P.A. Chacko

Come election season in India, there is a flourish of activities on a festive mode. The political fraternity is in buoyant mood. The hopefuls, near hopefuls and the least desirables are vying with one another on the catwalk to bare their outfits for public consumption.

Election season is the time for political candidates to make good, bad and ugly promises. Some will promise you to bring the planet Mercury to lighten every home and to enlighten the public. Some others will promise to increase your asset by a few lakhs of black money. Someone with creative imagination will declare that he will globalize India and make it the world’s capital in the event of his election win.

Election season is the time when the daring and the baring go berserk in showering invectives and vitriolic abuses on their opponents. Some will even stoop so low as to declare that, in their elephantine urge, they will pulverize their opponents who are but ‘termites.’ Some will add spice and flavour to their public performance by blurting out, in staccato style, memorized speeches prepared by their backroom boys.

Election season is the time when one declares oneself a saint and all the warts one carries are the mudslinging of his mindless opponents. Then, there is the wit who will address all the girls in endearing terms as ‘bahhenji’ and all the women are ammas or majis and so on and so forth. The immediate magical glare on his hearers’ faces is all the satisfaction he wants as an instant assurance that he can count on them.

Come election time, when swarms of politicians come out like hornets pretending to be butterflies. Their visceral verbosity stings while their sanctimonious pronouncement stinks. Their attempt to blindfold the electorate gets nowhere before a literate and sensible public! Aware of possible brickbats they make a hasty retreat by announcing that the crowds at the next venue are awaiting their arrival.

Election season is the time when the public get entertained by buffoons and cartoons wanting to stage a comeback thinking that the public have a short memory about their past gimmicks and colourless performance.

Election season is the time when many indulge in raking up communal passions and irreligious sentiments as vote-winning tactics. That is the time when pundits, priests and pujaris may shift loyalties to win favour and to taste a different political chocolate flavour.

Election season is the time when those, who have been swearing by class ideology, pander to caste and community allegiance. That is time when time-tested values are buried and political morality is given a go by. The motto is: grab power by any means.

Election season is the time when the desirables and undesirables come with begging bowls before the electorate to crawl and cringe before them making them feel for a moment being recognised as uncrowned kings. The stream of such shameless politicians makes a mockery of our democratic principles and values.

Election season is the time when verbal diarrhoea pollutes the atmosphere. The exercise of lung power gets into frenzy. Sound bites threatening with political rabies!

Election season is the time when many netas turn self-appointed grave diggers. They dig out old facts and embellish them with a barbed wire netting of lies and fictitious stories. Their intention is to tarnish the image of dead political leaders whose followers are also in the fray.

So, the Indian election scene is this and much more. All this boils down to the point that these political ‘banias’ think that the voting fraternity consists of idiots and morons who would swallow the bait thrown at them. If there are people who have voted decisively and booted out the undesirables, it only shows that Indian democracy is alive and kicking at least in some corners. If some others have refrained from exercising their right to vote, they might have wanted to demonstrate their frustration at the shape of things in India.

Let no politicians, desirable or undesirable, charlatans or chivalrous, take for granted that theirs is the last word!