India's Democratic Deficit
The Logical Discrepancy that Falsifies the Entire Democratic System
In West Bengal, for instance, even if the discrepancies were more illogical than logical (a Bandopadhyay had better not be a Banerjee, even if patently one and the same person), the exercise did produce desired results; the now bedraggled Trinamool Congress (TMC), having polled only 30 lakh votes less than the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) (2 crore 60 lakhs to the latter’s 2 crore 90 lakhs, that is, 41% of total votes polled) may well have returned to the seat of power had not some 27 lakh inhabitants been disenfranchised due to the “logical discrepancies” newly coined by the commission.
But, staying with the theme of “logical discrepancies,” here is the larger point: a monumental logical discrepancy (truly the elephant in democracy’s disingenuous parlour) resides at the heart of our electoral system, which no less than falsifies the whole constitutional principle of fair representation, and yet, neither the commission nor the political players (barring the left parties) nor learned commentators on democracy who make such fine analyses about niggles here and there seem to want to lay a finger on that monumental discrepancy.
I speak here of the great con of the first-past-the-post system.
Anybody who takes seriously the injunction that our legislatures must reflect the true logic of franchise must concede that this principle is vitiated election after election by this first-past-the-post con.
What logical discrepancy could be more antithetical to the fair representation principle than that a party which polls, let us say, 20% of the popular vote should get not even a single seat in the legislature while another that polls 30% may win a hundred or more seats?
Consider that barring one general election, none of our “mainstream” parties have ever attained the figure of 50% of the popular vote polled and yet have ruled with complete sway.
Over the last decade and more, the BJP has not received more than 38% of the popular vote and yet has been able to carry on governing as though it had received all 100%.
Ergo, some 60% or more of voters have remained deprived of their due share in seats because of a “logical discrepancy” between votes polled and seats allotted. No rational co-relation between the two thus renders the democratic order a mere pragmatic hoax.
So we ask, can there be a logical discrepancy more absurdly undemocratic than this yawning gap between votes polled and seats won? And does not this logical discrepancy make nonsense of the objective of fair representation of citizens in the legislatures and of their rightful opportunity to participate in government formation?
You may counter from a habituated stupor that such is the case in most democracies in the world, barring one or two in Europe, but, pray, does that tired status quo validate a disorder that often leaves a majority of the voters disempowered as though they had no constituency among “we the people”?
And such an argument may, in turn, be countered by another: most democracies have done away with the electronic voting machine (EVM); why do we not do the same?
And, more weightily, should not the vishwaguru among democracies lead the way to an electoral/governance system that remains faithful to the sophisticated verdicts turned in by the voters?
On a related issue of great importance: those theorists of democracy who often bemoan the neglect of participatory dues in shaping the full possibilities of the democratic order must see that it is only when a system of proportional representation is in place that democracy in the hinterlands may find space within the echelons of parliament and, thereby, in governance.
And citizens may then be spared the frightful spectacle of a democracy cornered by an ever-shrinking clique that uses its mechanisms to obtain power only to destroy its soul and essence in order to perpetuate its unrepresentative hold over the state.
One of the profoundest insights with respect to Indian democracy, and indeed democracy in general, was voiced by the late Kanshi Ram when he averred that the labouring masses in any democracy benefit when governments remain unstable, for only then may they find spaces for inserting themselves into the power structure.
Surely, those that worry about democracy must see the astutely democratic logic of that postulation and concede that only a system of proportional representation can make such creative instability possible, as the least of political groups come to have a voice in the matter of governance.
Indeed, at a time when centralising forces are set to institute an electoral order of “one nation, one vote”—a cynical ploy to neuter the will of the people, who alone must remain sovereign in our constitutional system every day of every month of every year between elections—“we the people” may do well to press the demand for a system of proportional representation such as may reinstate the sum of all voters as the true owners of the republic.
Can we hope that our current, exceptionally gifted Election Commission, so distressed by “logical discrepancies,” will find the conviction and the grit to initiate a process of consultation on this most illogical of logical discrepancies so that its persistent anxiety about delivering clean elections may fructify and establish a truthful link between how the electorate votes and how the republic is governed?
Should not the INDIA bloc make this a prime agenda, however reluctant the larger parties among them may be at first?
Surely, the undemocratic closure of the proposed “one nation, one vote” agenda is best stymied by the more persuasive and democratic proposal of proportional representation?
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