Development cards during election times
- The People's Chronicle Editorial :: February 24, 2022 -

LIKE in every election, leaders of national stature are trying to woo the voters with promises of bringing development in the state and extolling achievements of Manipuris in diverse fields.

While it is certain large numbers of the adult franchisees have already decided who to elect as their representatives for the next five years; national, regional and state level leaders of all the parties joining the election campaign indicates that their primary objective is to grab the attention of the remaining voters who haven't made up their mind on whether to keep faith in the ruling party or bring in a new entity.

Though the question of when and how campaigns matter remains a moving target, the so-called star campaigners continually trying new ways to reach out and move voters underscore that during election times all the political parties see every voter as highly invaluable.

No doubt, election campaigns do matter in a variety of important ways. As essential components of democratic politics, election campaigns attract attention from scholars across the social sciences as well as from journalists and political historians.

As these campaigns aim to influence the behaviour of individual citizens, persuading those who might do otherwise to show up at the polls and to make the right choice, it is obvious that serious contenders peruse past as well as contemporary data and methods employed to study political campaigns and their consequences, to put into action data sources and techniques to lure as many voters as possible even if it is entails spending extravagantly but without grabbing the attention of the election-conducting authorities.

Apart from candidates, parties, individuals, and non-party organisations embarking on spending spree during election campaigns, campaign volunteers spend countless hours in executing extensive campaign activities till every voter has been covered.

Regard-less of such hectic politicking and relentless efforts, it is heartening to note that this time around campaign leaders of major political parties have been playing the development cards and experimenting with their expletives in inter-party bickering unlike in recent past when elections tend to polarise the voters on ethnic lines.

Though elections are supposed to be those times when political organisations come up with innovative plans to mitigate hardships besetting the public, past elections laid bare the fact that contrary to many who have strong desire for social harmony and discarding the divisive outlook and agenda, politicians tried to feast on the varied issues plaguing the state to widen the ethnic chasm, all to gain political mileage.

While there is no guarantee that such relative calmness would persist as there are still some more days remaining to cast votes in the two-phase election, this time around the democratic exercise is poised to see how many of the multi-millionaires or candidates with criminal antecedents get elected.

For instance, a recent report of the Manipur Election Watch and the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) working out that average asset per candidate contesting in the first phase is Rs 2.51 crore and major parties are fielding 11 to 29 per cent of candidates with declared criminal cases against them sums up the role of money and muscle power in the state's electoral politics.