Five polling phases of the 9-phase General or Lok Sabha (Lower House of Indian
Parliament) Elections-2014 have been completed. The sixth phase polling is
being conducted on Thursday, the 24th of April. In this phase Mumbai
too goes to poll with its six Lok Sabha seats.
In this last phase of polling in Maharashtra there are 13 other seats including in Thane,
Raigad, Nashik and Jalna-Aurangabad. When Maharashtra and Mumbai go to poll the malady of voter
apathy comes in naturally since voting has been consistently low in these parts
over the decades. Talking particularly about Mumbai the normal voting
percentage has been around just 42% taking all kinds of poll into account. This General Elections things seem to be improving quite a bit, but about Mumbai fears are still there. Only tomorrow the scenario here would be clear. Anyway,
we will come to this first P of our subject that is percentage of voting later.
The other two Ps are the absolute low points of this
General Elections. First is personalized.
Leaders of all political parties are getting extremely personal in their
attacks and counterattacks. No kin of any candidate seems to be safe anymore. If
someone is attacked for his rediscovered or existing wife then some other is
attacked for the lack of a one. Similarly husbands, mothers, sons and even
in-laws of candidates are being brought in to score more over one another as
far as ‘antics’ or ‘the lack of it’ of their kin are concerned. The hapless
voters are the mute spectators of such abusive missiles and they are at a total
loss to understand what sort of political gains are being made out of these. We
had already mentioned in these pages earlier that this time mutual attacks have
plummeted to never-before lows and mere name-calling is driven out as an
unnecessary detail of the past. Now the circus has stopped to be entertaining.
The most sinister P of our narrative is polarization. All political parties,
major or ally or bully, are shamelessly indulging in the politics of
communalism. One after the other political leaders in almost all parts are
making hate speeches and divisive and inflammatory comments aimed mainly at polarizing
the two major religious communities of the country. Their agenda or so-called manifestos are no longer national. They promise ‘things’ to be done for a
particular community if voted to power. Those who want to come back to power
are promising the opposite. ‘Revenge’ is also emerging as the underlying theme
of ‘repairing’ things. Bans or restrictions have been imposed by the Election
Commission of India and FIRs have been lodged too in some cases. But the
leaders know well how ineffective these measures finally prove to be and so are
hardly caring for these. Voters must take into account this unprecedented ‘low’
for the largest democracy of the world while exercising their democratic right.
The only highlight represented by one of the three
Ps is percentage of voting thanks to
the novel initiatives of the Election Commission and awareness campaigns. General
Elections-2014 records high to very high voting percentages ranging from 70% to
around 86% in various states of India that have voted so far. In Maharashtra
the percentage has improved to around 65%, a 20% increase in some areas, so far.
However, it is still low compared to other states or regions. More positively,
in the Naxal or Maoists-affected regions citizens have voted fearlessly in large numbers.
Normally, high voting turnout is considered as an
anti-incumbency wave. That is to say, people want a change in ruling political
parties. However, due to the never-before polarization visibly obvious in the
country some experts would like to ascribe this high percentage to
polarization. This means that maybe due to desperation voters of a particular
community want to ensure ‘their’ candidates win. We hope this is not the case. We
hope the people of India are voting for an authentic and meaningful change. Amen!
