The Hindu Business Line : E-day musings

CONVENTIONALLY speaking, one would call this the definitive `D-day'. But it seemed more like E-day, with E as in "elections" and "enthusiasm", as around 21 million Keralites walked, trooped, marched or sauntered into polling booths to exercise their franchise in this most sacrosanct of homilies to democracy.

And saunter most of them did to this homily - in the sense of a moralizing sermon - which is what the whole exercise may well turn out to be, despite the daunting statistics: 21 million voters, 20,333 polling stations, 177 candidates (15 of them, women) for 20 Lok Sabha seats.

Inured as they are to the vagaries of coalition politics, most Keralites had little time to digest the recent findings of Election Watch Kerala (EWK), the civil society body set up by concerned citizens to monitor elections.

EWK's analysis of the affidavits filed by the candidates for the Lok Sabha election reveals gross under-declaration of assets and liabilities. One candidate declared his liquid assets at just Rs 240 and those of his spouse at Rs 140, yet claims to own a car! One wonders - does he run his car on love and ambition? If so, he could have made that an election manifesto, considering how oil companies are set to hike petrol prices.

The only saving grace that EWK found was the absence of a criminal background for Kerala's candidates. Only 25 candidates (14 per cent) have reported registration of some cases against them, but most of these related to offences such as unlawful assembly, obstruction of public duty and damage to public property - offences related to public protests and political action.

"It is a measure of the social and political environment in Kerala that persons with criminal records are not fielded as candidates in elections," EWK's recent report observes.

Despite being supposedly developed from a gender perspective, Kerala exhibits the same gender bias as the rest of the nation in nominating candidates. Most - over 90 per cent - of the candidates are men. And the older the better, it seems. In the three major fronts, 55 per cent of the candidates are above 45 years of age.

As for assets, the less said the better. While 65 candidates (37 per cent) have reported total assets of less than Rs 1 lakh, seven candidates (4 per cent) have reported assets worth over Rs 1 crore. One independent candidate from Kozhikode is the richest with assets worth Rs 18 crore. Of the candidates from the established parties, one Congress nominee in Kasaragod is the wealthiest, with assets worth Rs 11.87 crore, EWK's report says.

Not quite the kind of confidence-boosting findings that will urge more Keralites to the polling booths on this most august of days.

The writer can be contacted at kg@tug.org.in

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