemingly and the EC’s announcement of the schedule coinciding with it, the political theatre is again abuzz and all its unholy participants are moving back with a vengeance to centre stage. They did make their attempts to seize the limelight earlier by posing with dead jawans and offering solatia to their kin, but such gestures faded against the gallantry of the martyrs and the overwhelming and spontaneous spirit of patriotism demonstrated by the entire nation.

For once, the arclights and garlands were on the deserving candidates. The politicians and their tears rang hollow and irrelevant, even if their feelings were genuine. So much for their reputation!

And they are living up to it in right earnest, with the bugle for the battle of the ballot having been sounded. What is a politician if he does not eat his own words? Little wonder that much before the earth had completed two revolutions since the last election, the politicians have come several circles.

One look at the battle lines in Tamilnadu for instance, would stand testimony to the depths to which politicians can plunge and the extremes to which they can swing. Last year’s enemies are this year’s friends. ‘Communal octupuses’ have suddenly become tame lambs in the eyes of the rational rulers.

Yellow towels have found their colourful match in saffron kurtas, dravidian annans and aryan jis are now hand in hand, all hatchets having been buried for political spoils. If that is the scenario in the ruling fronts, the case of the opposition here is no less comic and as repulsive.

Last year’s foreigner is today’s darling and last year’s friend is now a cherished foe. So cherished that regrets are being offered at ‘secular’ conclaves to the thunderous applause of ‘fundamentally’ strong crowds. Never mind if the same crowd offered an equally thunderous silence to calls of Jai Jawan; they probably ran out of breath.

The devil’s workshops and the idle minds that inhabit them have come out trumps as usual, what with their innate ability to excel chameleons. The hollow but hallowed leftists are now in the opposite camp, all their red ideologies having withered away at the prospect of a saffron upsurge.

Yet there is a catch here too. While in TN they would be fighting communalism along with the Congress, in neighbouring Kerala both would be at each other’s neck. Kerala can afford a dose of communalism, one can hear the comrades reasoning.

And then there is the Idly shop hero to reckon with. He is now out of the secular front, having served the purpose of engineering yet another government’s fall. The hero now has been offered a zero which he is unlikely to take lying down. One can already visualise him getting back all his pre-1996 memories and also the last three-year amnesia wearing out. A real nasty blow on the head, poor man!

And out comes yesterday’s earth shattering news that there is going to be an also-ran third front. After chewing and chewing for months, its leader eventually decided to spit out, sorry, spell out, his party’s stand much to the glee of all those political discards eagerly waiting for a shelter from the ensuing storm. There will now be a grand realignment of all such political farces under the leaky umbrella of the third front, a veritable garbage dump.

The circus is well and truly in place. And as usual, News today, will bring to you, in these columns, a ringside view of the antics of all the political performers. Though the circus itself is purely an all-buffoon show, going by current trends, one can also expect such other acts as somersaults, tight rope walks, dare devilries, swings, and reverse swings, not to speak of the end game namely horse trading. So let us all endure and enjoy what we cannot cure or weep about. Over to the Great Indian Circus – Polls ‘99.

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