There is something about a general election that brings out the best and worst in the national character. The best because it forces every citizen -- including the non-voting classes who presume to know it all -- to consciously devote some time to thinking about larger issues. And the worst, because public spiritedness is inevitably accompanied by a descent into crassness and uncivil conduct.

The 1998 election has had its share of the latter. What began in January as a lofty campaign centred on rarefied issues has degenerated into a slanging match accompanied by needless drama. True, this has provided television viewers with countless hours of entertainment. That should not be grudged. What is pertinent is the quality of that entertainment.

To apportion disproportionate share of the blame to any single individual or party may be unfair, but certain images do stand out. It was, for example, singularly graceless of Sonia Gandhi to break the ground rules of parliamentary exchange and call Atal Bihari Vajpayee a "liar". But that was the least of her follies. What warrants greater outrage was Sonia's casual remark that the country would "break up" if the BJP won the election. The presumptuousness of linking the fate of Indian nationhood to the outcome of one election is staggering. But why blame the ghost writers alone for allowing rhetorical exaggeration to ride roughshod over niceties? Jyoti Basu, the archetypal bhadralok politician with 50 years of political experience, has backed his application for the top political job with the threat of a possible break-up of India in the event of Vajpayee winning. Hitherto, it was the Sitaram Kesris, Laloo Yadavs and the Bal Thackerays who were pilloried for lowering the level of discourse through generous over-use of expletives. Now, Sonia and Basu are making the integrity of India a contrived election issue. So much so that Sonia did not even have a word of regret for those who were bombed to death in Coimbatore last week.

The issue is not one of partisan politics. In 1991, the BJP erred grievously by unleashing a rabble-rouser like Sadhvi Rithambara. Yes, Rithambara mesmerised audiences with her thundering fanaticism. She even contributed to the BJP's spectacular triumph in Uttar Pradesh. But the political cost of that achievement turned out to be unacceptably high. Today, Vajpayee and L.K. Advani are being compelled to live down the legacy of those loonies in ochre who injected hate into voting intentions.

In essence, the problem lies not in our stars but in ourselves. At one level, Indians are terribly enlightened. They talk about the brotherhood of man, about the world being one large family and about the oneness of all religions. They can even graciously accept a foreign-born widow's right to be a claimant to a larger inheritance. What they lack is the ability to come to terms with legitimate dissent. Elections are an institutionalised mechanism for coping with conflicting approaches, philosophies and claims. The vote is a weapon for the resolution of tensions, not an excuse for exacerbating them.