The Hindu Business Line : Keeping the goose alive

IN THE next two days, the long-drawn exercise of elections to constitute the 14th Lok Sabha will have come to an end. In the history books, one more election in the history of Free India will have been completed and, imperceptibly perhaps, the journey towards the next one will have begun.

This is in the nature of things. In fact, one does not even have to think about it, but it is as true as the fact that one is holding a newspaper and reading this piece.

But the human mind distinguishes itself from those of other life forms and tries to probe behind what it sees. A tree is not merely a tree; neither is the sun, the moon or the stars. So it is with the Vote. True, the elections to the 14th Lok Sabha will have passed into history in another 48 hours or so, but it involved people, and people have minds.

What did they think of the entire exercise? Was it worth it? Was the election really what it was meant to be, namely, a free and fair exercise of the right to vote which the Republic's Constitution has given to the people? True, there are over a billion people in the country, and each one of those who is entitled to vote has a point of view worth listening to. But that is not practically possible. Willy-nilly, one has to rely on newspapers to get a cross-section (fair or otherwise) of views.

At least one newspaper yesterday had just such a collection dealing not with the parties individually but with the very exercise of the franchise, the common refrain running through them being a certain disenchantment with the quality of people offering themselves to be chosen as the people's representatives in the Lok Sabha.

One voter who has exercised his franchise over the past 30 years said that he was determined not to cast his vote this time, "All of them (the candidates) are thieves and thugs. Why should I take leave and go to my native Katihar when no one deserves my vote?" Another said: "I choose nobody. There should be a button on the EVM which says `None of the above'. Once parties see the electorate is shunning everyone, they will be forced to think why they are being shunned". A third was quoted as saying: "Why are you wasting your intelligence, brothers? These elections are rubbish".

Even if one does not agree with what these people say, it will have to be acknowledged that there must be something behind such observations. Indeed, it is said that in some parts of the country thugs and miscreants charge politicians and political parties specific rates (per voter) if a polling booth is to be "captured". And the "capturing" of polling booths and the conduct of free and fair elections certainly do not go together. Even so, basing oneself on the analogy of the baby being thrown out with the bathwater, it will be somewhat problematic to argue that one should not participate in an election because of the imperfections clouding the exercise.

Those who run the country from New Delhi must be chosen by the people. What this strongly implies is that as long as the Republic lasts — and it should last forever — the instrument of elections should be available to the electorate with which to either reward or chastise those who habitually lose their head when they are vested with power. Imperfections in the election process cannot be avoided, but every effort must be made to contain them at a manageable level because the goose that lays the golden egg of parliamentary democracy must be kept alive and kicking for our children and their offspring.

There can be no compromise on this, even if people who have been disqualified as voters brazenly strut around as candidates under the protection of the law and the leader of the Government himself does not hesitate to pull the wool over the eyes of the minority community in an effort to divide the vote to the advantage of his own party, as seems to have happened in Uttar Pradesh lately.