Festive democracy, yes, but accountable?

Some questions two days before what is vigorously hyped as “the Festival of Democracy” (even the staid Election Commission has chimed in with a multi-media campaign) begins:

Who is your Member of Parliament (MP) and when was the last time you saw her/him? Where is the MP’s constituency office? When did the MP last address a constituency meeting? How many sittings of the House did the MP attend in the last term and how many questions did (s)he raise? How much of the MP local area development fund was spent and on what activities?  

Barring the precincts of a few star MPs, even well-informed citizens elsewhere would be hard put to answer most of these. We seek such details when we consider engaging staff or recommending people for positions, but when it comes to our parliamentary “sevaks”, to use the term favoured by no less a personage than the prime minister, we are mostly in the dark.

I set up residence in Vadodara in 1982. I have diligently voted in all the nine general elections and state assembly elections thereafter. We have had eight MPs, two from the Congress, one from the then Janata Dal and the rest from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). One was from the family that ruled the former princely state of Baroda, another was the lead actress of Ramayana on television who never visited us after the election, four were typical party functionaries, one was a fluke winner by 17 votes who did my printing occasionally and later grabbed headlines in the Kochi Tuskers franchise scandal of the Indian Premier League. In 2014, we elected the day’s premier leader, who abandoned the seat in favour of Varanasi while promising to look after Vadodara too, but those achchhe din are yet to come.

I take a keen interest in civic issues, and have offered my services to the MPs or their parties. All that has come to nought, except for a chance meeting with the 17-vote wonder on a train journey. He proposed we should meet regularly to discuss urgent matters. That was the last I heard from him.

My interactions with state assembly members have fared no better. I could contact only one, a former city police commissioner who gained fame by dancing the garba in Navaratri. He parlayed it into a self-created aura of a civic-conscious politician. He served as mayor before entering the Assembly. I had to tick him off for jumping the queue at the Indian Airlines reservation counter. He became a minister after some party hopping.  I sought his intervention in evicting a local gangster who had grabbed public land in our neighbourhood. “You disturbed my siesta,” he said, but even later, was not on the scene when the police finally threw out the offender.

I mention these because they show how little our elected representatives are involved in our community and civic affairs. These worthies are beholden only to the party leadership which shares some loaves and fishes in the form of constituency and local area development allowances. It keeps them under an iron grip of whips and anti-defection provisions. And the members think this is how it should be. Sumitra Mahajan, who has represented Indore eight times, said recently “the nominations are decided by the… organisation [which] would take an appropriate decision on Indore at an appropriate time.”  With respect, Madame (retiring) Speaker, that is exactly what ails Indian democracy at the grass-roots because members think they are accountable only to those who nominate them, and not those who elect them.

Compare this to what happens elsewhere. In the United States, Congressional nominees come up through primary elections and are grilled in many town-hall meetings. In the United Kingdom, local party councils decide their candidates long before elections and MPs strive to retain support through visible presence in their boroughs. Smriti Irani recently coined a term, lapata saansad (absconding MP).  Such politicians would stand little chance of re-election elsewhere in the world.

Our elected representatives have now reduced parliamentary democracy to be in evidence in ever fewer sessions of short durations of the respective houses, passing business without debate amidst unseemly din and inevitable adjournments. They are seldom seen in the constituencies.

We could still make accountability the cornerstone of a functioning democracy by adopting some simple measures. For starters, representatives should be required to widely publicise their constituency offices and be available there on a fixed day and time every month. A report on complaints received and their resolution must be mandatory, much like companies are required to do. The representative must file an annual statement of attendance of sessions and the nature and extent of participation in legislative business. This should be published in full in the district newspapers at the member’s cost. Annual audits of schemes under the local area development funds covering procedural, performance and effectiveness aspects must be conducted and filed with respective house secretariats. Members should also be required to disseminate them in their constituencies. All these must be parts of the nomination documents to be filed by members seeking re-election  

The title of the world’s largest democracy has to be earned through being accountable, and not just the optics of a five-yearly “festival” of balloting.

The writer is an economist