Growing banality in political discourse

Unless people set the pace, intensity and quality of debate, politicians will only harp on empty issues.

As the electioneering in Bihar is coming to an end with the fourth phase of the polls closing, the decibel levels of the ongoing political discourse seem to be getting shriller with issues of little significance being spoken about.

None of the parties or the key individual players seem to be drawing the attention of the electorate to matters of a common collective good. While one expects political rallies and public speeches to provide opportunities to communicate the key messages reflecting the social, economic, political and policy thought that the party subscribes to, they are now reduced to demonstrating their numerical strength, media visibility and financial clout.

Indian democracy is known to be noisy and unhealthy. One of the ways of making it healthier is to enhance the quality of debate and discourse during the election season. Assembly elections provide an ideal platform for issues of significance for the state to be brought to the centre stage and to appreciate the general direction that the state is likely to move towards.

While emotions and other factors rather than mere reason are known to guide the voter in choosing his representative, one also needs to appreciate that he cannot be taken for granted and fed with morning headlines that are bereft of any serious content. Most discussions today seem to revolve around the creation of ghost issues and diversion of the discourse to mere sloganeering. 

We are seeing one person calling another a terrorist, while another wants to chop his rival party’s leader to pieces evan as a third seems to be intent on sending everybody, except himself and the voter, to jail. This is indeed taking the focus away from issues on how Bihar needs to brace itself in dealing with the lack of public infrastructure, poor Human Development Indicators, challenges in managing natural resources, and the problem of Maoism.

Neither law and order matters nor issues related to gender violence seem to attract any clarity of thought beyond being treated as ‘vote-catching’ slogans. There seems to be hardly any debate on the energy crisis facing the state, on how to deal with the growing inequities or on developing indigenous communities.

We are less concerned about the issues of pollution and environmental crises in the backdrop of a desire to rapidly industrialise and join the global bandwagon of mindless consumerism. Bihar is yet to have a scientifically validated poverty assessment process.

We are still arguing about the different percentages of people below the poverty line, the metrics of poverty and the processes to deal with alleviating it. It is indeed sad that not a single party has made this an issue of electoral significance.

Debate on ‘policy capture’
There has hardly been any political or media space debating the impending danger of ‘policy capture’ by the elite, the rich and powerful and corporate India. Electoral funding by large corporate houses has the danger of being seen as investments, the returns of which will be amenable policies that will come later.  

Economic concerns, including stimulating the primary land-based economy and creating a facilitating environment to promote the growth of the manufacturing sector, do not seem to flow from an understanding of the ground realities and the evidence that stares us in the face.

There is no debate by any party on how they view the youth of Bihar and capitalising on the ‘demographic divid-end’. Debates seem to harbour around merely giving tickets to younger people, while the larger issues of engaging meaningfully with the youth and ‘skilling’ them up to participate in the mainstream economy has taken a backseat. 
 
Except occasional articles by concerned activists and intellectuals, there has hardly been any discourse on universal health access, the burgeoning problem of adulterated and poor quality drugs, the growing burden of non-communicable diseases and on how to deal with them. No clarity seems to be there in any party’s thinking on how they intend bettering the poor learning outcomes of the thousands of children in the state’s schools despite spending crores of rupees.

All this can realistically happen only when the political class feels the pressure created by their electorate. Citizens need to take control of the debate and start setting this agenda. They need to force questions related to these and other issues by confronting the political players with them.

Unless people set the pace, intensity and quality of the debate, politicians will only dish out colourful, but empty issues, that reflect the society that they represent.

The media has to take the lead in surfacing these issues and go beyond mere opinion polls and debating the electoral arithmetic. Together, we need to communicate to our political system that the time has come for them to show us how much they agree rather than disagree with each other.

(The writer is a development activist and founder of the Swami Vivekananda Youth Movement)