Election season in the world’s largest and most diverse democracy ought to be the perfect stage for a display of leadership — old and new — for an engagement with big ideas and for big conversations. Unfortunately, the summer of 2009 isn’t turning out to be quite the show that it was hoped to be.

Two features of the election season have emerged clearer than others. First, that there is now an almost singular focus on arithmetic, rather than leadership, debate and ideas — this singularity of focus plagues almost every major and minor political party. And second, the political leadership has entirely failed to put on display real leadership — the kind that leads citizens to better things. What we have seen so far is, instead, a fiery display of bigoted and narrow-minded rhetoric combined with banality and a complete lack of substance from the leadership across party lines, on the issues which are of real importance to the country.

Consider first what the obsession with electoral arithmetic has led to, in terms of cross-party alliances and inner-party strategies. It is instructive to perhaps look at the case of the Left parties, only because they claim to consist of parties which function on points of principle, and not simply a craving for power. The Left parties also say that they are different from the Congress and the BJP and promise change. Do they?

The Left parties, to take an example, fashion themselves as the only true defenders of secularism — that’s why they struck an alliance with the Congress-led coalition in 2004, to keep the communal NDA out. Now, caught on the wrong side of public opinion in Kerala, they have chosen to ally with Islamic fundamentalists, just to win a few more seats — how “different” is that? Also, threatened with irrelevance at the national level after they withdrew support to the UPA, the Left parties have been quick to ally in a “third front” with former NDA/BJP partners like the TDP, the BJD, the AIADMK and the BSP, all of whom not only carry what the Left would usually view as a “communal” taint, but who also supported the pro-free market, pro-US policies which the Left vehemently opposes on principle. But it seems principles are as flexible as alliances.

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