India has finally set the dates for its national elections, formally kicking off a frantic 40 days of campaigning for the 714 million votes up for grabs in the world’s largest democracy.
Voting is staggered over five phases from April 16 to May 13 to enable the deployment of 2.1 million security personnel and 1.9 million other electoral staff around 800,000 polling stations, according to the Election Commission.
Ballots will be counted on May 16 and results will be announced soon after — setting the political course for 1.1billion Indians in the midst of a tense stand-off with Pakistan and a global economic slump.
Yet with campaigning barely under way, concerns are already being raised that the vote will produce another ungainly coalition government unable, or unwilling, to tackle the gargantuan challenges facing India.
The race is expected to be dominated again by the Congress Party, which heads the current coalition Government, and the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which lost power in the last poll in 2004.
Congress, led by the Italian-born Sonia Gandhi, is presenting itself as the choice of the aam aadmi (“common man” in Hindi) and trying to exploit the popularity of Manmohan Singh, the Prime Minister.
At the same time, it is promoting Rahul, Mrs Gandhi’s 38-year-old son, as the new face of the party and a potential future prime minister — not least because Mr Singh is 76 and recovering from a second heart bypass.
The BJP, meanwhile, is trying to mobilise its core supporters by promising to build a Hindu temple on the site of a mosque in Ayodhya that was destroyed by Hindu mobs in 1992, sparking riots that killed 2,000 people. L.K.Advani, its 81-year-old candidate for prime minister, is trying to appeal to young voters by writing a blog, flooding the internet with advertisements and talking tough on Pakistan.
For all their efforts, however, both of the traditional heavyweights are expected widely to lose seats to smaller regional parties, inevitably leading to another fractious and unstable coalition government.
If that includes the communist parties, who withdrew their support from Congress last year, its economic policies could again be held hostage by their antireform, anti-globalisation agenda.
“It is clear that neither the BJP or the Congress will get anything like a majority on their own,” Pran Chopra, a veteran political analyst and former editor of The Statesman newspaper, said.
“There’ll have to be a period of negotiations and instability and uncertainty before any new government can emergeand it may not happen for some time.”
Kuldip Nayar, another political analyst, who served as India’s High Commissioner to Britain, said he expected any new coalition to collapse, forcing midterm elections within two years.
While some celebrate the demise of the two big parties, others say the fragmentation of politics is making the country increasingly ungovernable.
Somnath Chatterjee, the outgoing Speaker of Parliament, gave an unusually downbeat assessment of Indian democracy in a speech at Delhi University.
“Communalisation and criminalisation of politics has greatly vitiated our political system,” he said, citing the “malaise of corruption and the influence of money and muscle power along with the use of religion in our electoral process”.
“Degeneration of the electoral system as a result of illegal and immoral practices used in many places for winning elections has been … contributing to the growing political apathy among the people,” he said.
He pointed out that the outgoing Parliament had only 332 sittings, compared with the previous one’s 356, and had wasted a total of 423 hours — 24 per cent of its time — on “disruptions and adjournments due to disorderly scenes”.
“If urgent corrective measures are not taken proactively by all concerned, it will create serious problems for the future of our democracy,” he said. “One should recognise that democracy is not all about periodic elections and political rights alone.”
Source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk
