Lessons from the 15th Lok Sabha elections
Money for votes
Though there was tangible progress in many respects in the electoral process, distribution of money to voters continued unabated. Candidates were alert enough to take care of inflation and increased the rate accordingly. In order to curtail that disparaging practice, it is necessary to analyse its causes and effects.
It is estimated that 60% of candidates’ expenses go to the distribution of money. Of course this item of expenditure is not entered in the accounts submitted by the candidate to the Election Commission. Losing candidates do not challenge the result on this count, because in such an action they cannot ask for being declared themselves elected, since they are guilty of the same malpractice. Its degrading effect is far from being realised by citizens. Even middle class people receive money without compunction and even claim it if there is omission. Why to refuse money when it comes by itself to the doorstep, is their motto?
A few who happen to have some scruple justify their conduct saying that, after all, the candidate has got that money not by hard work but through illicit means. As far as the candidate is concerned, he who aspires to lead the country does not feel sorry for resorting to this shameful practice. He rather thinks that he is relieved from his obligation towards the elector who has accepted the price for his vote.
Thus democracy is killed in the cradle. Each candidate knows pretty well that the money distributed will not necessarily result in a vote in his favour. However if opts singly to give up the practice he is sure of losing the election. So candidates have landed in an awkward situation from which it is not possible for them to wriggle out by themselves. Money distribution is a cancerous growth in the election process, which requires a surgical solution.
In fact, candidates selected by big parties do not mind distributing money. From the returns in the nomination forms, millionaires are aplenty in the House; they have been given ticket by their party on the basis of their fortune. Thus Parliament attracts more and more business minded people.
So there is no lack of management talent. But there are less and less professors, lawyers, human rights activists, social workers and likeminded groups who would be able to infuse a sense of human values in the debates and trigger interest in long term measures.
So distribution of money has the unexpected deleterious consequence of bringing down the quality of the performance of the House. With this malpractice well anchored, candidates have come to consider the election process as an investment opportunity meant to give handsome returns. Thus corruption germinates at the very inception of the scheme of governance. It would be difficult to keep it under check when it blossoms in daily government transactions. So it is highly imperative to eliminate money distribution, if the country is to be free from the evil of corruption. With the use of the media, citizens should be awakened and made to realise that the dole they receive is not worth surrendering their right to monitor the action of their representatives and that a better management of public affairs will yield better returns for them.
The effect of this civic education will necessarily be slow; it is however worth to be undertaken; it will back up the stern steps the Election Commission, which is wedded to cleanse the election process, may take. Parties may be asked to put in the top of their manifesto something like” This party will not distribute money to the electors”. The nomination form may contain an affidavit by the candidate that he will not directly or indirectly distribute money to voters. Candidates may be made aware that detection of a single case will entail immediate disqualification. It may also be made clear that even after proclamation of results, if a report is received and if the enquiry after due notice proves a single case of recourse to this malpractice, the elected candidate may be disqualified. The task of the Election Commission would be made easy and fully efficient if we give up our first-past-the post system of election. That system is indeed feeding this corrupt practice. In a system of proportional representation there will not be so much of inclination to distribute money, because the candidate will not benefit directly and necessarily by the same.
Representativeness of the 15 th Lok Sabha
Much has been said about the outcome of the last elections. Most of the comments have taken as their basis the number of seats secured by the parties. In the present electoral system that is only an epiphenomenon. It is relevant only to determine the majority in the House. What gives the exact picture of the political landscape is the percentage of votes secured by parties. The figures appearing in the following table are quite eloquent in that respect.
| Parties | Number of seats secured | Percentage of seats secured | Percentage of votes obtained | No of seats proportional to votes |
| Congress | 206 | 37,93 | 28,52 | 155 |
| BJP | 116 | 21,36 | 18,83 | 102 |
| Other parties | 221 | 40,69 | 52,65 | 286 |
The two big parties have secured more seats than the votes obtained by them would warrant, to the detriment of “Other parties”. Such is the mischievous effect of our rudimentary electoral system. If the ”Other parties” which have obtained more votes than the Congress and the BJP put together had formed a united front they would have secured enough seats to form the government. As they failed to do so, the Congress has formed quite easily the government on the foot of the seats secured by it and its allies, with the help of other parties which lent support. But that government is rather fragile; allied and supporting parties may severe ties at any time, if that suits their interest.
Comparing the percentages of votes obtained and of the seats secured by the “Other parties” one may realise that the Parliament is deprived of the benefit of the opinion of 12% of the population. So a decision adopted by the majority of the Parliament and the government issued therefrom is deemed to have got only the backing of 44% de la population. If it is not accepted by the rest of the population, the government will encounter difficulties in implementing its decisions. Strikes and acts of revolts will hinder its action; several of its policy decisions except those granting sops may remain a dead letter. The inefficacy of government is inherent in the present electoral system. The future of the country is thereby jeopardized.
One argument in favour of the first-past-the post system is that it creates a personal link between the candidate and the electors. Such a link is conspicuously absent in Lok Sabha elections. That is indeed impracticable since the number of voters in each constituency is of the range of 13 crores. So votes are practically for the party like in the proportional system. Only the value given to votes is twisted in the present system; thus 12% of the population remains unrepresented and that much of the rest of the population is overrepresented.
Another argument in favour of the present system is that it is conducive to the emergence of the majority. That is possible in a country with a two party tradition. In India the results of the Lok Sabha elections in the course of the last twenty years go to show that the present system is unable to yield invariably a majority. On the eve of each election the apprehension of a hung assembly is expressed by the Press. Governance has been possible only with coalitions, for which the present system is not necessary.
Thus the present system which offers only its disadvantages without any of its selling points in the Lok Sabha elections deserves to be replaced by the proportional representation. Money will have less play; the campaign will be less tense; the electoral period may be considerably reduced; the vote will be more on issues than on persons; each party will get representation in conformity to votes obtained by it; the campaign will provide more opportunity to the political class and the electorate to think on political options on major problems.
More than all that, the proportional system will provide to all shades of public opinion an opportunity of expression inside the Parliament and be thus conducive to more inclusive solutions acceptable to a large chunk of the population. There will be less room for vociferations and troubles in the street. Parties at the crossroads When we purport to assess the strength of parties the first idea which occurs to the mind is to compare their performance with that in the previous election in terms of votes secured. That is shown in the following table:
Parties | 2004 | 2009 | Difference |
| Congress | 24.42 | 28.52 | +4.1 |
| BJP | 22.29 | 18.83 | -3.46 |
| Other parties | 53.29 | 52.65 | -0.64 |
The « Other parties » get a slightly lower share of votes; they have however obtained more votes than the two big parties put together, like in the last elections. The decline of BJP is noticeable. The Congress has benefitted from the loss of both the other contenders. In order to ascertain the real import of these variations it is necessary to proceed to a State level analysis. Congress registered loss to the extent of 7,6% in Orissa and 6,3% in Himachal Pradesh. It could make up these and minor losses in other States and emerge globally with flying colours on account of substantial gains in some other States. It gained as much as 11% in Punjab, 8% in Kerala, and about 6% in Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Madhya Pradesh. The BJP on its side gained 5,3% in Himachal Pradesh and 4,9% in Karnataka; it registered big losses in Rajasthan(12, 4%), Uttarkhand (7%), Assam(6,7%) Delhi and Jarkhand (5,5%) Haryana(5,1%)and minor losses in all other States. So both parties had gains and losses. The loss of one of these parties did not result necessarily in gain for the other. Some regional parties had also their share of loss and gain. When the big losses and gains are probed it appears that they are mainly due to local and accidental factors which will not occur again. When the result of those factors is removed it remains that the Congress has improved its performance across the country, though not to the extent appearing in the table of global results. The systematic studies on the determinants of this outcome have revealed three important causes. The first cause is the proneness of the electorate to restore the existing government which has acquired a sort of legitimacy and to avoid the risk of change unless the incumbent has proved unworthy. The second cause consists of the popularity gained by the outgoing government thanks to the substantial rise of salaries and pensions of government servants, to some social measures in favour of poor classes, to a feeling of rise of standard of living by the middle class on account of economic growth and also to the personality of Man Mohan Singh. The third cause of preference deserves to hold the attention. Some partisans of BJP declared themselves favourable to the Congress at the helm of affairs at the level of the Union. The ability of a segment of the electorate to spot one party which is good for the State and another one which is preferable for Union affairs discloses high level of political maturity. The emergence of this subtle behaviour is perhaps due to the higher percentage of literate people in the electorate and the new delimitation of constituencies on the basis of 2001 census which gave the urban population its due weight. The role of these two factors is going to increase in the subsequent elections. What lessons could the parties draw from the increasing perspicacity of the electorate? The Congress which obtained only 28,52% of votes, if it wants to regain its importance of yester years, has to offer long term solutions to the fundamental problems facing the country, which it has been evading all along. If it rests content with just administering the country with a paternalist outlook, it will put itself again in the rear gear. The BJP got a comfortable majority at a time when people were fed up with Congress administration. If it wants to become a nationalist party capable to offer an alternative to the Congress, it will have to shed unequivocally its religious garb and opt for a cultural complexion. Then, minor parties will not hesitate to ally with it since by so doing they will not be mortgaging their secular character. The “Other parties” which obtained 52, 65% of votes constitute a far more important group but an heterogeneous one. There is no likelihood of all of them emerging as a single block. But a large chunk may still find a common programme worth working for and an undisputed leader symbolising that ideal. If this does not materialise, they are doomed to remain in the opposition for ever or to seek a small space under the aegis of a big party in order to get a bit of power, without being able to ever achieve the purpose of their coming into existence. The election campaign One of the indicators of the democratic level of a country is the content of its electoral campaign. In the campaign during the past elections there were one unwarranted thing occupying much space and one important thing missing. The first item consists of personal attacks on candidates or the party leaders. Even top leaders indulged in uttering niceties against their opponents. This brings honour neither to the country nor to them. What was missing was the reference to fundamental problems facing the country and having a bearing on the future of the country, namely the Kashmir problem; corruption in all ranks of the government apparatus; the distorted distribution of powers between the Union and the States; the inadequate sharing of the revenue between the Union and the States; the rapid growth of population in the northern part of India ; the large scale illiteracy prevailing there; the pitiable level of research and higher education ; the crying need of electoral reforms ; the assessment and eventual reorientation of the reservation policy; the preventive detention by administrative orders covering up the inefficacy of the criminal justice administration etc... Some of these items are taboos; no party wants to raise them lest they should lose votes. Regarding some others, the political class has no long term vision to realise their importance and to ponder over them. There is an evident dearth of thought among the parties except in respect of ways and means to seize power and keep it. If any of those fundamental points happen to be raised by some quarters, the party in power appoints a commission to go into the problem; its recommendations lie dormant. If at all any portion thereof is implemented, that is on account of the personal preference of some leaders, without any public debate and people’s mandate. There is complete abdication of the political class on those fundamental problems. What is more surprising is the paucity of contribution by the political science departments of Universities Their task is to generate fresh ideas, to trigger debates in the Press and induce the political class to cogitate on those points in order to ultimately express their conclusions in the electoral campaign and get a public mandate. Let us turn now to the actual content of the last campaign. It covered two kinds of items. One consisted of matters of daily concern to people, like water, food, medical care, electricity, access routes, housing, employment, etc... Much insistence was made on these items and rightly so. But since almost all parties have made similar promises the vote will depend on the confidence they inspire by their past performances. Promises on these items should not be made light-heartedly because failures will appear glaringly. The second kind of items in the campaign consisted of some matters of general importance other than the fundamental problems listed above. Parties have listed them in their manifestoes. Though there was a great amount of similarity between them, there was sufficient difference to distinguish the policy orientation of the respective parties. Unfortunately manifestoes are gone through only by a fringe of the population. Parties did not bother to elaborate on those items in their oral campaign either in meetings or through media, presuming perhaps that they may not appeal to the average citizen. Political minds failed to realise that elections are the best occasion for a dialogue between the electors and their representatives. They are of course right in listening to the electors on their felt needs. At the same time they have the obligation to enlighten the people on the problems of general importance confronting the country, which otherwise will not be perceived by the people. A large section of the electorate is now ripe to listen to such discourse. The campaign has to become a two-way traffic. That will enable the candidates to get a clearer and richer idea on the problems in hand and also prepare people to accept policies which would require some sacrifices from them in the immediate future. This mode of policy making is possible now with the political awakening of the people.
....sent by Justice (Retd) David Annoussamy of Pondicherry: 25 June 2009
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