THURSDAY, MAY 16, 2024
Luis Dias
What do you call a flawed democracy? An ‘electile’ dysfunction.
It seems an apt description for the situation India is in today.
The Democracy Index published by the Economist Group is an index measuring the quality of democracy across the world. This quantitative and comparative assessment is centrally concerned with democratic rights and democratic institutions. The Democracy Index produces a weighted average based on the answers to 60 questions, which are grouped into five categories: electoral process and pluralism; civil liberties; functioning of government; political participation; and political culture.
India has the dubious distinction of being labelled a “flawed democracy”. But even that seems a rather kind assessment, given the systemic rot that pervades the functioning of democracy in India.
The biggest and most recent case in point is the scam of electoral bonds that was struck down last February by a five-judge bench of the Supreme Court of India, headed by Chief Justice DY Chandrachud as “unconstitutional.” Apart from finding it "violative of RTI (Right to Information)" and of voters’ right to information about political funding under Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution, they also pointed out that it "would lead to quid pro quo arrangements" between corporations and politicians.
Such an institutionalisation of “quid pro quo” undermines the very fabric of democracy, and unlimited corporate funding makes a sham of the concept “free and fair” elections.
Unsurprisingly, when last month the Supreme Court ordered the State Bank of India to disclose the details of electoral bonds to the Election Commission of India (ECI), the biggest beneficiary of the electoral bonds at ₹6,060 crore (over 47.5%share in the total bonds encashed) was the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), but other parties benefited too: All India Trinamool Congress received ₹1,609.50 crore (12.6%) followed by the Congress ₹1,421.9 crore (11.1%), the second and third biggest parties in terms of encashment in the period.
But here’s the interesting part: although the lid has been blown off the scam, and the names of donors and beneficiaries are in the public domain, everyone gets to keep the money thus acquired. So how “free and fair” will this coming election, or indeed any elections in the foreseeable future, ever be?
How surprised should we be if the political party with far and away the most stacked coffers wins yet again? Is it really a measure of good governance, or further evidence of “quid pro” in action?
India ought to currently be down one notch further down the Democratic Index to what is called a “hybrid regime”, just a step away from the lowest rung of the index, the “authoritarian regime.”
“Hybrid regimes” are “nations with regular electoral frauds, preventing them from being fair and free democracies. These nations commonly have governments that apply pressure on political opposition, non-independent judiciaries, widespread corruption, harassment and pressure placed on the media, anaemic rule of law, and more pronounced faults than flawed democracies in the realms of underdeveloped political culture, low levels of participation in politics, and issues in the functioning of governance.”
Even without all of the above hugely troublesome issues, I find it more and more difficult to believe, going by past and present examples across the world, that democracy actually works in practice.
I recently came across this quote by the novelist Franz Kafka (1883-1924): “One idiot is one idiot. Two idiots are two idiots. Ten thousand idiots are a political party.”
Nowhere is this truer than in Goa, where the same rabble of politicians hop fences so effortlessly that we have trouble keeping up.
The other issue is our voting system, first-past-the-post (FPTP) or plurality voting, wherein voters cast a vote for a single candidate, and the candidate with the most votes wins the election. Its advantage is that is easy to understand, but it has serious drawbacks, far too many to get into here, but let’s just look at the big ones that are the particular bugbear of elections in Goa time and again: vote-splitting and tactical voting, which are inter-related.
Where two similar parties or candidates compete under FPTP, the vote of their potential supporters is often split between them, thus allowing a less popular party or candidate to win the seat.
FPTP encourages tactical voting, as voters often vote not for the candidate (or party) they most prefer, but against the candidate (or party) they most dislike.
My own voting history reflects both these issues. Ever since I became eligible to vote, I have almost consistently voted Congress (except for one delusionary phase when I thought that the Aam Aadmi Party was worth supporting; the honeymoon didn’t last long) not because I particularly believe in it all that much, but because they seemed and still seem the ‘lesser evil’. At least it was born at the hands of statesmen and women I admired, and I still do, most of them. And more importantly they seemed (and still seem, sometimes…) a counterweight to the divisive and communal forces in India. (Can our conscience permit us to forget about Manipur even in faraway Goa?)
So my voting history has always been ‘negative’, voting ‘against’ rather than ‘for’.
And this is the quandary I find myself in, like clockwork, every time another election circus puts up its tent in town wanting to blacken my index finger yet again. If I abstain, I’m called an irresponsible citizen. If I vote for someone who (surprise surprise!) actually wins, I have no way of knowing that they will not post-results hop another fence (even saying God told them to!) and betray my vote.
It’s a Kafkaesque circus, but who are the clowns: the politicians, we the people who vote them in through omission or commission, or the flawed democratic process itself?
And yet, infuriatingly, the voter will be blamed by political pundits on endless analytical television shows. “The voter got the government it deserved.”
But is that a fair assessment? It’s a rotten system, and we certainly didn’t deserve this.
(Dr Luis Dias is a physician, musician, writer and founder of Child’s Play India Foundation. He blogs at luisdias.wordpress.com)
