Beyond coteries and partisans: The responsibility of power
As one of the most vituperative election campaigns in this country winds down, we cannot but wonder if India and its people deserve any or all of these prime candidates hurling angry words and ugly images at each other. But then the question is if whether we really have much of a choice: probably not.
After a couple of weeks, the ballot machines will disgorge answers
to the poll arithmetic that pundits and analysts, columnists and cartoonists have been tossing out for months. The jumble may cease to be that and instead fall simply into place. Or maybe not. The Indian voter has scripted many epic turnarounds and redeemed the country’s democratic spirit at times when many brave hearts have flagged or fallen. But the new generation of voters, with access to more money, power, information and opinions than all the earlier ones put together: that’s the X factor that may send several wannabes to the dustbin of history and one Prime Minister in Waiting to the coveted spot.
Of course, elections are not what they once were. What is? Hasn’t everything changed around us and about us? It used to give such a good feeling to speak of casting one’s vote and the phrase ‘ballot boxes’ conjured up, for me anyway, a sense of activism, equality and steadiness; the image was of a vote being cast not a button being pressed.
The administrator and columnist, Gopalkrishna Gandhi has described the current condition of politics in elegant prose. He says there is a strange stillness in the air, a somnambulence, or the Doldrums where the air is still and heavy and nothing is moving.
Well, that’s not what you would think if you tuned into any of our news channels at night, especially our hyper-ventilating anchors, who are yelling at guests they have invited on their slanging matches (isn’t this really weird: first, the anchors or their research teams invite someone to the studio and then use every opportunity, gesture, and sentence to abuse them or pretend to be closely examining scraps of paper of apparently national importance instead of listening to what the poor fellow has to say; you can’t really dignify the noisy events which start on every channel after 8 pm by calling them ‘shows’.
A show conjures up images of glamour, brightness, a sense of enjoyment and public interest – what we hear and see post-8 pm especially on our English language and vernacular television channels is Billingsgate multiplied unendingly, without pity for the viewer or listener who desperately switches channels in search of sanity. Instead, the khoj brings him/her to good old Doordarshan and its other shades – the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha channels – and is so startled by the difference between the roaring markets and these sedate sidewalks that he/she can be forgiven for thinking he has entered a different world.
That the media has taken dramatically different positions is not in doubt. The question is why? The answer is not far to see. We live in one of those rare times, since 1977, when the people of India appear to be so divided. At that time, the North of India, stung by the excesses of the emergency and especially forced sterilizations and the impunity of law enforcers, united against Indira Gandhi and inflicted a crushing defeat on her and her Congress Party.
This time too the media is taking sides. And that’s not surprising. Some have bought into the call for firmness and strong governance; others by the threat to secularism by ‘communal’ forces; others by the backlash against the incompetence and corruption of UPA II. Narendra Modi stirs very strong feelings and even the gracious Gopal Gandhi, grandson of the Mahatma, uses strong evocative prose without naming the BJP leader as one who has ‘split the country into those who worship him and those who fear him, those who adulate him and those who despise him, those who imagine he will steer the ship to a golden harbor and those who know he will do nothing of the kind?’
Yet, at the end of the day, if the National Democratic Alliance comes to power, how much will change? Or put it a little differently, how much can Mr. Modi or the BJP and its allies change? After all, time and again, we find that the system of government, of existing policies and processes are such that few can actually transform this nation. They hobble along. Even if the NDA wins a majority, it still has to content with the fact that there are many states where it may not rule – although it will spend a lot of time trying to change that equation.
Whoever comes to power will have to deal with several things: one is the rising expectation of voters who can’t be conned by promises of performance but expect a Viagra-like demonstration of virility especially in taming the demons of inflation and a sluggish economy. The Doldrums that Gopal Gandhi speaks of are the perfect description of the state of the Indian economy. The foreign policy, whether it is relations with China, Pakistan, Russia or the untied States – or Bangladesh and Myanmar for that matter – are already defined in ways that seek to benefit India. Who could seek to change that, risking isolation and violence, despite belligerent election stump statements?
I doubt if a new Government would repeal the Armed Forces Special Powers Act. The gutless UPA I and II shrank from it; the NDA won’t touch anything that could irk the armed forces – in the name of national security. And instead of doing things to create communal and ethnic divides, a new government could go out of its way to assure everyone of equality, despite rumbustious acolytes. India is too big, too diverse, too complex to be toyed with. Prime Ministers in Waiting are no fools. Politics is not just the art of the possible; it is also the game of making possible the seemingly impossible.
Those who seek the office of Prime Minister have traveled across the length and breath of this country, across dusty plains and high mountains, over verdant valley and shimmering streams, over sun baked deserts and vast flood plains. They have seen places and met people of whose existence they had not known before. Both in moments of repose and activity, as they wait and prepare, can they not be but affected by what they have experienced?
Six decades have shown that the problems of the North-east cannot be resolved by a mailed fist or an iron frame; it will need more patience, more dialogue, more inclusiveness not more exclusiveness. The same is true for Jammu and Kashmir. Already we hear the quiet retreat in the words of party spokesmen and women, who are dragging their feet on a range of issues.
I could be wrong, of course. The noisy media, the pundits and the dooms dayers could be right. We could be in for a very rocky time. For ultimately, it depends on this reality: with great power comes great responsibility. Those who win cannot be partisan or vindictive, they cannot be seen to favour a coterie of the rich and powerful, or harm the interests of the vulnerable and poor. India seeks nothing less.
By the Brahmaputra / By Sanjoy Hazarika