Time for proportional representation?

Current electoral system is unhealthy for Indian democracy

Election expenses for political parties and candidates have far outpaced inflation in India. For the 2014 Lok Sabha election the combined expenditure of candidates and political parties per seat was rumoured to be between Rs 5 crore and Rs 80 crore. The legal spending limit for a Lok Sabha candidate is Rs 54 lakh to Rs 70 lakh depending on the size of the state. Aspirants for assembly seats are required to keep their spending in the range of Rs 20 lakh to Rs 35 lakh. However, there are no spending limits for political parties. The Election Commission (EC) has urged successive governments to enact legislation to cap election spending by political parties to 50 per cent of the ceilings for individual candidates.

Over the past few decades, enhanced deployment of armed police and election observers has reduced blatant exchange of cash for votes and physical intimidation. However, even if the EC were to deploy more personnel, it may be difficult to detect overspending or eliminate election related violence. The distortionary impact of higher spending on results in Indian elections is difficult to estimate except that candidates who have more financial resources have an unfair advantage. The increasing electoral costs also gives an edge to well-heeled candidates with dubious and criminal backgrounds.  

Under these circumstances the EC should examine electoral practices around the world which could be adapted to reduce the impact of money power on Indian elections. For example, Germany, Japan, Sweden and the Netherlands use proportional representation. Half the seats in the Bundestag, lower house of the German parliament, are elected on the first past the post system used in India. For the remaining 50 per cent of seats voters indicate their preference from one out of the several parties in contention. Political parties list their candidates for the Bundestag in a descending order of preference. Details are at https://www.dw.com/en/how-does-the-german-general-election-work/a-37805756.  

Germany with a population of 81 million has 709 members in the Bundestag. India’s population of 1.35 billion is almost 17 times that of Germany but the Lok Sabha has just 545 members. It is high time for India to at least double the number of members of parliament (MPs) in the Lok Sabha. For illustrative purposes Lok Sabha membership could be doubled to 1,100. For 550 seats the current system of first past the post could continue. For the remaining 550 seats voters would indicate their preference for political parties based on their manifestos and declared lists of candidates.  

The membership of all state assemblies could be doubled too with 50 per cent of the seats decided by the same proportional representation system. The Rajya Sabha could continue at its sanctioned strength of 250. This will have the beneficial effect of reducing the importance of the indirectly elected Rajya Sabha if and when a joint vote with Lok Sabha is held. In Germany, parties which get below 5 per cent of the vote share are not allotted any proportional representation seats. In India to consolidate parties, this percentage could be pegged higher, say at 10 per cent.  

If 50 per cent of seats in the Lok Sabha and state assemblies are decided through proportional representation, the debate would shift more towards explaining what parties expect to deliver. For instance, on March 25, 2019, the Congress party announced that if it comes to power after the coming general election, it will implement a minimum income scheme for the poor. This has probably shifted some attention from candidates to parties and with proportional representation this would happen more systematically. Parties would be expected to explain how their income support and loan waivers would be funded without compromising on basic aspects of governance such as security, health and employment generation programmes.  

Right now the practice in India is to bring in talented persons, who are not likely to win direct elections, to Parliament through the Rajya Sabha. High spending and intimidation tactics may be less effective in proportional representation. Hence gifted and public spirited individuals may find that the barriers to being elected to the Lok Sabha are lower under a proportional representation system.

There should be no requirement of reservations for the additional proportional representation seats in the Lok Sabha and the state assemblies. However, the existing reservations of seats for the direct elections should continue. Political parties would figure out that their candidates for proportional representation would have to be sufficiently diversified based on gender, social and economic backgrounds. If parties ignore popular sentiment about this issue, they may win less than 10 per cent of the proportional representation votes and hence get no seats in this category.

Doubling the numbers of Lok Sabha and state assembly members will double the cost on their salaries and allowances. When the difference in the number of seats between the party in power and the principal opposition is small, we are often subjected to the absurd sight of state assembly members being sequestered in expensive holiday resorts to prevent them from defecting. The higher cost on remuneration for the additional MPs and MLAs would be a small cost to pay for better representation.

In the unlikely event that political parties do get together to pass the required legislation for proportional representation, courts may well rule that this would be inconsistent with the Constitution. In that case legal remedies would have to be sought including possibly a country-wide referendum. In any case, nothing is lost in thinking big about changing our electoral system which is “broken” in many ways.

To sum up, voting for the next Lok Sabha will take place in April-May 2019. Once the new government is in place at the end of May, it should be asked to take a serious look at moving to proportional representation. Readers of this column may well think that all this is a pipe dream. Well, nothing ventured, nothing gained. Continuing with the current electoral processes with forever rising use of unaccounted money is not sound either for the health of Indian democracy.

The writer is a former Government of India and World Bank official ; j.bhagwati@gmail.com