Behind the croupiers

Now that the country has famously settled for a jerry-built 274-seater majority to run the showbiz, we can hazard a question, regardless of ...

Now that the country has famously settled for a jerry-built 274-seater majority to run the showbiz, we can hazard a question, regardless of who is in charge: quot;Whose government is this, anyway?quot;

I didn8217;t vote this time. This is not a lonely statement. The quot;Iquot; is a variable that could accommodate any of the thousands of poll absentees who have earned a cursory statistical reference in post-poll assessments by TV channel analysts. Even this cursory reference is not in order because the corollary, the percentage of polling, is expressed in the conveniently elastic format of quot;55 to 70quot;. In this, the higher end verges on the exceptional and breaks into euphoria, while the actual national average rather coincides with the lower end.

There is wishful thinking, though not deliberate malice, in this computation. The existence of the poll-fatigued absentees, let alone their disturbing political behaviour, is not accounted for. Putting themselves at ease, both politicians and mediapersons seem to have taken it forgranted. This calls for some unpleasant muck-raking.

Not voting is no personal trivia. At times, things of crucial social significance first occur to you only as personal trivia things you do only on the sly, or little idiosyncrasies. At other times, you notice a certain trait or trend at a social level and yet fail to recognise its decisive role in creating a groundswell. In both cases, however, when personal trivia meet personal trivia, you detect hidden lines of force which, given a fillip, is likely to emerge as a meaningful political formation.

This doesn8217;t mean that the inarticulate faction out there is lurking in formation, ready to strike at what they regard as an ersatz democracy.

There is no need to dramatise things, but one great thing about the recent poll-gambling was that it drew our attention to the silent shadows behind the busy players and poker-faced electoral croupiers dealing out the cards.

This non-voting populace is a variegated lot 8212; ranging from nerds, dweebs, incurableindies and lager louts to Naxalites to whom things won8217;t make any difference.

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This is both good news and bad news. Good news, because their political diversity makes them unfit to be the winning side. Bad news, because the same diversity makes them, as a whole, unpredictably volatile in their political disposition. If we can forget the latter, we can forget anything.

At this point, even the desire for a non-hung Parliament ceases to be the hot button it purported to be, and all that talk about democracy is sheer McGuffin in the original Hitchcockian sense of that word a device that appears to be critical but, in fact, is only an excuse for the actual plot.Talking of McGuffin, the element of horror is not an improbability. The dumb and mute electoral realm, which we want to wish away, could be more than spoof. It could easily be the 8216;terror incognita8217; that is in store for us. The underlying logic is as simple as death.

Someone said that politics is the art of the possible and, in India, nothing couldhave driven this point home better than the recent election. In all probability, a philosophy of the impossible is the very thing that is common to all those who didn8217;t show up at the polling booth, and it is a philosophy that could turn out to be most dangerous politically. All the more reason why we should not be stampeded into concluding that our possibility8217; by default is a system with nearly half the populace out of it. We want them back, very badly back.

One final note. Not casting one8217;s vote is no sin. To think so would be quot;grody to the maxquot;. Sins, says ace humourist Ogden Nash, are of two types: sin by commission voting and sin by omission not voting. Which of these is more sinful is doomed to remain a moot point in Indian politics.