The Prime Minister is right. It is time to debate simultaneous elections

Three changes that can help us achieve the difficult goal of simultaneous polls for Parliament and state assemblies

The prime minister recently said the time has come to seriously debate simultaneous elections to the Lok Sabha and state assemblies because at present India is perpetually in election mode. This, he said, hampers economic reform.

But how do you get two billion voters to vote if not simultaneously then within a period of, say, 12 weeks, a billion each for the two sets of elections? Can you even begin to imagine the logistical and counting difficulties? The Election Commission will tell you about these in great administrative detail.

On the other hand, the objections can be placed in the context of opportunity cost. How much does it cost the economy not to have rapid economic reforms? The economists will tell you about these in great econometric detail.

Recipe for inaction

So is this a case of equal and opposite pressure for practical difficulties versus output foregone, as a result of which there is complete standstill? Does it have to be so? If not, what’s the way out of what is clearly a bad place to be in?

Having been an advocate of simultaneous elections for two decades, and having had various suggestions dismissed on administrative, political and constitutional grounds, let me examine these objections.

First, all administrative objections are a function of resources. They are solvable by means of money, people and technology. A five year project similar to the Aadhar project — or the mission to Mars — is bound to solve it.

Second, political objections are a function of the degree of disdain for the voter. Political parties believe the voter will be biased in favour of the parties in power, especially if one of them happens to be in power at the Centre too.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi addresses supporters during the Bihar election rally, in Patna.

The evidence, however, is inconclusive in respect of the first objection. And it points in the opposite direction to the second worry. The voter is not an idiot. He or she can not only punish incumbent governments, he or she also knows the difference between assembly and Lok Sabha elections.

The third, constitutional, objections are more serious. They would require amendments to the Constitution which are never easy. In the end, though, the matter will boil down to whether simultaneous elections alter the basic structure of the Constitution.

I don’t think so, but many others do. Only the Supreme Court can decide this.

Think differently, please

It should be evident from this that we need a completely novel solution because otherwise we will keep debating it — as we did with Article 370 — without reaching a consensus. Such a solution should have three ingredients.

First, a technology should become available that makes it possible for the Election Commission to conduct simultaneous, free and fair elections.

Second, the life of the Lok Sabha and the assemblies should be made 66 months from the current 60. The extra six months will be for the elections — two months for the Lok Sabha and four months for the assemblies.

Third — and again this is something I have been advocating for two decades — we should think about regional parliaments that elect the members of the Lok Sabha. The regional parliament itself will be elected by a group of state assemblies.

This will filter out purely local interests because Lok Sabha MPs will view their role very differently. They will act on behalf of a region rather than a constituency. The European Parliament is a good example to follow with tweaks.

One final point: it’s a very bad idea — and even worse practice — to subject deep political reform to what economists call the strict Pareto criterion. Vilfredo Pareto was a 19th century Italian economist who said a movement from A to B is good if, and only if, it doesn’t make even a single person worse off. It’s impossible to achieve except for tiny populations.

Unfortunately that’s the criterion what all our non-reformists tend to use. It’s a formulation for zero action and total disaster.

Twitter: @tca_tca