Re: Elections in India by Raj

On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 11:18 PM, Jyothi and Raj <jothiraj12@rediffmail.com> wrote:

Revisiting Indian Electoral System

M C Raj

Congress Party has come to power in India in the just concluded elections to the Parliament.
Some eminent people have chosen to describe this as the victory of Indian democracy
comparing the quality of democracy in India to the democratic practices in the
neighbouring countries in Asia. Democracy has to bear fruit to the people on whose behalf
it is being practiced and not in comparison to what it does for the neighbours. Congress
has come to power with 28.6% of votes. This is only a marginal increase of over 2% from the
2004 elections. A few other regional parties have managed to increase their share of votes
but have decreasing returns in terms of seat share.

It is reported in the Times of India of 04 June that Bhola Singh (BJP) has won the Nawada
Parliamentary seat in Bihar with less than 10% votes. The Cosntituency has a total of 14
lakhs with an estimated population of about 24 lakhs. He won the seat by gaining only 1.3
lakh votes. 145 out of 573 elected members in the latest elections have won with less than
20% votes. Murli Manohar Joshi, Lalji Tandon and Hukumdeo Narayan won with only one
eigth of the votes. Salman Kursheed and Farooq Abdullah also got similar number of votes.
Meira Kumar got only one seventh of votes. Only five MPs, Nagaland, Sikkim, two Tripura
and one from West Bengal (Tamluk) got more than 50% of votes. The average MP this time
got only one fourth of the vote share.

This is the anomaly of Indian democracy that its practice is incongruent with its profession.
Indian democracy is self styled as one of the best int he world but Nepal has tarred this
image by taking recourse to a proportionale representation system in their democratic
praxis. In the Indian electoral system people are making their choices. There is no doubt
about it. But they are forced to make a choice within certain dominantly designed
boundaries of which they are ignorant. That somebody with less than 10% of votes can get
into the Parliament is a democratic anomaly in its character of representation. That a party
that manages to scrape through with 28.6% of vote share is hailed as the harbinger of
political hope of a nation is a democratic anomaly in its representational character. If actual
representation is removed from the praxis of democracy it is bound to be farce.
Unfortunately the trajectory of modern democracy has this farcical dimension inbuilt into its
from the time of its evolution from an enlightenment-cum-colonial period in history.

Fortunately some of these countries caught up in the churning out of a dominanat variant
of democracy and representation have realized the flaw in the trajectory and have shifted
their electoral system to the Proporitonate one. 21 out of 28 Western Eruropean Nations
have reformed their electoral system to usher in proportionate representation in their
Parliaments. Some of these countries have done model setting in termas of enhancing
representation of citizens in the Instruments and Mechanisms of democracy in their
respective countries. New Zealand has made provisions for separate electorate for the
ndigenous Maori people within their PR system. Norway has officially recognized the
Parliament of the Sami indigenous people as a mark of democratic recognition of the right
of the indigenous people to have their own internal governance. Germany has provided
reservation to the Danish people in one of its northern states.

India has been witnessing sproadic clamour for electoral reforms. Such clamour has been
restricted to cleaning up the existing system and has not been extended to critically
examining the legitimacy of the same in the praxis of a mature democracy. There is one
section of Intelligentsia in India that is not even aware of the nuances of other electoral
systems that are in vogue in many democracies. There is another section of intelligentsia
that is aware of the existence of other forms of electoral systems but know intuitively that it
is going to provide space for many marginalized communities of people in India. This is
something that the chemistry in their bodies naturally resist and therefre, such intellectuals
have shunned any public debate on the First Past The Post or the Majoritarian Electoral
System.

Another set of intellectuals have clamoured for the American type of two party democracy
in India. The USA, UK and India are major democracies that still cling on to the Majoritarian
Electoral System though dialectics are in advanced stage in the former two countries for
ushering in a Proportionate Electoral System. Arun Shouried belongs to this school of
thought though he stretches his argument a bit further and argues for the power of
governance to be handed over to the executive. The underlying argumentation is that
representatives of common people should not be vested with the power to govern the
country.

According to Atul Thakur and Shankar Raghuram the argument in favour of two party
system does not hold water as West Bengal and Kerala with multy party have gained the
maximum average percentage. West Bengal has 41% and Kerala has 36%. The other state
that has got one third of votes for average MPs is Tamilnadu with also multy party. In
contrast States where the fight was straight between Congress and BJP such as Gujarat, MP,
Chhattisgarh, Uttarkhand and Rajasthan the average is 25% and below. Only in Delhi and
Himachal with bipolar contest the situation is better.

India's FPTP electoral system has reservation for the Dalits and Adivasis/Tribals. But within
the Majoritarian system reservation has only become a handy tool in the hands of the
dominant parties to politically neutralize Dalit/Adivasi leadership. In the FPTP system seats
in the Parliament are not proportionate to the percentage of votes that a party gains thus
leaving out a vast majority of voters unrepresented in governance. Some of the States in the
North Eastern part of India are woefully under-represented. There are many Tribal groups
in many of these States and except Assam all other States have only one or two seats in the
Parliament. If multi member electoral districts are introduced as in the PR system these
States will have the possibility of sending more than six to eight representatives to the
Parliament from each State. In this case the strength of the Parliament will have to be
increased within manageable levels. Germany with about 40 million people has more than
six hundred members of Parliament.

Nepal has introduced PR system in their praxis of democracy with the support of the
Maoists. Big effort is going on there to integrate it into the new Constitution of Nepal. In
subsequent elections, before the PR system was introduced in Nepal only one Dalit
candidate was able to enter the Parliament. With the introduction of PR system it was
possible for the Dalit community in Nepal to send 49 Dalit candidates into their Parliament
in the last general elections.

Proportionate Electoral System does not go by any uniformity though there are many
common threads in all its variants. Not only the system but also the counting of votes and
apportioning representation to every voter is a major mechanism in the countries that
practice PR system. Democracy is about providing space for all citizens in the Instruments
and Mechanisms of governance. The present electoral system in India constricts the political
space of the poor and culturally marginalized communities of India by making it possible
for a party to come to power with even less than 27% of total votes cast. If such
communities make coalitions among themselves through their respective parties taking on
board also some religious minority communities and fight elections as coalition partners
within the ambience of the PR system it is going to spell the rise of the hitherto excluded
and downtrodden people and mark the ushering in of a mature democracy.

The Rural Education for Development Society and the Booshakthi Kendra in India have made
a research on the Proportionate Electoral System as it is in German democracy and have
published "Dalitocracy" as a result of their research. This was done after due reflection on
the demand for separate electorate and the need for other viable alternatives. Subsequently
they have also launched a Campaign for Electoral Reforms in India (CERI) to bring about a
Proportionate Electoral System. CERI is making further researches on the Norwegian model
of Parliament and the New Zealand electoral system. India is also badly in need of adapting
an electoral system that will checkmate efforts to infuse Indian democracy with fascism.
CERI is spearheaded by a group of senior leaders of civil society drawn from different parts
of India. Proportionate Electoral System is not a panacea for all the woes of a struggling
democracy. However, many nations of the world have proved beyond doubt that it provides
a just and legitimate space in governance for citizens.

It is in this context that the demand of Mr. Sitaram Yechury on the first day of the present
Parliament gains credence and weight. He has asserted that only a party or a coalition that
gains more than 50% of votes in elections should come to govern the nation. Though this
demand is woefully inadequate it has already laid the foundation for a possible
constitutional amendment to bring about a Proportionate Electoral System in India.



Rural Education for Development society

Shanthinagar

Tumkur 572102

Karnataka - India

Phone: ++91-816-2277026

Fax: ++91-816-2272515

Web: www.dalitreds.in

Jyothi's Mobile: ++91-9880184667

Raj's Mobile: ++91-9845144893

--
Palash Biswas
Pl Read:
http://nandigramunited.blogspot.com/