Poll time, show-time

Democracy is not hullabaloo or a Christmas Eve. Nor is it a licence for hawking parochialism and sectarianism. The system demands a peaceful, thoughtful response to the issues tormenting people. It is a clash of ideas and ideologies. Elections give people an opportunity to choose a particular party or a combination for governance on what they have done or had promised to do.

But the dust which most political parties have raised has covered up the real issues, making the ballot box exercise a farce. The whole thing looks like a nautanki, a gaudy display of meaningless rhetoric by leaders of different hues.

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I imagined that the BJP would be more confident having completed the full stint of five years plus. But the party looks nervous and edgy. It is touching all points, not knowing what may sell. If it is so sure of its performance as it claims, why have the rath yatra? Even if there is no communal riot, as happened in the wake of L.K. Advani's earlier yatra, the minorities will be hell scared till it ends.

Advani will get free publicity daily, particularly by the government-owned Doordarshan showing where his yatra was. What a waste it is of taxpayers' money? The Home Ministry has also taken upon itself the responsibility of security which the Deputy Prime Minister is entitled to. An official plane would have been cheaper. I am surprised that the Election Commission has stopped the use of plane but found no fault with the yatra which would cost the government a packet. The comment by one former CEC was that if he had been there, he would not have allowed "such nonsense". Advani compared the last yatra which caused hundreds of lives with Mahatma Gandhi's Dandi salt march. After completing the current one he would equate it to the entire national struggle for independence which RSS chief Golwalker had opposed. I hope Advani has no other yatra in view because he is running out of instances for comparison.

Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee says that their agenda is development. But his party's chief Venkaiah Naidu says that the BJP has not given up the demand for raising the temple at the site where the Babri Masjid stood before demolition.

Till a few days ago, the BJP talked of two options: the court's decision or the agreement between Hindus and Muslims. Suddenly, a third option has been added -- an act by Parliament. It should not come as a surprise because the RSS has been suggesting this for some time now. It appears that the idea has come after the BJP has convinced itself on the basis of several surveys that the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) will get a majority in the Lok Sabha.

When it comes to suggestions, Advani's is the most prolific. The latest is that he wants the people to vote either for the BJP or the Congress. He argues that the votes given to a regional party will be a waste. The regional parties he runs down are not a tiny set-up that works from some back room. The Telugu Desam, for example, is a regional party in Andhra Pradesh which is bigger than Germany. The point to ponder over is why the BJP is advocating the two-party system. Were this to happen, the BJP believes, it would get power at the Centre automatically when the Congress would lose. Strange the BJP, which ran the combination of 24 regional parties so well, should ask for a two-party system. I do not think that the elimination of regional parties is in the interest of Indian polity. They represent local aspirations. In the absence of decentralisation of power, there is no other way for the state parties to have their say at New Delhi. A diverse society of ours is dependent on consensus. Jawaharlal Nehru's first government after independence had Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, a staunch Hindu Mahasabha leader, as a minister. The different suggestions, however, underline that the BJP is trying to rub off its stigma of being anti-Muslim. It wants to give the impression that it is moving from right to center, from saffronisation to something more acceptable to Muslims. This also explains why every third day a Muslim leader of sorts is presented from the BJP stage as if the Muslims are joining the party en masse.

The BJP's nervousness is understandable because the Muslims constitute 13 per cent of the electorate. But the touchstone for the community is Gujarat. If the party were to dismiss Narendra Modi from chief ministership for the massacre in the state, the Muslims might reverse their opinion abut the BJP. It was, however, heartening to read Advani's observation that good relations between India and Pakistan had a favourable effect on the equation between the Hindus and the Muslims in India. This is true because the anti-Pakistan feeling becomes the anti-Muslim feeling. But it has taken Advani almost all his life to appreciate this basic point. In Pakistan also, the anti-Indian bias visits on the Hindus. But their number is so small that it matters little at the polls. However, General Pervez Musharraf has amended the constitution to convert the separate electorate into a joint one.

Conditions in India will improve when the states become viable. Just as the future of any political party is dependent on UP and Bihar -- the two have some 120 seats in the Lok Sabha -- India's tomorrow is dependent on the progress the two states make. From that point of view also, the regional parties are important.

It is a pity that Vajpayee did not convene the meeting of National Integration Council even once during his tenure. Nehru had founded it in the fifties to enable all political parties to rise above their petty loyalty to ponder on the country's problems relating to separatism and integration. Vajpayee has been reluctant to even call the meetings of National Development Council which discusses all-India economic policies against the background of what the Planning Commission does. He has been closeting more with the Sangh parivar than the chief ministers.

This reflects a particular way of thinking -- esoteric, narrow and biased. If all that the BJP is saying and suggesting comes true, the party may be able to get some credibility among the secular forces. But one fears that the BJP may go back on all its promises after the polls. The RSS has not changed. And all may turn into a mere tamasha.

Kuldip Nayar is an eminent Indian columnist.