The curtains finally downed on the nearly three-month-long Worlds’ largest “Festival of Democracy” for revellers, the 968 million voters, the 8,000 Candidates for the 543 seats up for grabs and the stages, the one million Poll-Booths housed in school and institute buildings spread out over cities to remotest villages in this Country. I read a report from a study by the Centre for Media Studies, the Costs to the exchequer had added up to a tidy 50,000 crores in the 2019-Elections!
Whilst the rhetorics, the road-shows and the drums and trumpets went back home happy, those who didn’t, were the 25 valuable lives of Poll Officers, died of extreme heat-wave in Bihar and UP, hardly found in prominence in thanks-giving speeches. Our silent-prayers for them!
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I strongly feel, we have a fixed time-table for Parliamentary Elections say, 1st Sunday of February to the last Sunday of March every 5 years. If by chance an Election is required midterm take a variation as an exception.
At the end, just like after any large Festival, you saw nearly everybody was happy (barring the bourse of course)!. Every Political Party claimed its own “Victories” if some of them indeed happen to get trounced, no problems! there was always Arithmatics for them to valiantly eke out some bizarre logic to interpret previously unnoticed virtues in their “Historic Victories”!
I must add, in all the Elections I’ve seen, this could be the singular one, that started with a dull “long-foregone conclusion” and changed it’s tracks nearly a 180o halfway and came to a nail-biting finish!
And, I felt it could be interesting to revisit the Festival throughout the revelry!
My take: Whilst Manifestos and Guarantees were all there in glossy prints on the 11th hour before the Ball actually started Rolling, many of the poll speeches seemed to hinge more and more on aggressive unseemly conceived content, spoken often in vitriolic tones with sufficient gesticulations in accompaniment, meant to sound menacing to a mortal listener and to a vulnerable opponent! In contrast, where tones seemed sobre and compassionate, more often I saw, these were the men and women who improved on their scores! Whilst the former ironically evinced perhaps louder applause, the latter probably fetched the votes!
The second take-home is the YouTube Media and most of it with its research embedded content (cut the bias out if any), outshining their conventional brethren on television.
That brings me to the third, and that’s the mega night-long Opinion Polls, Exit Polls (Normal) and Exit Polls (AI) industry. I wonder how they consistently managed to spellbind the best brains of the Country with hours and hours of content, making them even to plan out their years ahead, the ground-zero only to be rediscovered a couple of days thereafter!
I think a lot of inadequately founded misgivings on the Electoral Process, particularly on working of EVMs, surfaced during the play-out of the Festival, causing avoidable stress on the System, so bringing back an ambience of mutual trust would be one of the priorities I hope, between Election Seekers and Election Regulators.
But, one my greatest disappointment continues; Freebies continue to rule over Quality! The Left for example, had sported the best candidates, fresh young qualified, ideologically charged boys and girls nextdoor. Would have been ideal in Law-making and in Parliamentary Debates. Unfortunately none of them could get elected, although Party-Votes did increase.
Next, I think our critical mass of the millions far away in our hinterlands’ were holding in awe, well-presented “tableau” shows by candidates, but when asked to vote, they would perhaps like to stick to issues that pinch them closely at home viz Mahengayi, Berozgaari and Local Infrastructure.
Lastly, Voters generally re-snubbed Turn-Coats, whether it was in Punjab or Maharashtra or Himachal or Bengal.
The Road ahead: Truly complex! With the Peoples’ Verdict now in, and as I read it:
We were (slowly) getting accustomed to “speed”. Speedy decisions, (often at the cost of consensus), speedy actions for tabling policies, (though not always on implementation), remember the Smart City? Well, it’s back now, to the good-old coalition-and-consensus style once again. The two mighty junior-partners in the NDA, both headed by ambitious veterans, each with their own track-records and own mass followings, make the task even more complicated in an ambience where all three players primarily aim different aspiration-segments of the electorate. Even to frame a Common Minimum Program for just five years (not necessarily till 2047, like we were getting to hear more and more), will now not be easy..a program till 2047, ironically would have been much simpler for reasons well known of course! The future of the two flag-ship agenda, the UCC and the One-Nation-One-Polls, has been discussed already at length in media all around, so skipping here. The other areas that could be tough are management of data and information, data protection, data privacy and cyber security where one of the partner-leaders might aptly consider himself well informed already, for scrutiny and negotiation of innovative initiatives. Third: Issues of Management of Freebies already Guaranteed in Manifestoes like Monthly Pensions, Quantified number of Jobs for Youth, Unemployment Allowances, Honorarium for Volunteers and Maternity Grants could now entail hard bargaining!
The Delimitation Exercise (to be finalized a couple of years hence), or Caste Census across States or on Thermal Power Capacity enhancements from Coal and Special Status to Bihar and Andhra, could possibly turn into tough areas for consensus. And the Common Minimum Program would do well to address any bumps up-front rather than allow them to cause disruptions later.
And before I part: From a “Double” to “Triple Engine” haul could be fun to ride, (I’ve enjoyed our Goa Express being hauled and pushed by three engines on tandem on the Dudhsagar Ghats) only that, the two must be prepared to push-and-pull AFTER one, not a simple task, both uphill, more on the down hill side…but if that’s what it is, so be it till the next Festival of Democracy!
(Binayak Datta is a finance professional)
