The gains & losses of 2014 parliamantary polls
With the
final phase of polling done, parliamentary elections are over except for the
results. The exit polls are cluttering the TV channels discussing seats, voting
percentages, swings & waves as if these are the final results. The winners & losers in terms of parties
& candidates would be become known only when the results are out on 16th
may and any discussion on veracity of exit polls is as fruitless as churning water.
However
from the perspective of a young nation state, a democratic one at that, each
successive election is an important milestone in the journey towards
transparent, fair, representative, honest & progressive polity. It is important
to assess the gains made & losses incurred for the polity, the democracy
& the country after each milestone, celebrating each gain and mourning each
loss.
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Also, as
as usually happens, gains & losses are not cut & dried, black & white. Each positive
comes with its own share of negatives, more like two sides of a coin. Just that
our current perspective tells us that one outweighs the other.
Positive,
developmental agenda works: In a nine phase election, the party which looks like
the winner as per exit polls, conducted the campaign only on the developmental
agenda, spiced up with economy, jobs, opportunities, inflation, corruption,
power, drinking water, roads, infrastructure etc. They did succumb to the pulls
& pressures of caste & religious polarization in the last two phases
and tarred this achievement. Whether it was a strategic shift in message helped
by the perception that the constituencies going for polls in the last two
phases did not respond to the mundane ‘Bijli, Sadak & Paani’ or it was just
a reaction to the campaign of the other parties, we would never know but the
fact that upto 70% of campaign, one party tried to stay on the positive
developmental agenda is a major gain which can be built upon in coming
elections.
The rise of Social Media: Social Media seems to be finding its place in the sun. During
this campaign, not all parties were active in the virtual universe but the ones
which mattered were. And those who took it seriously, used it as a medium to
connect to the people directly, listened to what they were saying, responded to
the issues raised, were able to generate a positive & progressive perception.
Off course there were paid tweeters, bought followers, photoshop specialists
& rumor generators, but nothing that does not exist in the badlands of
physical political world; paid volunteers, paid crowds, fake videos etc.
On the
other hand, this was the election the Mainstream Media or more specifically English
Language Media saw its value being eroded. Even a few months ago the sense of
achievement of getting an interview was felt by both parties, the interviewer
and the interviewee. The typical political leader gave immense respect to the typical
anchor. This election affected much of the clout being wielded by the traders
of news and views as the political leaders opened new channels for
communicating with the voter. Many new experiments using new technology were
conducted with great success but these reduced the dependency on MSM by a large
extent. One felt sad for some of the anchors who were fidgeting while waiting
for a meaty interview till last phase of polling. Pity some did not get even
that.
Actually
MSM never had much of an influence with the voter, only that in this election,
they were shown the mirror and the sight was not beautiful. MSM has to find the reasons of this fall from
grace itself and it would involve looking inwards first before finding ways to
counter challenges posed by Social Media.
Nation always
wanted to know, just that MSM did not know what the nation wanted to know.
Blow to
dynasty: Like a cat enjoying its nine lives, the dynasty has been springing
back to life after every electoral debacle, sometimes helped by accidents and
sometimes by assassinations. This time the blow seems to be an existence threatening
one. It is not relevant whether the number of seats Congress wins is in two
digits or three, nor is it important whether Rahul Gandhi is able to retain
Amethi or not, what is more important that this is the first time that our pseudo
royalty had to go beyond giving the customary deity darshan to the poor,
unwashed but grateful masses and come down from the palace to the street, work hard,
answer questions asked by commoners & face the threat of losing a piddly
small entitlement of a parliamentary seat!
It is time
to remember an old interview which went something like this, “I could have
become Prime Minister when I wanted to. I can still do.”
Premature death of Anti Corruption
Movement: Two years back when the old & young, educated and not so
educated, urban & rural, thronged to Ramlila Maidan for providing support
to Anna’s movement against corruption, all of us felt that we were contributing
towards building a better India. Even those who were away from the capital
expressed their support through different means.
Today that
dream lies shattered.
Today, when
everyone else has fallen by the wayside, AAP remains as the self proclaimed successor
or the political avatar of the anti corruption movement but no one, even by a
stretch of imagination, associates it with words like anti corruption or
honest. During the course of this election, AAP has demonstrated sufficient
dexterity to change objectives & ditch agendas when returns are low while
claiming to be against corruption, associate with people with questionable
antecedents while claiming to clean politics, use dubious means to get support
of different sections while claiming to teach way of doing politics to others.
In the present form,
AAP is microcosm of Indian politics, representing everything
that is wrong with it.
How the
romantic idea of building a corruption free India has died within a short span
of two years. Hope the idea and soul of the movement survives to be born again,
in a new form, to reignite the dream, again.
Use of Money Power: This one was the costliest
election so far. Not only for the government but also for the political
parties. Some experts believe that both mainstream political parties spent anywhere
around 2000 crore each on the campaign. With Gopinath Munde admitting to
spending close to 8 Crs on one constituency & Jairam Ramesh stating that
current expenditure norms are not at all realistic, it does point to growing
cost of fighting an election.
One example
here would be pertinent here. AAP decided to field Arvind Kejriwal from
Varanasi to challenge Narendra Modi. It happens to be a party which proclaims
that it has no money to fight elections, relies only on contributions from
public and decries the use of black money by the big parties. The account given
below would highlight the wide gap between ideal positions taken & political
reality.
a) When Arvind Kejriwal decided to do a
referendum on his candidature against Narendra Modi, around 6000 volunteers
travelled from different parts of India to Varanasi. The minimum cost of
getting these volunteers to Varanasi, boarding & lodging and local travel
would have exceeded the total amount allowed under elections commission rules.
The expenses for that day are estimated to be between 1 cr to 1.25 cr.
b) Again when the road show was
organized on 10th May, the number of volunteers who travelled to Varanasi
is assessed by observers to be between 10000 to 14000. This itself would have
cost somewhere between 2 to 2.5 crs.
c) By its own admission, there were
over 3000 volunteers from different parts of country stationed for a period of
three weeks, for the campaign. Assuming that the volunteers have simple needs,
austere lifestyle and no demands, the cost would be somewhere between 3 to 5
cr.
After
adding the normal campaign expenses, it is safe to assume that AAP spent a
minimum of 6 Crs on Varanasi campaign. We can be sure that the expense declared
to EC would be within limits. If this is the state of affairs in a party which
professes that it works on public contributions and makes daily insinuations on
other parties about use of black money, one can imagine the expenses of BJP
& Congress on each constituency. If
there was a case for government funding of elections expenses, it just got
stronger.
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