Is India becoming ungovernable? The short answer is yes. The long answer is that remedies are ready and simple, but the more puzzling question is why we are avoiding them. Among all major parliamentary democracies in the world, India is now most in need of adopting an alternative to the first-past-the-post electoral system. Its divisive consequences have made the country all but ungovernable. There are a number of reasons for that. They were always important. But now they have become imperative.
The basic reason is that it has become difficult for the party in power to back its share of seats with its share of the vote. In this sense most governments have become minority governments. Each may have a majority on the floor of the House but in fact it represents only a minority of the voters while the majority swirl around it in various formations and in various degrees of alienation to begin with and resentment next. That is the root cause of the growing ungovernability. Of course, This has always been so. But the problem has been aggravated by four recent changes.
Except on a very few occasions, the party which wins a parliamentary election in India has never polled much more than about 40 per cent of the total votes cast. If even that much has proved to be good enough for the party's survival in power, it has mainly been because of our first-past-the-post electoral system. It gives the winning party a larger share of seats than its share of the vote, and generally it does exactly the reverse for the Opposition parties, giving them a smaller share of seats than their share of votes. Thus, voting the government out in Parliament becomes all but impossible. That has made the street more popular with the Opposition than Parliament as the arena for its political battles with the government. In fact, Parliament has been converted into a street.
Secondly, this anomaly has been magnified by the constant increase in the number of parties, each claiming to represent one or another of the numerous entities which, happily, constitute our society. Happily again, each has also become more conscious of its rights and more assertive in using them. But each new party also eats into the overall Opposition vote, depleting the challenge that it can pose to the government, whether in terms of seats or votes. A steady challenger would be more effective if he built himself up from election to election until his constituency acquired the critical mass and reliable alliances. But that possibility is being pre-empted by the habit of overnight coalitions which last only till the next head-count on the floor, with the allies in one head-count becoming rivals in the next.
This third development has become a running mate of the second. The ruling party's share of votes as well as of seats has been falling of late. Presently, it is roughly about a third to a half of what it used to be. The main challengers are catching up in the areas of their respective choices, for example the Left in West Bengal and Kerala, and the BJP in the Hindi belt and various regional parties elsewhere. But the challenge cannot be effectively delivered in Parliament because the scene is too crowded either with too many claimants to the throne or with the incompatibilities between them. The fourth complication has been made more complex by the flux in relations between parties at the Central and State levels. Parties which are allies at one level are enemies at the other, and at both wary about pushing inter-party rivalries at one level to the point at which they might hurt inter-party relations at the other level. All that turns coalition-building into an unending jigsaw puzzle.
None of that is entirely new. But the cumulative effect is new. Governance atrophies as one government succeeds another, each backed only by lesser parts of the electorate and Parliament, and each unsure of getting the public support it may need for the bold measures the times may need. This delay turns the public's disappointment into anger first and then into rioting. The political process as we know it becomes not only helpless but harmful. As election managers find that even a narrowly sectarian appeal can win them enough seats for long enough for serving their narrow and transitory ends, they focus mostly on the most handy appeal, the more divisive the better because it catches fire more quickly.
But that does not mean — not at all — that parliamentary politics has delivered us, bound hand and foot, to the service of these divisive ends. On the contrary, governance can be restored and at the same time democracy can be lifted to new heights by perfectly legitimate methods which are well within our Constitution and electoral laws. These methods have been suggested and supported by some of the most learned political, judicial, and constitutional minds in the country. All they need for implementing them is some improved conventions and legislative practices. We have not put them to use because we have not understood what ails us.
Our malady lies in our electoral process.
It cuts us up into fragments, the smaller the better for better "management." It puts the least small on the throne and keeps it there for as long as it can. Then the next smallest segment is enthroned when it has overtaken the first one in size. The criterion for making the change is not what is the broadest consensus that we can attain but what is the narrowest consensus that we can afford.
Thus while the problems of the people multiply we continue to nullify the first rule of the democratic system by which we swear, that the power to rule the country is vested first in whoever has been first approved by at least half the people, and is then transferred to the first challenger when he too passes the same test, the approval of at least half the people. This first rule is the basis of the reforms which have been recommended by many, including the highest commission which has examined the workings of the Constitution under the learned guidance of M.N. Venkatachaliah, former Chief Justice of India.
More specifically, the Commission's recommendation is that a candidate should be declared elected to Parliament only when he has obtained the votes of at least half the people who have voted. And if no such candidate emerges in the first round of polling there should be a second and last round in which the leader and the runner-up in the first round should be the only candidates. The House chosen in this way should then choose its leader in the same way, in two rounds at most. The government formed by him should be open to challenge but only by a challenger who has demonstrated, in the same manner, that he has the support of at least half the House. This single reform can achieve at least three objectives.
- The House will always have the support of at least half the concerned voters,
- the government will always have the confidence of at least half the House,
- and candidates at both levels, knowing that one day they may need the support of at least half the voters will, even in the first round, refrain from casting their appeal on narrow and sectarian lines.
The merits of the scheme are not in doubt. The mystery is why we do not adopt it. Pran Chopra The Hindu Thursday, Apr 20, 2006
No comments:
Post a Comment