Our country is known to be the largest democracy in the world. No doubt this is something to be very proud of and compared to the nations in the neighbourhood who attained Independence around the same period as we did, one can pat ourselves on the back for the way we have held on to our Constitutional rights and duties and to a great extent worked as a pluralistic society over the last seven decades or so.
But the happenings over the last few years and in particular the experience of the recent elections in the various states of the country makes one think whether a renewal of the system by which our Elections are conducted and Governments are formed is in need of a major overhaul. I would like to go into some of the topics that we may particularly need to study and change so as to bring about a more democratic norm into the Electoral process.
Number of Candidates at each Constituency: During any Election, besides the candidates of the two major central parties Namely the Congress and the BJP, we have candidates from the local parties, Independents and a few candidates who are possible placed by the Major parties to split the votes of their opponents. Take for example in the recent elections, the Cortalim Constituency (No.27) had Ten (10) candidates for a total of 30,406 registered voters. Of these 23515 votes were cast. This gives us a voting percentage of 77.33%. The winning candidate had garnered 5666 votes which is 24.09% of the votes cast and 18.6% of the total votes. In other words we have a person who has a popular vote of less than a quarter of the voting population who is authorised to rule the other 75-82% who were not in favour of this candidate. Dr.Srinivas Kamat has rightly pointed out a similar anomaly where in the Srinagar by poll where the total voting was a mere 7% and Farooq Abdullah with 4% of the votes was declared the winning candidate. (Ref Herald Review dtd 23rd April 2017) The question is “Is this fair ?”
Percentage of Votes to the parties: Taking a cue from the recent elections in Goa, it may be noted that we had a turnout of about 83% of the voters. This indeed is a very positive sign for a democratic set up. The BJP had 32.5% of the popular vote with only 13 seats, The Congress had 28.4% of the popular vote with 17 seats The MGP had 11.3% with 3 seats and the GFP had 3.5% with 3seats. Finally the party with 13 seats formed the Government with the support of the others. Heavy rewards were dished out to the supporting candidates by way of plum ministries, etc. Seeing that they had nothing to gain by sticking to the Congress, some of the congress candidates lost no time in throwing their loyalties to the winds and joined the BJP bandwagon with a view on lucrative positions. As per the Oxford dictionary to bribe means to Buy off or Give an Inducement to. In other words to Corrupt. While on one side the thrust is on corruption free Governance, it appears that slogans and practice are two different issues.
Winning Candidates should be based on Majority: In many organizations of good standing in the world and in many democracies, results are declared based on a simple Majority or an overall Majority. A simple majority is gained when one candidate receives at least one vote more than the other candidate. This is possible if there is a contest between two candidates only. In case there are more than two candidates then an overall majority is necessary. An overall Majority is gained when one candidate receives at least one vote more than the total votes cast for all other candidates. In case the latter has not been achieved, then a second round of elections between the first two or three candidates should be held. This will ensure that no dummy candidates are posted for elections and will also give the people a chance to have a better choice of candidates as a winner.
Conclusion: There was a time when elections were fought with a gentlemanly demeanour. Today we have candidates who are at each other’s throats. This is one of the main causes which prevents good and worthy people from entering into politics. We have candidates who speak more about the negative aspects of his opponents than about what he/she is going to do for the society. The parties as a whole are only interested in winning by hook or by crook. Winnability is the only criteria. Perhaps it is time that after over 70 years of Independence and a great amount spent on free education, “Educated Franchise” rather than plain “Adult franchise” together with the introduction of eligibility criteria for candidates is the need of the hour.
