The Great Indian Election Drama means that the country has subsided into a month of Sundays. Amidst the baffling charts and numbers that will install a new government, it’s surprising that there’s no count of the number of man hours or workdays lost. A five-phase poll spread over as many weeks has meant five days off in different parts of the country but if you tag on weekends, in fact, many more. Polling in Delhi was on a Thursday but, the day before, I found neighbours and friends packing their traps for brief mid-summer breaks. Voter turnout has generally been high but would be higher if voting day was treated as a full or at least half a working day. After all, voters don’t need more than an hour to queue up to press a button. That is the norm in many parts of the world. But in mahan Bharat, administrations on the orders of the Election Commission actually declared it illegal for a factory or business to function on polling day.
With their political masters absent over the last couple of months, work in many government departments has lapsed to a go-slow or all but petered out. A colleague who is in the queue to get a building plan passed by the municipality reports after several futile visits that no file has moved since early April and may not for many weeks to come. With municipal bosses, ministers and their henchmen preoccupied with party matters, petty officialdom and swathes of the bureaucracy are taking a long rest.
Even humble daily-wagers like house painters are missing in action. According to reports, many of them in the national capital have been commandeered by the regional guest houses, the line-up of bhavans and sadans that are being spruced up for the anticipated rush of new MPs with nowhere to live. Below a picture of the clean-up operations in progress at AIADMK supremo Jayalalithaa’s private residence in south Delhi, are touching quotes from managers of UP and Andhra bhavan confirming that there is no spare room. One says all 75 rooms are booked out in advance, the other bemoans that his large canteen has no spare seating.
There being no one in charge to take proximate measurements of the country’s health, most predictions, for example of economic growth or industrial production, are variable or contradictory. Policy decisions are pending, key government appointments held up. The only certainty is the uncertainty of who will form the new government. That, in itself, may be a process so long and convoluted that sections of government will continue their holiday uninterrupted.
The jigsaw of the incoming coalition, indecipherable to much of the electorate including many of those elected, may be a sign of a maturing democracy but is a handicap to its functioning. Government-forming may take days, even weeks; there will be hard bargaining, horse trading and ideological compromises; and should the resulting composition be volatile, the daily job of governance and delivery, will take a backseat.
In his wide-ranging new analysis of the dark side of the India story, The Caged Phoenix, sociologist Dipankar Gupta examines precisely the persisting disconnection between democratic process and low development: “In the long run things will probably get better, but in that case what use is democracy? The idea of democracy is to make a difference here and now...to quicken the pace and buck the trend and not just mind the store...conditions in India do not allow the State the luxury to leisurely roll back and look out of the window.”
In the current context, more and more party leaders are enjoying the luxury of staring out of rolled-down windows. A lame-duck government will be a mere store-minder. And if its survival is short-lived, a mid-term poll is a likely eventuality. In which case, another month of Sundays will come round sooner than you think.
