T C A Srinivasa-Raghavan: India's political diabetes

The idea of coterminous Lok and Vidhan Sabha elections needs serious consideration

Many modern Indian liberals have developed a new tendency: they reject an idea not on its merit but on the basis of who came up with it. The most recent example is a suggestion made by very high ups in the Sangh Parivar that Parliament and Assembly elections must be held simultaneously.

The idea seems stillborn. It was dismissed by the Congress as being "undemocratic" and by a former Chief Election Commissioner as being impractical. The regional parties also did not welcome the idea.

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The political response was a pure knee-jerk one by a party that is now run by some very silly politicians; the administrative response was a purely bandobast view of what is actually a hugely debilitating problem, a sort of political diabetes that kills slowly.

After this rejection we have heard nothing more about it, not even from the permanently topic-starved TV news channels. But the incontrovertible fact remains: at present India is forever in election mode because there is always an election to be held, somewhere or other, in one or more of its 29 states.

The negative effect of permanent elections on coalition governments at the Centre is very severe. It adversely affects, in the worst possible way, the very manner in which India functions. No country can be governed in either politically or economically effective terms if its governments are always making electoral calculations.

Even the BJP, with its simple majority, has not been an exception to this elections-caused problem. It is not pushing the idea even though it should expect to be least affected by simultaneous elections. After all, politically, it amounts to very little in most of the south and the east of India.

Think again, please

Of the two objections - undemocratic and infeasible - the latter is the real show-stopper because of the daunting size of the Indian electorate, of around 800 million and growing. To arrange for 'free and fair' elections would be a real challenge not just for the police but also the Election Commission if all these people were to vote at the same time. Things are hard enough as they are.

Does this mean that India is doomed forever to be in election mode? If the bandobast argument is accepted, yes; in which case, the country has little chance of making rapid social and economic progress. With political parties constantly jostling for advantage, India will forever be what Gunnar Myrdal called a 'soft state'.

The downside of this softness is immense because it negatively impacts the rate of investment and growth and therefore earning opportunities and regular jobs. Indeed, at the risk of being accused of exaggeration, I would say that this particular electoral reform is on par with the climate change challenge.

It must be taken seriously by the political parties and ways must be found to overcome the administrative challenges. The long-term prospects of the country cannot be ignored just because the task is so formidable.

As to the other fear, that it would be undemocratic, the Congress party spokesperson said that continuous elections make the central government accountable. Really?

But the question of accountability is important. But frequent elections are not the best way to achieve it.

Fixed terms

One major problem with our system is that it prescribes no upper limit for the length of time a party can be in power. There are several examples of this. We have seen how much damage this can do both at the central level and at the level of the states.

So the question is: should the length of time a party is consecutively in power be left to the voters or should it be determined by the Constitution? There are no easy answers but this is certainly another question that needs serious re-examination because it throws up some very important issues about voter preference, etc, but these must be tackled. We can't shy away from what has become a cancer in the system, responsible for both corruption and awful governance.

We also need to face up to the fact that our Constitution, while being excellent in terms of the rights it confers on us, is flawed in too many other respects. The Constituent Assembly, apart from adopting the 1935 Government of India Act as the base document, tried to do too much micro-regulation.

The time has come to recognise this explicitly instead of going on about the 'wisdom of the Founding Fathers'. After all, had it been such a great document, it would not have had to be amended more than a 100 times.

Our Constitution's singular obsession with detail over how India must be governed showed a colonial mindset. It has stymied us for almost seven decades. It needs to be revisited properly and not piecemeal via amendments and court judgements.