Touchstones: Destroyers of social values

Was there life before the Bihar elections, I wonder? Whatever you read, hear or see goes back to ‘Who do you think is going to win in Bihar?’ Just as we’ve made every festival a carnival, we have made elections a game of betting and public conjecture. It’s as if we have given our own brains to the pollsters and journalists, who have fixed preferences and bombard us day and night with dodgy poll surveys and interviews with chosen people. The hysteria reached epic heights in the days leading to Bihar’s Chhath festival. Buses and trains with migrant Biharis returning for their annual celebration became the perfect chance to hype the spectacle it presented, with some enterprising journalists even travelling in over-crowded sleeper coaches to ask the question that appears to haunt all of India currently.