WHERE DID MY VOICE GO?

As the results of the last elections came in I started to get that feeling again – the feeling that I have lost my voice. It has been a feeling that has been coming to me off and on for the past many years. In fact the last time that that I felt that my vote counted was the first time that I voted which was in 1977. The minimum voting age in those years used to be 21. But I was unlucky since when I became 21, Mrs. Indira Gandhi, then prime minister, was still carrying on her cute little experiment with dictatorship. My encounter with democracy as a voter was therefore virtually still born as there were no elections in sight, or so I thought. All of us were convinced that we had seen the last of democratic governance and now were going the way of several young countries of Asia and Africa liberated from empires. 

It has been well said that no one can stop an idea whose time had come. The same could be said of my opportunity to vote which came absolutely without warning when Mrs. Gandhi announced general elections in March, 1977. Now I wonder what made her do it. But at that time it was like light at the end of the dark tunnel. Many of us youngsters had grown tired of the dictatorship practiced during the emergency. There was no respite. Newspapers, that had been censored only sang praises of the government. If you turned on the radio all you would hear about were the good things the prime minister had done - her 20 points to a disciplined India. Her younger son Sanjay was not far behind - even he announced a five-point programme. When it wasn’t about Mrs. Gandhi, the subject was her son and the youth in larger and larger numbers that he led to glory after glory (actually mostly they were goons). One had to be careful about what one said even to one’s neighbours and friends since one could find oneself in jail for some indiscrete critical comment about the government. It was a police state, no less. So when the chance came all of us in the neighbourhood happily marched to the district revenue office and registered ourselves as voters for the first time. We were excited that here at last we seemed to be getting a chance to overthrow the tyrant for that is what Mrs. Gandhi and company had become.

TRYST WITH DICTATORSHIP

Well, our tryst with the dictatorship of the daughter of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru finally came to an end as our votes booted the Congress out and brought in the newly formed Janata Party. We heard with rapt attention election speeches at the local football ground of people like Babu Jagjivan Ram and Hemvati Nandan Bahuguna who had rebelled against Mrs. Gandhi and were now with the Janata Party. Their powers of oratory then had seemed magical. We were young and impressionable and did not worry too much about whether those we trusted were worthy of that trust. However, about one thing I never entertained a doubt – my vote counted. Indian democracy had a place for my voice. It seemed to me that my vote had helped bring down the mighty government of Mrs. Gandhi (Indira) whose majority in the Lok Sabha was such that she could steamroll any bill or even constitutional amendments that she felt like.

However, as the years passed and I voted in many subsequent elections, both parliamentary and assembly, my faith in the democratic process gradually began to erode and doubts started to creep in about whether my voice counted at all in India’s democratic process. I was told that the votes of people like me who did not vote en masse with my caste or religious group did not really matter. So-called vote banks determined those who would come to power, said those who ‘knew’. And I started to resign myself to the situation as I saw more and more corrupt and unprincipled people getting elected to power and virtually thumbing their noses at the honest and straightforward who felt powerless.

MORAL DECLINE

As a journalist later I had a unique opportunity to watch the political and social process from close and as I began to read about the stalwarts of our freedom movement (not just about Gandhi and Nehru) I discovered that honesty, morality and sincerity did have a place not just in public life but also in private life. I also became rudely aware of the moral decline that had overtaken Indians to such an extent that it has now become commonplace for people to say that idealism was a thing of the past and that in current times to make headway in any sphere one had to be “practical.” This meant that one has to be prepared to tweak principles in order to achieve success, whatever that word means. When I try to be honest, neighbours, friends and relatives call me ‘simple’ when what they really mean is that I am a simpleton or simply stupid. “It’s okay to cheat so long as you don’t get caught,” was one 'homily' that I heard. I was shocked but many others that I know were not. Hadn’t Mrs. Indira Gandhi, daughter of the great Nehru famously asked, “where in the world is there no corruption” when it was pointed out that this was a major failing of India. The floodgates were lifted and we have reached where we are. The ‘magnetic field’ of our morality has been so disturbed that the compass no longer points to ‘true north’. It can be commanded to point in any direction in accordance to our convenience and interest.

But after years of pessimism, I find that there in fact much cause for cheer. Having covered many elections, general as well as assembly over the years, I have come to appreciate that the percentage of votes received by a party is more important than the number of seats that it wins. In India, though the ‘first-past-the-post’ system has resulted in a situation that the voice of the real majority has not received the importance due to it, right from the start. Thanks to the great work of the Election Commission of India (much reviled today on account of the evm machines) statistics on all elections in India since the first elections are available on the web.  Jawaharlal Nehru was among the most popular public figures of his time aside from Mahatma Gandhi. So it was not surprising when he and his party colleague (Masuriyadin) received more than two-thirds of the votes polled in Allahabad (east) cum Jaunpur (west) in Uttar Pradesh in 1952. In the recent elections, incidentally, only 660 people voted for the Congress candidate from the same constituency.

DISCONNECT OF DEMOCRACY  

But what about the entire nation? The percentage of votes polled was 41.21. So what did the Indian National Congress that led the euphoric campaign for national freedom receive? The numbers say that they got 44.99 per cent of the votes. These votes won them 364 seats in the Lok Sabha out of a total of 489 or about 74 per cent of the seats. About 20 per cent more votes were cast in favour of parties that were part of the national movement. But the fact remains that 35 per cent of the voters who voted did not vote for any of these parties. Who were these voters and what were their ideas? They got very meagre representation and therefore little voice in the first Lok Sabha drowned in the clamour of the 45 plus 20 per cent. A beginning had already been made in the direction of what can be described as a distortion of the ‘general will.’ As the years went by this distortion kept increasing and votes for the so-called progressive parties kept decreasing. The big question is whether we can ignore the voice of a large section of our population and still carry on our democracy? The answer is an emphatic no.

That is perhaps the main reason why former prime minister P.V. Narasimha Rao, who led a minority Congress government, called for consensus, recognising for the first time that the large number of people who voted against a ruling party could not be ignored. Their voice had to be taken into account if governance was to meet the expectations of people. Many people accused Rao of being an agent of the RSS and some rumoured that he was ‘khaki’ beneath his dhoti. But it seems he was talking sense. All voices have to be accommodated if governance is to be smooth. He could implement the ‘tough’ economic reforms only because he made others buy in to the idea. This is evident in the fact that all subsequent governments have continued with the same economic policies.

However, to return to the point, as the years have gone by the ruling coalitions have barely managed to cross the half-way mark in terms of vote share while the maximum that any single party was Rajiv Gandhi in 1984 when the Congress received 49 per cent of the votes. The most that the Congress got under Jawaharlal Nehru was 47.78 per cent in 1957. If we add the share of those parties that were involved in the national movement in some way, they would add up to about 65 per cent in the first elections in 1952. This leaves us with the uncomfortable thought that a large proportion of those who voted were not with those who were fighting for freedom.

In recent years the situation has only worsened. If we look at all the alliances that have ruled India over the past dozen years have had majorities in numbers but not in terms of numbers. The latest has an absolute majority in the Lok Sabha, the first time after a gap of 34 years that a single party has enjoyed this status. But what is worrying is that it has secured only a little more than 31 per cent of the vote share. But this figure will not cross 40 per cent even if we include the vote shares of some regional parties that have allied with the ruling party.  So then who represents the 60 per cent? The blunt answer is NO ONE. We are told that elections are one way to show the general will. But what kind of general will is this that leaves out the wishes of the majority? It is very clear that there is what can be called a disconnect in our democracy because the way in which it ascertains general will is gravely flawed. Unless it is addressed it will leave a disbalance that can only give rise to tension and therefore conflict and instability.

What then is the answer? The answer is to replace the first-past-the-post system with proportional representation. In this nmkkind of elections parties are going to get seats in proportion to the percentage of votes that they win and a majority in the legislature will correspond to a majority of the vote share. According to American non-profit ‘FairVote’, “The basic principles underlying proportional representation elections are that all voters deserve representation and that all political groups in society deserve to be represented in our legislatures in proportion to their strength in the electorate. In other words, everyone should have the right to fair representation.” (http://www.fairvote.org/how_proportional_representation_elections_work).

Do I expect India to switch over to the new system anytime soon? Not really. At the moment the powers that be are dragging their feet over having even a paper trail for voting by electronic voting machines.