Elections are the best and perhaps most appropriate time for political parties to raise issues that affect people’s lives. Traditionally, they are also the time when opposition parties dig out uncomfortable issues from the past, shining a spotlight on government conduct which may have concerned the electorate during its term.

And, in a year in which parliamentary polls appeared to have “no issues” or to be decided “locally”, a look at an assembly election might serve as a useful comparison. Yet it appears that in the concurrent assembly polls in Orissa, none of the three major parties — the Biju Janata Dal, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress — seemed to have chosen to dwell on the issues that were central to state affairs over the past five years.

Needless to say, even in a state where all development indices are pathetically low and which is arguably the poorest state of the country, issues like hunger hardly figured. Why so, when rural Orissa, according to the Delhi-based Institute of Human Development, is struggling, with over 47 per cent below the poverty line? Every 11th child here dies before the age of five; and yet, bucking pro-governance trends, these issues have not been put before voters by either the government or the opposition.

What about other issues? The police firing in Kalinganagar, over land-use and industrialisation, and which led to the death of 13 tribals in 2006, did not find any place in the political discourse — though the state is a tribal-dominated region. Angry tribals blocked a local highway for over 14 months demanding the killings be investigated, insisting they would not give up land for the Tata steel plant. Yet neither the Congress nor the BJP embarrassed the state government over its dismal track record in resolving the knotty issue of displacement.

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