If elections come, can war imagery be far behind? With barely two weeks to go before India’s 16th Lok Sabha polls kick off, battle cries rent the air. To be in combat mode, you don’t have to necessarily plunge into the heat and dust of the battleground. A quick skim of the headlines, an hour or two in front of the TV, or on Twitter if you prefer, would do as well.
The battle for the 80 Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh is set to be fought in the skies, we are told, as all major political parties have lined up helicopters and small aircrafts to criss-cross the sprawling state. Seats are turning into battlefields. Unless one has been living under a rock, one would not have missed hearing that Varanasi will be the mother of all battles in the coming elections with Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal pitting himself against Bharatiya Janata Party’s prime ministerial nominee Narendra Modi from this holy city. Nor for that matter the unhushed whispers about Barmer and a soldier possibly turning renegade in his final battle.
Battleground paraphernalia include slogans, jingles, posters, banners, SMS, street theatre, even ink and eggs. All this, of course, makes for a colourful mix of politics and spectacle which gives elections in the world’s largest democracy its famous carnival-like atmosphere.
Campaigning is in full swing. But on the eve of a general elections widely touted as the most critical since 1977, should not one be also asking some fundamental questions? Where are the details in the competing visions on the basis of which one is expected to make an informed choice? Where are the specifics of how the respective visions are to be funded? If aspiring prime ministers can dress up in presidential garb, should we, the voters, not also demand US-style presidential debates between the various contenders?
The debate on election manifestoes is yet to start because till the third week of March, only a handful of political parties had come out with theirs.
On Wednesday, the Congress Party released its poll manifesto (Your Voice, Our Pledge) in an eagerly awaited ceremony attended by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and the party’s top brass. The party has offered a 15-point agenda for socio-economic and political transformation including a charter of rights such as the Right to Health.
The BJP and the AAP would also release their manifestoes by the end of the month says the political grapevine. That gives voters in Delhi, for example, just a few days to chew on their contents, to ask tough questions and to demand answers from candidates. In this nine-phase elections, voters in 122 Lok Sabha seats which go to polls in 13 states on April 17 will also have barely a month to digest the contents of the manifestoes and interrogate their candidates.
This brings one to the critical question many have been asking. Do election manifestoes matter?
Or do all manifestoes read alike, the difference lying only in cover pages showing the names and election symbols of the respective parties, as the late Chaudhary Devi Lal, the Jat supremo, former chief minister of Haryana and briefly deputy Prime Minister of India famously quipped.
It is tempting to be cynical.
India in poll mode means high decibel election coverage on television about which politician is defecting to which party, who is being nominated or not nominated to which seat, who is sulking and why. Every evening, television offers a choice of shouting matches in different languages.
Much of the discussion so far has been on the Modi wave, Mr Gandhi’s dilemma, the AAP challenge and regional aspirations. We are asked to choose between different Messiahs. But none has offered a fine print of the rescue narrative nor a realistic assessment of how existing bottlenecks can be tackled and the resources needed to accomplish the task.
Perhaps, there is an element of truth in the sceptic’s observation that Indian voters choose leaders and leave it to them to decide the priorities of governance. But a good many of us are frustrated that while soundbites and slogans are aplenty, absence of any urgency in bringing out poll manifestoes on the part of major political parties has left us with little time to reflect on the specifics of the vision of each party on critical issues such as rejuvenation of the economy, investments in the social sector, in education and health, women’s security and safety etc.
Those involved in the drafting of the poll manifestoes have a different take. This time, political manifestoes are being used as a key tool for gauging the public mood. Political parties are also mindful of how manifestoes will be used against them in the post-elections phase. A member of BJP’s manifesto team told this writer that “manifestoes are important because there is much more media and public scrutiny today. One has to be very careful what one puts in it because one year down the line, newspapers and TV channels will come up with a report card — you promised this but you delivered something else.”
No doubt, today, manifesto making is as much about formulating a party’s agenda for governance as a strategic tool of interaction with key segments of the voting public.
The AAP popularised he idea of “crowd-sourcing” manifestoes. Many national political parties have followed their example. All this is good even it is making the process of manifesto-making matter more than the outcome.
But there is no getting away from the nitty-gritty of making an informed choice. For the first time, the Election Commission of India has brought manifestoes within the ambit of the model code of conduct. “In the interest of transparency, level-playing field and credibility of promises, it is expected that manifestoes also reflect the rationale for promises and broadly indicate the ways and means to meet the financial requirements for it. Trust of voters should be sought only on those promises which are possible to be fulfilled,” the EC order said.
This means that grandiose promises would need to be accompanied by a blueprint of the delivery mechanism.
Voters should not allow themselves to be shortchanged. There is still time to raise concerns which normally get buried in the sound and fury of the election season, and to ask those who seek our votes not only what they are against, but what they are for, and how they propose to fund their vision.
