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Editorial
Elections & Diaspora
 The
diaspora’s interest in any election in Punjab is understandable and
this time too, a number of Punjabi-origin people canvassed in favor
of one party or the other. It needs some degree of engagement,
considerable money, time and energy for anyone to go visiting
Punjab to seek votes for the Akali Dal-BJP or Congress or anyone else.
Having said this
much, it is a matter of great sadness that the diaspora members fail
to bring any notion of an evolved democracy to the debate in
Punjab. Their statements merely reflect the same pattern of
canvassing that the local politico is good at.
One would expect
that citizens living in evolved democracies like the United States,
Canada or Britain would make interventions in the democratic debate
that are more politically nuanced. At a time when the Indian
politician is interested in extremely reductive forms of political
debate, it is a pity that the leading lights of diaspora also ask
the voters to either punish the Congress for being anti-Sikh or vote
for it to ensure another Prime Ministerial term for a Sikh.
The sadness is all
the more acute because most diaspora members who indulge in such
campaigning are the ones who are definitely achievers in many ways
in better democracies. Their inspiration for a role in the politics
back home in Punjab should be born out of a desire to bring better
norms of debate and evolved notions of democracy at a time of
elections than merely to be seen as shouting hoarse for the Badals
or the Congress.
Many well to do
sons and daughters of Punjab want to contribute significantly
towards the development of their villages, but there is virtually no
structured policy for that. If the diaspora had raised this demand,
it would have done better service.
It is possible to
find out at any time the number of children in any particular class
in any school in any western democracy, just as it is possible to
know the student-teacher ratios. If only the diaspora would bring
pressure on Indian politicians, never tired of talking loudly about
the IT sector development, to ask why is it such a difficult
exercise to find out the number of children and teachers in
government-run schools in
Punjab?
Transparency brings
shame also. So the Indian politician will always shun transparency.
The diaspora would help if it makes a consolidated effort to make
all candidates appealing to it for help, election funds and moral
support to issue a white paper on the school drop out rate,
malnutrition figures, calorie intake, teacher to student ratio,
hospital parameters in their area, etc. Also, their stand on major
issues and where have they articulated it.
Can members of the
diaspora, ever so awake about the way democracy works in their
adopted countries, imagine that we have parliamentarians in
Punjab who have not ever opened their mouth in the House? Will such
an MP even dare to go to the people again to ask for votes? Is it
not true that it is a story repeated time and again in
Punjab?
What then is one to
say of the parties that select such candidates? Is it not time to
intervene even before the elections, or after, to educate people
about how the selection of a candidate also has to be a democratic
exercise. What will you say about a party that officially announces
that the Lok Sabha ticket from a particular constituency will be
given to such and such family? And then a powerful member of the
family unwraps the riddle so tantalizingly by saying that one of the
women of the family will contest the seat, but does not make clear
which one!
Would the
diaspora have allowed such a thing in the west? Surely, it must not
allow it to happen in its own homeland.
13 May 2009
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