Why politics remains a numbers game

Politics is often said to be a numbers game. Sometimes, two and two can sometimes add up to 22 instead of the more modest sum of four. As much was demonstrated when Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s claim that his government had set up 8.5 lakh toilets in Bihar in the course of a single week was questioned by Tejashwi Yadav, son of the jailed ex-chief minister Lalu Prasad Yadav.

Proving that he is capable of filling his deposed dad’s shoes when it comes to canniness, the younger Yadav did his math and showed that, if the PM’s tally were correct, it would mean that his sarkar had built 84 toilets per minute, a figure which might chime with the saying that there are lies, damn lies and statistics. It remains to be seen, however, if Yadav Junior taking what might literally be called pot-shots at him will in any way discomfit the PM and his followers who seem to be flushed, in more ways than one, with their own success, in Bihar and elsewhere.

The abacus of adversarial politics recalls Lewis Carrol’s Mock Turtle, for whom arithmetic’s four branches were “Ambition, Distraction, Uglification and Derision.” Mutual mudslinging about sarkari claims about cleaning up the country’s act might cause sceptics to wonder if along with whatever else has gone down Swachh Bharat’s toilets, Sach Bharat—Truthful Bharat—hasn’t also gone down the drain.