The US midterm election results have come in. The Democrats have done well, flipping Republican-held seats in traditionally Republican states and gaining majorities in both the House and Senate.
Read the election report.

There’s a lot of chatter on social media about the diversity this election has thrown up. There is also considerable discussion about the hung Knesset, with no party securing a majority and uncertainty about who will lead Israel.
The Israel Democracy Institute’s analysis of the election provides an account of the fragmented political landscape.

Then there are we Indians, thinking about these elections and their implications in our political sphere.

The pro-BJP supporters are cautious and guarded.

The anti-BJP supporters are joyous and almost exuberant. The last time I had seen them so elated was when Zohran Mamdani won the New York mayoral race.
See the New York mayoral election results.

But if we think logically, India is altogether a different case. International politics doesn’t even cause a ripple here, forget waves. The problem is that independent political judgment and a shared civic consciousness have increasingly surrendered ground to identity-based loyalties and emotional mobilisation.

In the early years after the birth of the republic, with memories of the freedom struggle still fresh, perhaps we voted with greater sensibility and sensitivity. The shared experience of having struggled for a nation had given us a sense of collective purpose. But over time we have lost that ability and are barely holding on to the last vestiges of it.

We have travelled far away from that era and multiple generations have gone into their graves. The people now inhabiting the country seem paradoxically to have become increasingly insensible and insensitive. More intolerant, prejudiced and intensely self-absorbed.

Even academic intelligence, when divorced from an understanding of social structures and their finer nuances, offers little protection against prejudice.

The knives of religion, region, language, caste, food, clothes, misogyny, patriarchy and selective empathy have made mincemeat of what was once a whole, intact animal: our society.

Another problem is that we have perhaps overestimated the political awareness and astuteness of our electorate. Election outcomes are often celebrated as demonstrations of voters’ collective wisdom. But behind these outcomes lie deft political calculations and manipulations, carefully selected candidates, money, patronage, strategic messaging and an astute reading of local electoral equations. Much of this remains outside the recorded history of elections.

A voter may make a perfectly rational choice within the limited options, information and circumstances available to them. That doesn’t necessarily mean that the voter possesses an informed understanding of the larger political, social and constitutional consequences of that choice.

Similarly, an election can be procedurally democratic without necessarily demonstrating a high level of democratic consciousness among the electorate.

The tragedy is not merely that political manipulation influences electoral outcomes, but that the very divisions exploited to win elections are gradually becoming permanent features of our social consciousness.

It’s no turning back from here. For the path is blocked with debris. Debris of hurts and insults, of profound inequality and injustice, of neglect and abuse, of a deep sense of entitlement and an elevated sense of self-worth. All of these sometimes running parallel within the same individual or group.

The idea of a nation as a diverse and heterogeneous place, where things were not necessarily great but there existed a dream and hope of greatness without so much bitterness and hatred, seems to have been lost forever, sacrificed at the altar of Machiavellian politics. And no one can disclaim responsibility. Political parties across the spectrum, including national, regional and minority-representative formations, institutions of governance, the executive, the media and the electorate have all contributed their share to this mess.

A country as diverse as India cannot rely indefinitely on the historical sentiment of nationhood to hold itself together. It needs a continuously renewed social and economic compact, one in which linguistic identity, regional aspirations and developmental inequalities can coexist without eroding the idea of common citizenship.

© Shashikant Dudhgaonkar