1. Topic of the week for discussion: 9th to 15th January 2012
Topic: Electoral reforms in India
Minimum candidate qualifications: At present there is no requirement for
any minimum education. This may well have been justified at the time the
Constitution was written when large sections of our population were
uneducated. At that time, an uneducated junta was happy with an
uneducated leader. Today is a different world. Today, a majority of the
people are educated and it would only be appropriate that the leader be
educated as well.
Removing crime from politics: One of the primary problems with our
democracy is that it attracts the criminal minded towards it. The criminal
minded are attracted by the special privileges that MPs enjoy; the protection
from criminal proceedings; the ability to abuse state institutions for personal
benefit; the chance to be in charge of huge sums of governmental funds
which can be diverted to more personally meaningful causes; the power that
comes with politics. Now, if our justice system had been fast in delivering
its verdicts, then we could have insisted that even if an FIR was filed
against a candidate, he/she should be debarred from contesting elections.
Topic Election funding: This is a huge subject and I am only starting off a debate
here. There are two types of problems with our present election funding
Introduction norms. One is that most of the funding is in the form of black money. No
corporate wants to officially state who it is supporting for the worry of
inviting the wrath of the other party. In most cases, they end up giving
contributions to both sides. Even here, they prefer to keep the amounts
hidden so as not to upset one party or the other. The second problem is that
even if a candidate manages to raise all funds legally, he/she is not allowed
to spend beyond a certain limit legally. The limit for major constituencies is
Rs 25 lacs or so; for smaller ones just Rs 10-15 lacs. These are arbitrary and
unrealistic limits. How can you contest an election by spending just these
measly amounts? But here is the loophole. Friends of candidates can spend
as much as they want. Political parties can spend as much as they want on a
candidate. This leads to unaccounted spending. And black money entering
politics. We have much to learn from other countries – especially European
and Latin American countries – on public funding of elections. But it is
entirely possible that we may need our own rules to be developed. One of
the earlier suggestions I have given is that the 3% education cess that used
to exist till last year should be re-introduced as election cess. This would
generate a huge amount of money. The EC may then decide whether we can
do with less than 3% or not. Public funding of elections can lead to much
lower levels of corruption in the election process. Here’s the very important
side-effect: Good candidates, who are not well off, can also get a chance to
contest elections. Today, political parties prefer to support candidates who
can raise funds for the party. Another point worth considering is to give
corporates tax concessions for political funding. This will actually bring out
election funding in a much more open public arena – imagine shareholders
asking for details on which parties their company supported. Basically, the
idea should be to lift the veil on election funding…..

2. Coalition politics – we have been in the era of coalition governments for nearly
two decades now. And there is no sign that this is going to change. Coalition
politics creates trouble in the functioning of a government. Small coalition
partners are able to extract a much larger pound of flesh than they deserve;
encouraging even more small parties to be formed. The main partner in the
coalition is often subject to unfair pressures from small partners – to ignore
their corrupt practices, to wrest better ministries etc. Besides, by threatening to
quit the coalition and bring down a government, small parties enjoy powers
they should not be entitled to. We need to change the rules here. Maybe we
should only allow pre-election coalition partnerships. But what happens if pre-
election partnerships fail to get the required majorities? If post-election
partnerships are allowed, can we ban their dissolution before 5 years are over?
This will bring stability to the running of the government. These things need to
be discussed.
National parties v/s regional parties: Should we have a rule that limits Lok
Sabha elections to only national parties? Should we tighten the description of a
national party? Today, if a regional party has a presence in a mere 4 states, it is
called a national party. Even the RJD was considered a national party because
it had made some gains in the North East (it was subsequently de-recognized).
Likewise, the NCP today is called a national party because of its performance
Reforms... in the North East. Since the time this rule was framed, many more states have
got created. Maybe today, the rule should be that the party must be represented
in at least 8-10 states. Fortunately, in spite of the rather simple qualification
criteria, there are only six national parties – the Congress, the BJP, the NCP,
the CPI, the CPI(M) and the BSP. So in reality, there are only four groupings –
the Congress and NCP as the 1st, the CPI and CPI(M) as the 2nd, the BJP as the
3rd and the BSP as the 4th. Maybe if the rules were tightened, the BSP would be
eliminated. Maybe we should allow only the BJP, the Congress or the Left to
form the central government. State parties could of course join any of these
dispensations, but they would not be allowed to leave the coalition for five
years.
As is clear, there are many areas of reforms possible with respect to elections.
Right to Reject a candidate is a flawed concept as per most political analysts.
Do we really vote for candidates at all? Or do we vote for political parties?
Similarly, Right to recall a candidate is a flawed concept since even the
winning candidate gets less than 50% of votes in most constituencies. So if a
right-to-recall was exercised, almost all winning candidates could be recalled.
Besides, if we can clean up our election system, we may not even need to recall
our elected representatives.
Read further : http://www.liberalsindia.com/freedomfirst/ff454-01.html
http://www.mainstreamweekly.net/article1049.html