Sense & Insensibility
Musing on the ensuing election
In the rural Bengal, when high tide comes in rivers, boatmen get up from their sleep, start to holler on top of their voice at one another, pull up the anchor, untie their boats and begin to row with all their might to reach the destination. No more snoozing in a low tide. It's time for work. Row, row, row. Come election time and you see similar activities ensuing in various political camps across the country. Come election time you see professional politicians and seasonal supporters dusting their campaign attire and polishing their campaign boots.
Yes, there is the conspicuous smell of election in the air of Golden Bengal at the moment and politicians have begun to smell it, sniff it rather, with their sharp and sensitive noses. The smile is coming back on their faces. Khandaker Selwar is fully awake now. He does not look sleepy anymore. And last time he was on camera he had a clean kurta on. Good for him and his supporters. From various corners and cracks of Golden Bengal, others are also beginning to emerge, looking frequently over their shoulders. No. Thank God, no olive colour vehicle around…
With the hint of election, politicians are pulling up the anchor and looking forward to hitting the campaign trail the moment ban on political activities and emergency will be lifted. Politics brings forth such flurry of activities in the quiet countryside. It turns out to be the biggest carnival every five years, and a time to delve in brawls and gunfights with your opponents.
Election is the time when big money, in terms of crores, flies in the air in towns and sleepy villages of this poor country, where more than fifty percent of the people live below the poverty line, with the rest being in no better shape. Full stomach or half stomach; young men or women, old or adolescent, they all remain fully involved in the seasonal game forgetting their individual profession. Fishermen leave their fishing nets behind; farmers forget to water the seedbeds; milkmen forget to milk their cows and teachers do not attend primary schools. Why? Because unlimited amount of money, in cash, comes in the darkness of night.
Come election time people get infected by the electioneering malady, like the seasonal flu. It gets bad to worse as the polling date begins to draw nearer. Friends take up arms against childhood friends. Students throw stones at their own teachers. Wives connive against their husbands. Everything goes during election. You can crack open the skull of the workers of another political party and the thanawallas will not entertain any complaint. It's election time baba, forget it. Murders and breaking of limbs are only part of election. What do you expect…a peaceful congregation like you see in Eid jamaat?
Come election time and printing presswallas and graphic designers begin to polish their machines and computers. They sit in the front room to welcome any stranger, lest he or she turns out to be a mighty minister within three months. Known political leaders will come to them with horrendous looking photographs and ask the graphics expert to make them look handsome. Good Lord! Then the printing presswalla will have to print hundreds of posters from that photograph. The presswalla will get a 20 percent down payment to do the job and the rest to be given after delivery. He will never get the money.
But will it be the same this year? Shall we see jet black complexioned black- money holders going to the rural areas in large jeeps spreading dust on their ancestors faces to "beg" for their votes? That's begging up front but "threat" once the camera is gone. Will known smugglers go again to the rural areas wearing snow-white pajama and kurta to hide the blackness of their souls to beg for votes? Will drunks, bank defaulters, liars, grave diggers and women repressors in the cities and towns knock on your door begging for your votes?
There is a likelihood that things will not be the same this year. Things must not be the same, if we believe in upholding the spirit of democracy and the sanctity of the democratic institutions. Only lip service will not do, we have to ensure, each one of us, and not only the EC or ACC, that such lowly creatures never show the audacity of defiling the sacred precinct of politics and parliament. If we haven't learned our lesson yet, we never will.
Shahnoor Wahid is Senior Assistant Editor of The Daily Star.
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