Election Commissioner G.V.G. Krishnamurthy is not the first to discover and declare the fact. That Bihar represents a big challenge to the Election Commission has been publicly recognised by other harried occupants of the august office as well before. Specially notable was the same kind of challenge that T.N. Seshan saw in the task of conducting free and fair polls in the state.The former Chief Election Commissioner is now a candidate of the Congress that counts among its cherished allies the redoubtable Laloo Prasad Yadav who, as the Chief Minister then, called it a contest of ``Seshan versus the nation''. The cast and roles may have changed, though Laloo is still a leading actor, but the scene remains comi-tragically the same.While the ex-CEC sought to conduct polls by simply countermanding as many of them as possible, Krishnamurthy has not disclosed how the EC is going to deal with the ``difficult proposition''. Para-military forces alone are not going to help the commission in the task beyond apoint, as the past ex- perience would show. Besides its own strong determination to ensure free and fair elections without denying the people their democratic due, the EC's mission will also call for a political will in this regard on the part of parties that claim to share its concern. Laloos alone cannot, in all fairness, be blamed for the situation that none of the parties in the state has seriously tried to prevent despite the stances of their national-level leaderships.The situation is the creation of a political culture that cannot easily coexist with a peaceful electoral polity. A culture that combines rank and rampant casteism with a cult of violence from the village level upwards. It was about a decade ago that a television film brought out the tragedy and farce of elections in Bihar for many in the rest of the country.What they witnessed the planned booth-capturing, the intimidation of poor voters, the proud participation of criminals in the polls, the amount of arms in play, the cynicism ofthe saviours of law and order did provoke a debate in the press then. National observers have since then been numbed past shock by stories after stories of non-elections in the state.No one concerned has made a secret of the major role played in these by money and muscle. The electoral importance of criminal gangs matter-of-factly identified in the media as `mafias' of different labels has, in fact, increased enough to be accepted by analysts as a legitimate factor in their poll forecasts. The crime-politics nexus has had inevitable post-poll consequences, with sizable firearms once almost finding their way even into the State Assembly.The nexus finds an illustration in the recently reported detection of 1,400 duplicate ballot boxes in the state. And when Laloo attributes this to a possible clerical error in numbering, few consider it yet another example of his famous wit and folksy wisdom. Many, in fact, would ask whether it is a mere coincidence that 500 of these boxes were found in Siwan, the pastconstituency of a notorious candidate of this nexus. The scepticism, however, does not mean that all hope is lost for Bihar. It cannot be as long as the state has its unsung hero, the common voter, whom guns and goondas fail to keep away from polling booths.
