Election quality has a quantity of its own

Any election in India is seen solely as a numbers game. The obsession with rally size, voter turnout, number of campaign rallies, vote shares, seats won, etc, is especially big deal in Lok Sabha elections. But now that the hurly-burly's done - and the battle's almost lost and won - it's time to look beyond the nose of quantity and think of whether the quality of this democratic exercise may be strained. Election 2024 was particularly rife with what can only be described as incivility and digressions. This meant candidates appealing to atavistic, divisive, even inflammatory issues that play little part in the Viksit India story. The usual 'We are like this only' reasoning won't do.

EC may have wagged a finger at 'star campaigners' who needed to be reined in. But the fact that campaigning, for a great part, appealed to bad-mouthing opponents, preaching fire and brimstone sermons, rather than dealing with real issues pertaining to a citizenry's needs and wants, has left the world's largest democratic exercise looking a tad infantile. This needn't be the case. Viksit elections could mean making everyday life for citizens easier, providing better jobs, creating better access to opportunities and 'selling' healthcare solutions. Instead, much of poll campaigning was pretty much about rah-rahs and unsavoury put-downs. Doubly unfortunate is that voters seem to have accepted such tactics as par for the course.

'Recovery' will require politicians across the board to disagree without being disagreeable, to be critical, engaging and constructive. Voters, too, need to demand more of the political class and go beyond sharing images of their inked fingers as evidence of 'job done'. One would hope that once the heat and dust of the gigantic exercise to elect members of the 18th Lok Sabha dissipates and settles down, both the supply and demand side of governance will mature in quality, and not just in quantity.