From 50 Years Ago: A Decisive Election

A Decisive Election

In a month’s time the country will go to perhaps the most, critical poll in its electoral ­history to elect the Fifth Lok Sabha. The drama of 1967 lay in its outcome; that of 1971 lies in the very announcement of the election. The happenings since 1967 and the quickening pace of events since the split in the Congress party in 1969 have created an unprecedented interest in the preparation for and outcome of the Lok Sabha poll (to which are now to be added ­Assembly elections in three States). The act of dissolution of Parliament fourteen months ­before the end of its regular term —another ­unprecedented event — has intensified this interest which is not just political. The stakes are larger. Politics has never had such salience for the lives of ordinary people as it has now.