No Other Alternative

JC Sanasam *

The new Assembly complex

"Where's the alternative? There is none. The same thing will pervade, the goddamned electricity will not be there, no proper roads, no drinking water"

"No other alternative, we got to abide by the unhealthy murky environment", Nongyai lamented, "As I told you there's no room for an overhaul-repair or renovation of the system. We're no better than the stag that comes back to the spot for the hunting tigers to pounce upon and be a prey to them and be food not only to the tigers but even to the laughing hyenas, to the roaming lone wolves, to the pack of wild dogs, to the undaunted vultures, and to many other monsters", he reiterated.

Nongyai is the skeptical guy among us in our neighbourhood. When everybody nodded his or her head with the measures taken up, this time, by the Election Commission of India (ECI) and by the State Election Office as well, under the leadership of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), Nongyai refused to concede.

He said, "Man's brain, no one can say, will find out some other way, by hook or by crook, to manoeuvere an unfair means." We were skeptical to his skepticism, but we lost our face when he cynically pointed out to us, after the election was over, the much criticized electoral regulations, even failure of the unfailing EVM or ballot system this time too. Of course we did hear of bills in 500's and 1000's being showered in the lanes of Imphal in the last two-three days before the election in a hush-hush atmosphere; many a spot where tens or twenties languished with plastic cups of local and the so called foreign liquors after which they gulped lumps of chicken or Rhou fish, a gun totter entering forcibly in the ballot room and punch the button 100 times to 500 times in proxy on behalf of the whole electorate in the village or constituency in the hills, more so with the arbitrary barging in of the NSCN IM. Not only that, even the EVMs were looted or destroyed. The RO, his team and the security that accompanied them had simply to watch agape, their jaws dropped. There were many shoot-outs too.

Nongyai got exasperated and latched out, "Are we going back to our original primitive stone-age or are we taking the so called democratic values for just something like kind of tissue paper?"

He was vehemently refusing to walk up to his allotted polling station and punch the button on the EVM. His plea was, "What's the use? Chaoba or Hongba or Tomba may return; but what will be the difference? If I go there, stand in the queue everybody will take it for granted that I had received Rupees five hundred or one thousand. Do you think I'm a cheapie who sells his rights and his life at a mere Rupees five hundred or one thousand? No way. By the way, no one dared to come to me and offer such an amount either. And till today none, who I voted for, ever returned in the past elections. It's a wastage. I want to choose Hongba, but they say he doesn't have the face of a politician. The same old fox that has the face of a politician will be victorious."

Later, after the 28th January, he whined, "Oh, it was more of a wastage than I thought of. I forced myself to get there and cast my vote because you fools succeeded to put this crap in my useless head. I stood there in the queue for three dry hours in the sun. I could have enjoyed a classic mega movie or finish a good novel instead. The ECI was also completely unaware of a mathematical observation. More than one thousand voters were to cast their voted at our polling station; each voter took three minutes in the process; so naturally it would take three thousand minutes that means fifty hours for a thousand voters; and time given was from 7 am to 3 pm, that is, eight hours. It is like attempting to let an elephant pass through the hookah pipe.

Anyway, I voted for Hongba. They say he may win but when he is in power, if I ask him for a favour, he will expect tens of lakhs of Rupees which I don't have and which I would never do even if I had. Where's the alternative? There is none. The same thing will pervade, the goddamned electricity will not be there, no proper roads, no drinking water. Rather corruption will loom larger than King Kangsa and the easily-available-bullets or grenades or what people call bombs will become cheaper and number of the Boka Hingchabas will increase. More economic blockades too are in the forecast. What's our alternative? This is the age of democracy they say; whereas democracy has gone to drains."

All of us kept quiet. I swallowed about one millilitre of saliva and I too kept quiet because we thought it was best that way for the day. We knew it was the day of Nongyai; not the day of the electing candidates.