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DIRTY TALK Spit and RunElection '99 is increasingly resembling a free for all mud pit. In a vitiated campaign, it is becoming difficult to tell fact from fiction and information from disinformation. With no issues to speak of, personal vilification tops the political agenda. By Farzand Ahmed, Javed M Ansari and Saba Naqvi Bhaumik
Sadhvi Rithambara may no longer be egging on audiences in late-night meetings with her blood-curdling rhetoric against "Babur ki aulad (Babur's children)"; Vishwanath Pratap Singh is no longer arriving at his interminably delayed public meetings to the chant of "Gali gali me shor hai, Rajiv Gandhi chor hai (The streets are echoing with the cry, Rajiv is a thief)"; and Bahujan Samaj Party rallies are no more marked by chants of "Tilak, taraju aur talwar, uske maro jute char (Brahmins, Banias and Thakurs, greet them with shoes and slaps)". But the Indian electorate hasn't been deprived of their ritual share of muck and muck-raking. As the first voters queue up on September 5 for what is widely billed as the final and greatest democratic carnival of the millennium, the 13th Indian general election is increasingly resembling an unseemly free for all in a mud pit. Never mind the well-intentioned but largely decorative model code of conduct imploring the players to focus on issues rather than personalities and never mind the sanctimonious tut-tutting of the two prime ministerial hopefuls. Election '99 will be remembered as the time when India finally caught up with the world's most advanced democracy -- in dirty talk and dirty tricks. The time when it became impossible to separate fact from fiction, information from disinformation and truth from slander.
It didn't happen because some over-zealous second- and third-rung leaders decided that electoral encounters aren't cricket matches, governed by gentlemanly conduct and defined laws of the game. It happened because the descent was carefully planned and executed by backroom strategists and responsible leaders who knew that there are no consolation prizes for coming second. It happened because the stakes are dizzying. It happened because in "End of History" elections there are no distinctive ideologies, only distinct personalities in the race for the top job. For the record, it was Minister of Information and Broadcasting Pramod Mahajan's supposed comparison of Congress chief Sonia Gandhi with Monica Lewinsky -- a charge he steadfastly denied and blamed on imaginative journalism and the Congress' dirty tricks department -- that brought the muck-raking into national gaze. But the campaign of personal vilification had by then assumed alarming proportions with both sides going for the jugular.
In Tamil Nadu, where campaigning is much more vicious and intensely personalised, the old rivalry between AIADMK chief J. Jayalalitha and DMK Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi took a colourful turn. Putting her theatrical skills to full use, Jayalalitha coupled her campaign speeches with a song, "Yeamathi poittingale ayya, Vajpayee ayya (Oh Vajpayee you have cheated me/us)". Karunanidhi hit back with characteristic acerbic venom. "I have read about the way the AIADMK general secretary is singing a song in her campaign. I don't think this is in good taste because Vajpayee is a man and the person who sings is a woman. In our society if a woman says she has been cheated, we can only draw awkward conclusions." Likewise, in West Bengal where Trinamool Congress' (TC) Mamata Banerjee has mounted an assault on Chief Minister Jyoti Basu's red bastion, tough talking has reached bizarre proportions. When Mamata called on the police to revolt and not be a party to the Left Front's electoral tricks, Basu called her a "lunatic". Mamata responded by threatening to convert the CPI(M) headquarters on Calcutta's Alimuddin Street into a modern hospital. Whereupon the CPI(M) strongman of North 24 Parganas, Amitava Nandy, barked: "They may not need to build that hospital. We'll ensure that TC workers aren't so badly beaten as to need hospitalisation." Nor does it stop at rhetoric alone. The expensive advertisement war was always calculated to be sharp and hard-hitting. The Congress lashed out at Vajpayee's "13 months of bungling" and the BJP implored people "not to vote for him because HE was born in India, but because YOU were". But behind this lavish press campaign, another war was being fought. This time not by the Congress and BJP directly but through intermediary front organisations. The BJP started the battle as early as April when Lok Abhiyan run by Vijay Goel, an outgoing Delhi MP, issued ads asking, "What wrong did this man do?" and followed it up with one by Purva Sainik Sewa Parishad (PSSP) in Noida, Uttar Pradesh, attacking the Congress for not allowing proxy voting for soldiers: "The Congress is ready to allow soldiers to die for the country. But not ready to allow them to vote for the country." The BJP makes little attempt to hide the fact that these are front organisations. The party is spending approximately Rs 7 crore on its print campaign of which some Rs 1.5 crore of ads have been released by bodies like Lok Abhiyan, PSSP and All-India Kashmiri Pandit Conference. The Congress is a little less forthcoming. Slow off the mark, it joined the proxy war under the banner of Communalism Combat, a small journal run from Mumbai by journalists Javed and Teesta Setalvad. Now operating from a flat owned by a Congress MP in Marble Arch Apartments on Delhi's Prithviraj Road, Communalism Combat is acting in tandem with the AICC media cell. It has issued ads in all major publications attacking Vajpayee's leadership qualities, his links with the RSS and the BJP-RSS' lack of "respect" for women, an ad co-sponsored by women's groups as well. According to media planners, the ad campaign should have cost some Rs 75 lakh, money Teesta claims to have raised "from a wide spectrum of well-wishers including corporates, trade unions, women's groups and NGOs".
The war turned a little more ugly on August 25 when the Congress prepared a proxy ad on Kargil for release the next day. Within a few hours, Mahajan's office secured its text and Arun Jaitley and Arun Shourie prepared a reply on behalf of the PSSP for simultaneous release. The reply even contained a cheeky PS: "After Bellary and this ad, should they not start looking amongst themselves for an intelligence failure?" According to the BJP, the "Congress is leaking like a sieve" but AICC media department secretary Tom Vadakkan accused the ruling party "of tapping our phones and jamming incoming calls". Whatever the truth, the Congress withdrew its ad at the eleventh hour. Four days later, the Congress repeated the exercise and, predictably, the BJP was tipped off and prepared its rebuttal. At the last minute, however, the Congress substituted the ad forcing the BJP to withhold its reply. "This is a game we too can play," boasts Vadakkan. Today, the Congress media department is a sanitised zone with only Pranab Mukherjee, Kamal Nath, Vincent George, Ahmad Patel, Sibal, Vadakkan and Rajiv Desai enjoying access. The dirty war has spilled into other areas too. With the mode of campaigning shifting from cars to aircraft and helicopters, both sides had made travel arrangements well in advance. The Congress, not exactly flush with funds, had booked aircraft from India International, Asia Airways and Millionaire Airline on the understanding that the payment would be on actual use. However, the BJP, aware of the Congress' problems, used its clout to secure the aircraft for its own use. The Congress was keen on hiring a 10-seater Citation jet for Sonia's use on long flights but the BJP moved in there as well forcing her to travel by the slower Beechcraft. Not that these puerile one-upmanship games and dirty tricks -- begun, ironically, by Rajiv Gandhi in the 1989 campaign -- can determine the outcome but they can influence the mood. Fierce and passionate rhetoric are natural to any contest but the campaign is soured when parties start believing everything is fair in war, including lies and half-truths. This year, even the army and its chief have been dragged into the mud pit with dubious claims. The EC is helpless because the dividing line between legitimate competition and illegitimate practices is prone to subjective interpretation. The Congress may legitimately believe Vajpayee's leadership claims have to be punctured and the BJP may be justified in perceiving Sonia's inexperience and origins to be the issue. The issue is not the points of contention but their manner of articulation and the means deployed. Election '99 has witnessed the rules of engagement being redefined. The casualty is decency and good taste.
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