| Price of Democracy
The run-up to the elections to the 8th Manipur State Legislative Assembly,
scheduled about a month from now, does not seem to promise any change in the
much reviled political culture of the state. That is, if the trends already
visible are any indications. Everyday, there are press releases and statements
from sundry MLA aspirants declaring their migration from one party or the other
to another claiming to have brought with them sizeable number of supporters.
If this is what is happening at just the faint, and we understand intoxicating,
odor of power, we can quite imagine what would happen after the elections are
over, and those who would actually warm the 60 seats in our Assembly for
hopefully the next five years, become known.
Everybody's guess, on the issue
cannot be much different, and we know what that is. Much as we hope that the
public ire that resulted in the razing of the Assembly building, the attacks on
politicians, the lives that were lost, were not for nothing, we doubt if these
will remain as the beacon to guide political behavior in the state.
Why just the politicians, we doubt also if the people by and large would have
changed enough to resist political waywardness. We wonder if the hypnotizing
power of the rupee notes of the higher denominations will make them forget the
sacrifices made by young men and women during the June 18 protests.
We wonder if all the anger that led to the unprecedented destruction spree during the summer
of 2001, will not be soothed, by the green stationary with the image of the
Father of the nation, the half-naked fakir, the man in loincloths, the saint
who has come to symbolize man's innate goodness and honesty. We hope not,
but we doubt if the will of the ordinary voter will be able to withstand the
temptation.
The profound question before all of us today is, how do we make one and all
understand that the value of the ballot cannot be measured in terms of money.
That there should never be a price tag on democracy's most powerful arsenal. The
failure of the enlightened section of the society, more specifically the
intelligentsia and the academicia, to have this message of the pricelessness of
every single ballot, internalized and embedded in the very foundation of our
society, speaks not only of their failure, but of the unpreparedness of our
people for a democratic polity.
A dark thought really, for the alternative to a
representative government cannot be anything else but a dictatorship, benevolent
or otherwise. A dark thought again because the rejection of democracy in its true
spirit, is also an index of the weakness of the people's confidence in
themselves and their inability to take basic decisions. The state has heard so
much talks, as also rhetoric, about freedom and liberty, but let us ask
ourselves what freedom can be more fundamental than the freedom to choose how
one wants one's life to be governed.
There can be no doubt that the state is in
a bad shape, but this does not mean that the people should turn cynics or
surrender to what is seen to be an overwhelming predicament. Let all of us
actively participate in the political process that defines the shape of our
future and under no circumstance allow a price tag to be attached to our hearts
and souls.
(Courtesy: The Imphal Free Press) |
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