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VIEWPOINT: FIFTH COLUMN
More
Of The Shame
Elections
have been reduced to making a choice between the bad and the worse
By Tavleen Singh
An
interesting set of statistics has emerged from the opinion poll on the
assembly elections published in this magazine last week. When asked if
the quality of their lives had changed during the tenure of the previous
government, more than half the people polled in Kerala, Tamil Nadu and
West Bengal said it had either remained the same or worsened. In supposedly
modern Kerala, 53 per cent said it had remained unchanged and 23 per cent
said it had worsened. The story was similar in Marxist West Bengal where
51 per cent said there had been no change and 25 per cent said it had
worsened. From Tamil Nadu we heard 56 per cent say that their lives remained
unchanged and 20 per cent that it had worsened.
So does it make any difference who wins? No.
It cannot make a difference because in all these states every contending
party has already been tried and failed. Ah, but what of Mamata didi,
the Bengal tigress, you could ask, and the answer is she was one of the
most hopeless railway ministers this country has seen and is unlikely
to have miraculously honed her non-existent administrative skills in the
two months since she resigned from the Union Cabinet. Besides, there was
nothing in her campaign directed at "Marxist misrule" that indicated
that she would come up with a new style of governance.
It is hard not to be cynical about the phase
that Indian politics is passing through. Hard not to ask if there is any
point in voting when our choice is between bad and worse. Jayalalitha
has proved that she is not just corrupt but irresponsible as well. Remember
the tantrums that brought down the previous Vajpayee government. Yet,
if you were voting in Tamil Nadu would you really choose someone who proudly
goes by the name of Stalin? There is the additional problem that Stalin
would probably not even be a political figure if big daddy Karunanidhi
had not decided to will him the DMK as if it were some heirloom.
 In
Tamil Nadu cynicism runs so deep that despite Jayalalitha's long list
of corruption charges only 10 per cent of the voters polled said corruption
was an issue in this election. Could it be because they know that when
it comes to corruption all our political leaders are the same with the
only difference being that some get caught and some others get away?
Of all our politicians, it is the Marxists who
are the most sanctimonious. Not a day goes by without their leaders lecturing
the world on "the poor". They oppose foreign investment because
of the poor; they oppose privatisation because of the poor; they oppose
economic reform because they believe that only the state can look after
the poor. Yet, just travel around Bengal, ruled for more than 20 years
by the Marxists, and all you see is the most wretched poverty. Is that
not strange? Surely, a political party so totally dedicated to the poor
should have succeeded in eliminating poverty by now? Alas, the average
voter does not even ask these questions any more because they know that
things are unlikely to change whoever comes or goes. Mamata didi, another
politician much given to speaking for the "common man" (without
realising that this is offensive terminology) is not going to be much
better.
Things can get better only if our political
leaders understand the importance of good governance, if in their election
speeches they articulate exactly what they plan to do about the things
that have gone wrong. Allow me an example. Mamata could, for instance,
tell the people of West Bengal that she has examined why every village
does not have clean drinking water after 24 years of Marxist rule and
then articulate her plan to provide it. Ditto education, roads, health
care, electricity. Instead, during the campaign, all we got were polemics
and platitudes. She was no exception. All we got from all the contenders
were polemics and platitudes and political alliances so shamelessly expedient
as to make the average voter even more cynical. What, for instance, is
Mamata didi doing arm in arm with Sonia didi when they hated each others
guts only weeks ago?
These are cynical times indeed and because cynicism
is infectious, we hacks have not escaped unscathed either. Not only is
it politicians who no longer feel obliged to raise real issues at election
time but-in this age of television and the quick soundbite-we do not either.
So, instead of highlighting the successes and failures of governments
to help voters form their opinions, we go in search of the best visuals
and the best quotes. It no longer shocks me when I hear eager, young TV
reporters confront major political leaders on the election trail and instead
of asking them what they have done to deserve electoral victory, ask them,"Don't
you get tired, sir? How do you manage to do it day after day?" Who
cares, frankly, and who cares who wins in the desert that our political
landscape has become.
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