When an election commissioner has to point to bloody elections in the past to declare that these polls have not been all that violent in Laloo Prasad Yadav's empire, something is clearly very rotten in the state of Bihar. Free and fair elections are no doubt something of a chimera in the best of times, but the 13th edition of Lok Sabha polls in the state is turning out to be an exercise in futility. Just survey the story so far.Thirty-eight police and poll personnel are blown apart by landmines meticulously planted by outlawed ultra-left groups in the first phase of voting in Bihar on September 18, another eight persons killed during the second phase, not to mention the violence that has punctuated the campaign period with gruesome regularity.Two members of Rabri Devi's council of ministers are arrested for disturbing the poll process. Dalits complain that they have been obstructed from exercising their franchise, while countless other citizens speak of their votes having been cast before they reachedthe polling booths and photographs in dailies across the country document a series of electoral malpractices. Free and fair are attributes conspicuous by their very absence.Needless to say, this now familiar drama has been conducted in a highly charged and fractious atmosphere, with every allegation or development being given a political colour. What a pity! If the governor voiced concern over the police and civil personnel on poll duty, the merits of his complaint were promptly lost in a welter of debate on political and constitutional propriety and transgression.If there was any merit in apprehensions about extra ballot papers being printed for certain constituencies, impetuosity on the part of both the political class and the Election Commission resulted in an entirely avoidable controversy. And even as the remaining 16 constituencies in Bihar prepare for election day on October 3, the state administration and the EC cannot shrug off responsibility for the pathetic conduct of polls. After all, Biharhad been cited as one of the key reasons for staggering the general elections over weeks and weeks. Yet, the extremist Maoist Communist Centre and similar outfits translated their violent intent into action with relative ease.However, it is the socio-political disenfranchisement that is particularly worrying. The Mandalis-ation of caste groups has proceeded apace in many parts of the country, but Bihar's version of votebank politics backed by caste-based militias has imperilled the very survival of civil society. If Dalits are not allowed in vote, the phenomenon cannot be divo-rced from social realities - as in members of the underclass being barred from wearing chappals, as in social justice being a mere rallying war cry for self-serving politicians to garner votes and scamper away till their next tryst with the electorate. After all, it is the same men with scarfs menacingly veiling their faces who prowl the electoral trail on election day who also show the dispossessed their place through their macabremassacres.
