NEWSLINKS
US EDITION
COLUMNISTS
DIARY
SPECIALS
INTERVIEWS
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
DEAR REDIFF
THE STATES
YEH HAI INDIA!
ELECTION 99
ELECTIONS
ARCHIVES

Search Rediff

They know what they do

A freedom fighter and an ardent supporter of the poor, B G Horniman, editor of the Bombay Chronicle, once contested municipal elections. He even accepted the candidature of the then Poor People's Party. He lost. His reported remark after the defeat was: 'God forgive them for they know what they do.'

This is exactly how I feel when I ponder over the results of the assembly polls in Bihar, Haryana and Orissa. If the voters were looking for parties and persons wanting to improve the lot of the poor they could not have made worse choices. Whichever theory one may adumbrate, one comes to this sad conclusion that voters have knowingly jumped into the well.

Laloo Prasad Yadav in Bihar, Om Parkash Chautala in Haryana and Naveen Patnaik in Orissa are familiar faces. They are in no way associated with even the thinking of the impoverished. They do not deserve the positions they have reached.

Laloo is still in the midst of several prosecutions on charges of corruption and misuse of public funds. Chautala's stock from the days when he went to Canada and literally burnt lakhs of dollars at night clubs has not improved much. Naveen, who wears the mantle of his father, the dynamic Biju Patnaik, has not done anything worthwhile as a central minister in the last two-and-a-half years to evoke hope.

Whatever else may have mattered with the voters, it was not the welfare of the people. To interpret the victory of Laloo or others as part of the process for social justice is to delude ourselves. Let us face it. The voters have been swung on considerations of caste, creed, money and force. Muslims came back to Laloo, not because they felt he would give them a better deal but because the BJP initiated a discussion on the review of the Constitution and the cultural entity of the RSS in the midst of electioneering. Yadavs accommodated others so as to stay in power if possible. Chautala articulated the cause of Jats and Naveen Patnaik built on the bungling over the relief and rehabilitation of the super-cyclone victims.

Nonetheless, this election has once again proved that there is no abhorrence against crime or corruption. It appears that the voters have come to believe that such evils are inevitable. They are part and parcel of politics. Feeling that there is no difference between one candidate and another, the voters have preferred those who are of the same biradari (sub-caste) and who have gunmen at their command. In guns, they see the support for themselves if and when driven to the wall.

If at all anything has mattered, it is the pull of regionalism. The voters see in the state parties an entity which they find submerged in the all India parties. The Rashtriya Janata Dal and the Samata Party, both Bihar-based, have between them two-thirds of seats in the state. The Biju Janata Dal has swept the polls in Orissa. Chautala's Indian National Lok Dal has won a clear majority in Haryana. They are the sons of the soil.

Regionalism, in the process, has pushed down the support for all India parties. Both the BJP and the Congress have lost ground. The BJP has done particularly badly in Haryana. There is truth in the allegation that Chautala managed to have some BJP candidates defeated as the Samata Party has done in Bihar. But, even otherwise, the BJP is losing its stature. Its programmes and philosophy are not selling much and its alliance with the rowdy and violent Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Bajrang Dal costing it the support of the ordinary man who loves peace. When the BJP fielded some badmash as its candidates, Laloo's criminals did not look ugly.

The Congress has never been in the reckoning in Bihar. In Orissa, its dependence on the tainted Janaki Ballabh Patnaik, who distributed the party tickets, has been its undoing. What is surprising is the party's bad showing in Haryana. It was expected to win. The party has improved its position -- from 12 to 21. But it should have done better as the INLD and the BJP, the allies, were sniping at each other during the election.

Once again money has mattered in the constituencies where the candidates won by a slender margin. This is not surprising in the absence of electoral reforms. The Election Commission has made several recommendations on the subject. But all of them are accumulating dust on the shelves of the home ministry. When out of power, the BJP was for drastic electoral reforms. Now, even after two-and-a-half years of its governance, there is no bill in sight.

What should be a matter of concern to the nation is that the Indian polity is going over the exercise of holding elections at regular intervals but not coming to grips with the real problem; people's cynicism. Political parties are not placing real issues before them. Worse, the electorate has ceased to expect any. Over the years, people have found that the promises made to them are seldom fulfilled and that the parties in power do not perform.

If the voters are not reacting to the ways they are taken for a ride, it is because they have no alternative before them. They have lost faith in political parties, if not the system, and they do not find one better than the other. They go to the ballot box again because of the importance they attach to their right to vote. But they know well that no party, no government, no individual will ever improve their lot. True, they are influenced by slogans, rhetoric and money. But they repent at leisure because no worthwhile development has taken place where they live.

From whichever end we begin, we run into the wall of the criminal-political-bureaucrat nexus. This has to be broken. The home ministry has told the state directors general of police to curb the hand in glove relationship between anti-social elements on the one hand and bureaucrats on the other. But how is this possible when power is concentrated at the political level? Top bureaucrats are the instruments of politicians. They and the police have to be disassociated from political control. Only then will the polls be free.

Bihar and Orissa are gone cases. Their annual economic growth rate is less than two per cent. The population is growing by three per cent a year. UP is no better. The situation is deteriorating because even the limited funds for development is going to the pockets of rulers and their supporters. Rajiv Gandhi once said that only 15 per cent money for development reached the people.

In fact, the minus growth in the Hindi-speaking states is creating resentment in southern states. They wonder how long they will have to carry the extra burden which the backwardness of Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa and UP is heaping upon them. The feeling has assumed serious proportions. Still the rulers at the Centre refuse to face it. New Delhi's solution is more police and more stringent laws. There is hardly any realisation for issues like better administration and the rule of law. Political parties are lost in their own rhetoric or petty quibbling.

The voters's choices in Bihar, Haryana and Orissa is a warning to the democratic forces that they should be prepared to see society's bad elements exercising power because the system is not being insulated against crime, caste and money. Does it matter who the ruler is when the voters know that none of the parties can give them even drinking water, much less electricity, education or medical help?

Kuldip Nayar