With the conclusion of the last
round of voting today, came to an end an election that was high on rhetorics and low
on substance. The campaign this time was shrill, divisive, personalized,
polarized and hysterical. In their bid to demonize the opponent, the
electorates witnessed all sort of allegations and counter allegations hurled by
leaders on their opponent, which made for far better TRP than the best of
Saas-Bahu serial that Ekta Kapoor could have ever come up with even in the wildest
of her imagination. The
quality of a leadership is reflected in the standards they set for themselves
and during these elections the manner Indian leaders washed their dirty linen
in full public glare spoke more of their quality than their words. And in doing
so, they made a mockery of themselves at the international level. During the
campaign there was no serious effort on part of these leaders to talk
about their manifesto or to debate on issues and problems faced by a nation of
a billion. Their electioneering was restricted to road-shows and the speeches
were aimed at bludgeoning each other with facts and theories gleaned from cursory
readings, rather than any statesmanship like in-depth research on current
issues. Not one of them came up with his vision of change though they all did
come up with a ‘manifesto’ that was never discussed or debated in public. This
is because we live in an era where we do not have statesmen as leaders to lead us who can
discuss ideas. We do not even have average leaders who could discuss
events. We are left with ‘netas’
interested in smearing the image of their opponent on every platform including
the social media. And this happened aplenty during this election. These are the days of ‘netas’ who you will find dime a dozen at every nook and corner of
the nation.
Both my children acquired the age for voting this election.
As a parent and a responsible citizen I made them available the manifesto of
all the three leading political parties in NCR and also discussed the salient
features contained therein. But they were appalled at the poverty of debate during
campaign. They found these were inferior compared to debates in university elections
and the maturity of leaders at campus a shade better than those running to get
elected to steer a nation. They were surprised that ‘manifesto’ mattered little
for the candidate contesting elections. These candidates spoke about everything
other than issues contained in the manifesto. This is the ‘dance of democracy’
that we get to see every five years. The Election Commission of India
termed the Lok Sabha Election 2019 as ‘Desh
Ka Mahatyohar’ (The Great festival of the nation). Time has come we need to
celebrate this festival in a manner that it actually leads to empowerment of
the masses and do not end up in an exercise in mud-slinging by netas whose only aim remains to capture
the seat of power by hook or by crook. As a nation we certainly deserve better.
