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| Public deserves to know | | |
How much affairs of the state should public know has always been a matter of debate in public and the government. At the end of the day one realizes that despite all mechanisms of transparency the State does not want to share information with the public. It is indeed a welcome step that the coalition government in Jammu and Kashmir has finally shown some seriousness to come up with a modified Right to Information Act. While there is no reason to doubt the sincerity of Chief Minister Omar Abdullah but the information sharing scenario across the country is still grim. A mature democracy does not feel insecure about the free circulation of opinion and information. But more than 60 years after Independence, the Indian State’s knee-jerk reaction is to suppress the wish to know, and to make known, certain aspects of the political process. The Election Commission has consistently wanted to restrict, if not altogether ban, exit and opinion polls around the time of voting. Now, while planning a staggered schedule for the coming Lok Sabha elections, the EC has also set down guidelines regarding opinion and exit polls. The unanimous attitude to them seems to be that they should be kept well out of the public consciousness around the time of elections, for they influence and manipulate voters (particularly during multi-phased elections) through putting out distorted information, thereby coming in the way of free and fair elections. In this matter, not only the EC but also all political parties seem to be in agreement with one another. They all want to protect the electorate from the vested interests and unholy designs of the media (working in tandem with the polity). What comes through from such a unanimous stance is the peculiarly condescending assumption of the electorate’s gullibility in these matters. The EC as well as all the political parties seem to believe that the Indian voter is incapable of making up his mind without being swayed by what he hears on the radio, watches on television or reads in the papers. He would look out for what he gets to hear about the earlier phase of an election, and then go with the swing. This infantilizes the voter, underestimating his political acumen and critical distance from the media. But Indian voters have proven this wrong, most notably in 1971 and 1977, with the overwhelming support and the equally overwhelming rejection of Indira Gandhi, and repeatedly during all kinds of local or assembly elections. The EC has to seriously consider the fact that there is such a thing as the right to information, and a law that entitles the citizen to have this right respected by the State. As long as the exit polls make entirely transparent for the voters the questions of who had paid for and conducted them, when and for how long they were conducted, and what the samples and margins of error were, it would be regressive to think that adult Indians would be incapable of exercising their democratic duties clearheadedly.
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