It’s all over bar the shouting. The nine-phase Lok Sabha polls, the longest we have known, will have its last day of voting today. While politicians behaved poorly, and this is suggestive of extreme nervousness due to the keenness of the sense of competition, voters have behaved admirably.
The entire world was watching. Voter turnout was higher than ever. The government that replaces the present one will have to run the nation’s affairs with a self-conscious sense of responsibility whether its mandate is comprehensive or fractured.
The big fear of violence, given the sharpness of the rhetoric, did not materialise. There was no violence in the long run-up to the election, except the engineered communal violence in the Muzaffarnagar area of UP in September 2013 with a view to polarise the vote, which did succeed in part. The left-wing extremists held their peace, thanks to the tight security arrangements.
The Bodo Council districts in Assam did see terrible violence against the Bengali Muslims there, but this was right after the election. (The matter is also linked to wider political and historical processes that concern Assam.)
The EC conducted itself with poise in the face of name-calling in some quarters, and did its job with fairness. Its reputation as the super referee in the world’s most daunting electoral exercise remains intact. The EC’s job cannot be said to have been easy in these polls, given the sharp ideological cleavages and the largest turnout ever.
The chatter around exit polls that will be telecast and written about in the next three days should be handled good-naturedly. These exercises are legitimate, and a good way to open up political debate, but they take nothing away from the real thing. Till May 16, when the official results come in, all parties are likely to remain on tenterhooks.
The BJP, the most watched challenger of the present UPA dispensation, decided to run its campaign on a presidential basis by naming a prime ministerial candidate well before the election schedule was announced. No party had done this before. It will be interesting to see if the voter endorses this mode of indicating the Prime Minister.
In this coalition era it is unthinkable that any one party can command enough LS seats to form a government without allies. The presidential model of conducting elections under the Westminster system was meant to dent that thesis. We will have the answer on Friday. We will also know then whether a “wave” means 200 seats or 300. All in all, it’s been a complex election, and possibly the most fascinating that this country has seen.
