Smithereens

On Elections etc. February 3, 2009

The General Elections in the World’s most vibrant democracy are round the corner. But really? Its not so obvious this time, at least the low media coverage does not suggest so (the media seems to be in concordance with the view of this post). The lull before such a great event is not a thing that can be easily construed. Although, we are only 3 months away from the final showdown, yet we don’t know even the belligerents of the duel, quite contrary to the US where presidential campaign goes on for 18 months.

It appears like these elections will be a low key affair and the most boring ones in the recent Indian history. The three major coalitions have accepted that they will not be able to gain majority all by themsleves. The UPA is fighting anti-incumbency, NDA is fighting with itself while Leftists are fighting with everyone. The scenario is in many ways similar to that in 1996/1998 which resulted in a period of political instability. Quite obviously, it pops up in my mind that the General Elections of 2009 is, perhaps, a short skirmish which may follow the Grand Finale somewhere around 2012 / 2013, which would probably be between Rahul Gandhi and Narendra Modi. That will probably be a clash between the ideologies of Secularism and Nationalism (pseudo-secular hypocrites may read the latter as Fundamentalism), which will be deciding the course of future India.

****************************

If , in a high school composition, I were to list the major festivals of India, I would say Holi, Diwali, Id and, of course, the Election Day. Everyone waits so eagerly for it. Some are content with the associated holiday, some for their enthusiasm to vote and some for the results. Elections have always been fun, except in these metropolis’. The real enthusiasm about elections can be seen in towns and villages, where the real India resides.

Perhaps these will be my first General elections away from home. I miss the late evening discussions among the elderlys’, on which I always eavesdropped. The villagers visiting my father’s shop would come along with the voter mood-swings in their area. After sunset, when everyone is back after day’s work, there would be a demographic disintegration of each part of our constituency, an intense one for the areas in vicinity, ‘the so-and-so candidate has an upper hand in so-and-so area because of so-and-so caste combination etc etc’ (I come from central Uttar Pradesh, the heart of caste-based politics).

However, my favorite elections are the ones for local governing bodies which, in my case, is a municipality. Ours’ is a small town of 25,000 voters divided in 25 wards. We have to vote to elect a Municipal chairman as well as ward a representative. The petty issues like location of proposed hand pipe, renewal of power lines, revision of colony’s house taxes et al. dominate the polls. Also, unlike legislative or parliamentary elections, the municipal elections are marked by a polling booth in every locality. In the lane adjacent to ours, a polling booth was always set up at the premises of a government-aided primary school. With poll booth so near, we used to loiter around all the day and fundas like how to remove the permanent ink stain to cast multiple votes etc. came in handy. And after the elections, came the expert comments and analysis on what went right/wrong with our candidate as well as who did and did not vote for him.

PS – The hostel elections kind of remind me of those Ward Representative Elections because of their local character, though I’m involved in none of them, but eavesdropping is always fun 😀