Be It India or the US, Why Has Election Campaigning Hit a Frightening Low?

Is it a case of a public couldn’t-care-less about the niceties and generalities of participative democracy or one of a more compelling narrative winning over the other?

(Photo: Namita Chauhan/The Quint)

The ‘world’s largest democracy’ i.e., India, and the ‘world’s most powerful democracy’ i.e., the United States, are in the throes of election season. It is testing times for the 'Idea of Democracy’ globally as both democracies have seen a backslide in their proudly liberal traditions and spirit. 

Over the last decade, all international indices on the status of Indian democracy have red-flagged the steady regression by labelling it from a 'Flawed Democracy’ (as per The Economist Intelligence Unit) to an ‘Electoral Autocracy’ (as per V-Dem Institute). The latter noted gravely that India was “one of the worst autocratisers lately.” 

The US democracy has fared no better. It too has sunk from a ‘Full Democracy’ to a ‘Flawed Democracy’.

The so-called ‘beacon of freedom for the world’ stares at the possible return of an incumbent who is facing 88 criminal charges for attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 Presidential Elections.  

Democratic Nations Are Guided by a Strong Desire for Authoritarianism

If the political conversations and imaginations in India are about an opposition-mukt (free) situation – the challenger in the United States openly talks about wanting to be a "dictator for one day”. However, the growing acceptance and traction for such voices clearly suggest that there is indeed a counterintuitive desire for some degree of authoritarianism.

The perceived alternatives to such aggressive insistences and assertions are a combination of rote adjectives that include indecisiveness, meek, cowardly to even 'sold-out’. 

Is it the case of a public couldn’t-care-less about the niceties and generalities of participative democracy or one of a more compelling narrative winning over the other?

Given that all participants publicly seek to uphold the tenets and values of democracy, it is probably a case ‘Tu Quoque’ technique where even though those who have actually contributed to the backslide of democracy have successfully discredited their opponent’s argument by cherry-picking on facts and figures, to posit an alternative reality. In this surreal alternative reality, the best protection of democracy is surprisingly sought to be provided by those political forces who actually diminish the same. 

How Popularity Takes Over Truth

To make ‘Tu Quoque’ succeed in the heat of electoral campaigning, it is not important to sound either Presidential or Prime Ministerial in the sense of a classical ‘Statesman’. As a matter of fact, anything that strikes as popular, provocative, and resonates amongst the masses - true, untrue, or even knowingly economising with the truth, is par for the course!  

Old footage and prints of other leaders (some long gone) are data mined for proving things that they either said (with or without context) or didn’t even say, to stitch a compelling narrative.

But the truth or essential facts don’t matter in such times of individual cults, as the vast majority of mesmerised cadres remain wary, unmotivated, and even disdainful to consider questioning the hypothesis or the alternative argument.

The winning formula of a knowing untruth getting repetitively insisted, amplified, and accompanied by a pliant media aids the falsity to acquire credence and legitimacy in this era of alternative reality. 

One glaring example in the Indian context is the question of how the world views us. Two very divergent views are unabashedly postulated:

There is one of a gleaming and unmitigated pride about India’s sudden “arrival” on the world stage, replete with the embellishment of ‘Vishwa Guru’, ‘Akhand Bharat’, ‘Bullet Trains’ etc., and then there is another with India slipping to its lowest rank of 161 out of 180 countries on World Press Freedom Index or ranking of a shocking 111 out of 125 countries on the Global Hunger Index.  

The amount of hair-splitting and curation of data points is best exemplified with the example of the status of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) – one side has gone to the town about the thumping success of the ‘world’s fifth largest economy’, whereas the other side is talking about the first time that the GDP per capita of India falls below that of Bangladesh! Both sides are factually (statistically) true, but the one with the ‘monopoly of truth’ given the preponderance of institutional, media and decibel rights wins the day!  

The Americans are faring no better, as the spectre of incredulity becomes even more bizarre with Donald Trump wearing the superhero cape of the saviour of democracy.

Trump warned the Americans of the ostensible threat to democracy by insisting, “I don’t think you’re going to have another election in this country, if we don’t win this election … certainly not an election that’s meaningful”. If anyone were to question Trump’s credentials on democracy, they would be subjected to a barrage of expletives like ‘hoax’, ‘fake news’, ‘witch-hunts’ etc.,  

The ultimate proof of the pudding in terms of the efficacy of Trump’s audacious rants is the crushing might with which he steamrolled over all other more moderate Republicans like Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis et al, and by the sheer number of American citizenries that truly believe that Trump had actually won the 2020 Presidential elections.

The Pressing Issues Are Conveniently Sidestepped

In India, we readily attribute discomforting narratives to either 'WhatsApp Universities’, ‘Nagpur’ or alternatively to sources that are castigated as ‘China/Pakistan-funded’, ‘anti-nationals’, ‘Soros-funded’ etc., and the insincere blame-game goes on.

One lamentable attribute of the ‘Tu Quoque’ technique is that it works best on topics that are dehumanising (polarising), entail fearmongering, or have doomsday threats. In the US, it takes the form of migrants running amok, Black-diminishment, ageism etc., whereas the ‘world’s largest democracy’ is spending a disproportionate amount of time discussing the quantities of mango eaten by an incarcerated Chief Minister, redistribution of women’s mangalsutra to Muslims, caste census etc. Somewhere along the line, a sense of what truly ails the socio-economically wounded society, and just how dangerously fractured and vengeful we have become is conveniently ignored. 

Seemingly, both democracies are frenetically discussing individuals ( more like cults), enflaming passions, and mired in the victor-takes-all brazenness without a care or concern for the long-term consequences for social harmony and amity. Sadly, it is not the so-called ‘fringe’ that is leading the shameful dance of inelegance, but the leadership of all main parties.

It is a far cry from the inherent graces and dignity of a Barack Obama or a John McCain…..or in our context, from the decidedly gentler times of Atal Bihari Vajpayee or Dr Manmohan Singh – each very combative in making their respective partisan cases, yet always mindful of not lowering the civility and dignity of constitutionality (in the Indian case, even of civilisational decency) and restrain from making personalised or unsubstantiated aspersions, vitriol, falsehood, manufactured-outrage and worst of all, fear-mongering and ‘othering’. 

As the seemingly forgotten man-of-letters, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, once profoundly said, “Governments come and governments go. Parties appear and disappear. But this country should remain and its democracy should remain eternally.” Both the current dispensations (in both countries) and the opposition leadership will do well to reflect and introspect on the implicit wisdom that suggests an immediate and sharp course correction before it is too late. The danger is not just to the two countries but to the 'Idea of Democracy’.       

(The author is a Former Lt Governor of Andaman & Nicobar Islands and Puducherry. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)