HORSES FOR COURSES

COMMENTARY ARCHIVES, 21 May 2009

Vithal Rajan

The largest democracy in the world has just finished a month-long voting process in which over 415 million voters, out of a total electoral list of 715 million, cast their votes to bring back the hoary Indian National Congress to power.  The electoral system was inherited from the Westminster ‘first past the post’ British model, which grew gradually to accommodate swings of power between the landed Tories and the Whig bourgeoisie. However, the model became a boon to the founding elites of all former colonies of the British Empire, for it is tilted towards maintaining them in power.

The Indian National Congress, even in the heyday of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister, never succeeded in polling 50% of the votes, but till today has almost held dynastic sway over the country, with his daughter Indira Gandhi and his grandson, Rajiv Gandhi becoming successor prime ministers. It is widely expected that sooner rather than later his great-grandson, Rahul Gandhi, will ascend to supreme power. RK Laxman, India’s best loved cartoonist, once had Indira Gandhi tell the Queen of England: “Your Majesty, you have a constitutional monarchy, but we have a hereditary democracy!”

In this year’s election to the 15th Lok Sabha, or lower house of parliament, the Congress achieved 206 seats of its own, but even its erstwhile opponents have rushed in to give it unconditional support, taking the tally to 322, an unassailable majority in a house of 543. The Prime Minister, who will swear in his government on Friday, May 22, 2009, is sitting with all his allies to distribute the crumbs of office.

The Anthropological Survey of India lists 4635 distinct communities in this vast country, each with its own cultural and religious practices, rules of marriage, mythologies, customs, and interests. As is well known, this great human mosaic retains the separate identities of its member communities, living together through mutual accommodation, rather than any attempt at homogeneity. The electoral system that would naturally suit such a vast diversity would be a Proportional Representation hybrid, as most European countries have adopted with far lesser diversity. So, the puzzle is why have the Indian political parties studiously avoided even a discussion of such a possibility.

The large parties, the Congress and the rightwing BJP, are naturally averse to any such change for they punch in seats well above their voting weight. The Congress polled only 28.56% of the votes, so in a PR system it would get around 155 seats, and not a whopping 205. Similarly, its great opponent, the BJP, which polled 18.81% of the total would get only 102 and not 116.

But it is not just the intransigence of the big boys that prevents change in the system – even local state-level parties benefit. The Biju Janata Dal [BJD] of Orissa, named after the former leader of the state and the father of the present chief minister, polled only 1.35% of the total votes cast in the country, but it won 14 seats in parliament, while the old Communist Party of India, polling 1.46% of the votes secured no more than 4. While the BJD has called for a pox on both major parties and is maintaining its distance from them, the DMK of Tamil Nadu to the south, an ally of Congress, secured 18 seats with just 1.81% of the votes, and is now fighting for five to nine ministerial posts as reward for its support, with a berth of the son of its leader, and another for his daughter, and a third for his nephew. Another ally is the National Congress Party, a party created out of the old party, and maintaining a symbiotic connection with it as long as power equations justify this.

Its leader, Sharad Pawar, clings to a cabinet post as Agriculture Minister, though his contribution to India’s 700 million rural population has been restricted to converting Baramati, his constituency in a desiccated part of the Deccan, into a veritable oasis for rich sugarcane farmers, by wastefully bringing water through giant pipes over long distances. His rich farmer constituents are so loyal that he bequeathed his riding to his daughter for this election. So, the system enables dynasties to be built on the basis of populist votes.

These state-level parties field horses for courses, gambling on winning by close shaves, and choosing their candidates on the basis of caste or religious affiliation, or capacity to spend money or bribe voters; that is on any consideration other than a record pf public service. At this election the former cricket captain of India, Azharuddin, barred from the game for suspected match-fixing, was fielded from the Moradabad constituency in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, though he comes from Hyderabad in the Deccan, a distance of well over a thousand kilometers. He won with a majority of 50,000 votes, purely because a major chunk of voters there were Muslims like himself.

The traditional left parties would benefit from a PR system, but they also remain silent. The secret is not far to seek. A PR system will work if the parties can come up with clear agendas, and defend their action points by public debate. None of the parties in India have been able to demonstrate to the public in what way they or their policies are factually different from the others. In this election the BJP lost, and there is public belief this was caused by their attacking Muslim and Christian minorities.

But communal riots have marred political relationships even when the Congress was in power, and the pogrom of Sikhs in Delhi, following Indira Gandhi’s assassination in 1984, is certainly laid at its door. If the Left says it is focused on serving the poor, the Congress party’s National Rural Employment Guarantee programme most probably assured its electoral success.

So the Westminster electoral model owes its existence to populist policies, and muddled thinking from all parties. It ensures that power brokers will come to power, and that once the razzmatazz of elections is over, the poor will be forgotten for five years in the rush to capitalize on winnings.

Strange as it may seem, populism has also permitted the VCK, a pro LTTE party, to emerge in the temple town of Chidabaram, which it could never have done in any other system. Its existence demonstrates the strong undercurrent of feeling in Tamil Nadu for the fate of Sri Lankan Tamils, and perhaps, this will serve as a warning to the governments of both India and Sri Lanka that violence cannot be said to be over in the island country till social justice is meted out to these people.

It must also be pointed that the system against all odds has allowed for the BSP, a party of ‘dalits,’ or ‘untouchables’ as the lowest social strata were termed formerly, to emerge with Ms Mayawati as chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, India’s largest state. But to survive in the system she has to operate populist policies, which means that real benefits for the poor and disadvantaged are far short of rhetoric, while the rich and powerful cream off rewards of growth.

This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 21 May 2009.

Anticopyright: Editorials and articles originated on TMS may be freely reprinted, disseminated, translated and used as background material, provided an acknowledgement and link to the source, TMS: HORSES FOR COURSES, is included. Thank you.

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