“How long will INDIA (the Opposition alliance) sustain?” someone wanted to know. There’s signs of infighting already, as could only be expected.
To divide-and-rule is an easy task. The British played this game ever since the Battle of Plassey, and Mir Jaffar. Almost every governing power has implemented this effectively. Its roots in history probably go back far further than we know, or care to remember. Even if our memories sometimes don’t stretch back very far.
One strength of the Opposition in 2024 was its relative weakness. When the challengers to those in power seem strong, a whole lot of opportunists cross over. They change sides and play their own games.
We saw this happen in 2022, just prior to the Goa Assembly elections. At that time, we had top politicians of the BJP party-hopping into the Congress, only to go back “home”, with many more legislators, after getting safely re-elected).
As youngsters, we also noticed this trend during the post-Emergency elections in 1977. At that time, a whole lot of former Congressmen jumped over to the Opposition side. This included Jagjivan Ram, HN Bahuguna, Nandini Sathpathy, among others. We thought they were brave; perhaps they had a better antenna to detect which way the political wind was blowing, and to take some risks.
Besides, when politicians get overconfident about the “strength” of a grouping, two things happen. They start getting far more selfish. Secondly, they put their own interests above all else. We have seen so many parties (including the once-mighty Congress in Goa after 1980) get thus destroyed. Selfishness and negativism wins over everything else.
Since the INDIA was seen as a weak force at the start of 2024, it did not attract too many of the wrong sort of forces. Now, with more-than-expected returns from the EVMs, one can expect the quota of opportunists, self-seekers and infighting to emerge.
That is a given.
But it is not really the main point. If the citizen starts placing his (or her) faith in party labels and political leaders, we could be back to square one. Back to the roots of all our trouble. We would be forgetting the experiences we’ve undergone to get rid of our earlier problems, only to be saddled with entirely new ones. Ones which we had never anticipated till a little while ago.
So, let’s look at this issue from another point of view.
The Opposition is a reflection of the popular debate. If the commonman (and its intellectual leadership) pushes the Opposition, it will simply be forced to speak out, to stand up, and to be bold about what it does. In polarised, not business-as-usual times, it will come under greater pressure to do this.
In the recently-concluded elections, the Opposition was taking it easy about tell-tale issues which were early to come up.
For instance, take the issue of the Electoral Bonds. It is an issue which we might forget in a hurry, but its significance cannot be underplayed. Then, there also came along the case of the open rigging of the Chandigarh mayoral elections. It was such an open-and-shut case, especially as it was recorded on closed circuit TV (CCTV). Again, the Supreme Court came down harshly on this matter.
In both these cases, the Opposition didn’t make much of it. It was the online media that quickly latched on to these issues, and immediately went to town. They used the strengths of their media (audio-visual) to the hilt, and got the most impact. It becomes far more easy, when you’re in the digital space, to focus on issues, to show screenshots and video excerpts, and to bring ‘actual life’ to the viewer sitting even thousands of kilometres away.
This went on for much of the elections.
Seeing the determination with which a handful of people on the social media were taking up the issue, the Opposition had no option but to take that campaign forward. It would have made them look silly if they didn’t. After all, the issues were right there upfront. Arguments had been built up. Long lists of talking-points had prepared too. So how could the Opposition political parties not take the campaign forward?
Not surprisingly, after the results, one message heard praise and thanks to “the heroes, who so courageously gave us the real news”. On this list were two dozen plus individuals, many of them running small operations. Starting with the 29-year-old Dhruv Rathee (indeed well deserved), ex-NDTV Hindi’s Ravish Kumar, Arfa Khanum Sherwani of TheWire.in, Karan Thapar with his well-honed interviewing skills, and so many more. Some of whom it was hard to recognise in our diverse nation.
Tiny and hardly thriving media operations that drew praise included NewsClick, The Wire, Caravan, TheAltNews. NewsLaundry is also a favourite on my list. So is Meghnerd, a young man who had tears of joy when he was saying that even a small person’s work can make a difference to the national debate. At times.
This was one of the biggest lesson for us over the past fortnight. That seemingly inconsequential individuals and tiny, poorly-funded organisations can indeed make a difference. That even if all pressures come their way, there will be at least a few who are egged on by their conscience to speak out, stick out their neck, and tell what they see as the truth.
If a growing, smarter India can have more such individuals and voices, then there is hope. Whatever the Opposition does or doesn’t do, the debate need not be blocked and clogged. Instead, it will go ahead. Regardless.
FOOTNOTE: As far as the EVMs go, they are still suspect, ‘black boxes’ and no one but a small clique knows how the machines work or who (technically) controls these machines.
Until the source code (which controls their working in unseen ways) is made publicly auditable, and we know who has access to these machines and under what conditions (to load candidates names, symbols etc), the EVMs will continue to be under a cloud.
The EC’s obstinate reluctance to be transparent over this is incomprehensible. So is the Supreme Court’s lack of understanding of how Open Source Software works, and the security and easy-correct-ability this approach offers. It doesn’t give the keys to the robbers, but it makes it clear to all how a perfectly-working machine is supposed to operate.
The debate over the EVMs is far from over. Even if political parties tend to have a very short term view over this.
