The economics of low voter turnouts

The valley at the crossroad is steering in a politicaldirection that is unknown and uncertain. General Elections were held but haveleft behind a sullen and resentful public. Ahead of Assembly polls, allpolitical parties are keen to exhibit an aversion to any alliance that willcompromise state’s residual autonomy, camping up their rhetoric of securing theaspirations of people and taking recourse to clichéd public posturing. In allthis a peek into deeper recesses of our leadership tells us what went wrongthat disillusioned a deeply entrenched population to stay away from the polls.Not much before leaders who commanded near devotional respect among peoplebartered state’s overarching special status at their own hands by entering intocompromises seeking ascent in their politics. The enduring bitterness amongpeople has poured into an open war of ideology and today their disillusionmentwith the electoral politics is not surprising as it has been gradually seepingthrough and now becoming a challenge for every government. Earlier the Kashmirleadership that once incubated an association cradling a popular publicsentiment of the referendum was turned around terming it as “wandering in thewilderness” after the people blindly followed them and jumped en-masse into thefire of hostile circumstances. The dissolution of the Plebiscite Front andresurrecting of the National Conference as a separate political party, the 1976Ordinance of Land Grants that allowed non-state subjects to buy estates onlease, one of the first homegrown assaults on Article 35 A, striking down oftariff barriers with India, opening doors of bureaucracy to non-state subjectsand extending the authority of Supreme Court to adjudicate on matters.Demolishing the Wazir-e-Azam and Sadr-e-Riyasat. Politics has been a crueljoke. The modern political history of Kashmir is blotted with rigged Assemblyelections of 1987, the confluence of criminals in politics in 1996 backed bythe state, the unexpected and shocking alliance of PDP with the BJP in 2014.This resulted in huge public dissatisfaction and the growing political vacuum.The political rupture of years led masses away from voting, but the burden ofit cannot be simply shifted to New Delhi alone. Throughout these years the onlyconstant has been the anger in people that has intensified. While the localleadership was wary of the growing outcry, the leftover politically consciouspeople were robbed of the faith in democracy. It manifests that Delhi’sapproach is only secondary as it wouldn’t have been possible without the tacitsupport of our own leadership. The democratic process of the state has faced aparalysis due to consistent low voter turn out and an imbalance betweenregional aspirations and not electing the right leadership. Unfortunately,Valley’s political elite have reduced their political agenda to fighting theSaffron brigade alone but the question remains what have they contributed sofar?. Joblessness continues to be a thorn, even as overall growth has sloweddown, nepotism and red-tapism are rampant, the development quotient is notencouraging, the primary sectors of education and health are dilapidated,tourism inconsistent and the poverty index is sharply falling. Also when thepeople of the country have spoken their mandate, can our split Kashmirleadership afford to isolate regions of Jammu and Ladakh that haveoverwhelmingly voted their choice?

Tail Piece: Our electoral politics fails to realize theempowering possibilities of democratic life. We need to recreate the popularownership of electoral politics that we once had. Otherwise, the likely lowturnout will be accepted as routine, and Kashmir will increasingly become anoligarchy. While there are many narratives attributable to this politicaldecadence that led to a disillusioned populace, the role of our leaders remainsinescapable. If the mechanized and engineered ascent of our leaders is to befought, then voting decisively is the answer. For we cannot afford to be drivenby sentiments and the choice has to be fairly rational.

   

(The author is a Srinagar based practicing Advocate)

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