Cover Story 
 

Cover Story

Pakistan and India – Politics and Polls 2024:
Commonalities and Contrasts

The 60 per cent plus non-BJP voters are the hope for a future India that neither threatens itself nor its neighbours.

By Senator (r) Javed Jabbar | July 2024


Pakistan lost to India due to an appalling lack of preparation and grit in the pre-qualifying rounds of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup in 2024. But Pakistan left India far behind in an imaginary yet relevant Balanced Voter & Political Maturity Index (BVPMI) as of 2024.
Despite the well-deserved reduction of BJP seats in the Lok Sabha from 303 in 2019 to 240 in 2024, Narendra Modi returned as Prime Minister, and even with non-BJP allies, the poison of BJP-RSS’s Hindutva will persist in infecting and afflicting the Indian polity in the years ahead.
Notwithstanding that, as in 2014 and 2019, the majority of Indian voters actually voted against BJP, i.e. in the latest count, the BJP share of the total votes cast was only 36.6 per cent, though the number of votes it gained was more than previously because of the increase in the number of voters since 2019.

The absurdity of the FPTP system:
Because of the absurdities and the anomalies of the First-Past-The-Post (FPTP) electoral system slavishly used by both Pakistan and India, in imitation of the British system, a party that receives a minority of the vote share can get the majority or a near-majority of seats, As has happened in Pakistan, though here there are other reasons for the distortion. Nevertheless, for the record --- the PTI in Pakistan secured the largest vote-share at about 17 million, compared to PML-N’s share of only 13.5 to 14 million. Yet the latter rules the roost while the former serves in the Opposition! The PTI leader remains unjustly imprisoned while even the superior Judiciary de facto remains a silent spectator in the face of one spurious case after another being filed against the PTI chairman to keep him incarcerated. In India, the contrived jailing of Kejriwal of the Aam Aadmi Party is a revealing reflection of how the legal system, even in a democracy, can be manipulated to temporarily disable opponents.
Meanwhile, in both countries, coalitions are cobbled together to retain power. With odd aspects too, in Pakistan, PPP and MQM, while enjoying the fruits of office, often sound like Opposition parties. The male-female coalitions in both countries could do with substantive improvements. India stays ahead, with seven women in Cabinet and sub-Cabinet positions, down from ten women in the previous cabinet. These seven include the exceptional Nirmala Sitharaman, who had the distinction of presenting six annual budgets as Finance Minister up to 2024. In Pakistan, we have only four women, vastly outnumbered by over two dozen men.

Persistence of Hindutva:
Let us return to why Hindutva is likely to persist and proliferate in India despite the setback for BJP and Modi. The reasons: in the past ten years, since 2014, through a callous, calculated policy and surgical actions, covert and overt, the Hindutva ethos has been embedded into significant parts of the Indian polity. These include lower and higher education sectors with revisions to curricula, introduction of new textbooks, appointment of vice-chancellors and officials of similar mindset, cultivation of inimical conditions in colleges and campuses, appointment of biased judges and magistrates; take-over of most news media and promotion of a narrow, sectarian slant in most content, specially that concerning Muslims and other non-Hindus; use of vituperation and excess in political discourse, both within and outside Parliament and state legislatures, making hate and slander speech politically usable and acceptable; compelling non-Hindutva political parties to retreat from open, explicit defence of Muslims and other non-Hindus to milder, cautiously - phrased defence of “secularism and the Constitution.”

A whole ambiance continues to be fostered in which the dubious thesis is advocated that only Hindus are authentic Indians. To make this most disturbing is the use of social media to brainwash women and youth in large numbers to think in similar terms. Kudos to the majority of Indian voters and to the vast majority of Indian citizens who maintain a truly balanced, moderate approach and embody rich legacies of pluralist history. The 60 per cent plus non-BJP voters are the hope for a future India that neither threatens itself nor its neighbours.

While certain streaks of violent religious extremism in Pakistan flare up with more frequency and intensity in recent times --- a la Sargodha, Jaranwala, Madyan, false, unverified charges of blasphemy, abominable persecution of Ahmadis, etc. --- the people of Pakistan in general and voters, in particular, demonstrated rare, remarkable maturity and balance on 8th February 2024. No religious political party attained power at the Centre or in the Provinces. In historical terms, and in the present, religious political parties remain over-rated, unduly pandered to entities with little substantive national or electoral power.


Voter looks for party:
Notably, as has been well said, whereas in any normal election held anywhere in the world, including India, it is the party and the candidate of that party which keenly looks for voters on polling day. In Pakistan on 8th February, it was the voter who conducted a quiet, determined search for the candidate in her/his constituency who actually represented the PTI which had been unjustly deprived of its exclusive, well-known election symbol, the cricket bat, and thus prevented from participating as a political party. Among a wide range of old and new election symbols, familiar as well as funny, the sincere, courageous 17 million voters who supported PTI in 2024 carefully chose the right candidate and symbol without the advantage of advance publicity and sympathetic coverage by news media.

A whole ambiance continues to be fostered in which the dubious thesis is advocated that only Hindus are authentic Indians.

Indeed, the pro-PTI vote cast for officially non-PTI candidates makes the original results of the 8th February polls a historic, unprecedented watershed in global electoral and political history. This is why Pakistan is leagues ahead of India in the BVPMI context! While PTI can always draw inspiration from this milestone achievement, the phenomenon should also prompt and sustain candid, internal, self-critical review and reform by PTI --- to recall its catastrophic errors in the 2018-2022 period of its rule so as to avoid recurrence in the future. Yet those blunders cannot condone the outrageous mutilations of vote counts perpetrated after polling ended, so aptly, memorably captured by the cover story of SouthAsia titled “From ‘47 to Form 47.”

The regrettable contrasts:
This is where, alas, our humble pride in the Pakistani voter’s maturity must give way to profound regret for two reasons. First: in contrast to the integrity and credibility of the conduct of the Indian electoral process --- spread over seven phases from May to early July 2024 --- and the acceptance of results by all, give or take a few quibbles, the shoddy, discriminatory conduct of the Election Commission of Pakistan in all three phases: pre-polls, during polls and post-polls, It is a miracle that, in spite of the blatant bias displayed by the ECP against the PTI, the official vote-count was obliged to reflect the fact that PTI secured the highest share of the vote with 17 million, With PML-N nearing about only 14 million, Second: though the Indian military continues to exert influence on Indian political policies in Kashmir, Siachen, Assam, elsewhere, nuclear weapons, etc., it did not use its intelligence agencies to covertly or overtly influence matters in all three stages: pre-poll, during polls and post-polls. In Pakistan, in sharp contrast, at virtually every stage, literally every person in the street, let alone analysts and observers, knows that the military in Pakistan was, and remains deeply enmeshed in shaping the political and electoral processes: in violation of the oath of service taken by every individual in uniform who pledges not to take any part whatsoever in any type of political activity. Sadly, there are some other overseas countries where such military intrusion also occurs. But Pakistan --- only one of nine nuclear weapon powers in the world out of 193 UN Member-states and the only one such power out of 56 Muslim-majority Member-states cannot ever justify this continued, indeed worsening imbalance between the civil and the military. Most grievously, such imbalance damages the institutional health and future development of the Armed Forces of Pakistan, a segment of the Pakistani state that otherwise represents the finest qualities of professional capability, personal courage, merit-based progression, ideals, and standards direly needed by the nation as a whole, Hundreds of soldiers and officers give the supreme sacrifice of their lives to defend our state and our territory against terrorism and attacks by hostile countries,

Where the Indian voter has much to learn from the Pakistani voter, the Pakistani election system and the military should study the Indian election system and their military’s abstention from domestic politics. Even tense neighbours can benefit from studying each other while retaining their own distinct identities and perspectives.

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