Undemocratic India

The forthcoming elections will be India’s most undemocratic exercise ever.

Violence, money power, authoritarian leadership and empty rhetoric are the key currencies in use, and we are sure to end up with a verdict that will sanctify rule by one group of thugs rather than the other.

If Varun Gandhi has achieved notoriety for promising to cut off the hands of those who will threaten Hindus, a Congress minister in Andhra Pradesh has promised to do the same if Muslims are threatened. Lalu Prasad wanted to squash Varun under a roadroller. He has since amended his statement to mean the steamroller of law. A BJP joker now wants to crush Lalu under a train. All noble democratic sentiments, no doubt.
Quite clearly, mere participation in an election process cannot make us the world’s largest democracy. Even Hitler came to power in an election. We have learnt the art of voting and winning, but democratic temper is something else. Elections enable us to change governments every now and then, but this makes no difference when the key players — politicians, parties and voting blocks — are undemocratic themselves.

The Congress is nothing but a Nehru-Gandhi fief. The BJP tolerates greater ambition within its parivar, but seems incapable of truly democratic and inclusive behaviour. The CPM, which runs another kind of parivar, has reduced its leaders to pygmies. Jyoti Basu came within a whisker of being prime minister, but the party cabal said no. Somnath Chatterjee refused to play a partisan role as Speaker, and the party blackballed him.

As for the regional parties, the less said the better. Every regional party is a one-person (or one family) show, from Mayawati to Jayalalithaa to Sharad Pawar to Bal Thackeray to Naveen Patnaik to OP Chautala. Not for nothing does the Economist Intelligence Unit call India a “flawed” democracy. It finds India wanting in areas like political participation and culture, leading to high levels of corruption and lack of accountability among politicians. Politicians spend almost their entire time in power to build resources to fight the next election. In short, our “free and fair” electoral process has played no small role in entrenching corruption.

If I have managed to depress you, it is with a reason. Here comes the good news. The polity is changing and we haven’t noticed. Despite the awful stench of wholesale corruption, political parties themselves are changing. Many of them have begun to understand that they have to deliver, and some of them are indeed delivering. Not enough to satisfy everyone, but enough to give all of us hope.

Till five or 10 years ago, anti-incumbency was the norm as voters invariably threw out the government in power. But now, the electorate is beginning to distinguish between complete non-performance and partial performance. In the recent elections in Rajasthan, MP, Chhattisgarh, HP and Mizoram, two states voted for change, one for partial change and two others for status quo. In the coming general election, there is a good chance that the UPA will be judged kindly since it seems to have delivered at least some things to the aam aadmi in rural areas. Or course, the urban vote may be more angst-ridden, but that is because the UPA’s performance in urban infrastructure and reforms has been pathetic.

The second reason for optimism is the improving quality of people being put up by parties and the entry of new parties and independents. After Narendra Modi’s resounding victory in 2008, every party has realised that fielding the same old bandicoots may not be a wise thing to do. Parties are chopping and changing candidates on the basis of winnability. New parties — Chiranjeevi’s Praja Rajyam in AP and Vijay Kant’s DMDK in Tamil Nadu, and Mumbai’s Loksatta party — are coming into being. Some may be driven by star power, but they represent new nodes of change.

The most hopeful sign is the entry of complete independents such as Meera Sanyal in Mumbai, Arun Bhatia in Pune, and Capt GR Gopinath (ex-Deccan Aviation) in Bangalore. I do not expect them to win this time, but they represent a trend towards better candidate quality. If they persist with their candidacies for some time, they will succeed.

Candidates and parties who want change should take a leaf out of the book of BSP founder Kanshi Ram and Mayawati. Mayawati’s claim to fame is not that she has discovered a new Dalit-Brahmin-Muslim electoral combo (the Congress discovered it 50 years ago), but that you have to think really long-term.

The BSP made no impact in election after election in the 1980s and 1990s, but concentrated on steadily increasing vote share. Once the major parties noted what the BSP could bring to the table, they were willing to sup with Maya.

Today’s new parties and candidates may not taste instant success. They have to show that they are in for the long haul.