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!