By Girish Nikam
The countdown for the next Lok Sabha elections has begun in right earnest, and for the first time probably in the Indian elections, we have a happy situation where the voters are faced with two clear alternatives for the Prime Ministership.

Despite the media’s penchant for creating confusion regarding the UPA’s choice, or rather Congress’ choice for the Prime Ministership, it is now crystal clear that neither the UPA nor the Congress has any other candidate other than Prime Minister Dr.Manmohan Singh, despite whatever the loud mouth Amar Singh says. For once the debate over Sonia Gandhi wanting to occupy the coveted chair is over. Her 2004 decision responding to the call of her conscience remains, and finally even her worst detractors seem to be convinced about it finally.

As far as Rahul Gandhi is concerned, 2009 certainly doesn’t seem to be his year of glory, as he (and his mother) has made it clear ad nauseam that he is not in the race. And now that even the Congress party officially has declared Dr.Singh as the PM candidate, all the confusion should end. The Amar Singhs and his ilk’s frustrated attempts to position Sharad Pawar as the possible candidate is just that, frustrated attempts. And surely the last man to get carried away by such attempts is Pawar himself. He knows too well, that with 25 MPs at the best that he can muster from his NCP he is not going to be dreaming of occupying the PM’s chair.

So the race has essentially boiled down to Manmohan Singh vs L.K.Advani. And interestingly as mentioned earlier, it is for the first time that we have such a contest in this country. The BJP’s hopes that Congress would continue to flounder and give it a campaign issue about who is the Congress candidate, has now vanished. And they now have to reorient their campaign to face this new challenge of confronting the five years of Manmohan Singh’s tenure and the UPA’s hopes of another five years.

In this rather unprecedented but welcome scenario, hopefully the campaign will remain civil, more focused on what each of the candidates have done or not done and what they hope to do. In short, this campaign can easily turn out to be on the lines of the American Presidential campaign, without hopefully of course the bitterness that accompanied the Obama Vs Bush battle and before that the Obama Vs Hillary affair.

Indian voter has been used to bitterness, half truths, even lies and tons of exaggeration, in any political campaign. The media also is used to going for stories that the editors’ dub as “colour” and “unusual” which actually works out to chasing the trivial, and ignoring the big picture. What Indian elections need is a more careful, consistent and responsible analysis of the parties, candidates and their claims, rather than superficial and more often sensational reportage which is more often witnessed. It is important to sift the chaff from the grain, which essentially means sifting the propaganda from facts and presenting before the viewing and reading public.

What more often than not happens is that the entire media coverage of elections becomes focused on propaganda of the political parties, and therefore a “maut ka saudagar” statement becomes the focal point of an entire campaign.

While the performance or non performance, or claims and false claims, get buried or ignored. At the end of the day the voter is bombarded with these mutually vilifying statements, which certainly does not help in making an informed choice.

Hopefully the Manmohan Singh Vs Advani battle will set the stage for this turnaround in the Indian media and help the voters make an informed choice instead of just converting the elections into a “mega tamasha” of bytes, brickbats and smart one-liners, which leaves the viewers and the readers as confused as ever.

It is also a challenge to the political parties to make their offensive and counter offensive more issue-oriented and interesting and take on each other on the basis of facts, instead of taking the easier option of attacking the rivals personally. It is normally noticed that though the parties take some pain to draft their manifestoes and make pledges, they get left out in the background, as they focus almost entirely in stitching caste alliances and worse bribing the voters to catch their votes, instead of relying on convincing the voters on their performances and promises.

As a maturing democracy it is high time that both the polity and media turn their focus and make elections a more mature exercise rather than once-in-a five year tamasha.

For the first time the voters have the advantage of comparing and contrasting the performance of two Governments, which have both completed a full five year tenure. Come to think of it, when was the last time we, as voters, had this advantage? Never. So now we have two coalitions at the national level with concrete performances or failures and concrete programmes for the future, to place before the people and convince them about their credibility and sincerity.

We also have two contrasting schools of thought and ideologies poised against each other, and two Prime Ministerial candidates with impressive years of public service behind them. We therefore should not have any of the confusion which used to mark earlier elections, about who is the Prime Ministerial candidate and what is the line up, post elections.

Of course there are discordant noises with a non-existing third front trying to position itself for the kill, in the post election scenario. This is however just that, posturing without any real possibility of these forces being able to come together on a single platform. The fact is that the two national parties, the Congress and the BJP, has to be at the helm for any coalition to work, as we have seen in the last ten years.

And this is what makes this election most unique and most interesting. Now that Dr.Singh with a newly pumped up heart is about to get back into action, with a confidence that he has never enjoyed before of his party and his alliance, and Advani making that last ditch bid to fulfill his dream, the count down for circa 2009 has indeed begun.