Doctors say that even a low grade fever if continued debilitates the body severely. In the present fevered state of our polity, ghosts of Lok Sabha?s past continue to haunt us, much like Scrooge?s Christmases. The latest WikiLeaks bombshells rocked the fifteenth Lok Sabha on 17 March because of the vote-buying for the 2008 vote of confidence. What causes the fever is the permanent election syndrome.
?Nobody looks at 2011 as a year of any great political significance? bemoans Shekhar Gupta (Minus the left, FE, 14 March 2011) and rightly so, because of the implications of the five state elections in the next two months for the national polity. He mentions how we see 2012 as being crucial because of elections in Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat and Punjab and possibly even 2013 because of elections in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Delhi. Of course, the lessons from that landmark election in Bihar in 2010 are still being absorbed.
That marks every single year between the two national elections in 2009 and 2014 as being important. Effectively, we are in a permanent election mode at all times due to some or the other important state elections being held in any given year. This has come about because most state assemblies have not lasted their full terms at some time or the other, throwing the election calendar in flux.
The democratic process is doubtless strengthened by such developments. The people get to exercise their choice clearly at frequent intervals and those seeking political office have to be alert to their needs, at least in theory.
Some other consequences of constant elections are, however, not so salutary. First, as we have already seen this year, hard but necessary actions are delayed, perhaps inordinately so. Mamata Banerjee did not raise rail fares or freight tariffs despite her derailed finances because of the impending West Bengal elections. Market determination of petroleum product prices, becoming more urgent by the day, seem to be indefinitely postponed because some state or the other is always going to polls. Myriad other public policy decisions are dictated solely by populist compulsions.
Second, legislators take time off from their main tasks to mind their day jobs of electioneering. We worried a great deal about the loss of Parliamentary time in the last winter session, but not nearly enough about the curtailment of the budget session to just about half of its normal schedule due to the impending state elections. No one knows what passed for debate on the rail budget; we only know that it was passed! Between the Holi recess and the end of the session shortly thereafter, the main budget, too, will get a similar short shrift in terms of debate and discussion. Since March to May is the preferred time slot for state elections, there is not much hope that we will see more informed and detailed legislative discussions of these crucial concerns in the near future.
Third, there is the significantly escalation cost of holding repeated elections. The cost the Election Commission, without a doubt the most strenuously overworked public agency, incurs has understandably gone up. The first general election in 1952 cost a tad over R10 crore. The Commission?s website states that the 2004 Lok Sabha elections cost R1,300 crore. The state elections would cost a similar amount, and not wholly on a pro rata basis. This huge increase is due to the far more complex process that has evolved over time. At that, one is not sure if it includes all the costs attributable to elections. The very sizeable deployment of security forces and their movement in the field itself must cost a pretty penny, some of it hidden away in other budget heads. Several hundred senior administrators, mostly from the IAS cadre, are taken away from their normal function to act as election observers for up to two months or so. That surely has a cost in terms of temporary arrangements and decisions foregone or postponed. And we are only looking at the government costs. When all costs including those of candidates and parties, accounted for or otherwise, are factored in, it should not surprise us if the total is in 13 figures (a trillion or lakh crore rupees, or a single digit percentage point of the GDP) every year.
A time has come, therefore, when, like the United Kingdom, we must think of fixed terms for state legislatures and the Lok Sabha and holding elections together for the whole country. This is not as impractical as some may think at first, if it is accompanied by some other correctives.
The problem of hung houses and loss of confidence can be rectified by enacting relatively simple remedies. If no party or coalition musters up a majority to be proven by a vote within say, a month of the constitution of the house, the body must be directed to elect a leader who enjoys majority support in another month?s time. No absences or abstentions would be allowed in this vote. If no candidate gets a majority, either a run-off between the top two candidates, or recording of second preferences, would suffice. The uncertainty thus would continue at worst for two months.
A vote of no confidence to be effective must be made to be accompanied simultaneously by a vote of confidence for another leader, as is required in Germany.
A government thus cannot be toppled without installing another one and the legislative body need not be dissolved before its term.
Consider the benefits of these not so difficult changes to our representation of people act. We will face elections with all their costs and disruptions only once in five years. Legislators and governments will not be looking over their shoulders at all times and be able to address concerns other than the purely short term ones as they do at present. And a great deal of money will be saved. We cannot delay administering this simple Paracetamol to the body politic to restore some semblance of health to it.
The author has taught at IIMA and helped set up IRMA