As India’s general election gets underway, Kailash Chand predicts an uncertain outcome and proposes a presidential solution
VOTING in the world’s most populous democracy began last week, featuring hundreds of political parties, ageing leaders and a colourful cast of Bollywood and cricket stars offering themselves up for the approval of the masses.
The Indian electorate has done this 14 times since India gained its independence. Each time India has voted, it has been the world’s largest exercise in electoral democracy. India’s growing population ensures that the country keeps breaking its own record.
The numbers involved (715 million) are so huge that the election will be staggered over five phases, ending on May 13, with electoral and security personnel moving from state to state as polling is concluded in each place.
Despite the phased voting, the counting takes place nationwide only after the last phase is completed, with all the results due to be announced on May 16.
Because so many are illiterate, India invented the party symbol, so that those who cannot read the name of their preferred candidate can vote for him or her by recognising the symbol under which he or she campaigned. The old guard is using websites, social networking platforms, Bluetooth kiosks, text messages and traditional mass media to reach new voters, with the Congress Party paying nearly £150,000 for the rights to Jai Ho (“Be victorious”), the Oscar-winning theme song from the film Slumdog Millionaire.
It is the rural vote (more than 70 per cent of the population) that determines who forms the government. However, the central governments of all political colours have constantly neglected rural development and much of rural India has remained deprived of the fruits of economic growth. Nearer election-time, some meaningless headline-grabbing initiatives are invariably introduced. This election is no exception. The United Progressive Alliance government, in which Congress is the dominant partner, has introduced the national rural employment guarantee scheme and has written off unpaid debts in an effort to woo the rural votes. The two measures involved a sum of nearly £100 million.
The main opposition, the Bharatiya Janata Party, has now promised to introduce a similar scheme for the urban poor. Both national parties also promise to make cheaper loans available to farmers. Such measures have never succeeded in making a lasting change to the life of the poor voters; they merely provide a brief uplift during the election season.
Elections are an enduring spectacle of free India, which give foreign journalists the opportunity to remind the world that India is the world’s largest democracy. Indeed, Indians now take for granted that elections will take place, that they will be free and fair, and that they will result in actual transfers of power. There are few developing countries in the world where this is true while poverty and illiteracy are simultaneously rife. That may be the real miracle of what will occur in India over the next few weeks.
Unfortunately, the outcome of the election is sure to be another ungainly coalition: unable – or unwilling – to tackle the gargantuan challenges facing India. Neither of the two main political rivals, Congress – which has led the country for the past five years and most of the past six decades – nor the Hindu nationalist BJP – are expected to win an outright majority of seats in the 543-member lower house of parliament.
With politicians’ consciences becoming increasingly fickle, no political leader trusts another. Their stakes are high. And the feeling of national insecurity is pronounced. Promises being made now may not amount to anything once the votes have been counted.
Despite calls for a strong government that will resist being held hostage by erratic coalition partners, the lacklustre campaign has convinced many voters that the result, expected on May 16, will be inconclusive. A period of horse-trading could leave India becalmed or, more worryingly, could herald a succession of weak and short-lived governments like those seen in the 1980s. Alliances made today are not being viewed as marriage vows valid after the poll results. There are unwritten divorce clauses. After the results are out, what will matter ultimately is the elementary arithmetic where the party which can muster 272 MPs will form the next government. It is not an easy figure to reach, given the chaotic political landscape.
Congress and the BJP have stopped thinking of winning power on their own. The former could well emerge as the largest party, but it will be a weaker force within the next government than in its last term. It is expected to reach an accommodation with leftist parties, and small caste and regional alliances. However, a number of Congress’ former partners are angry at the party’s refusal to strike a seat-sharing deal for the elections. Some remain hostile towards Prime Minister Manmohan Singh over his nuclear co-operation deal with the United States.
Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first and longest-serving Prime Minister, spent his political career instilling in his people the habits of democracy: disdain for dictators, respect for parliamentary procedures and an abiding faith in the constitutional system. However, over the past three decades, bureaucratic and political corruption and the criminalisation of politics have served to weaken the roots of Indian democracy.
Bureaucratic corruption is largely a result of the “permit-license quota Raj” ushered in by Nehru’s brand of socialism. Recently, Swiss banks have disclosed that Indians have a concealed wealth of $1,500 billion in their vaults – 13 times India’s national debt.
The other most dangerous phenomenon of independent India’s political life is the criminalisation of politics. As many as 100 members of the current parliament (out of a total of 543) have criminal records.
When a promiscuous culture comes to prevail in a society, and particularly in politics, values and the nation become degraded – a state from which it takes a long time to recover. India’s parliamentary system has failed to live up to the aspirations of its founding fathers.
Modern India is facing international and domestic terrorism, economic depression, price inflation and the loss of moral backbone among most of its politicians. For its survival, India will have to reappraise the process of its government. A presidential system, preferably an Indian model somewhere between the French and American structure, might work best. Actually, in the early years of independent India, Clement Attlee proposed the presidential system of the United States as a model. Unfortunately, Nehru rejected it – ironically out of his Anglophilic delusion that the “British system was the only real one for democracies”.
The parliamentary system means the party system. In this election in India, more than 100 parties with over 5,000 candidates are involved. Most political parties are engaged in an unseemly scramble for power – its perks and means of amassing illegitimate wealth – rather than good governance. With the needs and demands of one-sixth of humanity to be met, India must have a democracy that delivers progress for its people. A presidential system is the best way of ensuring a democracy that works.
Kailash Chand is a Manchester-based GP
