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 16^th 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.

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 10^th 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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