people politics policy performance

Public Debate

Why should one vote?

A response to Swaroop Pandits article published in our last issue
Jagdeep S. Chhokar

waroop Pandits (Governance Now, March 01-15) title question And I ask why should I vote? is perfectly legitimate but his last question How is the pseudo-intellectual going to explain that? seems somewhat discriminatory. Can only pseudo-intellectuals explain this or can others also try? Assuming the latter, here is an attempted response. First, the agreement. I totally agree with Pandit that blaming the citizens/voters for voting undesirable people to power is completely wrong. I also agree with Pandit when he strongly condemn(s) and reject(s) the accusation that the current or for that matter the past or the future political leadership should not be blamed for the crisis of confidence facing the average Indian(and) rather the blame lies with the citizens who voted such a leadership to power. Pandit is absolutely on the dot when he says that Its the political parties who have been consistently unsuccessful in providing any inspirational purpose for voting at the elections and, therefore, the eligible voter population does not vote. I cannot agree with him more. This line of argument can be taken further to say that actions of political parties are deliberately designed to make the thinking voters such as Pandit to not vote. The type of candidates political parties put up in elections brings out these actions in sharp relief. Data gathered by

the National Election Watch (NEW) and the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) from sworn affidavits submitted by candidates as part of their nomination forms (as mandated by the Supreme Court) shows that in many constituencies there are as many as six candidates with criminal cases against them in which charges have been framed by a court of law. Data from the last two parliamentary and UP state assembly elections is on the next page (see boxes). Now to the disagreement. After the title question, Pandit gets into specifics and asks three specific ones: (a) why should I vote? (b) What has my precious vote gotten me so far? Apart from pot-holed roads, crowded and late trains, unending queues and various forms of harassment from different levels of bureaucracy; (c)

How has my blind faith in this current form of democracy made my life any better? There are two responses to (a), one positive and one negative. The positive one is that if a citizen/voter does not vote, s/he forgoes the most fundamental right and disregards the most fundamental duty of a citizen. As a well-known judge of the US supreme court, Felix Frankfurter, said, No job in the land is more important than being a citizen. If I do not vote, I am not doing my most important duty as a citizen. The negative response is that if I do not vote, I run the risk of my vote being misused and cast for someone whom I may not want to vote for. This happens due to fraudulent voting, particularly after 3 or 4 pm on the day of polling, and happens

50 GovernanceNow | March 16-31, 2012

Lok Sabha
No of constituencies with 3 candidates against whom charges have been framed 2004 2009 31 83 No of constituencies with 3 candidates against whom charges have been framed 8 56 No of constituencies with 5 candidates against whom charges have been framed 2 33 No of constituencies with 6 or more candidates against whom charges have been framed 2 23 Total No of Red Alert constituencies

Uttar Pradesh State Assembly

No of constituencies with 3 candidates against whom charges have been framed 2007 2012 47 93 No of constituencies with 4 candidates against whom charges have been framed 5 60 No of constituencies with 5 candidates against whom charges have been framed 1 23 No of constituencies with 6 or more candidates against whom charges have been framed 0 13 Total No of Red Alert constituencies

43 195

53 189

despite the continuingly more and more efficient and strict arrangements for polling made by the election commission and is not a comment on the election commissions arrangements. Dubious elements among the polling agents of various political parties either in connivance with or by intimidating the polling officers, some times get un-cast votes cast fraudulently. So, by not participating in the voting, inadvertently, a citizen/voter is allowing his/her vote being used nefariously. The usual remedy for this is to use the provision under Section 49(O) of the Conduct of Election Rules and say that I do not want to vote for any of the candidates on the ballot or the EVM. It is true that a lot of polling booth officials are not fully conversant with this rule and they have to be informed of it by the voter, and that the voter has to sign her/his name in a register and that such votes are not counted, but under the existing provisions, this is the only thing that can be done. Attempts at getting a none of the above button on the EVM are on; including a petition in the supreme court of India but the outcome of these efforts is likely to take time. The response to (b) has to be somewhat philosophical. However faulty the election system in the country is, it has still provided the citizens a somewhat effective functioning democracy. This becomes evident when we compare the current state of the political systems in our neighbourhood or among the countries that got independence around the same time as India. The survival of democracy, in whatever form, with peaceful changes of government, and whatever level of freedom of speech that India has, is the only one of its kind in the post-colonial world. We can look at the glass as half full or as half emptyin my personal opinion, it is more than half empty when we look at it as participating citizens living in the country but it is half

full when we look at it in comparison with other countries in our neighbourhood or in the rest of the post-colonial world. The more than half empty bit takes us to the last question: How has my blind faith in this current form of democracy made my life any better? This is a deep question as it touches on matters of faith and forms of democracy. Firstly, I do not believe in blind faith. If India is to take what some of us consider to be its rightful place in the comity of nations, and in keeping with the aspirations of the founding fathers of the country, then its citizens should not have blind faith and beliefs but need to have faith and beliefs based on logic and rationale. The second key statement here is this current form of democracy. The current form of democracy is neither Godgiven nor etched in stone, and there is no reason on earth that we, citizen/voters of India, should have either blind faith or even plain and simple faith in it. We must do all we can to give ourselves the form of democracy that is appropriate for us. We have been guilty of forgetting the famous saying, War is too serious a business to be left only to the generals and leaving politics only to politicians. It is our politicians who have, over a period of time, distorted the form of democracy that was intended, by making political parties, the basic unit of a representative democracy such as ours, completely undemocratic in their internal functioning. The phrase inner party democracy is often used these days and political parties respond by brazenly saying that they do have inner party democracy. It needs to be understood that inner party democracy does not mean unanimous election after bargains have been struck behind closed doors, or unanimous authorization of the so-called high command to nominate a chief minister,

or even the high command or a nominated committee choosing candidates for contesting elections. These are various manifestations of the current form of democracy. What we need is actually functioning internal democracy in political parties where members of a party will also choose the candidate who should contest the election on behalf of their party, from a constituency, in a transparently democratic process transparent not only to the satraps of the party but also to its membership and to the media and the general pubic. That will be the first level of democratic functioning. The second level of democratic functioning will be when such democratically elected candidates will contest the election for the state assembly or the parliament. It is then that we will have true representatives of the people in the legislatures and not the hangers-on of political bigwigs. This multiple level, functioning democracy will also eliminate the need for spending hoards of unaccounted money during the elections, thus generating bulk of black money in the country simply because candidates will be known to the people who are required to vote for them. So, my response to all right thinking and concerned citizens such as Swaroop Pandit is to work towards an appropriate form of democracy by (a) voting their disagreement with the current form of democracy, and (b) visibly supporting efforts being made to work towards an appropriate form of democracy. I am afraid not voting or opting out of the systems will only prove the old adage: The price good people will pay for not getting involved, is to be governed by bad people. n
Chhokar, a former dean of IIM, Ahmedabad, is a founder of Association for Democratic Reforms and National Election Watch

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