The brief lull between the casting of the last ballots and the exit-poll predictions leading to how the numbers finally crunch is, probably, the best time to dispassionately reflect on events of the last few weeks and how the campaigns in five states played out. For both the thunder of the just-concluded electioneering and the thrills/disappointments at the results are much too emotive to permit the contesting parties and the poll “machinery” to look within. What is tragically certain, regardless of the voters’ verdict ~ in UP particularly ~ is that the “loser” is decency. Seldom has there been such calculated divisiveness manifest, with the result that the national polity has been split wide open and religion, community and caste issues having to face gaps unlikely to be bridged. At least, not by those who played lead roles in elections of which no decent citizen can be proud. It would be an over-simplification to suggest that the screenplay of the 2014 parliamentary poll was merely re-enacted ~ the worst elements of that affair were shamelessly, purposely, exacerbated. And the nation rendered poorer in the process. Since more elections are in the offing it is with distinct trepidation that apolitical citizens await their next date with the EVM.

Apportioning blame is pointless: all entities are guilty of “murdering” the system for which the Founding Fathers had strived. Yet in all such matters it is the ruling party at the Centre that is   required to set the tone. The “veterans” who had projected the BJP as a party “with a difference” would hardly be impressed by the difference displayed by the Modi-Shah duo. That the accent was on personality was underscored by the Prime Minister leading a campaign that “sold” the voter no potential chief minister. It became a case of    more for the loser to lose than for the winner to gain ~ and since it was primarily a “Modi versus the Rest” affair the stakes were dangerously high. The early phases had established that the planks of development, war against black money, and surgical strikes across the LOC were not good enough to ensure victory: so the party played its    favourite card ~ no need for any further specification, or listing the poison that was spread. The other parties adopted similar tactics, and the Congress’ decision to play second fiddle to a divided Samajwadi tells it own sick story. The story in Punjab was only marginally different. To query the functioning of the Election Commission is never salutary, but it proved how far it strayed from “Seshan-standard” was confirmed by its allowing the kind of campaigning it did ~ that too over seven phases of agony in UP.