When elections were a festival

More than four decades ago, unlike today, any political election in West Bengal, let it be to the Lok Sabha, Assembly, municipal or panchayat, would be looked forward to as a festival by everyone. Our small town would be decked up with colourful flags, festoons, and posters. The walls would be painted with graffiti, parodies, rhymes, and cartoons, and the air would resonate with the din of slogans and speeches delivered by political workers and leaders at rallies, street corner meetings, street plays, roadshows, and so on.

Use of giant glossy flex boards printed with photographs of the candidates smiling unabashedly was then beyond people’s imagination. We the little boys rambled around the small town to memorise funny rhymes and parodies on the walls and recite them without realising their meaning.

Local political leaders would start thinking themselves as important persons overnight. They would deliver speeches on humble stages and in street corners. On the other hand, the grassroots workers would hang around the leaders to project themselves as influential persons before the people in their respective localities. There was competition among grassroots workers who could draw party symbols beautifully and quickly. Unlike today, professional artists would not be hired to do the job.

If a State- or even a district-level leader of any political party arrived in the town, there would be a mammoth gathering of people irrespective of their political differences. The town would very rarely see helicopters as very few leaders could hire them. The discussions will be mostly of the arrival of great leaders.

There will be a lot of commotion over political debates in tea stalls attended by commoners sipping cheap tea and puffing bidis. The tea stall owners hardly forbade customers from having such debates. Unlike today, chai pe charcha would neither be arranged nor attended by political leaders. However, women in general were less interested in elections. The candidates tried to visit every house to meet the voters personally either to win their heart or to be criticised on their face.

There was no opinion or exit poll. Even the newspapers that almost enjoyed a monopoly in dissemination of news abstained from conducting such polls. Though the term psephology (scientific study of elections) was coined in 1948 and used in written form in 1952, it did not gain much popularity until TV news channels came into existence. Educated people, especially a section of teachers and professors involved in politics directly, would be regarded as election specialists. People looked forward to their predictions.

On the day of election, tents for giving slips to voters would be decorated with flags and festoons made of paper and cloth. Though the political colours of the tents could be discerned by the flags and festoons, it was difficult for a stranger to differentiate the political workers as they gained access to sit in any tent. Even they shared and swapped their tiffin and lunches. Little boys would hang around the tents at the end of the vote to collect the colourful posters to cover their books.

The days of election results would be eagerly awaited. People assembled around the counting centres where paper ballots would be counted for hours or even days. There would be much hue and cry especially over the validity of the votes polled. However, after counting, the supporters of the winning political parties enjoyed the victory with much exuberance, whereas a pall of gloom landed over the camp of defeated ones. Within a few days, everything would be as normal as before. People would look forward to the next festival of democracy.

In the past few decades, the festival of democracy has lost its sheen. Elections are now marked by casualties, character assassination, terror, bullying and so on. Livelihood of a large section of people is now determined by the political parties in power. Political ideologies have been put on the back burner. Genuine issues such as education, employment, health, shelter, and industrialisation have been replaced by non-issues such as communal and caste divisions, religious differences, food habits, and so on.

Political parties and even the electorate have lost their patience to wait for long-term development of society. As a result, cut-throat competition in dispensing freebies to win over voters has come to the fore. Political leaders shift from one party to another even after winning the seat overnight brazenly. Ordinary people, especially those on the lower rung of society, in villages look forward to the result of elections with trepidation because they are the susceptible to political violence even leading to murder perpetrated by the winning political groups to exhibit their muscle power.

Therefore, the million dollar question is whether India’s democracy is progressing or regressing even after more than 75 years of Independence.

nandi.budha@gmail.com