Anaylisis: Politicians out of touch... or out of their minds

That Indian politicians are increasingly out of touch with people has been self-evident for several years now.

The Gujarat elections have only provided more examples of the yawning gap between political rhetoric and ground realities.

Last week, Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani was addressing an election rally in Kutch. It was 3:00 in the afternoon, and the sun was blazing down on the gathering.

Less than 24 months earlier, the venue of the rally had been almost flattened by the great Kutch earthquake. Several people had lost their family members, their property, their livelihood in those calamitous few hours. The gathering expected Advani, whose family had migrated from Karachi to Kutch soon after partition, to focus on the quake rehabilitation programme.

Instead, Advani chose to launch another attack on Pakistan, on the Al Qaida and the threat of international terrorism. What did the poor migrant labourer at the rally have anything to do with Osama bin Laden? The sheer incongruity of the occasion was striking and deeply disturbing.

Is it any wonder then that even in a make or break election like Gujarat, politicians are being confronted with dwindling crowds?

Why should a drought-affected farmer in Banaskantha district walk for miles to attend a political rally when he is going to be lectured on how the ISI has penetrated the Indo-Bangla border, or on how the prime minister has told Washington that India will not tolerate American intervention in the region?

If the farmer still makes the journey, its either because political parties promise him a free ride or because the old-fashioned helicopter still remains an eternal source of attraction in several parts of the country. Indeed, whether it is Sonia Gandhi or Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the fact is that there is a growing disconnect between the leader and the led.

Ironically, while the so-called "mainstream" politicians have struggled to sustain any kind of rapport with the people, the real beneficiaries have been the political demagogues who are spreading their network with a mix of high emotion and theatrical gestures.

In this Gujarat election, the two biggest crowd-pullers have been Narendra Modi and Dr Praveen Togadia. Both have attempted to touch the baser instincts of the human mind, their shrill rhetoric a bit like a Hindi film potboiler laced with plenty of fight, drama and dialogue.

At a public meeting in Godhra, Togadia – the self-styled "international general secretary" of the VHP – launched a venomous attack on the minority community. For 60 minutes, what was meant to be a "socio-cultural" gathering was transformed into political theatre with Togadia as the central performer. The gathering was meant to offer condolences to the victims of Godhra, yet all we heard was abuse.

And yet, the more brazen Togadia was with his language, the more the crowd cheered and clapped. It was almost as if the crowd was relishing the gladiatorial-like atmosphere created by the VHP leader.

Contrast this with the crowds that have been attending other political rallies. Sullen and cynical, they seem to have lost faith in the mainstream politicians and their grand promises to eliminate "Bhay, Bhookh and Bhrastachar" (Fear, hunger and corruption).

It is the political vacuum which has been created by the failure of the mainstream politicians to deliver on their slogans that has given the Modis and the Togadias the space to operate in. It is a bit like one of those escapist films that Bollywood has specialised in for years.

When the real-life politicians appear like empty vessels, the sense of high drama provided by the Modis and Togadias of the world appears so much more appealing. At least, the political demagogues don't pretend to be trying to tackle bread and butter issues.

The Advanis of the world, by contrast, claim to be representing the cause of governance, and yet end up speaking on issues far removed from the business of government. Better then to listen to the blood and guts dialogue of a Modi or a Togadia than the sermons of an Advani or even a Vajpayee.

All this raises an even bigger issue. If people prefer to listen to the hate-filled speeches of Modi and Togadia, does that mean that issues of governance will cease to matter while making informed political choices? Hopefully not.

In Godhra town itself, the months since the train tragedy have transformed a sleepy trading town into a symbol of Gujarat's communal divide.

Godhra itself remained remarkably free of the violence that was orchestrated through the rest of north and central Gujarat in the aftermath of the train carnage. And yet, the town has earned the reputation of being a dangerous place to be in.

The result is that business in the area has suffered enormously, with several trading companies choosing to erase Godhra from their itinerary. It's a bit like the Faizabad-Ayodhya region, which 10 years after the Babri demolition is a vast expanse of economic stagnation.

Does the economic collapse of Godhra then matter to the people who have been attracted by the minority-bashing speeches of Modi and the rest? It probably does because somewhere down the line, the desires and ambitions of the people of Godhra are not very different to those in other similar towns in the country.

Speak to anyone at a college in Godhra (or Ayodhya for that matter), and there is a yearning to move on life, and get the benefits of modern development. Unfortunately, modernity is not acquired simply through riches, it requires the development of the mind.

As a result, in the short-term, the emotional appeal of a Modi or a Togadia may seem very attractive, even if it pushes a medieval worldview in which ancient animosities are sought to be revived.

But in the long-run, there is little doubt that those who peddle hate and violence as their calling card – be it then Hindu or Muslim extremist leaders – have little future in the new India.

Remember Sadhvi Ritambhara, the fire-spewing sanyasin who was such a crowd-puller during the 1991 elections? Today, with Ayodhya a fading memory, the Sadhvi has been pushed to the margins of political debate.

The bottomline is that the politics of violence and divisiveness will always be subject to the law of diminishing returns. This is why sooner or later, even in a polarised state like Gujarat, politicians will have to eventually return to debating critical issues of governance.

Nor can the debate be carried out through populist slogans like Garibi Hatao that seem to have little real meaning on the ground.

Instead, as politics in the country become even more localised, it is the more basic issues of the area in which one lives that will eventually determine the contours of the political debate: water scarcity, power supply and employment opportunities. Those who choose to believe otherwise may soon find themselves being confronted with even smaller crowds of supporters.

The writer is political editor, New Delhi Television.