NEW DELHI, 2 May 2004 — India’s first general election took some six months to complete. That was because ballot boxes had to be sent by bullock cart to half the country. The 14th general election is also taking nearly as much time. This time the reason is crime. The Election Commission is taking every precaution within the ambit of bureaucratic imagination to prevent criminals from rigging votes. India shines in the electronic machines that have replaced paper ballots; India darkens on the face of politicians and their thugs who seek their way to power through theft of democracy.
On Friday the Patna High Court directed the Election Commission to prevent those in custody and absconders from jail from contesting elections. The argument was simple and persuasive: If such people were not eligible to vote, why should they be eligible to contest? I could name a few gentlemen from Bihar who were actually elected while in jail, and then spent their term in jail rather than in the State Assembly — because they never got out of prison. There is the famous Kali Pandey of Gopalganj, who is contesting this time as well and is not doing too badly either. Rajen Tiwari of Motihari; Munna Shukla of Vaishali; Suraj Singh Bhan of Mokameh... Perhaps the limit was reached when Bihar’s de facto ruler, Laloo Prasad Yadav rushed to Siwan to plead with a certain Mohammad Shahabuddin to become his party’s candidate. Shahabuddin sulked a bit, but agreed. Why did he sulk? Because he was in jail. Why was he in jail? Because Laloo’s government had charged him with a minor matter like murder. Where is Shahabuddin now? Still in jail, officially. So did Laloo go to a prison cell to meet his candidate? No. He went to hospital, where the accused was resting because of some feigned ailment. Where can you find Shahabuddin now? Talking to television cameras in a very sober and even dignified manner. How? Who knows? I’ve lost the plot.
And yet there is a problem with the Patna High Court directive. It falls apart on a basic principle: You are not guilty until proved to be guilty. An accused must have the same democratic rights as any other citizen. It is the Voltaire principle: I do not approve of what you say but will defend to the death your right to say it. Any compromise with such a basic right would vitiate Indian democracy. It would be an invitation to governments to string up their opponents on false charges and lock them up during an election season.
The courts are trying their best to find a way out of a horrendously complicated maze, strewn with paradoxes, and have hit another dead end. The disease lies in the nature of power in our country, and the problem is larger than Bihar.
The Taj Residency in Lucknow has a notice on its front porch, in elegant capital letters: ARMS AND AMMUNITION PROHIBITED. Lucknow is not a frontier town of the Wild West and the Taj is not the Last Chance Saloon. But the need for such a sign tells its own story. Lucknow, once the capital of the Awadh nawabs, is today the constituency of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, from where he will win without too much fuss on May 5. India shining, etc.
74 km from Hazratganj in the heart of Lucknow, northwest along the Grand Trunk Road, is Sitapur, a typical small town of central Uttar Pradesh. It was named after a woman called Sita who committed sati; there is a temple that commemorates the event. Life clings to the highway; and although empty space rolls away on either side of the shops and houses toward far horizons, bustle and commerce pressure the middle. Overnight showers have left pools and dark slime on the edges of the road. Families walk gingerly through the filth in search of rickshaws; women talk through their burqas to their children as they head for the shops; young men loll in front of shops, filling time doing nothing. A flurry of motorbikes races past, mounted with orange-and-blue flags. They are volunteers campaigning for a rather presentable candidate of a party called Apna Dal. His name is Om Prakash Srivastava Bablu.
Some of his opponents have class, others have clout. The Congress is represented by Raja Mohammad Amir Mohammad Khan, scion of the Mahmudpur princely family, descendant of the Raja of Mahmudabad who, along with Congress leaders like Mohammad Ali Jinnah and Motilal Nehru created the famous Lucknow Pact to solve problems between Hindus and Muslims in 1916. But the past is no indication of the future. When we pass a sparse Congress roadside meeting we hear a rather derisive cackle and a comment: “The Congress must be canvassing for the next election. They have no chance in this one!”
The victor in 1999 was from Mayawati’s BSP, Rajesh Verma, and he is in the race. The Socialist Party has put up Mukhtar Anees and the BJP Janardhan Mishra. The theories are being debated at every dhaba — if X squeezes out Y then Z will win. No one thinks Bablu will win. But no one underestimates him either. Bablu’s campaign manager is Neeraj Jain, a students’ leader from Lucknow University who has mobilized young men from the campus. The students can fill their motorbike tanks any time they want, and there is a handsome daily expense account. They are happy to associate with Bablu Bhaiya.
Bablu is about 41 years old. When a student at Lucknow University, he started with petty crime — a bit of harassing girls, a little protection. But if you had to measure his career path in terms of upward mobility, then he had met the highest standards of the private sector: He was at the top by the time he was 30. While in college, he decided that success lay through the political class. He became the henchman of a Congress leader in Sitapur, and, on orders, committed his first murder. By this time he had established contacts in eastern Uttar Pradesh, recruiting ground for gangs in Bombay. When murder increased the heat around him, he slipped away to Bombay. Give him credit for choosing the best employers. He became part of Dawood Ibrahim’s operations, and was soon seen in the company of fake swamis who were close to the highest in Delhi in the early 1990s.
Along with Chota Rajan he broke with Dawood after the Bombay bomb blasts in 1993, and shifted to Singapore — where he was arrested in 1995 and extradited. There are suggestions that he preferred arrest to freedom, because he was safer in jail from Dawood’s hitmen. But that is only a supposition.
He had 48 cases against him when he entered an Indian jail; today he has only eight. Witnesses have either turned hostile or, preferably, died in the 40 other cases. He was kept in Bareilly jail because that was once out of the mobile phone system’s coverage area. Progress has now reached Bareilly, and the mobile telephone is Bablu’s link with his networks. Life is always a trifle difficult in jail, but not impossible: Scotch and cigarettes provide reasonable comfort.
Bablu is still in custody, but that does not diminish the enthusiasm of his campaign team. The danger is not from the presence of Bablu in Sitapur. The danger is from the fact that hundreds of young men are ready to fly a flag in his name. The young are cynical; they laugh and call him a role model. Bablu was a student like them; today he can pay them. They are not aware of another definition of success.
The 14th general election has come; very soon it will become history. Someone will be relieved on May 13 when the results are known; someone will grieve. Joy will last a day, grief a little longer. Success will be rewarded; failure will strive to survive and fight another day. He who spurts ahead in the great heartland along the Ganga and Jamuna rivers will rule Delhi. In feudal days, you first took Delhi and then chased the heartland; in a democratic era you chase the heartland in order to reach Delhi. There will be surprises in this election from Uttar Pradesh; maybe one that startles some and shocks others. Din, elation, despair: They are all part of the election game. We have seen them before, and know that they are not permanent.
But the young men on those motorbikes will remain in Lucknow and Sitapur, crawling around puddles and slime when the drama is dead, and even heads of crime syndicates have other things to do. If they have to wait for another general election to find someone who needs, there will be half a dozen Bablus contesting the 15th general election of India from Sitapur.
