Indian elections are apparently not a time to test the ideological mettle of parties or their political vigour or sturdiness. Parties change their orientation wholesale if they perceive electoral advantage in doing so. There is hardly any surprise, then, if prominent individuals within parties jump ship or simply develop cold feet in the face of adversity. Election blues are for real. They are a leveller. They affect small parties and big.
The debilitating distortions noted above find exposure in almost all elections but the poll battle to elect the 16th Lok Sabha reveals a degenerative quality of an altogether new order, shaming slogans and the high principles that glibly tumble off manifestos. Among the more eye-catching examples of the trend are prominent Congress folk, including Central ministers, declining their party’s offer to contest elections. They are too numerous to name, but many are from states like Tamil Nadu and Rajasthan where Congress’ chances are rated very slim. Ten years at a stretch in office has robbed the party of much of its normative elan.
There is also, of course, the other variety in the Congress former stalwarts who have been sidelined in the wake of corruption charges and are being overlooked for the party ticket. But they are straining every nerve to get their kin the party nomination. How stubbornly the Congress rebuffs them would be keenly watched.
The most extraordinary, of course, is the 360-degree turns of parties and individuals. The Lok Janshakti Party led by Ram Vilas Paswan in Bihar is the foremost example of this. Mr Paswan swallowed all his “secular” pride and lined up behind the BJP whose current star performer is Mr Narendra Modi. This leader with Lohia socialist antecedents had walked out of the Atal Behari Vajpayee Cabinet following the anti-Muslim violence of 2002 in Gujarat under Mr Modi’s stewardship. But now he goes about lionising the Gujarat leader, hoping no doubt to be a member of the Cabinet that the Gujarat CM may form if he were to become Prime Minister.
If this is rank opportunism, what about Mr Ramkripal Yadav, until the other day the general secretary of Mr Lalu Prasad Yadav’s hard-core “secular” RJD? When denied nomination from his desired Patliputra constituency in Patna, he switched to the BJP with a swagger and bagged the saffronite nomination from the seat he sought. Numerous such examples can be had from across the country. But the BJP, the magnet for many, is a party where top leaders want to change their constituencies, scared of local factors that may negate the so-called “Modi wave”. This is holding up lists in crucial states such as Uttar Pradesh. It’s a topsy-turvy election, all things considered.
