A voter in search of a candidate

By M H Ahssan

The past few weeks have been spent in election mode -- well, that's to be expected in a newspaper office or any other media house. Several candidates have visited us and given us their pitches. While that's very interestingand sometimes great fun as a journalist , it's becomea bit of a downer as a voter. You can't, it seems, really go by the candidate. And, as it happens according to surveys, 60 per cent of the electorate knows that -- it votes by party.

So far, of the selection I've met, there have been well-meaning smart people with not enough street or grassroots cred, grassroots people with no smarts, wishy-washy candidates with no nothing to impress, keen but clueless candidates and over-smart people who are likely to go nowhere as no one knows who they are. Not, then, a very reassuring situation.

Or, a bit of a Rumsfeld situation -- we've got the known knowns, the known unknowns, the unknown knowns and the unknown unknowns. But if one of the joys of electing a Member of Parliament is that he or she is your voice in the national assembly, then you feel a little short-changed.

One candidate only wants to hang Afzal Guru, another is bothered about India's unused uranium deposits, someone else is worried about security, the other about defence deals and yet another about corruption or rather, corrupt people in politics. For some, it's not clear what exactly they represent. Some of these issues are important and others do not really fall under the umbrella of influence which an ordinary MP has. How will this ordinary MP reflect the concerns of the average Mumbaikar in Parliament?

Cannot be, it seems. The municipal issues are not parliamentary issues, although they hurt us or affect us on a daily basis the most. The uranium might be an issue if a nuclear power plant was coming up in an unused mill compound. The hanging of Afzal Guru is not, I'm afraid, going to be a preventive for all future terrorist attacks. It is a salve at best for those who are looking for some blood revenge.

There are, then, it seems, no local Mumbai issues for Mumbai's candidates.

Is this the same for all cities or all parts of India? Do we have candidates who truly represent us, no matter how diverse, different, intelligent, silly, emotional, irrational, scientific, religious, greedy, rich or poor we are? Yes, there are times when we vote for or against this or that party because some party appeals to us and some parties fill us with loathing. This is how it must be. But this does not absolve individual candidates from working for their constituencies or addressing issues which affect them, while at the same time being justifiably worried about uranium or the importance of the death penalty.

Perhaps the problem lies in the political parties themselves and in the way they do not allow dissent in the ranks. Where are the backbenchers who take their own party to task when their constituents are affected or when the part of the manifesto that affects them is ignored or subverted?

Of course, there are and have been candidates who stand for themselves and command loyalty no matter what, candidates who people have learnt to trust or rely on. But these are few and far between. As our version of parliamentary democracy has progressed, we have people who get in because it is a family business, because they have business interests to pursue, because the party has to hand out or return favours or because they have good bargaining power now or at some later stage. The worth of the person is sublimated for the greater good of the party and that accounts for the majority.

Under these circumstances, the search for the good candidate has left me flummoxed. I'm unconvinced by those in my constituency and my heart bleeds for those who have to choose or have chosen in the other 542.