Comment: Kashmir polls are the quiet revolution of India's democrats

It was an image frozen in time. Omar Abdullah stomping away from the counting centre in Srinagar, his eyes betraying a mix of disbelief, hurt and anger.

After all, here was the poster boy of the capital's chatterati, someone who found himself being invited to every social occasion, be it a fashion show or a book release.

Here was the generation next of Kashmir politics, someone whose fresh-faced looks and earnestness was in marked contrast to the dirt that was swimming all around him. But politics has a remarkable habit of downsizing mighty reputations.

It is one thing to be a clean-cut politician delivering articulate soundbites in television studios, it is quite another to be able to build a mass base in the cauldron of electoral politics. Television appearances can get you applause, they can't deliver votes as Abdullah junior has learnt to his cost.

If he is clever and wise enough, Omar will bounce back: there is nothing like a few hard knocks to enable a politician to mature. Ironically, Omar's defeat may finally force Kashmir and the Centre to look beyond the Abdullahs.

There are new faces emerging on the political horizon of the state. Some like Ghulam Nabi Azad of the Congress are little more than old wine in a new bottle, unlikely to stand the test of time.

Others like Mehbooba Mufti are far more resilient, and are therefore likely to play a more active role in Kashmir politics over a longer period of time. It was the spunky Mehbooba who first took on Omar in Srinagar, and she has since been the one politician who has consistently fought the Abdullahs at every level.

But if Mehbooba, Ghulam Nabi and others can now actually be involved in the process of government formation, they have one person to thank: the chief election commissioner James Michael Lyngdoh.

The prime minister can call the elections a triumph of democracy. The international community can applaud from the sidelines, and support New Delhi's efforts at trying to defeat the bullet through the ballot. And political parties can haggle over ministerships, defectors, and more.

But when the history of the 2002 Jammu and Kashmir elections is written, there is little doubt that the son of a district judge from Meghalaya will be the real star, the one person who ensured that public faith, especially that of the people of an increasingly sceptical and alienated valley, was restored in the institutions of Indian democracy.

It hasn't been easy for Lyngdoh over the last few months. It started with Gujarat, and the BJP's insistence that elections be held in the state at the earliest, and well ahead of the original schedule of February 2003.

Resisting the might of a party in power is not easy for anyone, not even a constitutional functionary with the kind of autonomy that the election commission enjoys. In a fractious and polarised atmosphere, it becomes even more difficult. Not surprisingly, his eventual decision to postpone the Gujarat elections was seen as biased.

Worse, it was seen through communal binoculars, with Lyngdoh's Christian origins being used to try and intimidate him. So low was the level of the discourse that eventually Prime Minister Vajpayee was forced to intervene and ask for an end to the anti-Lyngdoh campaign.

Not that any of this stopped Lyngdoh's detractors from running a whisper campaign against him. Today's politicians are neither concerned about political or moral authority. Their entire behaviour is governed by their immediate self-interest.

So, if an election commissioner is seen to be inconvenient, then they will do their utmost to be rid of him, the overall philosophy being, "if you can't get them to bend, then get them to crawl."

Nor is this a uniquely BJP or NDA disease. Every government in power, irrespective of party affiliation, has tried to subjugate the bureaucracy at different levels.

In the Congress years, the chief election commissioner was a single member authority who was expected to work within the rules set by the politicians. Then, came T.N. Seshan who chose to challenge the political authority and enabled the election commissioner's office to rediscover its backbone.

Seshan's style was combative and aggressive: he never missed an opportunity to attack the politician. Lyngdoh has been very different. He is neither a bureaucrat- politician in the Seshan mould who gets carried away with his own myth, nor is he as media-savvy as his predecessor Dr M.S. Gill was.

Right through the vicious political campaign against him, Lyngdoh has kept an almost monk-like silence. There have only been the occasional flashes of public anger. The first was when he openly rebuked district officials in Gujarat for misleading him on a visit to the state. The government tried to suggest that this was an example of a constitutional authority out of control.

The fact is that all that the chief election commissioner was doing was to remind the steel frame of the country of its ultimate responsibility to the constitution and not to political masters.

Then in an interview to Star News (the only television interview he has given), Lyngdoh responded to the criticism of his action in Gujarat by describing the allegations against him as the "gossip of menials". He maintained that he was an "atheist" for whom religion did not matter.

That was also the interview when Lyngodh spelt out his commitment to free and fair polls in Kashmir, saying that he had taken it up as a personal challenge. Few believed him at the time.

Over the years, elections in Kashmir have acquired a peculiar edge, where they are seen to be predecided verdicts, with either fear or else alienation holding the key. That is the reason why no one really believed that the Abdullahs could be defeated.

Every Kashmiri you spoke to, would hark back to the 1987 elections, widely believed to have been rigged, an election which was seen to have given separatist sentiments a new momentum.

This 2002 election has partly, if not entirely, buried some of the ghosts of 1987 and revived a flicker of hope in the valley. For that alone, Lyngdoh and his team, who have personally visited the valley at least half a dozen times in the last few months, deserve full praise.

Omar Abdullah might wonder what went wrong, but maybe even he in a moment of reflection might pause to admire the quiet revolution brought about in Indian democracy by an man of few words with a black belt in judo.

The writer is managing editor, NDTV