What's in it for India's 'common man'?

My pain, a voiceless song/My being a nameless mote/If only my pain could speak/I'd know who I am/

These words of Fiaz Ahmad Fiaz, the late progressive Urdu poet, describe the feelings of an ordinary Indian voter, hailed by some political parties as aam admi (the common man).

This is the 15th Lok Sabha that he and the 700 million other voters will elect. Yet he feels helpless, because the elected do not attend to his problems of development and progress. He wants to be heard in the medley of songs, slogans and shouting that makes every poll campaign noisier and costlier than before, but does not even discuss what ails him.

The voter is confused because he increasingly sees leaders shrinking in stature, parties losing the plot and the people losing the idea of India. There are more hate speeches than ever before. And no party has any compunction about handing out tickets to criminals and the corrupt.

Election to the Lok Sabha is at stake, but in fact there are 26 elections - as many as there are states in the country. Everywhere there is a different agenda, a different leadership and a different caste combination to attract the voters. The main all-India party, the Congress, which has led the United Progressive Alliance (UPA), has weakened substantially.

Its stalwarts, such as Sharad Pawar, Lalu Yadav and Ram Vilas Paswan, have joined hands among themselves, with their own regional parties which articulate local problems. The UPA has stayed as a shell, leaving top Congress leader Pranab Mukherjee to explain that they have left the Congress alliance, not the overall UPA, which rules the country.

Another all-India outfit, the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), has suffered the same fate. It too has lost its allies. Its combination, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), is weaker after the exit of the Telugu Desam in Andhra Pradesh and the Biju Janata Dal in Orissa.

The voter is used to either the Congress or the BJP forming the government. A third combination has ruled in the past, but has not lasted long. He would like to try a non-BJP and a non-Congress government. But he is not sure whether it can muster a majority in the Lok Sabha, 272 out of the 545-member house.

At the time of writing, it leads the other two. But if the past is any guide, the third front has depended on the support of the Congress or the BJP. Both of them have pulled out the rug from beneath the front's feet at their political convenience. A mid-term poll has followed.

But this holds good even if the Congress or the BJP forms the government. The two may not reach even the present strength - the Congress having 153 seats and the BJP 130. Both are hoping to get back members of their old alliances.

The predicament before the voter or, for that matter, the nation, is that in face of political uncertainty no clear-cut decision may be possible. Any prime minister wanting to keep his or her allies in tow may have to make compromises to accommodate them. In the midst of the global slowdown, certain steps need to be taken to direct the economy in a particular direction. They may be unpopular but they are necessary.

The polity is so fractured that nobody knows who the next prime minister will be. Top industrialists would like to see Manmohan Singh in the gaddi (throne) once again. This may come to pass, because leaders such as Lalu and Paswan, who have joined hands with Mulayam Singh of the Samajwadi Party, have announced that after "winning at the polls" they will support Manmohan Singh. Still this does not ensure his return. The Congress may itself drop him at the 11th hour for Rahul Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi's son.

Apart from Manmohan Singh, L.K. Advani, Sharad Pawar, Mulayam Singh, Mayawati, Jayalalithaa and Chandrababu Naidu are candidates for the prime ministership. The outcome depends on which party wins the most seats and who from among them can muster a majority in the Lok Sabha. At this time, it is impossible to pick a winner - you may as well flip of a coin.

The Muslim electorate, roughly 12 to 15 per cent, is still undecided. Although some Muslim parties have mushroomed, the community looks like voting for the non-BJP parties, selecting whichever one seems likely to win in a particular state. It has been observed in past elections that the Muslims back a leading candidate and then vote for him en masse. The party tag is not important, his secular credentials are.

The Congress is hoping to win back this community, once its vote bank. This expectation is the main reason why the party is going it alone in Bihar, where it broke off an alliance with Lalu, and in Uttar Pradesh with Mulayam Singh, who was going out of the way to rein in the party's exaggerated claims.

Whether jettisoning allies before the elections to give the party more room to manoeuvre will work in favour of Congress remains to be seen. Even if it does, the party will require substantial outside support to form a government.

In face of these uncertainties, the voter's real problems have been pushed to the background. His pain is writ large on his face. He is nameless, but his affliction has a name: poverty.

Kuldip Nayar is a former Indian high commissioner to the UK and a former Rajya Sabha member.