The Hindu Business Line : In the grip of election fever

When a political party or person suffers from election fever, the infected victim exhibits symptoms of frothing at the mouth, knee-jerk reflexes, hysterical fits, uncontrolled fulminations, extreme allergy to good sense, proneness to rash and negligent acts, inability to concentrate on responsibilities and obligations, and loss of the faculties of hearing (of differing viewpoints), vision (long, medium and short-range) and touch (with reality, logic and reason).

Altogether the patient is in the grip of a combination of Alzheimers' disease, palsy, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and apoplexy.

A pathetic, if not precarious, predicament indeed.

Election fever is to be differentially diagnosed from election campaign since the latter's etiology is entirely different.

A campaign is based on a cogent analysis of ills and issues affecting the body politic and the programmes proposed by the contending political parties and candidates for national advancement.

It is conducted in a spirit of decent discourse, reasoned exposition and fair criticism of the views of opponents so that the voters are educated on all the facts, dimensions and implications of the courses of action advocated and enabled to make up their minds on who should be given an opportunity to represent them. Parties usually start off claiming to stick to the norms of election campaign, but somewhere along the way succumb to the election fever.

In the current scenario, the fever seems to have assumed the character of an epidemic even before the President has even put his signature on the notification to kickstart the Constitutional process.

What else are we to make of normally emotionally stable and intellectually gifted individuals such as Messrs. Arun Jaitley and Promod Mahajan, losing their cool over trifles and trading charges of a personal nature having nothing to do with the larger aspects of nation-building, and setting off counter-detonations on the part of Messrs. Kapil Sibal, Jaipal Reddy and Avinash Singhvi?

They must understand that people are sick and tired of the hypocrisy inherent in such useless tirades and charades.

If there are misdeeds and misdemeanours, those in authority should bring the culprits to book and lock them up in jails for good, instead of beating breasts over some stupid tidbits served by some panjandrum of a cabinet secretary whose own credentials are nothing to write home about.

Off with this nonsense, and on with "smart" (sensitive, moral, accountable, responsive and transparent) governance.

B. S. RAGHAVAN