A dangerous election practice

INACOUNTRY inwhichit is always election season, it is hard for political commentary to rise above mundane tripe.

- TAVLEEN SINGH

As a columnist with an outsized sense of my responsibility to you, dear readers, lam going totry this week to get beyond covering the Prime Minister’s latest speech and Tejashwi Yadav’s anointmentas the chief ministerial candidate of the Mahagathbandhan. I have said more than once already that it is my fervent hope that Prashant Kishor’s Jan Suraaj party somehow manages to win because he is not a ‘potted plant’ (political princeling) and has spent more than two years wandering about the villages of Bihar trying to understand what the people of our poorest state really need. I have also said, more than once, that if there were a hundred more like him in our ancient and wondrous land, it might end up becoming modernas well as wondrous.

So, let’s talk about other aspects of democracy that somehow, we never get around to discussing. A disturbing example from recent elections is the way our political leaders have openly started using taxpayers’ money to win votes. Ever since I covered my first Lok Sabha election in 1977, I was sickened by the sight of Congress party workers turning up in the homes of Delhi’s poorest citizens and offering them money, booze, blankets and saris. In those days, this bribery may well have been paid for out of party sources so there was a certain legitimacy about the practice.