IN A country in which it is always election season, it is hard for political commentary to rise above mundane tripe. As a columnist with an outsized sense of my responsibility to you, dear readers, I am going to try this week to get beyond covering the Prime Minister’s latest speech and Tejashwi Yadav’s anointment as the chief ministerial candidate of the Mahagathbandhan. I have said more than once already that it is my fervent hope that Prashant Kishor’s Jan Suraaj party somehow manages to win because he is not a ‘potted plant’ (political princeling) and has spent more than two years wandering about the villages of Bihar trying to understand what the people of our poorest state really need. I have also said, more than once, that if there were a hundred more like him in our ancient and wondrous land, it might end up becoming modern as well as wondrous.

So, let’s talk about other aspects of democracy that somehow, we never get around to discussing. A disturbing example from recent elections is the way our political leaders have openly started using taxpayers’ money to win votes. Ever since I covered my first Lok Sabha election in 1977, I was sickened by the........

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