Over lunch this week, a Western diplomat asked this columnist which TV channel’s exit poll was worth watching. The world is keenly interested in our elections, and the diplomatic corps have had to forgo their summer vacations (wistfully sending off their families instead), brave the heat and try to give their home governments political updates on India. And because Delhi often provides a cacophony of political half-truths and fictions (it’s the “echo effect”), diplomats in Mumbai, Hyderabad and Chennai are active. (It might also be because the states these cities are in, along with UP, will be indicative of the next Parliament and the next government).
It is sometimes amazing how wellinformed diplomats are about various minutiae of Indian political life.
I told the diplomat to watch all the exit polls; I wish I had said none. Frankly, I hope someday there is a Constitutional amendment against exit polls (I also hope for a Constitutional amendment banning elections during summer). They serve little purpose besides helping large parties bully smaller ones into less advantageous political negotiations. I can’t remember the last time the exit polls got it right, and I was stunned at how they said that here in Tamil Nadu, the ruling alliance would get a majority of seats.
One TV channel proudly spoke of a sample of 70,000, countrywide. Yet if in Tamil Nadu alone there are 52,175 polling booths, then the math for a useful exit poll does not add up. Such a sample size, or even twice as much, might make sense when a national issue dominates the electioneering. It is clear this time that there aren’t even statelevel issues, much less national issues. The Express coverage shows, for instance, a former Mayor winning Tiruchy for the Congress; such predominance of local matters prevails in most of the 543 constituencies, and this increases the error of margin for nationwide surveys exponentially.
By the time this appears either I will look silly, or the exit polls will be forgotten; “heads they win, tails I lose”. TV channels are as cynical as political parties. They smell the viewer’s hunger for election results, and so exit polls are a lucrative, if misleading (and insidious) exercise.
But they probably made the diplomatic corps let out a sigh of relief. One of the things we spoke of at lunch was India’s global image. India is surrounded by instability.
Pakistan is imploding and the West is wringing its hands about how this will translate into more terrorism. Sri Lanka’s humanitarian crisis is, as US President Obama says, a catastrophe; this puts President Mahinda Rajapaksa in a tight spot.
He can’t finish the LTTE off without massive collateral damage, and if he waits, the crisis only grows, inciting the impatient global community into heckling him to do something. Nepal has taken a dangerous turn on the road to democracy, sacrificing a democratically chosen prime minister for an obdurate soldier. Bangladesh has simply run out of ideas.
In such a neighbourhood the West looks upon India as an important anchor. What it really wants is to dump these problems on India. Obama’s administration has made no secret of the fact that if they can terminate al-Qaeda, they don’t mind an accommodation with the Taliban in Afghanistan.
The US will never attempt regime change in Islamabad, and seems willing to live with Afghanistan-like enclaves scattered around what is now northwestern Pakistan. The Americans are setting a modest strategic goal: to get out. India can suffer the brunt of the mess left behind.
At the same time, western diplomats — much like our candle-lighting, vote-boycotting middle class (here Chennai has proven itself less hypocritical than Mumbai or Delhi, with a far higher voter turnout) — are mortally frightened of Mayawati becoming prime minister. “What kind of image does that send to other countries?” I was asked, and I listened quietly as my host spoke of the kind of respect that Manmohan Singh commanded among leaders, for example, at the G20 last month.
Frankly, Manmohan Singh does not appear to command the kind of respect that China’s Hu Jintao does, and if leaders appreciate his soft-spoken, scholarly demeanour, it is superficially. What matters is the weight your country pulls, the terms your country can dictate, and the bargains your country can pull off. India is still far behind China in these matters. In international relations, respect is commensurate with power. The human face makes zero difference.
Some mistakenly believe that international relations or economic summits are best left to technocrats. In fact, political instinct always best solves problems of any complexity or detail. No matter how many shivers Mayawati sends down the back of commentators, her response to a problem will be superior to the pusillanimity shown by “specialists” like the incumbent.
An example is Nepal. With our political leadership busy with elections, mandarins and soldiers (as alleged by former Nepalese PM Prachanda) have recently run India’s Nepal policy and it has looked short-sighted (even though our man in Kathmandu is one of our best). Pranab Mukherjee would have possibly finessed the showdown between Prachanda and their army chief; he should not have left it to our useless National Security Advisor.
Ironically, before Pranab was appointed foreign minister, there was a lot of handwringing in South Block about how diplomacy required someone suave with impeccable English; some snorted how Pranab could make “peace” sound obscene. Whether it was the nuclear deal or Sri Lanka, however, it was Pranab who has had to come to this government’s rescue time and again. He is an example of how more important it is to be politically savvy than it is to know to use fine cutlery.
Western diplomats, exit polls, and the chattering classes all seem to want their choice of prime minister, regardless of how the rest of the country votes. Yet if the Congress, which ran the government as if the UPA was a single party and which contested elections as if it were the single dominating party of yore, gets below its last Lok Sabha tally, perhaps it should bow out.
Such a result may not be a verdict in favour of any other single party, but let the freshly elected parliamentarians figure out what to cobble together as a replacement.
Unfortunately, the people who think that only the Congress can provide the stability to tackle looming economic and diplomatic problems are the very people who will egg it to destabilise a government run by regional heavyweights. I hope the results dash the hopes of such people. Today I look forward to results which will eventually result in a non-Congress government. Even one headed by Mayawati
editorchief@epmltd.com
About The Author:
Aditya Sinha is the Editor-in-Chief of ‘The New Indian Express’ and is based in Chennai