The last US Presidential election is way back in the past. But this article I was reading on the media coverage of the campaign leading to it brought some thoughts to mind. The author gives a snapshot of what various news channel websites were offering as information on the two candidates and their respective policies. It was, in short, a joke. Or it would have been a joke if it wasn’t so sad that the most powerful nation in the world was engaged in such trivia on the eve of deciding who was going to be the (let’s be frank about it) leader of the damn world. Sound bites, vague generalizations, trite sayings, these were all that, according to the media, the candidates had to offer in response to the most pressing questions of the day, in a time of the gravest crisis that country had seen in decades. Now I’m sure there must have been something of substance the candidates would have said somewhere in their prolific public appearances and speeches, but not much of it found its way into the highlights the media presented to the American public. Whether this is an indictment of the public or the media or, more likely, both, I a question I don’t think I am a fit person to answer. Maybe I got only one view of the picture. Maybe there were other sites, other channels offering something with greater substance and more pertinence to the problems at hand. But what it got me to do was to look at how elections are conducted in our country, unarguably the largest experiment in democracy the world has seen.
We go into General elections more or less every five years, not counting the late 80s-early 90s phase which was a shameful period for democracy indeed. But barring such unfortunate events, five years it is. On top of that, we have state elections every five years too. A lot of money, effort, manpower, man-hours, and planning go into the elections. Unlike the more orderly British or American system, our political setup is more open and way more chaotic. Innumerable parties, even more candidates, confusing and often ephemeral, opportunistic alliances; it is hard for an outsider to look at this mess and be able to make even partial sense of it all. But even that is not the problem, for the system holds despite all the cacophony. What I was thinking about was – on what grounds are elections fought? What is presented to our public by the parties to help them choose? What are the policies, the broad principles that the parties espouse? What do they say about the economics, the defence, the internal security, all the questions that worry, to different extents, the people of this vast, variegated nation? What do we read in our media concerning these issues? Not much, unfortunately. All parties release their manifestoes around the time the elections are announced. I remember a couple of decades back when the release was a big event, front page news in all the papers. The manifesto was outlined, spelled out, explained, discussed, debated, the parties defended it, it was a big deal. Now a manifesto release is a sideline news, reported in passing. It makes headlines only if it contains something grossly stupid or uncommonly controversial. No one bothers what it has to say at other times. I sometimes feel it doesn’t say much either. Even the parties releasing it don’t mention it again. At most, they might condense it to 20 odd popularist slogans that they bandy about in public meetings and in their speeches as their aims. After the elections, hardly anyone bothers to look up the document to see if the winners are even nominally trying to achieve what they claimed they would if they won.
No, we decide our vote based on irrelevancies- caste, religion, community, group and so on. What matters more to our electorate is not the candidate’s qualifications or his views on policies, but whether we can relate to him in any way. Does he belong to our ‘faction’ so to speak. Our political parties know this full well. That’s why they choose their candidates accordingly. Dalit candidate for a dalit dominated constituency, Rajput in a Rajput dominated area and so on. As the demographics of an electorate changes, so does the caste/religion/class of the candidate. So we have parties putting up candidates belonging to Bihar in certain areas of Ludhiana in Punjab, where the Bihari migrant labour now forms a majority of the voting public. Crass, shallow opportunism and we don’t see anyone even raising an eyebrow over it. I guess now that labour from Bihar is going down in numbers, we’ll find parties suddenly realising that non-Bihari candidates are fitter, more qualified choices. Our media not only doesn’t condemn it, it actually studies it as a fact of political life; it’s just one more statistic to analyse.
Is democracy really the best system of government man can come up with? Is Universal Franchise really such a good idea? Or should we hold back the vote from parts of the populace that lacks the ability to make sound judgment, sound not in the short term for their personal interest (caste/religion etc make a lot more sense in that background), but in the longer term, broader interest on the nation. I know it sounds immensely snobbish and elitist to say so, but just look at our record. Regional parties hold so much power these days, sending large numbers to the Parliament and forcing ‘national’ parties into forging alliances that serve their own purposes at whatever cost ot the nation. That is why people like A. Raja become cabinet ministers. That is why parties like the MNS can win seats. That is why our nation cannot forge ahead with the speed, purpose, and momentum it is capable of. Unless our electorate realizes what is actually at stake in the elections, India cannot become the power she dreams of morphing into.

Back after a break

Haven’t written in over a month. Earlier it was because of the paucity of time, with too many things on my ind, but later it was because I couldn’t type at all. Got viral conjunctivitis (I know, what a joke for an ophthalmologist to get conjunctivitis) and that led to corneal infiltrates that made life hell. I couldn’t type, couldn’t read, couldn’t even use the computer for long periods of time. I had to squint at everything. So very irritating and tiresome. It was hell trying to pass the time. Now with some two weeks of topical steroids therapy behind me I am at least able to read somewhat without looking like some ham actor playing a blind man. It still isn’t very clear but a damn sight better than it was. Still have a ghost image forming just below any object I focus on. It will probably take a couple of months before I am near normal again. Life sucks sometimes. And this year has been one of the worst of my mid length lifespan. Anyhow, now that I can type a bit I should be more regular with my blog.