The Bihar election verdict may have gained attention for handing out a stunning defeat to BJP. But the voter has also delivered a huge blow to the growing tribe of media contractors who attempt to manufacture opinion through poll debates and surveys. The attempt to generate a mob mentality to swing the voter in a particular direction is actually an assault on the intellect of the voter. The underlying lesson that we Goans could draw from the Bihar and Delhi electoral results is that if voters are united then democracy wins. If divided, fascism thrives. A sectarian ideology having 30 percent plus vote share is able to emerge victorious only because the opposition is divided. The fascist strategy is to taint, demoralise and destroy the promising political opponents and limit the options for choice of political leadership. In such a world of the blind the man with one eye is then projected as king. The rejection of the BJP and its allies is basically a big ‘No’ to what could be summed up as 5 A’s visible in BJP’s model of governance – Arrogant, Adamant, Acrimonious, Ambivalent and Ambiguous.
Simultaneously, the Bihar people’s verdict which has restored Lalu Prasad Yadav as a kingmaker despite his corrupt political track record seems to also send out a message that with not many options available, corrupt politicians will have to be tolerated by the voter over communally divisive politicians when the secular democratic fabric of our nation is to be protected. For that matter, the perception that one politician or political party is not corrupt when compared to its opponents is more of a myth. As of today, it would be foolish to believe that politicians in this country thrive on love and fresh air and that the voter has no role to play in their corruption. The only difference is in the style of corruption. One may be about a sophisticated centralised corruption making it difficult to pin point the actual culprits while the other is about a decentralised, solo corruption which is more noticeable. So, corruption from centralised contracting of mass-scale development projects of 50 flyovers, 100 Smart Cities and 12 crore toilets to selected corporate firms at one go does not mean less corruption than in the case of piece meal sanctioning of development projects to many small time contractors.
The third lesson which one could infer from the Bihar elections is the maxim, ‘too much familiarity breeds contempt’. The over-play of the Modi image finally created revulsion among voters particularly when his moral credibility of 2014 has eroded after an environment of nuisance rather than development which has engulfed the nation over the last one year. The mystery behind a political brand ‘Modi’, which was an outcome of product placement and product positioning strategies used to create a larger than life image around a chaiwallah who even sacrificed his marriage for the nation and economically turned around Gujarat, would do the same for the country in 100 days, has ultimately been unravelled and realised to be a ‘Jumla’. The madness of the 2014 poll was more like what Winston Churchill had said, “a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.” Biharis, shrewd as they are and having been beaten once in 2014, were twice shy in biting Modi’s attractive bait in 2015.
For the moment, as a ray of hope from Bihar has emerged a huge sigh of relief is seen among the minorities and liberals with the rejection of Modi’s brand of divisive politics. But it is only eternal vigilance and well informed minds not swayed by manufactured opinion which can help confine the socially destructive monster of communal intolerance to its rightful place.
