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Throw a lump for me

For me, the best news about the ongoing elections was, in a way, not such good news. Actually, pretty bad news. I was elated that it happened, yet dejected at what had made it happen. And yet perhaps that's the essential chameleon-like character of our Indian politics. Through these interminable elections, I've been fascinated by that character.

The musing was prompted by a series of reports on the election. They tell of just how disgusted people are with the state of their surroundings, with politicians' apathy to that. They don't want to hear any more about Pokhran and foreign origins and Ram temples and other similar nonsense. They want answers to basic issues: water, garbage on the streets, sanitation, housing.

Some voters are so angry over the deliberate neglect of such things, so angry with instead being told the other airy-fairy stuff, that they are starting to vent their feelings very forcefully indeed. In Kanpur, a Bharatiya Janata Party MP and aspirant again, one Jagatveer Singh Dron, was dragged into "the middle of a vast expanse of slush and cow dung and told ... to say whatever he had to say from there." (The Times of India, September 13). The man ran hard as soon as he could get away, helped along by lumps of cow dung the residents were throwing at him.

When I read this, I nearly leaped up and applauded. Good for those Kanpur voters! May they repeat the same treatment with every candidate who stumbles into cow dung range seeking votes on irrelevant issues and empty promises. May we all learn to offer our own candidates the same treatment, the same lumps of cow dung. For too long, we have tolerated "representatives" who distract us from their failures with a putrid menu of xenophobia, hatred and irrelevancy. They are not concerned with our hundreds of millions -- their own constituents -- who go to bed hungry each night. Or with the hundreds of millions who live life without a toilet or basic health care. Or with dirt and squalor and corruption that never get better, only worse.

But in these elections, there are finally some such constituents who are rubbing their candidates' noses in the dirt that India's cities are.

Now Kanpur is a particularly horrible city. That same report says it "has become the armpit of Uttar Pradesh, a foul and noxious place." It is a grey, grimy wasteland you could only want to flee from. The times I have visited, that's how I felt. But really, it's not much different from any number of other cities -- where public services are more and more lackadaisical, dirt is everywhere, municipalities are indifferent, and elected representatives don't give a damn about all this. Villages are in as bad, or worse, shape. Years pass, but nothing ever improves.

There are many possible recipients for the blame in all of this, and surely some among those are our politicians. They have never cared to come to grips with the ordinary problems that make life so hard for so many Indians. They make promises, sure. Also, they sell us wars and nuclear bombs and the supposed danger that religions are in and the foreign origins of people. On and on they ramble, with stuff meaningless to myriad Indians; but when asked why he did nothing about his Kanpur constituents' problems, the honourable BJP MP Jagatveer Singh Dron claimed "that he has had no time to attend to their problems and that MPs should not be blamed for local problems." (Do tell us, Oh Exalted BJP MP from Kanpur: just what were you spending your time on? And what problems should you actually be blamed for?)

Result: voters in Kanpur are enraged. "The anger against Mr Dron and the BJP is not just palpable," that report says, "it hits you in the face." It may have hit Dron in the face too, come to think of it, in the form of a flung lump of cow dung.

Of course I deliberately chose a report about anger against the BJP. While every party has earned such anger, mouthings from the BJP and its pals are most nauseating of all. In this entire campaign, these perpetual pretenders to the moral high ground have given us nothing except Sonia's Italian birth, the Kargil war, the glory of nuclear bombs. Also, words from the likes of Murli Manohar Joshi that imply that "those who do not worship Ram have no place" in India (The Times of India, September 17). It galls me that men with minds as narrow and hate-filled as this actually become our rulers.

Most of all, it galls me because the lesson is increasingly obvious: men like this are not at all interested in what Indians struggle with every day. You cannot expect men who obsess about Sonia's birth and breaking mosques, and do their best to transfer such obsessions to us, to do much about dirt and water shortages and corruption. Indeed: 11of Kanpur's 12 MLAs are from the BJP, as are all three of its MPs. The eminent Mr Dron, the cow-dung splattered Mr Dron, has been MP since 1991. The city is a hellhole.

Which fate beckons for much of the rest of the country as well. Five years of BJP and pals rule in Bombay has done nothing for the city except turn bad into dreadful. That applies to traffic, garbage, crime and more. Not that others are any better than the BJP. In Calcutta, ruled by Jyoti Basu and his CPI-M for 20 years, it is nearly impossible to breathe clean air. A visit there last March had me coughing and miserable for days. From state after state, there are reports of voter disgust with the corruption and indifference of elected representatives and their parties.

This is not new, certainly. But there is a definite sense that the disgust is more pronounced in these elections, that this time it is touching a crescendo.

I am thrilled by that. It's about time our political class is forced to understand just how completely it has betrayed India. It's terrific to read that ordinary people, like in Kanpur, are doing that job. For these may be the first wobbly steps towards demanding accountability from those who come begging for our votes and then forget all about us. (Sorry, they have no time for our problems and must not be blamed for them anyway. Did I get that right, oh Jagatveer Singh Dron?)

And yet the thrill is tarnished by knowing how deep that betrayal is. We can express our rage, perhaps even find accountability eventually. But spare a thought for the tragic mess these men have made of the hopes and dreams India once had. Spare a thought for the suspicions and hatreds let loose by only a decade of insidious propaganda in search of votes; hatreds that will take generations to erase, if at all. Spare a thought for the 400 million Indians who cannot read words like these.

Having spared those thoughts, ask yourself: what's next? All of us share in the guilt about the state of the country; certainly the leaders we have elected cannot escape any. Yes, flinging cow dung at them is satisfying, and in fact we should have done it years ago. But what's next? How can we demand, or expect, any better from the Parliament that's being elected than we have had from previous ones?

Big questions. I would like to suggest a small answer for each one of us: demand better from ourselves. Here, I mean that in an odd sense: get rid of political leanings, at least for a time. Because if our politicians share anything, it is that all have let us down profoundly. None deserve our support. Let's make a fresh start with just a few clear-eyed thoughts, free from our particular political tints: Do I, myself, care about all Indians? If so, who do I know will drag India down? Who can I trust to do good for India? For Indians?

I'll admit it sounds corny, and I'm not much of an optimist anyway. But I like to think that your answers to those questions, your honest answers, will eventually reduce the Jagatveer Singh Drons among us to the irrelevance they earn every day. Now that would be even better than seeing him covered in cow dung.

Dilip D'Souza