OVER the years, Indian democracy has stood the test of time. Among the nations liberated after the Second World War, India has a unique record of successive elections and stable and peaceful democracy. Judged by four key criteria our democracy is robust and real. Government leaders are chosen in competitive elections; all parties have the right to propagate their ideas and openly seek public support; there is peaceful transfer of power and winners do not punish losers; and elected governments exercise real authority and are accountable to the electors.

Participation trends in successive elections clearly establish that our democracy is deepening. The voter turnout for state assembly elections has shown a steady increase from 45% (1952) to 64% (1993-95). The polling percentage for Lok Sabha too is around 60%. Among countries with a first-past-the-post system, this is a high rate of polling. The participation in the US is only around 50%, and even in the UK it is around 60%. Only countries with proportional representation record consistently higher voter participation. Considering the defects in our electoral rolls, this polling percentage is high. Even more heartening is the fact that the poor, illiterate and rural voters participate more earnestly than others.

Does all this indicate that the people of this country are content with the present political system? The answer is negative. The fact that large numbers of incumbent legislators are not returned to office demonstrates that there is a widespread and growing frustration with our political process. For instance, in the recent parliamentary elections, out of 543 incumbent MPs only 180 (33.14%) returned to Parliament, the others were either denied tickets or lost. Or take the case of the recent assembly polls in Andhra Pradesh. Out of the 292 incumbent MLAs, only 189 were re-nominated by their parties, of whom only 75 were re-elected; i.e., only 25.68% of legislators were returned to office.

The restlessness with the political system often results in anti-political attitudes. The section of society ridiculed most in this country is the political class. We just love to hate them. When prominent persons deride or vilify politicians, large sections of populace respond with unrestrained glee. The political class, more than any other segment of the society, is aware of the growing crisis of legitimacy of the political system. And this is precisely why the last year has been the most productive in terms of furthering the democratic reform agenda and generating a serious debate. The major reform initiatives carried out in the last year are:

* The 13 March 2003 Supreme Court (SC) verdict mandating the candidate’s disclosures pertaining to criminal antecedents, assets and liabilities, and educational qualifications.

* A law to usher in accountable and legitimate political party expenditure and campaign finance has been enacted.

* The 97th constitutional amendment has been enacted to address the problem of defections and to limit the size of council of ministers.

* The Representation of the People (Amendment) Act, 2003 was amended to facilitate entry of qualified persons into Rajya Sabha and to carry out elections to the Rajya Sabha through an open ballot system.

 

 

TABLE 1
	Lok Sabha			Rajya Sabha
Year	Seats	Women MPs	% of Women MPs	Seats	Women MPs	% of Women MPs
1952	499	22	4.41	219	16	07.31
1957	500	27	5.40	237	18	07.59
1962	503	34	6.76	238	18	07.56
1967	523	31	5.93	240	20	08.33
1971	521	22	4.22	243	17	07.00
1977	544	19	3.49	244	25	10.25
1980	544	28	5.15	244	24	09.84
1984	544	44	8.09	244	28	11.48
1989	517	27	5.22	245	24	09.80
1991	544	39	7.17	245	38	15.51
1996	543	39	7.18	223	19	08.52
1998	543	43	7.92	245	15	06.12
1999	543	49	9.02	245	19	07.76
Average	528	33	6.15	238	22	09.00

While some of the reforms proposed and enacted could be improved, clearly the flurry of legislative and executive action indicates a broad awareness that status quo cannot be sustained forever. But, given the complexity of the crisis, although the reforms are significant milestones in our evolution, they do not really change the nature of our troubled politics. The crisis in our democracy has four major dimensions.

 

 

First, women who constitute nearly 50% of the population are poorly represented in legislatures. There were many more outstanding women leaders and workers in the Congress party at all levels during the freedom movement than there are at present in all parties put together. In states like Maharashtra and Gujarat, virtually every neighbourhood and most villages could boast of at least one effective woman leader, even into the 1950s. But as politics became more centralized as well as criminalized, thus undermining all other institutions of civil society, women were pushed out of leadership positions to function on the margins, usually relegated to the domain of social work at the local level. Even that tradition eroded from the 1970s onward.

 

 

TABLE 2
Lok Sabha	Women contestants	Elected women MPs	% of representation
13th Lok Sabha	247	49	9.02%
14th Lok Sabha	177	44	8.10%
Source: Complied from Just 44: Number of Women MPs, available at http://ushome.rediff.com/news/2004/may/26women.htm

The decline in women’s participation is even more severe at the state level than in the Lok Sabha. This is clearly evident in Bihar which had 14 women elected to the Vidhan Sabha in 1952, 31 women in 1957, and 26 women in 1962. But in the 1967 elections, women won only 11 seats. Their number declined to four in 1969. Thereafter, it plateaued, levelling at a mere 13 during the last state assembly elections.

 

 

While women candidates are being elected more often than their male counterparts, the actual proportion of women candidates nominated by parties and elected remains under 10%. Even during the recent parliamentary elections the number of women MPs elected to the Lok Sabha came down from 49 to 44. This despite the fact that all major national parties in recent years have declared through their manifestos that they would implement a 33 per cent reservation for women in all legislatures.

The second area of concern is that several important minority groups tend to be under-represented. This is because while their vote may be important in many constituencies, they are not concentrated in large enough numbers to either induce parties to nominate members of those groups as candidates or to be elected if nominated in the territorial constituencies. A plurality or first-past-the-post (FPTP) election system, in which the candidate who obtains the highest number of votes is elected irrespective of popular support, has led to over-representation of social groups with concentrated populations and under-representation of scattered minorities.

 

 

The third problem has been the frequent distortions resulting from the plurality or first-past-the-post (FPTP) election system. The largest party often needs only 30-40% of the votes polled to obtain a majority of seats in the legislature under our present system. Considering that only about 60% of the votes are polled, the actual voter support to obtain a majority of seats could be as low as 20%. The system clearly tends to exaggerate the representation of the dominant parties as the requirement to win is not a majority of votes cast in a constituency, but a plurality of the vote. In a fragmented polity, in the absence of a two-party political system, a candidate with well under 50% vote is often elected. Large and important groups often feel that their voice is not heard, and their vote has little value.

The distortions that mark electoral verdicts due to FPTP electoral system are evident if we examine the vote shares of the two major alliances during the parliamentary elections 2004. While the BJP alliance with 34.83% vote share got 185 seats, the Congress alliance with 34.59% vote share got 219 seats. Though the aggregate vote share of Congress alliance is less than that of the NDA, the Congress alliance ended up with 34 more seats (see Table 3). The party which gains may change from time to time, but distorted representation is part of our political reality.

 

 

TABLE 3
Vote Shares of Major Alliances During Parliamentary Elections 2004
Party	Won	Gain*	Retain	Total (G+R)	Loss*	Net Gain (G-L)	Voteshare	Voteshare (1999)	Swing
BJP+
BJP	138	48	90	138	90	-42	21.48	23.75	-2.27
SHS	12	1	11	12	4	-3	1.79	1.56	0.23
BJD	11	1	10	11	0	1	1.29	1.2	0.09
SAD	8	6	2	8	0	6	0.89	0.69	0.2
JD(U)	7	4	3	7	18	-14	1.98	3.1	-1.12
TDP	5	1	4	5	25	-24	3.01	3.65	-0.64
AITC	2	1	1	2	7	-6	1.99	2.57	-0.58
NPF	1	1	0	1	0	1	0.18	0	0.18
MNF	1	1	0	1	0	1	0.05	0	0.05
ADMK	0	0	0	0	10	-10	2.17	1.93	0.24
Total	185	64	121	185	154	-90	34.83
INC+
INC	145	96	49	145	65	31	26.21	28.3	-2.09
RJD	23	18	5	23	2	15	1.86	2.79	-0.93
DMK	16	5	11	16	1	4	1.79	1.73	0.06
NCP	9	4	5	9	2	2	1.76	2.27	-0.51
PMK	6	3	3	6	2	1	0.55	0.65	-0.1
TRS	5	5	0	5	0	5	0.62	0	0.62
JMM	5	5	0	5	0	5	0.46	0.27	0.19
MDMK	4	2	2	4	2	0	0.43	0.44	-0.01
LJNSP	3	3	0	3	0	3	0.51	0	0.51
JKPDP	1	1	0	1	0	1	0.07	0	0.07
RPI(A)	1	1	0	1	0	1	0.09	0	0.09
MUL	1	0	1	1	1	-1	0.1	0.23	-0.13
RPI	0	0	0	0	0	0	0.07	0.14	-0.07
AC	0	0	0	0	0	0	0.02	0.02	0
KEC(M)	0	0	0	0	1	-1	0.05	0.1	-0.05
IUML	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0.01	0
Total	219	142	75	217	76	66	34.59
Source: http://www.indian-elections.com/resultsupdate/

The fourth problem pertains to the power of entrenched parties. As the number of votes obtained by a losing party or candidate is of little value in the winner-take-all system, the system heavily favours the dominant parties or groups or parties with concentrated presence in certain pockets. Entrenched parties therefore acquire enormous power. This is by no means uncommon in most democracies.

However, as the parties in India are largely autocratic and unaccountable, the quality of members tends to be poor and legislators are often unrepresentative. Neither can independents mount an effective challenge to the arbitrariness of parties, nor can reformist groups and new political formations with credibility and broad support base across a wide geographic area have any real chance of success. Therefore, such groups are either marginalized in our polity, or are forced to join the dominant parties whose functioning leaves much to be desired. The choice available to voters has thus largely been limited and unsatisfactory.

 

 

In addition to these concerns of fair representation, special problems have cropped up in recent years with the advent of coalition governments at the Union level and in many states. Even as the FPTP system does not reward the sub-optimal strength of a party in a state or region, the power of small parties with concentrated pockets of influence has become more pronounced. While parties and candidates are theoretically compelled to appeal to the widest possible base to get elected, in reality the appeal is getting narrower. Typically parties tend to recruit the dominant elites in each caste or social group and parade them before voters to demonstrate their ostensible concern for those groups. In reality such candidates, once elected, rarely represent either their social groups or the larger public.

In the FPTP system parties anyway nominate a certain number of candidates from an influential caste and there is no incentive for candidates to enlarge their appeal beyond their social group as the party backing can ensure victory in a constituency. In a coalition government too such elected legislators and parties rarely represent the legitimate interests of the social groups constituting their political base or those of the larger public. As a result, dishonest and secret deals not honest and open negotiations and policy affinity, tend to form the basis of coalition partnerships.

Another problem stems from our cultural traits in dealings between various social groups. Traditionally Indian society has evolved reasonably predictable and harmonious methods for dealing with relations between individuals within a social group. However, across social groups such interaction often fails and there is neither trust nor harmony. Consequently, there is a tendency to form caste cliques with the participation of the bureaucrat, politician, businessman and contractor.

 

 

Moreover, in the first-past-the post system we adopted from Britain, the candidate who wins most votes in a constituency is elected, and all other votes for the losing parties do not count. There are no prizes for runners-up. No wonder, parties choose to opt for ‘winnable’ candidates, who invariably dominate the political fiefdoms.

The FPTP system thus leads to several unhappy consequences. First, parties are forced to seek out those candidates who, however undesirable, will somehow get elected. Second, candidates are forced to resort to vote buying and rigging in order to overtake their rivals. The overall electoral verdict is still fair because there is a system of compensatory errors at work, whereby the malpractices of one party are neutralized by the rival party. But these distortions more or less foreclose the chances for honest, decent and public-spirited candidates of being nominated or elected. On the contrary, persons with dubious record often get nominated to contest elections and become legislators.

Given these problems of representation in our parliamentary democracy, we need to evolve methods to enhance women’s representation, promote equitable representation and encourage honest dealings across groups and in coalitions. We also need to promote an electoral system which penalizes local electoral malpractices and gives incentive for broadening of appeal across groups. Let us closely examine some of the reform proposals.

Apart from reforms in local governments, judiciary and bureaucracy and effective instruments to enforce accountability and check corruption, we need to pursue systemic reforms changing the nature of elections and process of power. Three such reforms required are discussed below.

 

 

First, a mixed compensatory proportional representation. The FPTP system that India adopted has led to several distortions, given the passage of time and ingenuity of legislators. The politics of fiefdom at constituency level has forced the parties to rely on local strongmen. As a result, the political parties and independent candidates incur astronomical election expenditure for vote buying and other illegitimate purposes. This has led to a significant weakening of the party platform and ideology and reduced elections to private power games. In many states, where their voting percentage falls below a threshold, national parties have been marginalized. Consequently, regional parties have occupied centre-stage in several pockets, holding larger interests at ransom.

 

 

All these failings find expression in bigger and long-term predicaments. The inability of all political parties to attract and nurture good talent is the primary issue. Difficulties of minority representation leading to ghetto mentality, backlash, and communal tension form another facet of the problem. Last, leadership is undermined by permanent reservation of constituencies (or regular rotation) in order to provide fair representation to SCs. The solution to this flawed system is the adoption of a mixed system of elections combining the FPTP system with proportional representation, broadly drawing on the German model. The key features of the suggested system are:

* The overall representation of parties in legislature will be based on the proportion of valid vote obtained by them.

* A party will be entitled to such a quota based on vote share only when it crosses a threshold, say 10% of vote in a major state, and higher in minor states.

* 50% of legislators will be elected from territorial constituencies based on FPTP system. This will ensure a link between the legislator and the constituents.

* The balance 50% will be allotted to parties to make up for their short-fall based on proportion of votes. e.g. (i): If the party is entitled to 50 seats in legislature based on vote share, but had 30 members elected in FPTP system, 20 more will be elected based on the party list. e.g. (ii): If the party is entitled to 50 seats based on vote share, but had only 10 members elected in FPTP system, it will have 40 members elected from the list.

* The members of the party or their elected delegates through secret ballot will select the party lists democratically at the state or multi-party constituency level.

* There will be two votes cast by voters – one for a candidate for FPTP election, and the other for a party to determine the vote share of the parties.

It needs to be remembered that the PR system can be effective only once law regulates internal functioning of political parties. Otherwise the PR system will give extraordinary power to party leaders and may prove counter-productive. However, the PR system has one more advantage, which needs to be reiterated. It, more than the FPTP system, ensures better representation of women in legislatures.

 

 

Political party regulation by law: Political recruitment has suffered a great deal and bright young people are no longer attracted to politics. Centralized functioning of parties is imposing an enormous burden on leadership to manage the party bureaucracy, leaving little time for evolving sensible policies or governance. Party leaders are helpless in candidate selection, and the choice is often between Tweedledum and Tweedledee. An important reform to improve the quality of politics and restore credibility would be a law to regulate political party functioning, without in any way restricting leadership choice and policy options. A law needs to be enacted to regulate political parties in the following four key aspects:

* Free and open membership with no arbitrary expulsions.

* Democratic, regular, free, secret ballot for leadership election, and opportunity to challenge and unseat leadership through formal procedures with no risk of being penalized.

* Democratic choice of party candidates for elective office by members or their elected delegates through secret ballot.

* Full transparency in funding and utilization of resources.

The provisions can be similar to Article 21 of the German Basic Law and federal law to regulate parties.

 

 

A clear separation of powers at the state and local levels through direct election of head of government: The other systemic reform that is needed to isolate the executive from unwanted influences, as has been pointed out, is to ensure direct election of head of government in states and local governments.

As election costs have skyrocketed, candidates spend money in anticipation of rewards and opportunities for private gain after election. Legislators perceive themselves as disguised executives, and chief ministers are hard pressed to meet their constant demands. Postings, transfers, contracts, tenders, tollgates, parole, developmental schemes, and crime investigation – all these become sources of patronage and rent seeking. No government functioning honestly can survive under such circumstances. While the legislators hinder objective and balanced decision-making by the executive, their role has become nominal and largely inconsequential in the actual framing of legislation. This blurring of the lines of demarcation between the executive and legislature is one of the cardinal features of the crisis of the system of governance.

Therefore, separation of powers and direct elections are necessary in states and local governments. This needs to be seriously considered because proportional representation in states often leads to fractured legislatures, and no single party can form a government. At the national level, such a direct election is fraught with serious dangers. Our linguistic diversity demands a parliamentary executive. Any individual seen as the symbol of all authority can easily become despotic, given our political culture. But in states, separation of powers poses no such dangers. The Union government, Supreme Court, constitutional functionaries like the Election Commission, UPSC, CAG, and the enormous powers and prestige of the Union can easily control authoritarianism in any state. This necessitates adoption of a system of direct election of the head of government in states and local governments. The fundamental changes suggested find mention as under.

 

 

The legislature will be elected separately and directly while the ministers will be drawn from outside the legislature. The legislature will have a fixed term, and cannot be dissolved prematurely except in exceptional circumstances (sedition, secession, etc) by the Union government. The head of government will have a fixed term, and cannot be voted out of office by the legislature. Any vacancy of office will be filled by a due process of succession. The elected head of government will have no more than two terms of office.

Even though these changes may not serve as a panacea to all evils in the present structure of legislature and executive, they will certainly encourage a healthy and vibrant democracy and democratic processes. Further, clear and periodic delineation of functions between Union and states, and among various tiers of local governments is also a necessary condition for a vibrant democracy. It is only a true federal structure that can ensure unity in this multi-ethnic and multi-religious society.

In conclusion, our parliamentary democratic institutions have served us reasonably well, at least to the extent of preserving freedoms, sustaining a competitive, open electoral process and facilitating frequent change of governments. But the severe distortions on account of our failure to evolve a democratic political culture have made political and state institutions captives in the hands of unaccountable oligarchies. The flaws in electoral process have distorted democracy, undermined institutions and alienated the best citizens from politics and elections.

The FPTP electoral system, coupled with territorial representation, has tended to consolidate local oligarchies and promote modern zamindaris. In conjunction with administrative centralization this has made citizen’s subjects and representatives and bureaucrats their masters. The Westminster model at the state level has encouraged an unaccountable, disguised executive, institutionalized corruption, undermined accountability and made honesty and political survival increasingly incompatible.

Our republic is founded in glorious democratic values. For the first time in our history the ideals of rule of law, human dignity, liberty of citizens, people’s sovereignty, and universal adult suffrage have taken root in society. However, there is need for correcting the distortions which have surfaced over the years. Gandhiji’s admonition should be the guiding principle in rebuilding institutions of state. ‘The real swaraj will come, not by the acquisition of authority by a few, but by the acquisition of the capacity by all to resist authority when abused.’