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Those were the days, my friend

There's no scientific reason behind it, but that there's greater magic in the past than in the present cannot be denied even by the ultra-rationalists among us, even if they are unsure of why it is so. And, especially around election time, this holds true.

Perhaps in their heyday, Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi led highly personalised campaigns that were built around their persona, but they needn't have worried. The Indian political system, aka the Indian voter, had not matured to a level when he could really separate the issues from charisma, performance from promise. He was still drunk on the heady brew of the national movement, and given that the history books were replete with the sacrifice of the Indian National Congress in securing freedom for the nation, he really cannot be blamed for trusting the same party with the task of protecting it as well.

The Emergency, and the violation of individual rights that went along with it in the name of guarding against the threat to the nation, was the real jolt that woke him from the Rip Van Winkle-like slumber. The mandate of 1977 was not so much in favour of the ragtag jumble of old men that called themselves the Janata Party, it was the voter throwing out a regime he believed had let him down.

Subsequent elections have showed, in fact proved, that despite the much talked about decline in the Congress fortunes, the party continues to remain a major player. It may not sound politically correct to say so, but the fact is, no non-Congress government, at New Delhi, so far has come to power on a favourable vote. Every non-Congress government at the Centre -- in 1977, 1989, 1996, 1998 -- has been formed on the basis of an anti-Congress vote. Given this, it is ridiculous to even suggest that the party has been wiped out.

Of course, this time, if, as the pollster and the analysts seem to indicate, the Vajpayee government is returned to power, it will be the first time that a non-Congress government will have been voted in on a pro vote. If and when that happens, perhaps one will be justified in saying that the Congress has been well and truly replaced at the federal level.

The present election, too, somehow seems devoid of fire and brimstone. Thanks to an over-zealous Election Commission, the one issue that could have led to some drama at the hustings, Kargil, has been well and truly emasculated. In its absence, the BJP and the Congress appear like -- to borrow a line from a favourite Tamil classic -- two blind men in a dark room looking for a black cat that is not there.

Among the elections I have had the fortune to witness, my vote for the best of the lot goes to the 1989 edition. It was the one that saw, for the first time, the Indian voter defeat a prime minister he had elected with an astounding majority in the previous election. The kind of sloganeering and campaigning that went on to oust Rajiv Gandhi from the prime ministership has been missing from the subsequent elections, blame it on Seshanomics if you will.

Those slogans still resound in one's ears:galli galli mein shor hai, Rajiv Gandhi chhor hai; takht badal do, taaj badal do, beimaano ka raj badal do. There was enough contribution from the Gandhi balladeer, Piyush, to bring a chuckle to one's face everyday. There was enough activity from the BJP on the sidelines that kept alive its Hindutva hopes, which, barely 10 years down the line, have been thrown into the Arabian Sea.

Rajiv Gandhi not only set aflutter female hearts, he was also a cartoonist's delight. In particular, Ravi Shankar of the Indian Express who beefed up his reputation thanks to his newspaper's Bofors campaign. Gandhi, of course, responded with an iron fist when things became too hot for him, and raided the offices of Indian Express across the country. Shankar's cartoon the next morning was a classic: it showed Rajiv Gandhi occupying the Express circulation manager's post. And when the election campaign was on its last legs, Shankar drew a diminutive Gandhi occupying an outsized PM's chair, indicating that the job was too big for the incumbent, and shouting out 'mummy!'

Oh, Rajiv Gandhi was a delight in so many ways, even if he was a disaster as the prime minister. But let me repeat what I have said so many times since then. Instead of becoming mincemeat to the LTTE, if, after the 1991 election, he had returned as the prime minister, I believe he would have been the best PM India has ever had.

Since then, I blame the colourless P V Narasimha Rao for having reduced the political process to the colour he can identify with best: grey. He, in league with that megalomaniac in Nirvachan Sadan who is contesting from Ahmedabad this time, made the Indian political tamasha as uninteresting as watching a snail cross a superway. Since then, things have not quite been the same.

This election could have been very different, but for Seshan's successors in the Election Commission who seem obsessed on making polls dull. No wonder, then, the past seems so much better.

Saisuresh Sivaswamy