Election times are big business season for numerous cash-crazy communities in India. Media people, moviemakers, publishers, printers, ad agencies, content writers, photographers, artists, computer graphics experts and more swoop on the scene like hungry vultures.
The voter, expected to behave like the master, is reduced to the status of a beggarly slave under pressure from the agents of political parties with loads of bribe money given away to the willing and favourable voters. Incidentally, Clisthenes, an ancient Athenian statesman, is believed to have reformed the Constitution to instal a true democratic procedure called elections in 508 BC.
Elections were first conceptualised to choose the best among contenders for power. Thus, elections had become popular in ancient Greece and Rome across the Medieval period to select emperors and the Pope.
In India, during the Vedic period, chieftains or Rajas were apparently elected by ordinary subjects in a ‘ballot box' procedure. The modern ‘election’ we witness didn't emerge until the beginning of the 17th Century when the idea of representative government took hold in North America and Europe.
Early elections in the United Kingdom and the United States were dominated by landed or ruling class males only as females were considered inferior humans. However by 1920, all Western European and North American democracies had incorporated the universal adult male suffrage system into their Constitutions, except Switzerland. Wisdom dawned upon modern democracies and many countries began to include women's suffrage too.
In the 70-odd years since India's Independence, elections have slowly and steadily become so significant that they generate more excitement among people than most cherished religious festivals like Dussehra or Deewali. Election season means bustling activities that keep politicians and unemployed youths on their toes.
Unfortunately, the election season of 2019 is likely to be the first one to witness serious challenges to the country's inclusive political culture.
According to political experts, if the Hindu Nationalist government, led by the BJP secures another emphatic mandate, the country will move dangerously close to becoming a majoritarian state. A decisive victory would give the BJP huge hegemonic control over all the state institutions, the media and public discourse.
This would further undermine the integrity and autonomy of different arms of the state, including the judiciary, public watchdogs and, more importantly, state-run educational institutions.
Amid waning public support for the government, caused by economic failures, the BJP has recently taken a series of steps to accentuate India's growing religious polarisation to secure a victory not by convincing Indians that it will implement a strong social, economic and political agenda but by fomenting the Hindu majority's prejudices against Muslims and convincing them to vote along religious lines. In 2014, Modi was voted into office for two reasons.
sFirst, anti-incumbent sentiment against the Congress-led coalition government was rampant, mainly as a result of corruption accusations and a downward drift in governance; second, Modi managed to raise Indians' hopes about the country's future by making a number of ambitious promises. Despite his controversial past concerning the 2002 Gujarat riots, Modi succeeded in presenting himself as a messiah of development throughout the election campaign.
Once in power, however, he moved away from the reformist image he created for himself. He did follow through some of his campaign promises such as starting pro-poor economic schemes and innovative programmes, but mostly he used sectarian, Hindu-nationalist dog whistles to consolidate his power. As a result, Muslims became open targets for discrimination.
The Modi government's tacit promotion of sectarian politics resulted in what is identified as "Middle India", a burgeoning demographic block of urban middle-classes who are socially liberal but economically conservative.
They had backed Modi in 2014 only because they believed he had given up divisive politics and committed to economic policies to help everyone prosper.
However, only a couple of months into his reign, ‘Middle India’ realised that Modi is no unifying reformer. Modi repeatedly turned a blind eye on attacks by fringe groups on religious minorities, according to data from ‘IndiaSpend’, which tracks news about violence in English-language media, reports religious-based hate-crimes mostly involving Muslims as targets.
Modi seems to believe that firing up Hindu-nationalist sentiments would give him an electoral advantage. Probably, the sectarian politics has done some magic among the wider Hindu communities. The 2017 landslide victory in India's most populous State Uttar Pradesh bears testimony to this fact.
Fortunately however, divisive methods stopped yielding political dividends for the BJP from the autumn of 2017 and Modi's when personal popularity started declining.
All said and done there is also a bright side to Modi’s efforts. The corporate world has found his policies better than those in place since long. The ET Magazine had recently reached out to over 130 CEOs of mixed genres -- startups and investors (33%) and services (21%) forming the biggest block. 95 of these guys had responded seriously with revealing views. A majority of them, 60% of the CEOs consider Modi’s five years as good and yielding.
Ardent readers too responded online; 73% of them rate the Modi tenure as impressive. 36% of the corporate guys and 13% of readers, respectively, rate it just average. The infrastructure push and the effective branding of India have touched the hearts of the gullible masses, mostly the rightwing youth groups who go by what they see, not by what’s been happening really on the development domains.
The government’s most terrible failure, unemployment, has been condemned by 35% of CEOs and 41% of readers who consider it as the most unforgivable letdown. India is known now as the world’s youngest country where unemployment and un-employability have reached huge crisis proportions. 26% CEOs attribute the gross failure to the rising communal discord while 38% of readers believe it is farm distress that has caused the disastrous situation.
More amusingly, pollsters and sephologists have begun going wrong in the recent times only because trends are weird, varied and so widely different depending on regions, aspirations of the people and, above all, their perception of good governance.
Odisha is a State where the BJD is known as an enigmatically invincible party which has made BJP stars bite dust even during the horrific ‘Modi wave'. Though there is talk of a BJP undercurrent, precision weighing indicates the BJP will take a beating more because there is big conspiracy within the fold. Besides, no saffron hero has been projected as the CM face. So, the prospects of the BJP doing wonders in Odisha are virtually marred quite at the outset.
The Modi-Shah duo, heavily backed by superb poll strategists, may not be able to move or shake masses in Odisha. Hopefully, the terrible rumours are all rumours only without even an iota of truth. As the BJP is struggling more fiercely than before, the BJD biggies are having a relaxing time, their worries diminishing by the day.
(The writer is a core member of Transparency International, Odisha)
