Campaigning for the local bodies’ election has, for the first time, marked a big departure from tradition. Its ‘local’ content hollowed out, electioneering for local bodies now revolves around narratives of national and state-wide currency, like never before.
“Unlike earlier, the local election has begun to resemble a general election, for good reasons. There’s a political churning in the wake of the BJP-SNDP tie-up and issues of corruption at the state-level. A raging national debate over the beef issue and recurring questions over freedom of expression have suddenly made it important for the voter to make a political statement,” says Sebastian Paul, former MP and political observer.
Academic and social commentator J. Devika says the shift in focus of the election was unavoidable, given the recent attack on the country's federal structure. “The onslaught on the daily life of individual citizens not just by governments but also by known or unknown fringe groups have made it a life-or-death situation. Ironically though, this has given the state government a shot in the arm. Instead of discussing the worrying collapse of local body governance, the focus has now shifted to issues of communalism and freedom. Stark communal divide has rendered the present election rather ‘uncivilised’,” she observes.
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Novelist C. Radhakrishnan thinks that politicisation of local bodies led to corruption percolating down to the grassroots. ‘We have been able to decentralise corruption and communal polarisation,” he fumes. National issues are important, but should not be brought to the fore at the expense of problems faced by people in a panchayat or a block. Brushing them off will be like throwing the baby out with the bathwater, he argues.
Historian Rajan Gurukkal views the local political processes as not just national but also international ‘because they are inseparable from the global political economy’. “It is a process of shifting control over natural resources from the local power structure to supra-local, national and international in the ascending order,” he contends.
Considering decentralisation as part of a political strategy for the localisation of the national development paradigm and not as a means to attain local-level social development, he says what is happening now is the localisation of the global economy. “It was decentralisation of the corrupt national party politics into the local casteist and communal system of power relations, which has impaired democracy. It precludes the possibility of carrying forward as part of democratic politics the real local needs of economic growth with equity.”
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Critic and former legislator M.K. Sanoo, also deplores politicisation of election at the local level.
“While it is a complex situation and may help ward off the communal ghost, it is not good for development as political parties tacitly support one another on issues of corruption,” he states.