By D.N. Singh
General elections, described as the ‘largest festival of democracy’, appear to be an occasion in which there are a lot of pain for a majority and cheer for few. It is hard to guess, as if, its timing is driven by any constitutional compulsion or just because it has been going on for decades, so let it go on at this time of the year.
Rock-bottom reality is very different than what it is made to appear. Thousands of people bathed in puddles of perspiration, loaded like cattle in vehicles, waiting in the scorching March-April solstice for hours to listen to the leaders filibustering the stereotyped stuff at almost each venue.
Flying in in choppers or flights and line up on a stage where care is taken that the leaders remain minimally chilled by the air-coolers or even air-conditioners in the stage.
After the customary, yet highly irritating, photo op with a huge floral wreath, the leader thanks the crowd for coming in such large numbers, braving the heat and humidity to listen to him or her. Then clapping rants the air from a section of the public.
The leader or leaders cushioned there on the stage can rarely feel the sizzling heat out there. In this festival what really sales the best is the art made of lofty promises and dreams knitted by lies, hyperboles and theatrics to purchase peoples’ loyalty and which, in fact, is a game as old as the politics itself. From a hustler to become a law-maker and that is the only product in which the crowd enjoys no share. Power and wealth.
Each leader’s speech is stewed with narratives on hunger, poverty, backwardness and so on but, there is no mention of the whopping sums splurged on each such rallies or meetings of VVIPs.
That apart, why there is no initiative politically or through any legal recourse to amend the practice of celebrating this ‘festival of democracy’ amid a blistering phase of summer spanning over one and half month. Why it can’t be sometime in winter or during any other time when the normal human mind is not that downbeat by heat.
Just imagine the double standard of politicians. On one hand they advise people to avoid engaging daily wagers after 11 pm during summer, prepone the vacations for schools, but they relish the perils of voters forced by them only.
