[dropcap]B[/dropcap]y the time you read this the 11,70000 odd voters in Nagaland will become a part of the biggest democratic electoral exercise in the world as they elect one candidate to the sole Lok Sabha seat from amongst three contestants. Along with Nagaland ,polling is being conducted in the Outer Manipur Parliamentary Constituency, where ten contestants,are competing for one of the two Lok Sabha seats in the state which goes to polls today. In Arucnachal Pradesh ,as many as eleven candidates are contesting the two seats and in Meghalaya ten candidates, will vie for the two seats in the state.
Overall , the fate of thirty four candidates will be cast for 6 out of a total 543 parliamentary constituencies in the country by over 44 lakh electorate in the four states going to polls.These numbers are a drop in the ocean compared to the staggering total of 81.45 million voters who will exercise their franchise to elect 543 representatives to the Lok Sabha from amongst thousands of contestants in the month ahead. To that end, ‘may the best man win’.
On the eve of such an event, one cannot but wonder what the images in the minds of the candidates are ? They must secretly wish they could read the mind of the voter, even if they are by the millions. There will be those, who may sit up all might, perhaps, rewinding strong and awkward moments of their campaigns.
Suddenly the‘singular’ attains the power of an ‘atom bomb’ coupled with the agonizing charm of an unrequited love, atleast till the time the results are declared. That ‘nano’ moment before the voter presses the button is when he/she has the power to exercise and usher in change. But do we have such a sacred relationship with our might and right? This is that one instance when’ might is truly right’.Think about it when you cast that sacred secret ballot.
For the electorate in Nagaland the issues put forth by the political parties, are not new. The one dominating and echoing refrain, of the Naga National Party led DAN alliance and the Congress, other than a few weak attempts by the latter to rope in the dead horse of ‘corruption’ (forgetting the major scams and corruption scandals by its own leaders at the centre) has been the Naga political issue, and who will solve it. Both have been engaging in slamming matches and subjecting themselves to an Alchemist’s test on the issue. Viewed from the outside the surmise itself is misleading.
When the ‘political issue’ is likened to a puzzle to be ‘solved’ all the pieces must be there. Political parties per se cannot ‘solve’ the Naga political issue. Without the pieces to the puzzle the picture will never be complete. And in this long drawn out battle the ‘pieces’ have been missing. The pieces first need to be identified, studied and carefully brought to the table. Are the political parties willing to do that? The fear is, for all of the argument of the ‘unique identity’ of the Nagas, there is the tiny word ‘ego’ which has been weighing the solutions down. And when the ego is involved, it does what it does best making it hard to reconcile differences and admit weaknesses and mistakes. Still, having said that the recently signed agreement between the Naga Political Groups leading to the ‘Lenten Agreement’ ushers in a ray of hope. The hope being that ,perhaps, the baggage of the ego is shedding weight. More exercises in the right spirit will certainly lead to more enlightenment. They say for a medicine to work well on a festering wound it needs to be exposed to string sunlight. For the past decades since the first cease fire in 1964, we have been unable to do exactly that.
So much so, that with each decade the ‘unsolved’ issue is spilling out of the box and attracting a lot more debris than the centre can hold. Debris in the form of factions, fratricidal killings, illegal taxations, corruption, unemployment, alcoholism, drug addiction, tribalism, school and college drop outs and the ever widening gap between the haves and the have nots.
These issues than tend to develop their own trajectories.
A generation of young people who with each passing decade are questioning the ‘unique history’ they are inheriting and for which they have more questions than they can find answers. The immediate answers for them lie in being able to hold their heads high with sound education and corresponding jobs. To till the land and live with the sweat of their brow in a system which is ‘unique’. A system which not so long ago was in practice in our villages when the welfare of the public and not of the individual ruled. A democracy, bereft of nepotism and muscle or money power. An education which will arm the young to face the challenges of the world not one where they are led to purchase fake qualification certificates or attend schools without teachers and text books and for some the added bonus of being without a school building.
As pessimistic as these thoughts might sound there still is space for hope for things to change, to get better.
And in a strange way the elections themselves despite being such a fixture of the nature of democracy ushersthe hope of change. This is both metaphorically and realistically speaking. The electorate of the Noksen (ST) assembly constituency during the bye election in September 4, 2013, were the first in the country to use the Voter Verifiable Audit Rail Syatem (VVPAT) paper trail of voters with electronic voting machines (EVM) after the government amended the Conduct of Election Rules 1961, allowing the Election Comission to do so. The paper trail of votes was introduced in the wake of demands by various parties and leaders like L.K Advani and J. Jayalalitha seeking a system to clear doubts of voters of EVMs . The new system will ensure of the vote cast by the voter has gone to the candidate of his choice. However the system is still on trail and is only being selectively used. But the electorate of Nagaland and Assam will be the first two states in the country to use plastic EPIC . In Nagaland a total of 11, 20, 888 EPIC has been issued till date while distribution was still on till before the last day of the polling date.The remaining 13,000 odd could not be furnished their cards as their photos were not made available.
Then again a total of 2059 Eletronic Voting Machines in use will be armed with the None Of The Above Above (NOTA) facility. It has been clarified that despite NOTA getting the most number of votes, since it is not a candidate, the official party candidate with the highest number of votes will be declared elected.
NOTA is the underlying factor offsetting the power of the singular voter and his vote. The mark of real democracy.
