Don't look back to go ahead

Ira Pande

Between last Sunday and this, the country has undergone an unimaginable political upheaval. Learned pundits, psephologists, news anchors and many friends have still not recovered from the triple whammy the electorate handed us in the crucial states that straddle central India. It defies imagination how so many respected analysts were so wrong in their opinion and exit polls.

Although few will admit this, their mistaken predictions were premised upon some fundamental assumptions that deny reality. Sitting in backrooms, their computers logging in data that comes from complex algorithms, they have lost the pulse of the land. Add to this the fact that most news portals are now biased towards one party or another and you have a rough idea of what they were unable to see. Their unwavering faith in their fancy degrees and lofty ideological leanings are no match for the canny Indian voter. If I am not wrong, no voter reveals to anyone which party will receive his vote. This is the only power he has and he is unwilling to tell a complete stranger, armed with a mike and a loud hectoring voice, who is likely to get his precious vote. Believe me, no psephologist is more savvy than the common man in our country. People like us, who have never known poverty, indignity and marginalisation, will never fathom the deep recesses of this wounded heart that punishes rather than rewards a candidate.

Let us now move to another area that has occupied my attention of late. And that is our understanding of caste and social stratification. Once again, political parties which are now talking of a caste census will discover that in large parts of the country, this issue is subsumed into a larger rubric that concentrates on privilege and entitlement. Ask your children whether they look at caste when making friends or forging a social relationship and you may be surprised at their reaction. The more pernicious curse is the advantage that birth in a rich family or a privileged class bestows upon them. The futility of planting seeds of discord between those who have the privilege of education, entitlement and wealth and those who are still struggling to find a job or a proper school for their children has percolated to the lowest social level.

The Mandal movement that some political parties hope to resurrect only benefited those who grabbed political power. Look at all the parties that were born from this movement, whether the BSP, the SP or the Janata Dal, and you will see how desperate they are to secure the future of their own children rather than improve the condition of the castes they represented. Graduates from poor families work as drivers and security guards, while the son of a political leader who has no administrative experience or educational degree rises effortlessly to become the second-most important minister of a state that was the birthplace of the movement for social justice. How long can such charlatans fool the people?

Yet, if appeasement and vote banks built on religion or caste are wrong, so is discrimination based on religion and majoritarianism. As we know, you can fool some of the people for some of the time but not all the people all the time. Perhaps my generation may not live long enough to see the day but we will be a proud democracy only when we realise that this country deserves more than empty rhetoric and false promises. Festering hatred among communities will only destroy whatever is left of our grand civilisational legacy.

At this point, I am delighted that the Indian woman is finally being acknowledged as the key to the problems of this topsy-turvy political game. Most political commentators have admitted that the reason for the unexpected victory of the BJP in Madhya Pradesh is the image of the benevolent Mama (uncle) that Shivraj Singh Chouhan successfully cultivated. If one was watching the rallies and roadshows that he did, you would be blind to not see the overwhelming surge of women who attended them. Contrast them with the complete absence of women at the Samajwadi Party rallies we saw during the UP elections last year and you can understand why women had such a large part to play in Chouhan’s resounding victory. As I said earlier, the common Indian (man or woman) is quick to sense which political party gives them the confidence and dignity they seek. In the case of women, security, a separate income for themselves and the faith that a brother will always protect them, meant that they came out in huge numbers to cast their vote. This revelation of the huge vote bank they constitute made me realise that if our family planning is aimed at women (who are the worst sufferers of multiple pregnancies and bear the burden of rearing a large brood of children), the response will be quite different from the Sanjay Gandhi plan that targeted men.

Similarly, if land rights are equally shared by men and women, we may see another social transformation that is long overdue. Caste versus gender is a no-brainer and while one party has already started to include this in its political outreach, others have lost a golden opportunity. A filmi song says, ‘Mud mud ke na dekh (don’t look back to go ahead).’ Listen to its wise advice.

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