Flashback elections in 70mm

It was a time of ‘booth capturing’, of ‘ballot-box rigging’, of candidates being kidnapped, of polling being countermanded, of bogus votes, of winning candidates “romping home with a thumping majority”, and of mayhem in the more lawless districts.

AND THE WINNER IS…. Excited people gather outside the OCS (Overseas Communication Centre, Flora Fountain) to know the outcome of general election results before the advent of 24 x 7 television.

The electioneering that preceded polling days, and this was especially during the general elections of the 1960s and 1970s — for the fourth, fifth and sixth Lok Sabhas — had the character of a rolling, riotous, colourful, entertaining ‘mela’, a full festival. The lorry (old Bedfords, stodgy Ashok Leylands) was the chariot that bore candidates around their constituencies. Rigged up with public address speakers and cassette players, lorries crammed with party workers and supporters would wind their way through the streets and lanes of towns and cities, adding ferociously to the din, the candidate waving out to the middle-class voters lining their balconies, his (or less frequently her) party workers perched at impossible angles on the slowly moving lorry.

If the party had done its homework well, a Bollywood film star might share the lorry — and that was the era of ‘Sholay’ and ‘Pakeezah’, ‘Deewar’ and ‘Roti, Kapda Aur Makaan’ - and the resulting frenzy ensured that life in that city constituency came to a standstill for the day.

It was a time of sloganeering, and no wall at eye-level was spared. Few had heard of an Election Commission, and fewer still cared for a code of conduct. Long weeks before campaigning began, select wall spaces would be hedged - municipalities and town councils scarcely bothered about visual pollution - by the use of innocuous advertisements for everyday products, owned by businessmen and traders friendly to the party. These were then swiftly painted over with party symbol, the candidate’s name, and a slogan if space permitted. Those quick with a brush and clever at using odd-shaped spaces did a roaring trade, for that was also the era when Bollywood hoardings were hand-painted, and so the two industries — film and politics — combined into a single feverish carnival.

GIANT KILLERS.... Giant cut-outs of political leaders could be seen all over the cities

Rallying slogans became, in the heady electioneering of the 1960s and 1970s, as popular as the national anthem. The one best recalled by Indians who watched wide-eyed the Lok Sabha races of that era is “garibi hatao” (remove poverty), connected forever with Indira Gandhi’s campaign in 1971 and which brought the Congress a landslide victory. Now dimming in popular memory is the slogan that endured from an earlier race to the Lok Sabha when “jai jawan, jai kisan” valorised the soldier and the farmer: there had been both armed conflict with neighbours and a food shortage.

The new India of IT parks and cineplex malls has scant recollection of those years, and campaigns today are in the hands of PR companies who employ the science of branding. They have lost their earthiness and raw appeal. The electronic voting machine has replaced the humble ballot paper, and with it has replaced the tension of the rounds of counting, of ballot boxes being ceremoniously locked, taken under guard from the polling station to the counting centres, where they would be opened, the papers tumbling out in great heaps, to be sorted and counted.

SERPENTINE QUEUES…… Voters wait patiently to cast their vote

In constituencies with large electorates, the counting would be done — by small armies of government servants, teachers and municipal staff — in ‘rounds’, and the press would stand by, fortified by tea and samosas, as the result of each round was announced, strong rivals edging ahead in one round, dropping behind in another, terse despatches being broadcast by All-India Radio in fourteen languages, as India listened to the tumult of democracy.

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