Manifested character of all Abdicating responsibility
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: January 30, 2012 -

The real character of the people and a classic case of abdicating responsibilities manifested itself in myriad ways on polling day.

CRPF personnel U Tripathy of the E Company, 155 Bn gave up his life in the line of duty and so did five other officials who were deputed for poll duty at Tampi Primary School polling station in Chandel Assembly Constituency.

They laid down their lives just so that the people could exercise their franchise rights, defending the most fundamental tenet of democracy.

In as much as their deaths should have a salutary effect on all of us, the uncomfortable feeling that they might have laid down their lives just so that some voters who had sold their voting rights for monetary considerations could vote, refuses to go away.

The contradiction is eerie.

In many ways what happened at Chandel and at other places where poll related violence have been reported are nothing but an extension of the reality at the ground level.

It is a reflection of a culture where violence has become the lingua franca of quite a large number of people and the incredible part is, those who speak the language of violence can walk away with impunity ! Come to think about it, would the Chandel incident have occurred if only Delhi had the sincerity to seriously implement the cease fire ground rules ? The hands of the Union Home Ministry is stained with the blood of the six slain officials.

Delhi should bear the moral responsibility, but to the Government, the dead will be mere figures, cold statistics and while this is not the first such instance, the irony is the people do not seem to have learnt any lessons at all.

While the death of the officials on poll duty revealed the gory underside of the place, the overall culture of the people and officialdom became all that more prominent in the advertisements that appeared in the State dailies in the run up to the election.

The series of cautionary warnings or ultimatum issued by the election office to all employees to attend office/training programme ahead of the election was a perfect example of the prevailing work culture or lack of it here.

The result was there for all to see on voting day when the queues moved at a snail's pace and in the seeming lack of professionalism inside the voting booth.

If these examples brought out the state of officialdom and where work culture figures in the priority list of the employees, then how did voting day reflect on the character of the people as a whole ? There were violence galore, arguments could be heard in all the lanes and bylanes of each Assembly Constituency and the talk centred around only one point-What is the amount that is being paid per voter but not a sound on the issues that matter.

It was not the people who set down the agenda for the candidates to follow or try to live up to.

None of the issues besetting the State and the people figured in any of the hot arguments that could be heard and seen in the by lanes.

It was not the character, not the qualification and not the antecedents of the candidates which mattered but how much money he or she has kept stashed away for distribution at the last minute.

'Poll analyses' went awry at the last moment in many Assembly Constituencies and not unsurprisingly the factor that influenced the last minute vote swing was money.

And to think that six officials deputed for polling duty had to lay down their lives to ensure that the voters could cast their vote and the tragedy becomes all that more chillingly real.

This is one character of the people that manifested itself on the day that we as a people sealed our fate for the next five years and more.

With close to 17 lakh people exercising their franchise rights and with 279 candidates in the fray, the EVMs have been sealed and secured, but repoll is expected in quite a few polling stations, once again underlining how far the culture of violence has penetrated into the social mores of the people.

Come March 6, the shape of a fresh dispensation would have emerged, and while it is a matter of speculation on whether the old faces will return overwhelmingly or not, it may not be altogether wrong to suppose that the people have once again failed to set the agenda for the future.

The selective amnesia is astounding.