Election Speeches: What’s There and What’s Not?

With much anticipation and hype, Assam is once again gearing up for the Assam Vidhan Sabha Election 2021.  Proposed candidates lists have been out from most of the political parties and candidates along with all the crowd power are one by one filing their nominations to contest the elections. Political pundits are of the opinion that elections in Assam shall be really interesting this time around, with the alliance of Congress, AIUDF, other parties and the two regional parties trying to dethrone the current BJP led government.

The approaching of Elections is marked by ‘political campaigns’, where leaders move from one constituency to another, delivering speeches for themselves or in favour of other candidates of their respective parties. In fact, this is the time when most of the leaders remember the crowd for the purpose of gaining votes, as rest of the time after winning the elections they simply disappear, being busy in their own personal affairs.

The largest democratic nation in the world i.e. India believes in electoral politics and when elections approaches, leaders are often seen interacting with the greater audience, and the audience too expects the leaders to come out with new plans, policies and schemes that they would undertake for the benefit of the people once they come into power. In a way, the election speeches strengthen democracy, but at the same time if we analyse properly in the present era, these election speeches have more or less started losing its essence for various reasons. Therefore we need to carefully understand and know the content in the election speeches of the leaders and then develop a notion: whether or not these speeches have maintained the essence of Indian democracy?

Election speeches are basically those which are delivered by the leaders prior to the elections to allure the people and also to let them know the working manifesto of leaders, when they come into power. Going by this perception of election speeches, it becomes important for leaders to have in their speeches ways or plans to tackle the most burning issues that are disturbing a particular state or community as a whole. Therefore, as Assam Vidhan Sabha Elections approaches, we need to take into consideration the 4 or 5 major issues that are troubling the state of Assam and whether these issues have been properly covered by the leaders in their speeches.

The core issue that has troubled Assam since ages is the issue of illegal immigration in relation to the recent tabled CAA. Although leaders have addressed this issue and also gave promises to solve the same, but till now the issue hasn’t been solved, rather the issue is making the people cripple with each passing day. And it’s really unfortunate to witness almost none of the leaders come up with a proper plan or idea in their speeches to solve this issue. Moreover since the time of signing of the Assam Accord, the people of Assam have been demanding the proper implementation of clause 6 of the Assam Accord, but even after more than 30 years the same clause has just remained as a statement in the Assam Accord with no practical implementation of it. Be it the ruling party or the opposition party, most of the leaders in their speeches or work culture have hardly structured a proper planning of implementing the same, rather are more oriented towards delaying the same. Apart from this, other dilemmas and issues of Assam like unemployment, problem of floods, price hike etc have all been sidelined very tactically by most of the political leaders as they find issues more important than all these to incorporate in their election based speeches.

In today’s contemporary politics of India including Assam politics, leaders are more oriented towards delivering election speeches that are based on sarcasm, humour, some unjustified versions and statements, inappropriate or unnecessary activities and most importantly the tendency to defame each other in every way possible. In an average of 40 minutes to 1 hour speeches delivered by leaders, a majority portion of it is dedicated to stuffs that can never come in handy for the people or the constituency as a whole. Thus when we speak of maintaining healthy democracy, the election speeches delivered by the leaders come forth as a big barrier in front of it. As a result of which, important issues, problems, people’s wishes and desires are most of the time never addressed by the leaders.

In fact, coming back to the state of Assam, most of the areas or the constituencies that fall under the capital city of Guwahati, too have some of the crucial issues that are seldom addressed by the respective representatives of those constituencies. Issues like scarcity of water in households, the problem of flash floods, lack of proper infrastructure in terms of street lights, issue of landslides and water logging, etc. have always troubled most of the concerned dwellers year after year. But even then, unfortunately these issues have either been just mentioned by the political leaders in their speeches or ignored most of the time much to the disappointment of the people.

Therefore the need of the hour is a change in the structure or the content of the speeches delivered by the leaders that can benefit the voters. The election speeches of the leaders must be based on research and that research should be used to deliver to the greater audience an account of the things that were previously done and the things that would be done by the leaders in the upcoming years. The palpable fact is that each and every thing that is promised by a leader may not get completed in a period of five years, hence while stating anything in the election speeches, the leaders should at least properly calculate or analyse the viability of the proposed things to be done in a period of five years. Moreover, if a thing promised cannot be completed a period of five years, then at least the basic foundation of it must be laid down so that in the next term the same thing can be completed. However if in the next term a different leader wins the elections, then instead of doing unnecessary criticism, the new political leader must carry the work forward from the point where the previous leader left.

Therefore if these changes can be brought about by a leader while approaching the crowd or while delivering the speeches, then not only would he become a talking point amongst the crowd but it would also mean a step towards strengthening Indian democracy.

Bishaldeep Kakati