A Proverbial Guide to the Polls

MY CONTRIBUTION TO the science of deciphering election campaigns is a puzzle composed of Russian proverbs. All clues are hidden in one or more of them. Do the math. Those in fewer traps will limp, fatigued but delighted, towards the victor’s altar on June 4.

– A spoken word is not a sparrow; once it flies out it can’t be caught.
– One old friend is better than two new ones.
– The past is a lighthouse, not a port.
– If you chase two rabbits, you won’t catch either.
– Don’t run from a wolf into a bear.
– If you wake up without pain, you are dead.
– Don’t go to another monastery with your own rules.
– You can’t bite your own elbow.
– Better to be slapped by the truth than kissed by a lie.
– The only free cheese is in the mousetrap.

IF YOU WANT to check the state of play, ignore the bombast of self-proclaimed analysts, most of whom have just emerged from a long conversation with their mirror. Check the cheese.

When cheese moves up on the agenda, you can be sure it is a sign of nerves. A political party suddenly announces mid-campaign that every woman will get ₹1,00,000 annually if it wins. No one, naturally, cares to explain how this will be funded. Given that there are roughly 500 million women voters in this election, and many more claimants outside the voting list, this particular election bait adds up to an expenditure of a number of crores beyond my comprehension of arithmetic. Indians will be smoking their currency if this is funded by a laissez-faire treasury rather than tax revenue. But there is little real cost to such bizarre promises because all that is on offer is illusion. Only the faithful nod their heads. The majority of voters are interested in tested value, not hokum.

SRINAGAR HAS REGISTERED its highest voter turnout in nearly four decades. Thirty years ago in the 1990s, the city was floundering in the squelch and blood of unprecedented violence, while secessionist slogans echoed across the skies from hardline minarets. Today, there is an uprising in Muzaffarabad, capital of the part of Kashmir illegally occupied by Pakistan. Kashmiris across Pakistan-occupied- Kashmir (PoK) want freedom from deprivation, from injustice, from a shattered economy, from the fog that clouds their future. Pakistan has taken food off the plates of children, denied them a decent education, and replaced democracy with an army-controlled oligarchy. This is the Pakistan that Muhammad Ali Jinnah, in collusion with the British, carved out of united India with a brutal knife.

Here is some news for Pakistan from the streets of India. For 75 years you have fattened your army at the expense of the people by using the fraudulent excuse that India is an existential threat. The news from the 2020s is that no one in India wants this septic geography back. The only sympathy Indians have is humanitarian, for the ordinary, misled people of Pakistan, who have become the greatest victims of an evil canard, a preposterous lie, perpetrated in 1947. The elites who created Pakistan continue to fatten on the crust of a sinking economy, beneficiaries of history’s most exploitative rip-off.

I have described Pakistan as a jelly-state in my book Tinderbox; a country which, like jelly, can neither be stable nor melt and disappear. Pakistan is being drained in a trap of its own making. To escape this self-inflicted haemorrhage, it will need a leader with more vision and greater courage than visible now. Perhaps she is still anonymous among the masses. But she will have to accept one truth. Pakistan cannot find a future until it corrects a basic anomaly from its past and reinvents itself as a modern state rather than one tethered to political ideologies that have long crossed their sell-by date.

NAMES BELONG TO parents, not children. Children are gilded with the loving aspirations of their procreators. The immortal philosopher PG Wodehouse noted wisely that all babies look alike, and he was not being complimentary. But all parents glow at the sight of the fresh bundle and award their child the grandest name in their imagination, beginning with the nomenclatures of god. More modest types stick to nature, but go for the finest: the prettiest flowers, etc. You might think that an Elon Musk is being different when naming his children after the alphabet, but he is making them commanders who will lead tomorrow’s odyssey towards unknown galaxies.

The most honest name I have seen is the one given by a certain Bhavesh Bhinde of Ghatkopar, currently in police custody. He called his advertising agency Ego Media Pvt Ltd. Ego is synonymous with candour.

Bhinde is a temporary guest of Mumbai Police because two years ago he erected a massive billboard, through the usual help of corrupt elements in the city’s legislature and administration, that broke all regulations. For two years the authorities could not see this massive billboard that was searching for a place in a book of records. A fortnight ago, the police sent him a notice, which Bhinde ignored with the impunity of those who have kept influential friends happy and well fed. He might have got a follow-up notice in 2026, if a storm had not sent the billboard crashing, killing 16 innocents and injuring 74 (at the time of going to press). The number of casualties is evidence of the level of corruption.

Why is an election victory for the Mumbai municipal corporation prized higher than that for Parliament? Because of billboards. There is more money to be made from a seat in Mumbai’s corporation than in Delhi’s Parliament.

Bhinde was transparent. His company was called Ego, and ego is what he thrived on. Perhaps he rose from what is often described as a humble background, but humility does not take you far in the business of Mumbai’s illegal billboards. Ego does. Ego brings municipal councillors into your pocket, from where they take their pickings. Which brings me to another proverb: pride comes before a billboard fall.

THE CLEVER BOYS in multinational marketing have floated yet another new word, currently seeking attention: ‘spaving’. It means, or hopes to mean, spending in order to save. A trick word, then, to justify the fraud of getting a fourth cake of soap free if you buy three. No one from the national or multinational tells you that the price of every cake is a massive rip-off. ‘Spaving’ might make sense during high inflation when the value of money has dropped while the usefulness of the product remains stable. The word could also enter a pessimist’s dictionary; or interest an economist in search of a book. There might also be a legitimate place for ‘spaving’ in electoral politics. Spend on donations now in order to save on the cost of getting decisions through later. Every democracy, whether in America, Europe, Africa or India, is lubricated. The methods vary, but the purpose does not. There is nothing secret about this.

LET US, THEREFORE, end with another Russian proverb: Three people can keep a secret if two of them are dead. There are no secrets in a democracy.

About The Author

MJ Akbar

MJ Akbar is the author of, among several titles, Tinderbox: The Past and Future of Pakistan. His latest book is Gandhi: A Life in Three Campaigns

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