By M H Ahssan
After over-heated summer weeks of campaigning, long on personal attacks and short on substance, guessing who India's next prime minister will be is about as easy as solving the decade-long puzzle on the identity of HNN's essayist Newscop.
My long-time suspicion is that Newscop is an HNN staffer, churning out blood pressure-tickling articles while sipping coconut juice in a sunny beach in coastal AP. But varied guesses about India's next prime minister could be as off the mark, or as accurate, as any Newscop identity guess. The latter is due to be revealed on Friday, April 17.
When the month-long voting process that started in India on Thursday ends, on May 16, counting will start and results released. Frenetic political dramas are sure to follow before the 18th prime minister of India is revealed.
I have told amazed local media colleagues, the ones who still think I am sane, that the next premier could be Lalu Prasad Yadav, India's maverick railway minister, a kingmaker in the last elections and a parliamentary funny man.
Never underestimate the shrewd court jester. During the bitter political fallout last year over India's nuclear deal with the United States, Yadav managed to keep cordial relations with both his warring coalition partners, the Congress and the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M). In one photograph taken during the crisis, he was seen with his hands on the shoulders of both a Congress and a CPI-M leader. All were laughing.
Such savvy to keep squabbling factions in good humor would prove devastatingly effective after the election results are announced, and India's political theater goes into hyperdrive over the formation of coalition marriages.
Besides, Yadav has a pan-India fan base. "Lalu Yadav would easily work himself into power," said a chuckling R S Patil, a guard at the Bank of India branch near Churchgate station, Mumbai. "He is a very street smart fellow."
While Patil told Asia Times Online that he would take time out to vote on April 30, the voting day for Mumbai, the general electoral mood in India's financial capital was as varied as the "mixed vegetable curry" coalition likely to come to power, as sales executive John Lobo termed it.
A Christian from the neighboring Portuguese-speaking state of Goa, Lobo said he may not exercise his voting rights, as an expression of disgust at the current crop of politicians.
However, Lobo's colleague Ravi Shinde, an office assistant and a resident of Raigad district, said he would take leave and travel the 100 kilometers to his village and vote on April 30.
Mumbai has expressed a strong anti-incumbent sentiment at street level. "I have long been a Congress party supporter, but [Prime Minister] Manmohan Singh has doing nothing for us poor people," said Darshan Das, a middle-aged tea vendor near Eros Theater.
Das says he earns about 6,000 rupees (US$120) a month; the only income he has to support his wife and four children. "From this 6,000 income, I spend 1,000 rupees monthly as hafta (bribes) to local policemen and municipality officials to be allowed to sell tea here," he says. "Things don't change much for us, whichever government is elected."
"It's difficult to predict who the next prime minister will be, but whoever comes to power will be of no use unless they help people like us," said Ganga Ram, a member of Mumbai's dabbawallahs (lunch-box carriers). In 2001, the world famous home-to-office hot lunch delivery system was awarded a Forbes magazine rating of six-sigma, equal to a 99.9999% accuracy rate in delivery. (See India's lessons in a lunch box, Asia Times Online, Sep 8, 2006) Ram, a resident of suburban Ghatkopar, said he will vote.
In South Mumbai constituency, the area of the November 26 terrorist attacks, interest in elections is much higher than last year, said voter Anil Patkar. "I expect voter turnout percentage here will be the highest ever, at over 50%," he said. The turnout for the 2008 US presidential election was 56.8%, the highest since the 60.8% turnout of 1968 when Richard Nixon was voted into power.
Guessing who will form the next Indian government is big business for bookies, an outlawed but thriving tribe. They are currently offering odds on the Congress party grabbing around 150 seats and the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) bagging 120. A coalition needs the support of a minimum of 272 members in the 543-member Lok Sabha, the directly-elected house of Parliament, to form a government.
But India's electorate has always proved an enigmatic nut to crack, with both bookies and pollsters usually left wiping egg off their faces after the election results are announced.
In 2004, the Mumbai-dominated bookie tribe illegally raked in an estimated US$5 billion in punters' money after predicting that the ruling BJP would win 175 seats and the Congress 150. But the Sonia Gandhi-led Congress won 150 seats, up from 114 seats in the 1999 general elections, and formed a coalition government. The BJP crashed down to 137 seats, from 182 seats in 1999.
The two leading prime ministerial contenders in 2009, the 77-year old economist Manmohan Singh and the 81-year old lawyer LK Advani were both born in land that is now Pakistan, and formerly undivided India. Singh was born in Chakwal district, some 90 kilometers south of Islamabad, while Advani was born in the southern port city of Karachi.
Both could be runners-up this year, as opinion polls have shown the electorate would prefer a younger prime minister.
Either way, the prime minister-elect won't make too much of a difference. In India, politicians are like the noisy, visible surf of ocean waves. It's not the fleeting, fickle surf, but the deep, unseen, silent, strong, millennia-old undercurrents that actually define and direct the direction ahead this nation takes. India works despite its politicians, not because of them.
Manmohan Singh lasted the distance of his full five-year term, and won some respect, because he is not a politician. But after starting to talk like a politician during this campaign, voters could give him the usual nasty surprise they gift wrap for egoistic leaders who think only they know best what is best for the country.
For now, the next prime minister of India, the world's 12th largest and Asia's third-largest economy, appears as difficult but less popular a guess worldwide than the identity of Spengler. Advani produces 1.9 million Google search results, Manmohan Singh fetches 2.8 million searches. And Spengler? 2.9 million.
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