The only claim to fame of a candidate contesting from an assembly segment of the prime minister's parliamentary constituency was that he has been to jail 242 times. More times than anyone else in the world, he boasted during his election campaign, supplying copies of its mention in the Guinness Book of Records to anyone who sought proof. In another Uttar Pradesh constituency, a candidate with a criminal record said this should not bother anyone as long as people were ready to vote for him. Elsewhere we had eunuchs contesting on the valid ground that as men and women had failed so abysmally, they who thought of themselves as neither might do a better job.

Proud though we are of our democracy, could it not be said that these elections came as worrying proof that the "noise and chaos"-which Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto famously praised us for-have become more important than anything else? If eunuchs, criminals and an Italian-born national leader were not ludicrous enough, we had the descent of stars from Bollywood. Govinda dancing at Congress election meetings because of his love for Sonia Gandhi; Amitabh Bachchan singing at Samajwadi Party rallies for his love of Mulayam; and Hema Malini, in her new role as "Punjab's daughter-in-law", speaking up for the prime minister. Not one of these stars had anything political to say and Govinda was good enough to admit this. "I am an entertainer," he said in an interview to Aaj Tak, "and it is as an entertainer that I am here." Had he been more political, he could have added that since elections have become entertainment why should there not be real entertainers instead of clowns masquerading as politicians? Indian democracy is going through a bizarre, disheartening phase and this found reflection in the assembly elections. There were, for a start, no issues to speak of although there should have been thousands.

We need to ask why. Is it because our political leaders are raising the wrong issues? Or because the electorate knows it makes little difference who comes to power as nothing changes anyway? That nothing changes has become depressingly evident. For years large sections of the electorate-from extreme left to right-deluded themselves that the BJP would provide change. Those of leftist inclination predicted this fearfully. Fascist parties usually brought a degree of good governance, they would mutter. Had the Nazi party not made the trains run on time? And, voters of rightist bent believed the BJP slogan that it was a party with a difference. They were willing to overlook the party's inclination towards militant, communal nationalism as long as it could change the way India was governed.

Three years of Shri Atal Bihari have put an end to both leftist fears and rightist hopes. It is not so much that A.B. Vajpayee has been a bad prime minister, but that he has been so much a Congress-type prime minister it is sometimes hard to believe he is not. The Congress bequeathed him a corrupt, inefficient, obsolete system of governance and he has done absolutely nothing to change this. So, the average Indian continues to fight his way through a jungle of evil officials and evil rules and regulations to obtain the basic necessities. He knows the officials are corrupt and have too much power and that the rules are convoluted and unnecessary. But he is now resigned to the reality that nobody is going to do much to change things.

If things are bad in Delhi, they are infinitely worse in a state like Uttar Pradesh that has over the years degenerated into lawlessness, casteism, religiosity and despair. The foundations of this decline were ably laid by Congress chief ministers, but in recent years it has been BJP chief ministers who have cemented the collapse. So, much as governance should have been a big issue in the recent election, it was not because the voter seems to have given up hope.

Politicians and Delhi's political pundits like to blame the voter for this. It is because voters vote on the basis of caste and creed, they say, that there has been this decline. What nobody appears to notice is that voters would not vote this way if they were given a choice between caste and creed on the one hand and progress and development on the other. Which voter provided with a road, a school, clean drinking water, healthcare and electricity would choose temples or caste instead?

It is when the choice is only between temples and mosques, upper and lower caste leaders that caste and creed become important and, unfortunately, that is usually the choice that the Indian voter has. Is it any wonder that he would rather watch Govinda dance or listen to Amitabh sing than hear some third-rate politician make yet another set of third-rate promises that he is going to break anyway. If that sounds cynical, think of the cynicism of 30 per cent of our people living on less than a dollar a day after 50 years of regular elections.