CHENNAI: The woman at the roadside eatery in a narrow alley in Triplicane chides her husband for not telling her that the man who drove past just then was the DMK candidate for the Lok Sabha elections, Dayanidhi Maran. It is past 10.30 pm on Tuesday when the owner tells the few customers that Maran has visited the party election office in the lane near Star cinema at least four times that day.
“I would have asked him for some financial help to establish a better shop,” she goes on. To the baffled husband, she explains: “After all, they pay thousands to so many people. Will not he have helped us, too.” The next day, a few hours after the polling starts all over the State, a house broker in Big Street argues with another person who returns from a polling booth say ing that he envisages an AIADMK sweep: “No, they did not distribute a paise anywhere, while their rivals have given enough money,” he says.
However, he is peeved that no one has paid him anything and says: “Why should I vote and help someone win. I have 20 persons with me. None of us will vote without collecting a minimum of Rs 500 per person and a ‘quarter bottle’.
Conversations like this were heard all over the State as “money distribution” for votes has become an accepted norm. Not only were the election commission offices inundated with complaints from political parties accusing rivals of ‘paying’ voters, many party workers boast of distributing cash while explaining why the candidate they work for has an edge.
Some even attribute ‘cashfor- vote’ to the high turn out of voters in Madurai constituency, where the distribution has been open and blatant. A reporter in Chennai, hailing from Madurai, got Rs 500, which was handed over to her relatives back home, and she rushed to Madurai to cast her vote -- unfortunately for the rival candidate.
Of course, we have been hearing allegations of ‘money power’ and ‘alcohol’ swinging voters ever since India took to democracy.
Even actor Rajnikanth, way back in 1996, openly exhorted voters to “collect the money but not vote for them”, if they were offered any thing.
For traditionally, to make impoverished daily wage earners take a day off and go for voting, grassroots level political workers paid them an amount equivalent to their one-day pay and some booze as incentive after identifying the candidate for them.
But it is this election that saw money being delivered unabashedly at educated middle class homes, along with slips. In Madurai, however, the recipients were angry for what landed in envelopes looked like peanuts to them.
Their expectations had been raised by the January by-elections in Thirumangalam, where the open secret was that most of the people had a windfall. So, going by the trend, winning an election in the future could be more costly than now. For delivering cash with the voters’ slip may become a normal practise.