The Wrong Issues

Even as the dust settles on Gujarat's high-decibel election campaign and the state goes to the polls, comes a report that the country may face a water emergency in 2003. Though the opposition's theme was "development not destruction", environmental and infrastructural concerns found no mention during the elec-tioneering.

The message: Unlike caste and creed, conservation does not make for an emotive poll issue. Instead, the pivot of the entire election was communalism and Pakistan's perfidy. BJP star campaigner Narendra Modi said it all "Pahle matdan, phir jalpan". But leaving jalpan to later may prove too late.

Dire water shortage predictions are particularly ominous for Gujarat, which is chronically water and power deficient. Drought is a familiar spectre in Saurashtra and Kutch and barring tall promises that the Sardar Sarovar dam will transform these areas, the self-styled Chhote Sardar did not touch on a single issue which could improve people's quality of life. Of course, this is the pattern in all elections and the Congress is no angel when it comes to populist sloganeering. Remember Mrs Gandhi's famous garibi hatao call?

Politicians and voters think along two different tracks. Electoral aspirants focus on big ticket issues like Pakistan and secularism. The ordinary citizen wants only education for her children, safe drinking water, better health facilities and, if it was not too much to ask for, a secure livelihood. But our political class remains convinced that such jalpan issues do not win votes; raw emotions like fear and hate do.

So we see in Gujarat that the drastic reduction of water availability, which will bring in its wake devastating social and economic consequences, is ignored because both the Congress and BJP were busy outdoing each other to prove their 'patriotic' credentials. The water crisis is only one of the problems Gujarat faces. In the clamour of the campaign, the spectacular collapses of a string of cooperative banks have gone relatively unnoticed, as have the economic repercussions of the riots.

The outcome of these elections will show, not just for Gujarat but for the country, what our politics is about: Progress or paranoia.