Democracy and Electoral Reforms
Talk given in Kolkotta to the Working Group of The Welfare Party of
India
M C Raj
The Way
Democracy Arrived
Present
state of affairs in the world needs to be traced from 16 century, from the
beginning of the period of enlightenment. This was also the end of monarchy and
feudalism. Both these refer to predominant forms of governance of nations. The
emergence of enlightenment announced the arrival of individualism, liberalism,
bio-power, discipline, ordering and re-ordering into mechanisms and instruments
and governance. Communities were slowly replaced by the inalienable focus on
individual and the rights of individuals. The underlying economic paradigm was
that the individual’s right to accumulate and amass wealth and profit was
unquestionable, relegating the rights of communities of people to the backyard
of governance. In as much as the state was expected to protect the rights of
the individual to indulge in mindless accumulation, he was also expected to do
some duties to the state. The primary duty was to pay taxes to the State. The
other duty was compliance. The Individual became a obedient citizen. He had to
comply with the rule of law that were brought in force in the ordering and
re-ordering of the society. Those who did not comply with the changed laws were
criminalized and punished.
The
rights of individuals were deeply embedded in a form of governance that we now
know as democracy. But the point of interest for us in the transformation of
communities into individuals is the emergence of citizen as an essential
component of the mechanism of governance. With a heavy taxation system in place
as a duty of the citizen the transformation of the citizen into a tax payer was
also set in motion.
The
arrival of the citizen as tax payer was coupled with another engineered
phenomenon at the global level. The enlightened individual took upon himself
the unprecedented task of ‘discovering’ the world. This discovery of the world
strongly meant the invention of ways and means of exploiting the wealth and
resources of different continents, especially from people who lived in harmony
with nature without giving event the slightest thought to exploiting Mother
Earth and cosmic rhythm. Discovery simultaneously meant plundering, not only
material resources but dignity, rights and the bodies of communities of people
who were easily dumped as barbarians.
Globalization
refers to the efforts to render a civilized face to the plunder of world’s
resources essentially in the hands of a few individuals. In this order human
beings become non-entities. Only citizens and tax-payers are recognized with
rights and services. Nations paved way for nation-states with the fabrics of
individuals and tax-payers.
A
dire need in the globalizing order and re-ordering was the capturing of power
to govern. Missionary enterprises became a handy tool in ‘softening’ of the
‘barbarians’ with the messages of love and forgiveness sugar coated also with unlimited
supply of cheese, chocolates, milk power, blankets. These became the
foundations of plundering the dignity, rights, land and her resources, forests
and ultimately power to govern. The enlightened citizens of a globalizing world
had to have a legitimizing face for criminal plunder and looting. Democracy
provided this legitimizing face. Democracy has come to be the sweetness of a
camouflage for all the evils that are wrought in the name of freedom,
liberalism, accumulation, profit, limitless surplus, production of weapons of
mass destruction, war and ultimately violent transgression of the sovereignties
of nations.
The
Globalization Order
The
ordering and re-ordering of the society with an inextricable obligation on the
citizen had its ineluctable consequences for the rest of the world.
1.
Democracy as power of the people was re-ordered
to become power in the hands of a few to crush disempowered people and nations.
2.
Freedom became limited to the capacity to enter
into a cutthroat mechanism called level playing field.
3.
Justice led to the criminalization of masses of
people, communities and even nations and new laws to punish and banish such
ascribed ‘criminals’ from the face of the earth.
4.
Governance, which is the distribution of material
and spiritual values was re-ordered to become accumulation of material wealth
and power to exclude.
5.
Militarization has been re-ordered to crush
unrest within the borders of given nation states instead of protecting the
boundaries of nations.
6.
Production of weapons of mass destruction has
come to be recognized as the power to establish ‘democracy’ at gun point,
leading even to the total destruction of freedom of people.
Thus
globalization has become a process by engineered paradigms of dominance have
been spread, established, assimilated and universalized as the irreversible
mechanisms of the governance of nations states. It is this irreversibility that
provides a global legitimacy to the modern and postmodern looters to capture
accumulative governance in the entire world.
Modern
democracy that has come to represent governance of nation states is no more
possible except through one or other form of representation. Postmodernism has
come to recognize the inevitability of multiculturalism. But keeping in line
with its essential trajectory of accumulation, multiculturalism is also an
engineered process to further accentuate the need for individual identities as
inalienable component of democratic governance. Representation is engineered
through electoral processes in such a way that this element of accumulation
will always remain intact.
Democracy
and India
India,
which is a victim of such skewed instruments and mechanisms of governance, that
is colonial democracy, is religiously following the general psyche of all
oppressed people. Franz Fanon has succinctly put this psyche in his psycho
analysis of the psyche of the black people. Every Black thinks that his
ultimate achievement in life is to become a white. This is much evidenced also
in India’s strenuous efforts to blindly imitate her oppressors in all possible
ways and her borrowing of the instruments and mechanisms of governance from the
dominant world. On the other hand it is also very true that in the transfer of
power in 1947, it was into the hands of those who believed that accumulation of
wealth and power in the hands of a dominant few that the power to govern India
was handed over. Thus there is no surprise that India is governed in the same
way that it opposed governance while the British were governing India. Looked
at both ways, as a blind imitator and as a hegemonic force, India has become an
inseparable partner of this grand enterprise of globalization.
As
in the rest of the world India’s legacy of governance has gone through all the
historical phases that the West has gone through. The only difference is that
India went through a phase of enlightenment much before even Jesus was born. It
is not an accident that Buddha’s enlightenment was crushed in the land of its
origin by the hegemonic forces of Brahminism who governed the many nations that
constituted India through the Kautilyan principles of loot, exploitation,
cheating, brute force. Thus though Globalization is new to India, the
mechanisms of postmodern globalization in India are deeply rooted in the
ancient principles of Brahminic hegemony. India is in a mindless hurry to get
into the fastest lanes of a globalizing world. The way it has opened its
economic corridors and doors to the ‘developed’ countries and the way its
citizens have gone all over the world to establish their business bears witness
to the principles of accumulative governance.
India’s
Representative Democracy
There
is no wonder then, that India has opted for the British system of a representative
democracy in order to sustain and nurture dominant power in the hands of a
powerful few. In India the powerful few will specifically mean a few castes
whom Hindu divinity has ordained to be dominant. Thus the element of re-ordering
in the Hindu society will be badly missed in an order of globalization. India’s
globalization and modernization will have this specific dimension of consolidating
the archaic principles of caste governance. Just as ‘democracy at gun-point’ of
the US and the West has effectively stifled the democratic aspirations of many
communities and nations of peoples, India has also crushed the democratic
aspirations of many Minorities, Triabls, Dalits, Adivasis and women. India’s
continuing governance of certain states of India with AFSPA (Armed Forces
Special Powers Act) is an indisputable evidence of this hegemonic praxis of
democratic governance. It is a stark contradiction in terms and praxis. But
then, is there any need to say that India’s caste governance has thrived well
on contradictions?
Any Hope?
Of
course yes!
Democracy
is more about share in power than about representation.
Democracy
is more about governance than about rule of law
Democracy
is more about equal opportunity than about level playing field
Democracy
is more about inclusion of all sections than about subscribing to dominant
groups
A Different
Electoral System
Many
nations in the world have already started realizing the fragility of systems of
governance that they have created. Efforts are being made to reverse their own
folly. One of the major changes that has come about in recent past is the
endeavor to change the mechanisms of representative democracy. Some nations
have taken conscious and strenuous efforts to usher in true representation of
all citizens in the instruments and mechanisms of governance. This has been
done by ushering in the Proportionate Electoral System in the place of
Majoritarian Electoral System. India has borrowed the British legacy of the
First Past The Post (FPTP) system, which is a majoritarian electoral system.
Changing electoral system is not a panacea for all the problems that a country
faces. But when it comes to governance, electoral system plays a crucial role
and if an appropriate system is not put in place it could spell a doom for the
entity of a nation.
Perhaps
it was this realization that led the makers of the Constitution of India to
heated discussion on the choice of appropriate electoral system for India. Unfortunately,
it turned out to be Muslim leaders on one side and all others on the other
side. Syed Karimuddin Saheb and Mehboob Ali Saheb vehemently argued for PR
system while all the others wanted the FPTP system. Finally it was decided to
go with the British FPTP system under the argument that with only 15% literacy
it was impossible for Indian voters to understand the intricacies of PR system.
Much
before the debates in the Constituent Assembly Mohammad Ali Jinnah and
Babasaheb Ambedkar spearheaded the fight for political nationalism in India and
constitutional governance already in the 1930s. Unfortunately Gandhi spoiled a
true democratic emergence through his fast unto death against separate
electorate and made the separation of Pakistan inevitable. In 1930 Jawaharlal
Nehru had openly said that India should have PR system.
Sporadic
voices are heard in the Parliament clamoring for PR system in India. But these
voices have till now remained feeble. In 1999, the National Law Commission has
made a strong recommendation to the Government of India to usher in PR system.
It is in 2008 that CERI was started with an avowed purpose of changing the
electoral system of India to a appropriate PR system. The Campaign was started
after many years of work among the poor and substantial research on electoral
systems in five countries. Among the many programmes CERI organized, the most
significant one is the Workshop of electoral systems experts from all over the
world. This was organized in Berlin, Germany in October 2011. As a consequence
CERI prepared a tailor-mad policy for PR system in India. This policy book was
released by the Chief Election Commissioner of India in Delhi on 09 February
2012. This was immediately followed by a national conference in Delhi.
Why do we
need Proportional Electoral System in India?
First
we must understand that representation through elections must lead to share in
power and not create an illusion that by casting votes our duty as citizens is
over. The FPTP in India is grossly disproportional between the percentage of
votes and percentage of seats. Such disproportion leads to exclusion of
minorities and concentration of power in the hands of powerful group of people
who are smaller than many minority groups in India.
Some Issues that
Beset our Electoral System
1.
India is a multi party democracy and therefore,
renders the FPTP system of elections redundant and unrepresentative. It invariably
produces ruling party or parties that are not mandated by majority of the
voters in India.
2.
FPTP is suitable for enhancing representation in
any country with two party democracy. In this case a clear majority for one
party will be the outcome and a clear majority of voters will be able to give
mandate to political parties to govern. This is clearly not the case in India.
3.
India has already arrived at coalition politics
irreversibly both at the Center and in the States, and many of our electoral problems,
sometimes even crisis such as corruption, violence, communalism and casteism
are because of this misfit of our electoral system to the composition of the
democratic governance of our country.
4.
India, as a multicultural society is in need of
special provisions for historically oppressed minorities, Dalits,
Adivasis/Tribals, MBCs and women. Such provisions have to be integrated into
the electoral system itself in order to enable such communities to come to
level playing fields and gradually grow out of the present ‘reserved seats’ for
only SC/ST categories.
5.
The present FPTP system has proved beyond doubt
that from the time of independence it gives leverage only to certain dominant
groups in India to capture and retain power of governance without sharing power
with all sections of people. CERI firmly believes that sharing of power is an
essential ingredient of any representative democracy and governance.
6.
The very idea of majority is skewed in the
majoritarian electoral system. In FPTP one does not need to gain a majority of
votes to be declared a winner. The candidate has to only gain more votes than
the other contestants to be declared winner. It can be less than 10 of the
total votes polled. The present Indian parliament has two MPs who have won with
only 9.6% votes. This leads to the next issue in FPTP and that is the huge
wastage of votes. All votes that are wasted are unrepresented or vice versa. Any democracy that allows wastage of
the votes of her citizens can only be called a sham democracy. In the FPTP
system, parties with less than 25% of votes have proved capable of gaining
adequate number of seats and subsequently forming governments. This results in
huge wastage of votes, which is the antithesis of representative democracy.
7.
By its very core principle FPTP professes to
declare a candidate with more vote than the others as winner. Similarly it also
declares a party with more seats than the other parties as eligible for forming
the government. The high risk for democracy in this case is the huge disparity
between the share of votes and the share of seats. This often is not a
representation of the will of the people. This has the potential to lead to
manipulative politics.
8.
Rightly or wrongly, a general impression in
India has been created that political parties are accountable to none either
before or after elections. CERI is in agreement with the argumentation that
further empowering of the National Election Commission of India is a serious
need in this regard. However, we also like to highlight that inner party
democracy in India has received a body blow under the FPTP system. Most
countries in the world that have opted for PR system have ensured such inner
party democracy.
How Do we Understand Proportionate Electoral System?
Let
us take the example of one political leader Mr. X for illustration. He is
politically popular in his state and has formed a party of his own. Let us
imagine that this leader is from Maharashtra that has 280 seats in the
Legislative Assembly. Mr. X is popular all over Maharashtra among people of his
community. But there is not a single constituency where his followers live in
majority. Under the FPTP system he is unable to win even in a single seat in
the elections. After the election results are declared Mr. X realizes that he
has 10% of votes in the State of Maharashtra. But with this 10% of scattered
votes he is unable to win even one seat. In the PR system seats are allotted
according to the percentage of votes that a party gains. Mr. X has to prepare a
list of candidates that his party would like to send into the Legislative
Assembly in proportion to the percentage of votes that his party would gain.
His party gains 10% of votes and will become eligible to have 10% of members in
the Legislative Assembly of Maharashtra. This will enable his party to send 28
members from the party list that they submitted to the Election Commission
before the elections. This is a huge difference that a party that was unable to
win even a single seat in the FPTP system will be able to gain 28 seats under
the PR system simply based on the percentage of votes that it gains.
Some Salient Features
of PR System
More
than 80 countries in the world with democracy have already shifted from FPTP to
PR system. India, being the largest democracy in the world with multi party
system and coalition politics is ripe to adopt the Proportional Representation
electoral system.
Countries
with concern for providing representation to minorities have taken recourse to
PR system. India, with different types of minority groups will do well to
change to PR system of election in order to provide adequate and meaningful
representation to all sections of people.
The
efforts to tinker with the FPTP system to the already changed political
scenario in India is much more complicated and problematic than developing an
understanding of the PR system among voters. Since PR system translates all
votes into seats it has the best possibility of providing representation to all
voters in the first place and also to all minority groups in India.
PR
system creates a win-win situation to all parties, as there is the possibility
of more than one member representing a constituency through the List PR. This
will drastically reduce the play of money and muscle power, corruption,
violence, communalism and casteism. As long as the FPTP system is in practice
all the efforts to reduce corruption in elections are bound to be only a half
way journey to a majority of voters, as the system itself promotes cutthroat
competition.
Since
voters are bound to vote for parties and their ideologies through the List PR,
the convergence of voters on ideology based parties will be enhanced much better
and correspondingly it will reduce foul play at the time of elections. Needless
to say that an ideology based governance is destined to create a strong nation.
Countries
with PR system have already proved to provide more stable and more inclusive governments.
The anomaly of parties with less percentage of vote share
forming governments will easily be avoided in the PR system.
PR Measures for India
1.
Mixed Member Proportional Representation with
70:30
2.
Two Votes
3.
Closed List system
4.
Representation of Minorities, Dalits, Adivasis,
MBCs, Women etc. special measure in the Party List
5.
1% or 3 Seats Threshold
6.
Webster Method of counting
7.
Internal Party democracy
8.
State Funding
9.
One Day elections
10. Gerrymandering
– Not allowed
