Back to Forward - Polls 2014: Ugly as sin

 

Several distressing events in quick succession underscore how fast the Indian election scene is turning from ugly to uglier. In all fairness, however, let me start with a basic fact that is also encouraging. Indian democracy has been deteriorating tragically over the years. Yet elections here are held regularly and at appropriate time. More importantly, they are, by and large, free and fair. The credit for this goes entirely to the Election Commission. The higher judiciary comes into the picture only occasionally and always upholds the democratic process.

 

What an irony it is therefore that the external affairs minister of the government which is almost certainly on its way out, Salman Khurshid, went to Britain and mocked both the EC and the Supreme Court, the two of the most respected and effective institutions in a country where most others have been suborned or subverted by successive governments, irrespective of their party affiliations. Few believed 

Mr Khurshid’s subsequent claim that he had been misquoted.

 

Far more sadly, the standard of public discourse in India is dismal even at the best of times and starts plummeting in the run up to every election. Exchanges between the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party have started degenerating fast since the day Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi declared that the BJP’s prime ministerial nominee, Narendra Modi, was India’s “Hitler”. To complicate matters further, a newcomer on the political scene, the Aam Aadmi Party of Arvind Kejriwal, is hurling at both the mainstream parties the epithets that were earlier exchanged bilaterally. In a typically Indian twist to the situation, the AAP has already started squandering the goodwill it had earned because of its spectacular debut.

 

It is in relation to the key element in electioneering, selection of candidates by every party, group or splinter, that the lowest depth has been reached. This has traditionally been the most troublesome area of the democratic process. In fact, the rot began with the first general election in 1951-52, when the Congress’ dominance of Indian Parliament was overwhelming and the party’s Central Election Committee consisted of very eminent leaders. Dismayed by the quality of candidates the Congress was fielding, Jawaharlal Nehru had suggested that the ruling party need not put up candidates against two socialist leaders, Narendra Dev and Kamala Devi.

 

Morarji Desai opposed the idea on the ground that elections should be fought “on principles and not around personalities”. In a letter to him on October 27, 1952, Nehru sharply pulled Desai down to earth. How could the Congress talk of principles when so many of its members were “snarling” for selection and “third-rate individuals” were being chosen on grounds of caste and sub-caste? “I have felt recently as if I was in a den of wild animals”. That “wild animal spirit” has evidently multiplied manifold, judging by the way Congress’ Central Election Committee, headed by Sonia Gandhi, and including her son Rahul, and 

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, has been distributing party tickets. It has already given both the party ticket and a “clean chit” to two former ministers — Pawan Kumar Bansal and Subodh Kant Sahay, who had to be sacked not long ago in connection with massive scams. The debate on giving the same generous treatment to Suresh Kalmadi, the main accused for the unspeakable loot in the Commonwealth Games, and Ashok Chavan, charged with colossal sleaze in the Adarsh scandal in Mumbai, is still on at the time of writing.

 

Normally it would be unfair to blame the Congress Party alone because every political outfit has given tickets to candidates who are either heavily tainted or have serious criminal charges against them. The BJP has embraced the associates of the infamous Bellary Reddys (with some protest by Sushma Swaraj). The patriarch of the Dravid Munnetra Kazhagam, M. Karunanidhi, has put up A. Raja, under trial for the 2G Spectrum scam, and so on. But there is reason to single out the Congress because its vice-president has been shouting from the housetop that he is the biggest crusader against corruption in India. He can go on claiming, contrary to all available evidence, that his party would get more than 200 seats. But his claim to be against corruption and crime is now demonstrably false. He should be grateful to President Pranab Mukherjee who prevented him from “pushing through” five anti-graft ordinances in the last session of the 15th Lok Sabha.

 

What Mr Gandhi and the Congress president should worry about is that many important Congress leaders are voting with their feet and refusing to contest the election. Some want to take the Rajya Sabha route, others are opting out completely. That in the coming election the Congress is the “under-dog” is the verdict of the cerebral finance minister, P. Chidambaram, not of any opponent. Equally shockingly for the Congress, its past and potential allies are also ditching it. The Congress Party’s belated decision to form a separate state of Telangana was based on the hope that the Telangana Rashtra Samiti would “merge” with it. The TRS has not only rejected the merger idea but even an alliance with the once grand old party.

 

The BJP has no dearth of allies but it has some serious problems. The division in its top leadership, even on the issue of Mr Modi contesting from the holy city of Varanasi, shows that L.K. Advani-Sushma Swaraj faction is engaged in a rearguard action against the party’s prime ministerial nominee. Both the main parties must introspect because if the BJP ranks are burning effigies of the party president Rajnath Singh, disgruntled Cong-ressmen have vanda-lised the party office at Raipur in Chhattisgarh. 

 

Arguably the most revealing event so far has been senior Congressman P.C. Chacko’s statement that the Prime Minister’s “silence about the government’s achievements” has done the party much harm. Is it the start of an effort to shift the blame for the expected defeat to Dr Singh alone?