Chennai, April 15: How many of you agree with the statement that mostly it is the poor people of this country who decide who comes to power in their state as well as in the center? I very strongly feel so though I’ll reserve my final judgment till I see the results in these elections especially in Tamil Nadu.
And this should actually not come as a surprise to anyone since there are more than 700 million people who may be counted as being poor. That is like more than 60% of our population. And if you are poor, most political parties would work on the premise that your vote can be bought for prices ranging from 100 to 1000 rupees.
Consider this, in 2004 Lok Sabha elections the overall voting percentage for the country was 57% with Congress garnering just 26.5% of votes polled. In 2009 the overall voting percentage of the country was 59% with Congress taking 29% of the total votes polled. In absolute terms if there were a total of 100 eligible voters in our country then in 2004, Congress was the choice of 17 voters only and in 2009, 19 people voted for them. But this was more than enough for them because they managed to come to power on both occasions. If less than 20% people of this country were to decide who should form the govt isn’t it a travesty of democracy? In fact I’d spoken about this very issue in my blog post Why is Congress against compulsory voting?
Now come to Tamil Nadu elections of 2006. If you see the results of these elections you’ll find that on an average a candidate was assured of his or her victory if he or she managed to get just 60-70,000 votes with an average number of voters in any constituency being 200,000. Anything above this and you could be absolutely confident of winning. Out of this, lets assume that a candidate decided to buy 50,000 votes. The rest he or she may assume would as it is vote for him or her. Taking an average price per vote to be 500 the total money required by him or her would come to anything between 4-5 crores, including other miscellaneous expenses. And if you want to win more than half of 234 assembly seats the total amount required by the party for just this purpose would come to more than 600-700 crores. Or to be on the safer side let’s say 1000 crores. And that is the amount of money required which would more or less guarantee a major political party/alliance like the DMK-Congress or AIADMK+ the seat of power in the state.
And therefore, out of these two alliances which one do you feel has the resources to muster up this kind of cash? I say resources and not the will because in all likelihood both Jayalalitha and Karuna would do anything to reach their goal. In my opinion, the DMK-Congress alliance is more likely to have such large reserves of money. And no prizes for guessing from where this can come from. Off course, from the 2G scam among others.
And please guys, don’t be so surprised by my giving out the mathematics of it all. Votes have been bought and sold like never before. All TV channels are screaming about it. So much so that in Tamil Nadu alone the Election Commission has seized more than 50 crores of money in cash apart from liquor, which is really heartwarming. What is not so heartwarming is that no candidate has been disqualified for this ‘crime’. Also, if you see the overall mathematics of it all this is just a small percentage of the actual amount which may have been used in these elections. In fact Jayalalitha has claimed that DMK has spent something like 5000 crores for this purpose. May be that is an exaggeration but even if DMK has spent one third of this amount it’d imply that they’ve gone out of their way to ensure their victory. That is to say that on an average they’ve bought 80-90,000 votes in more than half of the constituencies. And therefore, they might come back to power all over again in Tamil Nadu. But that could very well change with a high voter turnout which in this case was nearly 80%, highest since independence.
If you really ask me the higher voter turnout could imply two things. One is that the middle class and above have got so disenchanted with corruption that they came out to vote en masse like never before. You may call it the Anna Hazare effect or whatever but this is surely a very strong possibility.
The second is that DMK has bought so many voters that it has resulted in a higher turnout. Apart from this I seriously cannot think of a reason why people of Tamil Nadu have suddenly decided to come out in such large numbers. And no, I do not believe that people of Tamil Nadu have all of a sudden rediscovered their love for DMK like never before so as to come out in such large numbers without any coercion. Please note that in 2006 Tamil Nadu had 70% people exercising their franchise as compared to nearly 80% this time around.
And therefore, here’s my prediction. If DMK wins it’ll be the power of money which will ensure their victory and if it is AIADMK who wins it may signal an awakening of our not so poor people who now want to determine their own and their state’s destiny. This is not to say that Jayalalitha is absolutely above board. She may not be but given the kind of corruption cases in which DMK has been embroiled in recently she seems like a saint in comparison. Having said this, I’d like to go one step forward and say that in view of the voter turnout it is quite likely that AIADMK will romp home to victory quite easily. Actually, it’s my conscience which refuses to believe that such corrupt people can come back to power just by buying votes. I also do not believe that any party has the organizational capability to reach out and bribe 80,000 or so voters in more than 130 odd constituencies out of 234.
In case my gut feeling is correct, and it may well be, it’ll prove that no party in this country can ever have the power to take us all for granted. It’ll have to work really hard for the benefit of it’s citizens so as to gain their confidence and come to power. This election may also show to the rest of the country that we can bring about a change if all of us fulfill our primary responsibility of exercising our franchise. And in all likelihood, this election will also prove to be the turning point in our history where citizens of this country may now begin to realize that people’s power can triumph over power of money. And I’d like to sign off with that belief while keeping my fingers crossed.