Why is every election a warning bell?

Why is every election a warning bell?

Has democracy failed in India?
Put that bluntly,
the answer has to be `No'.
Anarchical sure, but our democracy is still functioning. The problem is that it has developed a dangerously brittle, touch-and-go character. It has become, shall we say, failable.

The usual "estates" that sustain democracy have failed. The Executive was the first to collapse with corruption and criminality overrunning it. Parliament has become negative with parties mistaking House stalling for patriotism. The traditional First Estate is God. Even that has lost out with god-men taking the place of gods. The Fourth Estate of course has lost its credibility.

If the system still remains functional, it is because of the judiciary which is by and large intact and the Election Commission which guards its independence. The power and dependability of both were on show last week.

Consider Shibu Soren, a thug who should never have been in politics let alone in the Central Cabinet. What a commentary on Indian democracy that one of the cleanest prime ministers we have ever had is forced to take into the Cabinet this man who killed his own personal secretary; Mohammed Taslimuddin accused of murder, robbery and extortion; Ali Ashraf Fatmi charged with kidnapping and extortion; Jaiprakash Narain Yadav, of fake duplicate certificate fame; and Laloo Prasad himself.

The judiciary's best gift to democracy was the ruling that "sanction" was not necessary to prosecute public servants for corruption. For too long crooked politicians and civil servants have taken refuge under the sanction provision. Their excuse was that they were carrying out public duties and should not be obstructed in such duties.

Which of course is nonsense.

The Supreme Court has said once and for all that taking bribes is not duty. The Election Commission made its own contribution to democracy by handling this week's critical byelections with exemplary efficiency. It could not of course control the results.

Eventually deserving candidates won, but that was small consolation. In Karimnagar the Telangana flag flew high giving Chandrasekhar Rao a two-lakh plus margin. In Chamundeshwari and Thiruvambadi cliff-hanger drama ruled the roost, with the victor's margin at 257 and 246.

The future turns dark when we see how successfully Karnataka politicians ensured that every single vote was cast along caste lines. The wafer-thin difference the loser achieved through reckless caste play suggests that the same caste politics will be used to dominate elections from now on. In Kerala the tradition of incumbent governments ignoring people's interests continues. The LDF now in power is so obsessed with internal one upmanship that governance goes by default. Neither it nor the Congress-led UDF has any issue to debate. So everyone resorted to Christian-Muslim communalism with abandon.

Clearly, casteism is rapidly becoming the foundation of our electoral democracy. The seed of casteism was sown when we enshrined linguism with the linguistic reorganisation of states. Linguistic-regional bigotry and religious-caste bigotry are two sides of the same coin. Hence the link between Chandrasekhar Rao's Telangana party and Deve Gowda's JD(S). If our voters are taught to vote only by dialect, religion, caste and subcaste, then finally the devil will have taken over our democracy.

The failable will then finally fail.