For some four weeks during April - May, the 2009 elections dominated the television news channels. From the time the Election Commission announced the elections to the counting of votes on 16 May, the medium covered the mammoth event in great detail. While regional channels had their known biases, the three major English channels - NDTV, CNN-IBN, Times Now - attempted to preserve a measure of impartiality in coverage; but the attempt at one-upmanship and overkill did make their own contributions to making or marring reputations.

The Varun Gandhi episode should illustrate this; what could in normal circumstances be dismissed as an aberration of a young, new entrant, television channels blew it out of proportion and for days the focus on Varun over-shadowed other more important issues. This did a lot of good to Varun himself and enabled him to register a convincing victory but this also caused a good deal of discomfiture to the BJP and perhaps impacted severely in weaning more Muslim votes away from the party.

The absence of star campaigners for major national parties emerged as another glaring defficiency. The campaign itself was confined to less than three weeks. With political parties taking time to decide on their alliances and firming up candidates, there wasn’t just the time for most of the candidates to go round their constituencies and even casually meet the voters. With an average voters to be covered per constituency at around 13.4 lakh, it was physically impossible to attempt personal contacts of the type familiar in the early years of elections. In the 1950s and 1960s, I remember candidates moving around constituencies and meeting voters in groups and individually and addressing meetings at street corners. In those early years, there were the posters, graffiti on every wall, constant blaring through loud speakers and advertisements in local papers that provided information on the contestants. The number of contestants was small with mostly serious candidates in the fray. In contrast, in the recent elections, one gets to know the names of the contestants and their party affiliations only at the polling booths. It indeed was a revelation to me to come across 43 contestants for the south Madras seat with hardly a couple of the names sounding familiar! With the Election Commission closely monitoring expenses incurred by the contestants, there was understandable caution; of course one did witness money flowing in torrent for the purchase of votes!

I had the experience of functioning as a polling officer in 1962 when I worked at the Madras Christian College. I remember reaching the polling booth at Thiruvanmiyur on the previous evening. Five of us attached to the booth were provided instructions and training in advance. Since the senior officer was a lady doctor who had to be relieved early, I had the responsibility to take the sealed ballot boxes to the central, secure place in Saidapet; the vehicle to collect the boxes and myself arrived on the late hours of the day and I remember handing these, completing the formalities and returning home only on the vee hours of the following day! In those golden days the procedures were simple, pressures for manipulation absent and results were accepted without doubt!

By staggering the elections through five phases, the EC has ensured peaceful polling. Remember the detailed exposure of booth capturing, intimidation, violence and rigging indulged in Bihar graphically presented by Nalini Singh in the 1990s? The 2009 elections will be remembered for the almost total absence of violence in most parts of the country. Increasing voter consciousness was also in evidence with states like Jammu and Kashmir recording a vast increase in votes polled. Just contrast this with the single digit polling in J&K hardly a decade ago!

There was much expectation on the middle class of Mumbai turning out in large numbers and bringing about big changes. Remember the 100,000 plus gathering at the India Gate hours after the end of the 26/11 gory event and proclaiming the new power of the middle class?
Contest by spirited candidates like Meera Sanyal (who resigned a lucrative bank job to contest the elections) in Mumbai, Capt Gopinath (founder of Deccan Airways) in Bengaluru and K Pandiarajan (founder of the MaFoi HRD firm) in Virudunagar raised hopes on impressing upon voters the need for change; but they failed to make an impact except for a few sound bites in the TV. The turnout of voters in the seven constituencies of Mumbai was poor ranging between 42 and 48 per cent. Times of India’s Lead India campaign and Tata Tea’s Jaagore campaigns were indeed evocative; but they had not impacted enough; even the high profile cine star Kamal Hasan failed to check his enrolment in the voters’ list. In the end it was business as usual: with contestants of established parties crossing the winning post.

The 24x7 new channels have had a field day speculating the outcome of the elections. There were expert opinions from psephologists, journalists, historians and politicians, anchored in what an appeared an endless stream of discussion programmes – often repetitive, sometimes with leading questions and sometimes with a strong flavour of lobbying.

Competitive one-upmanship also led to overkill. The Election Commission saved the embarrassment for the channels by banning publicity to exit polls till the last phase of polling was completed. There was the expected scramble for publicising the results of exit polls by different agencies on the night of 13 May, the last day of polling.
One was in for quick changes in the stance of some of the experts. The Hindu’s N Ram predicted in the morning of 13 May a complete sweep of the AIADMK-led alliance in Tamil Nadu polls; by the evening CNN-IBN predicted a big swing towards the DMK-led alliance. Dayanidhi Maran of DMK could not help suppress his glee and ridiculed Ram for his brash statement. The discomfiture of Ram was palpable and Indian Express’s Shekar Gupta had to pitch in to arrest Maran’s heckling. The shrewd commentator, Cho Ramaswamy, who also hoped for a swing towards the AIADMK, was of course cautious in qualifying his statement with the possibility of the third force, of cine actor Vijayakant’s DMDK, playing the spoil-sport. In the end Cho was proved right with the DMDK contributing to the defeat of the several of the AIADMK alliance candidates. The votes polled by candidates of this party in several cases were higher than the margin of victory of the DMK front candidates.

This time, M K Stalin, son of M Karunanidhi (MK) and minister of local administration, Tamil Nadu, took over the responsibility for the election campaign of his party. Senior MK, who used to campaign in every one of the constituencies, was not well and could campaign only in Chennai and Tiruchi in just three meetings. AIADMK leader Jayalathithaa, flying by helicopter, addressed everyone of the 40 constituencies; Stalin traveling by road, addressed different sections in each constituency more intensely and covered the entire Tamil Nadu. It should give a lot of comfort and satisfaction to Karunanidhi of grooming an effective campaigner in Stalin. Using his considerable clout with the Congress President, he would do well to anoint Stalin, as the chief minister, even while he is in control; having positioned his other two children in national politics, MK would do well to prepare Stalin to take up the mantle two years before elections are due to the state assembly in 2011. This would help prepare Stalin to gain experience under the lead of MK.

One may also expect MK to appreciate the justification in the demand of the state Congress to share power in the state. The Congress and the PMK extended outside support to the DMK (which does not enjoy a majority in the state assembly - it has just 96 members in the 234 member assembly). With the new UPA government continuing to offer the same number of berths, despite its much stronger position today, there is the just expectation on DMK sharing power with the Congress in the state.

I referred to the clever lobbying by the TV channels; one such instance of this was provided by NDTV’s group Editor Barkha Dutt. On 21 May, the night prior to the swearing in of the new cabinet, NDTV got Omar Abdullah, chief minister J & K and a close friend of Dutt, for his reactions on the cabinet’s composition: in a leading question Dutt made an innocuous enquiry on the inclusion of his father Farooq Abdullah in the cabinet. Omar gave vent to his anger and disappointment and referred to the lack of courtesy of the Congress leaders in not informing his father of his inclusion and to the latter scheduling to leave for South Africa on the morning of the swearing in to attend the IPL match.
Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh, immersed in the crisis created by the DMK that upset the process of cabinet formation, understandably forgot about these niceties. Manmohan Singh made amends by calling up Farooq Abdullah and reportedly informed him of his inclusion in the next round of swearing in. The senior Abdullah took it on his stride, graciously confirming that it was the prerogative of the prime minister to choose the members of his cabinet.
One noticed such loaded questions bordering on lobbying in the other two 24x7 English channels as well. With the strong Bengali flavour of all these three channels, coverage of the West Bengal, whether it related to the elections or the Kolkata Knight Riders, particularly Prince Saurav Ganguly, received disproportionate coverage. Sadly, the dithering by the DMK contributed to so much of adverse publicity for Tamil Nadu; with the usual commentators, N Ram (The Hindu) and Cho Ramaswamy (Thuglaq) no great admirers of the DMK, coverage of Tamil Nadu was not quite flattering.