Appealing to the lowest common denominator

Where do personal barbs get us? Nowhere, really. Except, political big daddies seem to believe it takes them ahead in the first-past-the-post system. Destroy the credibility of the opponent any which way… that’s the name of the game. As the Lok Sabha elections wind down, Rafale has a new competitor: Bofors. 
Not that India has ever made any headway in cases related to corruption in defence deals.

Not that there’s any semblance of transparency or oversight even now. Nor have these allegations got us anywhere closer to indigenisation of defence production. Just like we have competitive welfarism on display in election campaigns (without anyone explaining its real impact on the economy), as if political parties fund them with their own resources. The same holds true for defence deals. We seem to forget it’s public money that gets spent and needs accounting. 

But larger and subtler questions such as these can scarcely be expected to be addressed in the heat of the election rally, where appealing to the lowest common denominator is the primary aim. This is where Parliament, consecutive governments and even the judiciary have failed us. What really should the phrase ‘code of conduct’ mean? Exactly what it says: a kind of self-born commitment to decency. It should not have to be enforced. We are so far away from that not only do we need an independent ombudsman in the Election Commission, lamenting the latter’s fall from its own code of conduct is our favourite pastime now! 
That said, mixing up the discourse on corruption with a former prime minister’s horrific death—the first and only instance in the world of a prominent political leader’s body being blown to bits by a suicide bomber—is like hitting a moral circuit-breaker. Must we become grave-diggers to decide who we should elect to run our next government? Oh, pass the box of clean chits please.