Election Days are Here Again, Thumbs Down! Thumbs Down!

Election Days are Here Again, Thumbs Down! Thumbs Down!


Ganga Prasad G. Rao
http://myprofile.cos.com/gangar

Elections are in the air! "Oh, Not again" seems to be the general response, though some 'upstarts' from media journalists and newspapers, corporates/corporate leaders and 'Lead India candidates' have raised their voices to create more awareness of the polls and the import of voting among the masses. There is as much talk of 'gender equality' in political representation, as there is of the corruption and criminalization of politics, and the sham that elections have turned in to. From the post-independence days when the Congress party was the only game in town to those years in the 60s and 70s when political pundits bemoaned the absence of a credible alternative to the Congress, to the present day when every politician of every hue forms a party of his own to extract maximum 'mileage' in coalition government formation, politics has come a long way. In fact, politics is no longer about serving the people by governing, lawmaking and administering on their behalf. It has turned in to a business of representing various ideological and commercial interest groups while enriching party coffers and its supporters.

In the din of election posturing and confusion, there was one suggestion that seemed to offer a glimmer of democratic hope. Negative voting, as it is called, offers the now powerless voters a tool to reject candidates in the fray, albeit as a group. By empowering voters to individually and collectively express their rejection of fielded candidates, negative voting offers voters a tool to communicate their disgust to politicians. But is negative voting in itself enough? The reality is, total boycott has always been an option, but has been rarely achieved. So what are the chances of negative voting, which too requires coordinated action from voters? Yes, the threat of negative voting could irk some party leaders in to pondering about their choices of candidates in rebellious constituencies, but don't they already count on blocks of support promised by their (corrupt) candidate? Besides, in the larger scheme of things, a rare rebellious constituency may not be of interest, or even matter. So, what recourse do the voters have?

If parties impose corrupt candidates with criminal backgrounds upon voters so they may win elections the easy way and rule the roost in the Parliament, why not consider a scheme of things in which they are punished for flouting ethical norms, or equivalently, rewarded for abiding by them? One way to get around criminalization of politics is to offer some sort of 'clean character credits (CCC)' to parties that they could use in the Parliament. Such credits could be offered by a committee constituted of the Election Commission, Judges of the Supreme Court and Chief Justices of State High Courts who meet in the weeks before elections to pass their judgment on candidates, possibly on a scale of 1 to 10. Subject to certain stringent vote thresholds, say, >20% of 'legal' votes polled (and party conduct during elections), these 'Clean Character Credit (CCC)' points would be awarded to political parties after elections. At this stage, it'd be necessary to recognize these CCC points legally in the Parliament. If such credits could be made to count in critical motions and votes in the normal course of Parliamentary business, then parties would have an incentive to field and elect 'clean' candidates. The question is, how do we integrate the CCC scheme in to the scheme of things as exists now? One could conjure up various possibilities, from using these points to decide 'ties' and 'close votes', to including them in specific votes such as the vote on budget, or the vote of no confidence. This list is not exhaustive, but let's not leave it to our politicians (lest it turns in to a joke like the gender quota - incidentally a policy I do not support).

Properly implemented, the CCC incentive, possibly in combination with the negative vote, could push political parties to adopt higher standards of morality both in fielding election candidates and in electioneering, thus bringing about decriminalization of politics.

Surely worth a try?