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| Psephology has become a game of numbers | | | Sandeep | 3/22/2012 11:19:19 PM |
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We have just wit
nessed the triumph
of numericals over ideas and ideals. The deserving have lost the election and the least deserving have won!
Psephology is tedious business. At a level, it reduces democracy to a savage farce of a triumph of numbers over ideas, ideals, even philosophy. But the times we live in makes it a necessary evil. While it has its undeniable uses, a historical sense and wisdom from experience are better guides, which to a keen observer inform that Uttar Pradesh would go to the Samajwadi Party and Goa, to the BJP. First, Uttar Pradesh. All the pundit-theories about castes and formations apart, there is a fundamental reason, which has to do with the nature of politics that's in vogue. It's the politics of divide and rule. It's the politics of deception, which has been elevated to an art form to such a vile degree of refinement that everybody has taken it for granted and nobody even questions it anymore. Needless, it is the Congress that sowed the seeds of this deception whose harvest it reaped till that fatal and irreversible defeat in 1989 at the hands of the same Mulayam Singh Yadav (then Janata Dal), whose party (now SP) has won so spectacularly. However, Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav's tenure in 1989 was short-lived in the face of the wave of resurgent Hinduism that altered the political landscape and because the Congress yanked the rug under poor Chandrashekar's feet in Delhi. Then it was the BJP's turn at the Uttar Pradesh helm.
If the Congress lost due to decades-long arrogance, the BJP lost due to infighting. Forget about chief ministership, the party never returned anywhere close to electoral respectability after 2002. Ever since, Uttar Pradesh has alternated between the BSP and the SP. In other words, the two national parties were rendered irrelevant in a State that gave India most of its Prime Ministers. This holds an important instruction: Both the BSP and SP invested some 15 years in to groom themselves. That done, they had perfected the art of gaming the numbers-system in Uttar Pradesh in a way the Congress and the BJP hadn't done and are unlikely to do anytime in the near future.
Thus, it doesn't matter that Mayawati is voted in because the Uttar Pradesh junta was fed up of Mr Yadav's goonda raj, and the same junta votes her out because she's perceived as haughty. Thus, it doesn't matter that the same goonda raj was back at Jhansi where journalists were besieged by SP's workers on the very day of victory. As for the national parties, the BJP simply wasn't in the reckoning while the Congress was smashed in both its home grounds: Rae Bareli and Amethi. Now, Goa is a State that holds a record for political instability, with 14 Governments in 15 years. Back in 2005, it voted in an indisputably clean Manohar Parrikar as the Chief Minister, only to lose him to the Congress's practiced skullduggery - for which the people of Goa paid dearly. The gory story of the rape and loot of Goa under the active watch of the Congress is only too well-known. It would have been a surprise if the result was anything less than an absolute rout of the Congress. Which brings us to the arch-villain of these Assembly elections: The English media. The English media appeared to campaign for the Congress in the Uttar Pradesh election, starting with apologising for Rahul Gandhi's gaffes at Bhatta Parsaul.
And then, when he descended on Uttar Pradesh from that perfumed helicopter, the media assaulted us relentlessly, making it appear as though the Uttar Pradesh election was only about his impending coronation. The media took dynasty-sycophancy to sickening depths by describing Priyanka Gandhi as endowed with flawless skin, charm and grace, and even magical powers. Such was the media's obsession with the dynasty that it forgot that local Congress candidates even existed. Equally, it blanked out every setback Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi suffered during the campaign phase. It blanked out the angry taunt that rural women directed at Priyanka, "Kaa bitiya teen saal ke baad aai ho phir teen saal ke baad aaogi?" That taunt in many ways was prophetic, a precursor to the Congress's impending washout.
The media created a make-believe world for itself and the dynasty, one that was built on the denial of reality. It's this denial that blinds it to Mr Parrikar's deserved victory. Goa is the only State to post a record voting turnout of 81 per cent. It is also the state where the BJP fielded five Christian candidates, all victorious. Mr Parrikar is exactly the kind of leader India needs: An IIT graduate, a man of ideas, integrity, cultivated, non-corrupt, and endowed with a record of good governance. Yet, all he - and Goa - got was a perfunctory "electoral victory" coverage while Mr Rahul Gandhi's defeat was mourned as a national tragedy. This utter perversion of and misplaced priorities in public discourse occurs when democracy becomes a sick game of psephology. Which is why I said that psephology reduces democracy to a savage farce of a triumph of numbers over ideas and ideals.
Corrupt but powerful losers find hand maidens who make sorry excuses on their behalf. Goonda raj returns in the garb of electoral victory. Genuine do-gooders get ignored. The nation loses yet again. |
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