Senior journalist and television anchor SP Singh, well known to the Punjabi readers for his weekly column, Likhtum BaDaleel, in Punjabi Tribune, ploughed a characteristically different furrow when it came to making sense of the recent election results from West Bengal, Assam, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry. We bring you the English translation/rewrite of his column that appeared a day after the results. The Punjabi iteration of this piece can be accessed here. The English version is exclusive to The World Sikh News.

DESTINY OF CITIZENS and the country’s politics are intertwined constructs, and the relationship determines the quality of life that citizens enjoy but invariably defines it. This relationship between citizenry and politics determines our approach towards abstract and tangible constructs like state, society or fellow individuals.

Ever since the advent of the nation-states and the predominant acceptance of electoral democracy as a better means of governing people, we have remained tied to a classical understanding of how this relationship works: the concerns of the citizens will determine the politics, and, in turn, politics will impact stuff that people will be concerned about.

Howsoever tough the times be, we accord huge significance to elections since electoral exercise necessarily decides contemporary political paths and, consequently, the destiny of the citizens. Even in times of humungous crisis – say an attack by an external force, an epidemic or a pandemic or a serious challenge in the form of an insurgency or political upheaval – an election begets our utmost attention, assumes a central position on the smorgasbord of our concerns, and ends up deciding the future political path.

The results are out. One side is celebrating the great Bengali victory of a Spartan woman, another has shown it continues to hold sway over the northeast, the reds have retained a land where Che Guevara graffiti is still part of street art lingo and in a southern Indian state, we now have anointed a leader called Stalin, as if the pandemic-jolted world needed another shock.

India has just been through such a moment in time and political history. As a pandemic raged and scorched through cities, communities and families, four provinces and a federally administered little territory went to elections.

The results are out. One side is celebrating the great Bengali victory of a Spartan woman, another has shown it continues to hold sway over the northeast, the reds have retained a land where Che Guevara graffiti is still part of street art lingo and in a southern Indian state, we now have anointed a leader called Stalin, as if the pandemic-jolted world needed another shock.

Politics has divorced itself from the concerns of the citizens.

For a few days now, election results statistics and wisdom-spewing political pundits had been jostling for space on the television screens with rows of pyres inside and outside the crematoriums, trying to get themselves heard above the din of people shrieking for oxygen and hospital beds.

That’s the closest that people’s concerns and electoral democracy’s shenanigans came on that screen that has become the key turf upon which Indian politics is currently playing itself out. Television, social media handles, bombastic prime ministerial speeches and now-you-see-me-now-you-don’t kind of Rahul Gandhi peep shows is what electoral politics is made of these days.

This is a dangerous scenario: politics has divorced itself from the concerns of the citizens.

Let me be clear: this has been a standard rhetorical line for decades but all it meant was that politics was failing to catch up with the concerns of the citizenry. What’s happening now is the real divorce. It is now possible to pursue electoral politics successfully without engaging with the issues of the citizens at all.

Here are some recent and telling examples. Who would have thought in the immediate aftermath of an exercise like demonetisation – I find notebandi in Hindi a much better description of what befell the populace – that the tormentor-in-chief would go seeking votes, actually harking to his grand success in bringing the country to its knees by sucking legal tender currency out of the informal economy, and then actually win the poll?

Narendra Modi did exactly that. Just four months after killing the economy with one fell swoop at 8 pm on a wintery November night, the BJP swept Uttar Pradesh and its 22 crore people happily accepted Ajay Mohan Bisht as their chief minister who now goes by the name of Yogi Adityanath.

Where was that classical linkage between people’s concerns and electoral democracy? By all means, the people in UP had suffered demonetisation to the hilt and then chose the saffron party in elections that were largely free and fair.

Modi had every reason to crow that the vote was an endorsement of the success of notebandi. The opposition’s narrative seemed just tomfoolery.

Where was that classical linkage between people’s concerns and electoral democracy? By all means, the people in UP had suffered demonetisation to the hilt and then chose the saffron party in elections that were largely free and fair.

As lakhs of migrants walked for hundreds of miles, many of them hungry and bare feet, reaching their shanties and hamlets in Bihar from distant industrial cities, one would have expected a tide of anger, but lo and behold!, Modi’s BJP and Nitish Kumar’s United Janata Dal (who is it united with, I’ve never figured out!) won the vote.

Migrants who had still not found another job, and at a time when the pandemic was still raging, voted for BJP-JDU.

Modi could rightfully claim that his policies, approach and narrative were being tested on the only legitimate yardstick an electoral democracy offers: elections.

The fact is that the BJP has been able to Hindutva-ise the politics, something the Congress used to do whenever it was the pragmatic thing to do to win an impending election.

There is clear evidence that Indian electoral democracy is now held ransom to the communal virus, and neither the Congress nor any other political party or outfit is working on a vaccine. A BJP victory or loss in electoral politics is now fundamentally divorced from people’s concerns, and the same applies to other parties.

Indian political parties have not made health or education or unemployment or opportunities their core political areas and there is no pressure on them to do so. The largest outfits, including the ruling party and its main challenger national and regional parties, are comfortable in pursuing their politics on turfs they are familiar with. That’s why even a pandemic is not enough to impact electioneering.

Neither Modi nor Mamata Bannerjee nor Stalin were dying to explain to the people what they did or plan to do to make sure people do not die. The question was as fundamental as this. As of now, Indians are largely super-busy in trying to remain alive, but that wasn’t and does not seem to be becoming, a political question.

There is clear evidence that Indian electoral democracy is now held ransom to the communal virus, and neither the Congress nor any other political party or outfit is working on a vaccine. A BJP victory or loss in electoral politics is now fundamentally divorced from people’s concerns, and the same applies to other parties.

India is gasping for breath, but its electoral democracy is being reflected in that pantomime currently on in the Delhi High Court and the Supreme Court, even as television brings home the dinner time drama of death and those who are yet to die.

In all this, we are listening to serious political analysis about saffron’s tentacles in West Bengal, the job it must do in Kerala to count, and the post-poll joust for chief ministership in Assam.

It is a new normal – electoral politics hogging all our attention bereft of any concern with our struggle to breathe, go into a hospital or land up at a proper pyre, or at least being burnt preferably not by the roadside.

This is the end of normalcy, and we should be able to see this. If the haggling going on over Oxygen supply to Delhi hasn’t convinced you, here is a slightly simpler argument: if you are gasping for breath tomorrow outside the gates of a swank hospital you are fortunate enough to afford but are greeted by a banner proclaiming No Admission and the hospital tagging the PMO and the CMO for some cylinder full of breaths, it might not matter much to you who won in West Bengal.

When the ability to govern is divorced from the right to govern, then it is the politics taking its leave from electoral democracy.

It is a new normal – electoral politics hogging all our attention bereft of any concern with our struggle to breathe, go into a hospital or land up at a proper pyre, or at least being burnt preferably not by the roadside.

Actually, we are done with this Nehruvian construct – it has reached its limit. It is not that the BJP has destroyed it; it is that the Congress and the regional satraps had already worn the fabric too thin. We are living in times of no political morality.

The BJP has irreversibly changed politics. It does not work to align itself with people’s concerns and aspirations. It, instead, changes the people to fit its mould. It has conceptualised, developed, nurtured, practised and perfected the art of turning citizens into hordes that are ready to go out into the cyber world and troll people, and if need be, come out swinging lathis, beating up young smooching couples in parks when in good mood, or lynching people to death when in bad. On a day, they feel particularly pissed off with Pakistan, they could become Babu Bajrangis and carry out massacres or pursue electoral democracy and elect a Pragya Thakur.

It is time to think beyond electoral democracy.

If in this matrix, we are still adamant on hailing the victory of Mamata Bannerjee as some kind of a faith-restoring event in electoral democracy, we only have the next shock coming.

It is time to think beyond electoral democracy. We have lived in a box called Nehruvian Everything for far too long, and it has been a comfort zone life inside a Truman show where nothing was real. Who can forget the unforgettable line: “We accept the reality of the world with which we are presented.” It is time to cue the sun and shine a light.

The relationship is gone. Electoral democracy long bade goodbye to citizens’ concerns. We just wanted to remain inside a television show. It is time to crawl out of our Seahaven comfort box because, unlike the Network Executive of Peter Weir’s world, this one would have no compunctions in letting us die in front of a live audience!