One nation, no elections

It was reported by Satya Hindi news channel, and reiterated by a Congress spokesperson, that after the declaration of the West Bengal Assembly election results, CEC Gyanesh Kumar told a group of reporters: "Tiger abhi zinda hai!"

My faith in 'chief deletion commissioner' Mr Gyanesh Kumar (may his tribe decrease) has been fully restored and vindicated: he has lived up to the trust I reposed in him. I fully expected the Election Commission to win the elections in West Bengal, even though it is not a registered political party but only a kind of I-Pac for one of them. And it has won handsomely.

Mr Kumar can now look forward to greener pastures in the days to come — a governorship, perhaps, or even (as is being whispered in some shady corridors) a presidentship. The latter post will suit him admirably because a President can only act on the advice of the council of ministers, which is precisely what he has been doing for the last many years.

Which brings me to a larger point: why have elections at all, now that ONOE (One Nation One Election) has been converted to ONNE (One Nation No Elections)? After much deliberation and consultations with the divine forces à la Chandrachud, I have come to the conclusion that the country would be much better off without elections. There are both macro and micro reasons for my view.

At the macro level, elections are an impediment to the march of democracy: every now and then, the government is distracted from its usual job of handing out contracts to cronies, devastating forests, lynching people, building temples, garlanding rapists, bringing down Opposition-ruled state governments, etc., in order to get the endorsement of the voters.

Why is it necessary to get the voters’ consent when it already has the support of the Election Commission, the Supreme Court, the President and the AA twins? It is this unnecessary distraction which has made us among the worst-performing countries in global indexes related to equality, pollution, press freedom, democratic rankings, and so on. ONNE would solve all these problems at one fell stroke.

It would also bring to an end that unique feature of Indian politics — sovereign bribery. Now, bribery is an offence, except when the state does it, and with your money to boot! In our elections, ideology, development, social justice, etc., have now been replaced with doles, gold mangalsutras, gas cylinders, washing machines, bicycles, sarees and anything else that can rake in a couple of more votes.

And it is bankrupting states: Himachal has already started cutting salaries by 30 per cent, Vijay’s TVK has promised subsidies and freebies worth more than Rs 1 lakh crore per annum, Bengal will now have to borrow money from Bangladesh to keep the bhadralok happy. Our elections are more like auctions now; scrap them and we'll become the second-largest economy in the world before you can say 'jai Shri Ram'!

At a micro — that is, personal — level, the benefits of ONNE cannot be ignored either. For one, your domestic staff will not abandon you: during the Bengal election I was orphaned for weeks. My driver went off to Kolkata to vote, the maid to Malda and the washerman to Bankura. They will return in due course, minus a few who may be shoved into Bangladesh, but for those weeks, life was not worth living; no amount of democracy is worth it.

And then there’s the evening news, of which I am an addict. I like my news hot and spicy — a couple of murders, a rape or two, the occasional encounter killing, a politician caught in flagrante delicto, a judge’s outhouse stuffed with moolah, a bulldozer mounted on a masjid.

But during elections, I get none of these — only Yogendra Yadav or Jawhar Sircar or S.Y. Quraishi talking about EVMs, SIR or the Model Code of Conduct. On a bad day, I’ll have to be satisfied with Mr Modi or Mr Shah on the stump. Life loses all charm, but with ONNE, one can get back to the daily dose of violence, sex and Kangana Ranaut’s earth-shaking one-liners.

Elections play havoc with relationships. Familial and social intercourse has, for me, been teetering on a knife edge since we gained our independence in 2014: my vocabulary is limited, so I tend to call a spade a spade, a fascist a fascist and a bhakt a bhakt. This has not endeared me to most of my family, colleagues and friends, for whom a Hindu Rashtra is the Holy Grail and Mr Modi its delivery service.

Elections, and the inevitable discussions about them, only add fuel to the fire: whenever elections are announced my wife moves into the guest bedroom, morning walkers in my housing society stop wishing me, I’m unable to make a foursome at golf, even my dog refuses to go for a walk with me!

With ONNE, there will be a sea change — no opposition, no political discussions, no rallies, no elections. Dinners will become convivial once again, without Republic TV-type debates. Peace will descend again on our twice-blessed nation. Silence will prevail, the silence of the grave. Or, as Omar Khayyam wrote: “Thou shalt be — Nothing — thou shalt not be less.”

Ah, the comfort of being Nothing!

Views are personal. More of the writer's works here

Avay Shukla is a retired IAS officer and author of Holy Cows and Loose Cannons — the Duffer Zone Chronicles and other works. He blogs at avayshukla.blogspot.com