The case for decoupled elections

Both the EU and India follow a similar practice of separating elections and there are good reasons to keep it that way

It’s perhaps an accident of history that India became a country. A stray bullet could have killed Robert Clive at the Battle of Plassey, for example. It was pragmatic on the part of the founding fathers to compose a Constitution that is federal in nature since India is a union of states more diverse than the European Union (EU).

The EU has 27 countries — India has 28 states and 8 Union Territories. The EU has 24 official languages. India recognises 22 languages in its Eighth Schedule, and there are at least 35 more languages seeking recognition.

India has roughly 3.5 times the population of the EU (around 450 million). India also has a higher GINI coefficient than most of the EU. A GINI coefficient of zero represents a country where everybody has the same per capita income. A coefficient of 100 would be a nation where one individual holds all the income.

Germany has a GINI of 32 and France of 30. Bulgaria has the highest GINI in the EU of 39, and Lithuania has the second highest GINI, at around 36. India had a GINI of 36 in 2019. Given anecdotal data about increasing inequality, India’s GINI has probably risen since. 

The EU has a common currency used across 20 nations. The other seven have a commitment to join if they can fulfil the Maastricht or Convergence Criteria. These include fairly strict limits on government deficits, inflation, public debt-to-gross domestic product ratio, stability of the current national currency, and long-term interest rates. Importantly, the EU is a common market. Goods and people can travel across member countries. Labour rights include automatic residency rights. Goods can be sold anywhere within the union.   

Politically, each nation has its own laws and holds elections, which vary in accordance with the country’s polling system. The EU only insists on secret ballot. Some nations use the first-past-the-post system, others employ proportional representation, or mixes. Some use ranked voting systems. Each nation has its own parliamentary system, and enacts its own laws.

Members set their own tax rates, which move up the scale from a top income tax rate of 15 per cent in Hungary to 55 per cent in France. Indirect taxes are also set locally but must stay within a bandwidth of value-added tax slabs agreed upon by the EU. The European Central Bank sets the policy interest rates, and uses other monetary policy levers, as it considers necessary.

The EU is run through the European Parliament (EP) at Strasbourg (France). Members of the EP are directly elected by citizens of member states, every five years. Each nation must use secret ballot and proportional representation for EP. Importantly, members of the EP can be grouped by political affiliations (which may be pan-national), rather than national affiliation. This is analogous to a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP from Uttar Pradesh being grouped with a BJP MP from Maharashtra, rather than with a Samajwadi Party MP from UP. The next EP election is due in May 2024 — around the same time as the Lok Sabha elections.

The EP votes on laws and directive principles. It negotiates on behalf of the EU if necessary. It has the power to oversee the EU’s joint institutions and to query the central bank on monetary policy. It sets up commissions acting across the zone — for example, the General Data Protection Regulation is based on EP legislation. Once the EP legislates, member nations have to craft local laws consistent with these directives.

This is somewhat similar to India’s federal structure. Indian states can legislate many of their own laws, but those have to be consistent with parliamentary legislation. Of course, EU members have more latitude than Indian states.

EU member nations hold national elections when it suits them, and these do not coincide with EP elections. The local issues discussed in national elections are completely different from those discussed at the EP.

By keeping elections separate, each member nation ensures that it retains focus on local issues, instead of those being drowned by pan-national considerations. India also follows a similar approach, and it should continue to separate state elections from Lok Sabha elections for precisely these reasons.