The current Assembly elections raise several issues. First and foremost is the process of selecting candidates by political parties. Unlike other democracies, we do not have a democratic process for deciding who the candidates are. In the US, registered Democrats and Republicans vote in the primaries to decide who the Presidential candidate will be. In Germany, candidates are selected by parties based on a secret ballot. In our country, citizens have no say in the matter and it is the party leaders alone who decide this. As we see a little later, this has led to deterioration in the nature of candidates put up.

The second issue is the nature of candidates that the political parties persist in putting up. In the 2004 Assembly elections, the record of the three major parties was very poor as seen in the table. In spite of public assurances to the contrary, the parties have repeated some candidates who have serious criminal cases pending against them. The parties have also not nominated a sufficient number of women.

The third issue is the rapid growth of money power in elections. It is almost impossible today for a new comer to enter politics unless he or she has a lot of money or political backing to begin with. The assets revealed by the candidates show a substantial jump compared to the previous elections. Most of them claim that their wealth is based on sharply increasing land prices. This may be true.

But we need to look at potential conflict of interest since those in power know in advance which projects are coming up. They buy up land at cheap rates, and then reap the benefits when infrastructure develops and prices shoot up. People from the construction, mining and liquor industries are also contesting in greater numbers.
Until business and citizen interests coincide, elected representatives are more likely to focus on their interests rather than on citizen concerns. For instance, urban regulations on construction of apartment complexes, shopping malls, flyovers, quality of roads, congestion on roads, pollution, the plight of pedestrians and bicyclists on roads and so on are very likely to be ignored.

Similarly, in rural areas, land use and mining rights are going to be more and more aligned to business rather than to citizens’ interests. Like some other countries, we need laws to regulate conflict of interest.

Votes are sought to be bought by distributing money, liquor, clothes, gas connections and even payment of water and electricity bills by candidates. All these are in blatant violation of existing laws. It is common knowledge that hardly any candidate adheres to the limit of Rs 10 lakh per Assembly constituency. Ironically, the elected representatives are supposed to formulate these very laws. The competition for votes and power is intensifying and the election expenses are spiralling. So are the potential payoffs for getting into power.
Civil society needs to get much more active and create awareness that representatives who spend a lot of money in the elections will later ensure that they recover their investment several times over after winning and not concentrate on good governance. Manifestos are becoming blatantly populist and aimed at enticing voters by promising all kinds of subsidies.

As a result of all this, citizen apathy and cynicism is growing. Voter turnouts are steadily decreasing. This is perhaps a little alarming since it means people are slowly losing faith in the form of democracy we see now. The Election Commission is no doubt doing an excellent job, curbing violence, trying to clamp down on malpractices during elections, bringing in the police and CRPF from other states and so on. But some problems still persist. Candidates start distributing largesse before the notification of elections so that they are out of the purview of the EC. Problems in voter rolls persist, and citizens continue to complain that in spite of repeated efforts, they cannot get their names on voter rolls. This hits at the very roots of citizens’ constitutional right to vote.

In a sense we are all victims of the prevailing system — including the politicians. Some creative thinking and action is needed if we are to get out of this impasse. We need changes in the system, in the laws and in the rules and regulations. We also need much greater involvement of voters, and greater awareness of the issues so that the nature of politics itself starts to change. One way out is to begin with a more open, transparent and democratic process of selecting candidates. Another is to widely disseminate information regarding election expenses to voters - as well as a candidate-declared estimate of spending and source of funds well before elections as is done in some other countries.







(The writer is a professor at IIM, Bangalore)