Delhi polls: AAP, BJP, Cong made noise but didn't say what they would do

At 6 pm yesterday, the hectic campaigning for the Delhi Assembly elections was to come to an end. Or did it? The in-your-face full front page advertisements this morning, and the hectic rounds the party spokespersons are making of news television studios would tell you that the campaign is still on.

The newspapers, which could have an eye on revenue such advertisements bring in, don’t object. It’s the same with television channels which are keen on their TRPs and bring in the spokespersons to verbally maul their rivals, as well as permit them last-minute advertisements to entice the voters to their respective sides.

All major Delhi newspapers had advertisements today, mostly thanks to the Bharatiya Janata Party which with its immeasurable resources seems to have cornered space much earlier. The Aam Aadmi Party just cannot come up with such funds, and the Congress appears somnolent even during a crucial elections.

The Election Commission, which is to conduct fair elections and monitor the conduct of political parties, has a Nelson’s eye in this regard. For instance, during the Maharashtra state elections parties had advertisements in newspapers that reached the readers even as they were leaving for polling booths.

There is a logic behind the cut off for the campaigning to end 36 hours before the polling actually begins. It is to create a sterile atmosphere during the crucial period for voters to contemplate their choices. Such a requirement becomes more important given that each election, the campaigns move up a notch in terms of bitterness of content and decibels at which they are spouted.

Of course, with 24x7 television and an active and almost partisan use of the social media, such sterile space measured in time and silence is difficult to achieve. Such quiet can expose any illicit activity by political parties, their candidates, and their agents like distribution of money, liquor or the use of strong arm tactics. But that is an idea never realised, much like those on control of expenditure.

The media have, however, grudgingly conceded only one thing to the Election Commission so far, which is not to come up with the findings of any exit poll in a phase till all phases of voting is completed.  It appears that they have also forgotten that as a sentinel of democracy they have to ensure a fair play when reporting because ‘paid news’ is a fact and widespread.

During this particular election, given the significance – the AAP resurrecting itself from the ignominy of not winning one of the seven parliamentary seats in Delhi, and the BJP fielding none else than Narendra Modi and trying to find a face in Kiran Bedi should the party lose – I have been surfing channels only to find that each of the parties did its best to stoke fires.

Two strong personalities, one a David and the other a Goliath, made the elections breath-taking in its dimensions but it did not address something missing and pointed out by Valson Thampu in The Indian Express today.  It was the absence of debate between the candidates and the voter. It was an election – like all others – where “huge crowds are addressed without the risk of a single question being raised.”

He goes on to say, “We needed a debate not only between political heavyweights but also between the citizens and them. To insist that debate makes sense only on the floor of the assembly is to slight the citizens of Delhi who must vote before doors of the Vidhan Sabha can open.” The ‘authoritarian oracular utterance’ which was on show was not communication”.

However, the modes adopted by the two parties – BJP with its huge rallies by mobilising people in the traditional manner, and the AAP engaging in street level discourse with voters – puts the BJP in a non-communication format. Likewise, the Congress did not have to risk a single question being asked. If there was any scope for a discussion on Delhi, not on parties, it was in the studios.

It would be hard to find people who found the nightly television discussions, ill-identified as debates, didn’t get the discerning Delhi voter into make informed choices. The issues were hardly ever centric to Delhi; it was personalities all the way. It was as if the actors were important, not the script for the next five years.

It was left to Ravish Kumar of NDTV India who heard an entirely different drummer. He took his camera into corners which people in Lutyen’s Delhi either ignored or neglected. The very municipal nature of a city’s crying needs which Delhi as a state has to address after each election but does not. He exposed how even AAP’s promises of immediate redress were not possible.

But the big question is: why were the voters quiet, tolerant of mindless activity? Here the voters had no answer.  In the studios and in most newspapers, it was mudslinging, outshouting, and a mindlessness where the right to speak, was used till the spokespersons ran out of breath, in a manner of speaking.  All the voters heard were allegations. They will make up their minds on their own.