Even as the people await the results of the legislative assembly elections in Maharashtra and Jharkhand and the by-polls in Uttar Pradesh and Kerala, one result is out and that is on the state of our democracy. There has been a great assault on democracy.
From the advent of electoral democracy in India, cases of wooing the electorate by offering them goodies have been witnessed, but that was done on a micro level and did not affect the electoral results in a great way.
Attempts to divide the electorate on religious grounds have also been made time and again since the first election in Independent India, but that too did not have a great impact on the voters in the initial years. Political parties, which primarily appealed for votes on religious lines, did not get great success in the elections.
It was only in the 1980s that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), soon after its formation, started playing the Hindutva card, garnishing it with the Ram Mandir issue. The bloody riots in Gujarat in 2002, followed by projection the state’s Chief Minister, Narendra Modi, as a saviour of Hindus and as an ‘effective’ administrator with his much publicised Gujarat model, helped the party in coming to power and making Modi the Prime Minister.
Gradually, the much hyped Gujarat model was exposed and the public at large, especially the underprivileged, the farmers and a section of the youth, saw the reality in the country in terms of lack of employment and continuous inflation, and started shifting away from the BJP during the elections, prompting the BJP to adopt new strategies to be in power.
With its financial power, the party has engaged paid party activists to reach out to the people in their assigned areas. The large army of such paid activists have helped the party increase its base in rural areas. According to its leader Pankaja Munde, 90,000 volunteers have been brought to Maharashtra from different states, for booth level management.
The party has also been able to reach out to the people through social media platforms and favourable mainstream media in spreading false narrative of Modi’s success on all fronts and in creating a fear psychosis among the Hindus, who form a vast majority in the country, that their existence is threatened by the Muslims, who will outnumber the Hindus in the coming years.
This has gone down well with a large section of even educated people, including professionals and technocrats, who fail to apply their mind to this false campaign and firmly believe that their existence is threatened.
The division of the people on religious lines is scary and is bound to cause great damage to the country and if it is not controlled. The hatred that is being spread among the population would soon lead to violence that is seen in M.pur for over 18 months and could lead to civil war in the country.
It has taken decades for sensible minds to wean from communal hatred after the partition, but within a short time the bridges of brotherhood between Hindus and Muslims have been shattered in many parts of the country, by power hungry leaders.
It was shocking to see the police preventing Muslims from casting their votes in the bye-polls in Uttar Pradesh or a police officer threatening women at gun point, ordering them to return home, without casting their votes.
The use of money was seen in a big way in Maharashtra and Jharkhand, with the Election Commission acknowledging that it has seized over Rs 1,000 crore from different places in the two states, during the run-up for voting in the legislative assembly elections.
A majority of the people caught distributing money to voters in Maharashtra were found to be doing so for the candidates of either the BJP or the Shiv Sena (Shinde group). The biggest such incident was in Virar, where the BJP National Secretary Vinod Tawde was arrested with nearly Rs 10 lakh in cash and a diary, with entries of distribution of money, allegedly amounting to Rs 5 crore.
The Election Commission of India is seen to be functioning like a wing of the BJP, by its failure to take appropriate action against the candidates on whose behalf money was being distributed or against Tawde. Neither Tawde nor any other candidate has been arrested for this blatant violation of the Election Code of Conduct, though the small time workers, executing the distribution have been arrested.
This newspaper has exposed two major instances of use of public funds to woo women voters by presenting them pressure cookers. According to the report, Shiv Sena (Eknath Shinde) legislators Sada Sarvankar and Dilip Lande, got the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation to divert its funds for distribution of pressure cookers. Though this was done before the electoral process started before the Code of Conduct became effective for the current election, this is a way to influence voters.
The ECI is impotent when it comes to the BJP and its allies. It has failed to take action on the speeches appealing to voters in the name of religion, spreading hatred or making derogatory remarks against women leaders of opposition political parties.
Another serious issue seen in Maharashtra during the elections was the increasing violence. Not only have there been clashes between supporters and activists of rival political parties, even party and independent candidates have been victims of violence.
Over the years, Maharashtra had by and large remained insulated from money and muscle power. The results declared today will show whether the parties indulging in such corrupt practices have won or whether the electorate has not sold its vote, even if a section of it has accepted the money and gifts given by the candidates or their political parties.
Maharashtra should be like the last lines of Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s poem The Brook:
“For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.”
The state needs to live up to its rich tradition.
The author is a senior journalist and media trainer. He tweets at @a_mokashi
