We Indians are an emotional lot. And that makes us easy targets for PTSD. No, not post-traumatic stress disorder. Though there is an argument to be made for that, too. I mean, have we really moved past the partition?
But that is a tangent. The PTSD affecting us now? Post-truth stress disorder. In a world that seems to have moved beyond facts, where cold hard data melts under the hot lava of emotion, where does one turn to for the truth? There are as many strands of “truth” as there are hair on an average head. And this surfeit of information, wide and unreliable, leads to hair pulling.
Sample this. February 26: Indian fighter jets breach Pakistani airspace and drop bombs. The extent of the damage is still being debated. One side claims 300-plus deaths and the destruction of a dreaded terrorist camp; the other claims a bunch of charred trees and some scratches to a man.
The fact that got lost was that India played aerial kabaddi with Pakistan, raided its airspace, and came back untouched. An impressive military victory, no two ways about it.
Talking of victories, India will soon host the world’s largest electoral exercise. The Lok Sabha elections. And in the run-up to that, we will see many more disputes, distortions and defacements of truth.
So, to help you navigate the political season, THE WEEK has prepared for you a ready reckoner on the great Indian elections. How have the political parties performed over the years? What are their high and low points? How many women have made it to the Lok Sabha, and has this kept pace with the number of female candidates? How many Muslims, part of India’s single-largest religious minority, have had a seat in the lower house of Parliament? What are the changes that have been made to the voting process?
Questions like these and more will be answered in the following pages, and, hopefully, will dispel some preconceived notions and open up space for fruitful debate.
As an experiment, we have dropped the long story from our cover package and replaced it with a lot of data that you, the reader, can keep returning to in the coming weeks.
With accusations flying left and right, and from the left and the right, it is always handy to have the facts in hand.
We will let the numbers do the talking.
