Please go to vote! And choose between the devil and the deep blue sea…

Feeling a bit handicapped to write without ‘research’ on a topic that ignited me at a time when I don’t have an internet connection, but there is happiness in this handicap as I wouldn’t have written at all if I was to wear the research cap. So the write up may suffer from lack of numerical facts, but yes! The heart is there, numbers I may add later…

The ignition came from watching Aamir Khan being interviewed, who being himself was slyly promoting his new venture (a television series) while continuously protesting he is not. Mid way in the interview, the enthusiastic interviewer referred to Aamir supporting Anna Hazare in his high staged crusade against corruption; Aamir affirmed the support but went on to say that the proposed bill can’t be beyond the purview of the parliament. He said in the democratic political system the politicians are our representatives, who are supposed to represent us and make policies for our betterment, but, he said if they don’t, we don’t vote for them the next elections. The ‘I practice what I preach’ Aamir further said that he has written letters to Priya Dutt the representative of his constituency i.e. south Mumbai and also has written to the prime minister about the issue of corruption and on why the bill should be introduced. He reiterated if they don’t act “don’t vote for them again!”. “That’s the power of Democracy. And for the power to be exercised all of us should vote and the problem arises when people don’t go to vote” he declared. Ah there it came, how many times have we heard “if you don’t vote, you have no rights to complain”, “if you feel things are wrong, Why don’t you join politics? Why don’t you fight elections, India is a democratic country…” and ya “Jago re!” 

Choice a powerful word, a profound word, a word that has amused economists, marketers, psychologists, neuro scientists, social scientists all alike, sounds like a joke when contextually placed in this argument of Indian political democracy. Let me clarify before the lips twist and one questions “so what don’t vote!!?” I am not against the process, its symbolic and powerful (when we have real options). I am defiantly against planning a long weekend by combining the vote day holiday with a Saturday Sunday and packing off to Lonavala. But what I attempt to do here is seek an answer to how voting leads to betterment and question do we really have a choice (read power)?

Come voting day I am all set to contribute my part to the democracy, get the coveted mark on my finger. Now lets contemplate on the question I posed earlier – do we really have a choice? Ya you just thought BJP and Congress or may be the all engulfing and messier NDA and UPA. Correct me if I am wrong when I mockingly juxtapose this to choice between death by a bullet or death by poison. Is that a real choice? Let me put down some instances to prove there is none – 

1994, it was clear under the implementation of the Oxford borrowed Manmoahnomics that India will sign the disastrous WTO agreement, which had suicidal clauses like compulsory imports, reduction in agricultural subsidies, product patents and much more. The party of Baharat’s janata sprung into action, protested vociferously and declared 1st January 1995 the day we signed the agreement as black day and vowed to demolish the agreement. Year 1998 the BJP comes to power, completes the whole term till 2004, it takes pleasure in announcing that they continued the process of reforms and continued the implementation of WTO … whatever happened to ‘vow’. The options that we have to make the choice don’t really decide on matters of national importance, and for the ones who decide, we don’t select them, so where’s the choice?

It’s a national disgrace that the country’s second largest political party’s USP is its caste inclination and building a RAM temple at Ayodhya features high on its agenda after demolishing a mosque that stood there for 465 years. A party that architected, supported, instigated and allowed riots after riots – Babri Masjid demolition, Mumbai riots, Gujarat 2002… the list is long. The ‘instigate-riot-yatra-election-win’ is a vintage right wing strategy. Here we have a choice – or do we? – consider this if you think we have – the 1984 sikh riots, the inability to control the right wingers that lead to the demolition of Babri Masjid, the constant corporate appeasing policies which lead to making Naxals out of the tribals and an array of scams will again strike out the option out of the choice.

Here is a classic to aid the choice argument – the Salwa Judum in Chhattisgarh – is a group of civilian tribals trained and empowered by the state – as militant group to fight the Naxals, the leaders of this group called the SPOs (Special Police Officers) were equipped with firearms and other artilleries. Year 2005 when this was initiated it was sphere headed by Mahendra Karma, a local congress MLA and the ruling party then was the BJP. Come 2011 the Supreme court declares the Salwa Judum illegal and directs states to stop training civilians as militants with immediate effect…. Why? When this initiative was supported by both the parties – P Chidambaram (Congress) praised the SPOs in fighting the Naxals and Chhattisgarh CM Raman Singh from BJP said that the Salwa Judum is the answer to reduce the Naxal menace in the state; why was the Apex court so vehemently against it. Here is why – since 2005 the Salwa Judum burned or evacuated 644 villages, forced 300000 people to flee their homes, killed and raped at will. Many of the tribals labelled SPOs were minor who were handed guns. Now will anyone help me with a choice?

The 15th Loksabha elections held in 2009 saw 150 MPs with criminal records, out of which 73 were charged with serious crimes like rape and murder. This number was almost 20% higher than the last general elections in 2004 when the number was 128. And here comes the choice – 42 of these 150 belonged to the BJP and 41 to the Congress. There were constituencies where the voters had to decide which is better among – 2 rapes and 1 murder or 2 murders and 1 rape!

After the “if you don’t vote, don’t complain” argument comes the “why don’t you join politics” rant. Yes we can, but there are serious issues – let the number speak – 2009 elections all the independents put together accounted only for a meagre 5.19%. Lok Paritran Party – sounds familiar right? Heard somewhere kind of a feeling? This is the party formed by 6 IITians to ‘clean’ Indian politics, to ‘do’ and not just complain. They fought for 7 constituencies from Tamil Nadu in 2006 – and lost. 2007 – The skirmishes within the party lead to a split and Bharat Punanirman Dal was formed. “The split is unfortunate and a POLITICAL CONSPIRACY” said of the founders. The two parties remained at loggerheads for some time and now all they are left with is an unupdated website and a further search stop at them being ‘non-existent’.

The logic of ‘Pepsi sales are exponentially higher than the much healthier coconut water’ comes to play here. Let me explain – Pepsi invests billions of dollars into advertising and takes over any company that starts doing well in that space. Now consider this – the NDA (BJP lead coalition) spend 500 crores of public money during the 2004 elections on advertisements – remember the India Shining TV ads – at time when India was sinning with 17,500 framer suicides every year from 2002-2006. Then the election commission laid strict rules for political advertising. This didn’t deter the parties – 2009 UPA (Congress lead coalition) purchases the rights of the Oscar wining film’s song Jai Ho… Money still left but the election commission scrutiny leads to a solution – Surrogate advertising. A strategy used by the liquor and cigarette companies who are not allowed to advertise and so they camouflage under the guise of advertising products like – soda (McDowells), Music CDs (Bacardi) and packaged drinking water (Kingfisher). Our politicians version of this strategy was the much dangerous ‘Paid News’ unofficial figures claim this nexus between politicians and media owners to be anywhere between 800-1000 crores during the 2009 elections with major contributions from the 2 largest coalitions of the country.

One more fundamental question as pointed out by Nobel Prize Winner for Game Theory Robert Owman – Are we really representing the choice of the voters? Let’s do the math – during the 2009 elections the UPA won 37.22% seats, let’s say 38% of voters voted for the UPA; another way of looking at this will be to say - there were a good 62% voters saying they don’t want UPA in power. Now which of the two is in majority?

Wikipedia defines Choice as a mental process of judging the merits of multiple options and selecting one of them. Yes it says ‘Merits’. A necessary precondition for choice is option and for option it is entities with meaningful difference and not the difference between the devil and the deep blue sea… And for the passion personified Aamir – I wish to ask if DJ and his Bhagat Singh inspired group from Rang De Basanti wouldn’t have killed the corrupt minister and kept voting till the time a non corrupt, pro-people party would come to power or did a Lok Paritran themselves would Caption Rathod and his mother ever get justice?