The Hindu Business Line : Achilles' heel of Indian politics

Tentative efforts have been made to change the electoral laws, but the fear is that such legislation will not be enough to stem the tide that is already gathering force.

FOREIGN observers in India at this point of time witnessing the ongoing election process not merely to see whether the entire exercise is carried out properly but also to witness the largest voting exercise in the world where the political framework is one of parliamentary democracy.

This, undoubtedly, is a matter of pride for the country for at least two reasons: First, that it has been able to continue effectively with the system that was chosen for the country by the Founding Fathers of the republic 54 years ago; and, second, that the Indian election process has continued to be the focus of attention for all those around the world who are votaries of the parliamentary democratic system of governance.

This is not to suggest that there have been no hiccups in the process, some of them serious enough to tamper with the stability of the entire structure of parliamentary democracy itself, the best example of which was the national emergency imposed on the nation by Indira Gandhi in 1975. Herself a product of Western liberalism, the daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru had that streak of intolerance in her which made her cross the Lakshman Rekha separating the best practices of a parliamentary democratic system from a benign dictatorship which even the most sincere democrats are attracted to when faced with well-intentioned but nonetheless troublesome opposition.

The people opposed the initial imposition of Emergency energetically and, later — when the authoritarianism in Indira Gandhi began to don an institutional mantle with the help of countless amendments to the Constitution — an exemplary stoicism which, unnoticed, facilitated the rapid growth of deep rooted opposition to Emergency.

The threat to the body politic of the nation was effectively snuffed out in 1977 when (fortunately for the people) the late Prime Minister was wrongly advised by her cronies to call for elections, the assumption being that the vote would go her way and she would become the undisputed ruler of the republic for, at the very least, the next five years. But, of course, as the world knows, things turned out differently, and the masses, who had suffered the emergency with a stoicism only Indians are capable of, struck back when they booted out Indira Gandhi and her Congress (I) and replaced them with the Janata Party, which was essentially an agglomeration of all the elements of the Opposition which had fought together to keep the fire of parliamentary democracy burning during the period of darkness in the republic's young life. As it now appears, this fight-back by the people against a tyrannical regime, which had itself used the electoral process to attain power, was the high point of the Indian parliamentary democratic system.

Since then, however the scene has become dull and colourless with elections being held with monotonous regularity, which is perhaps as it should be but which has had one serious effect, namely, that the political system has come to be taken for granted by leaders and the led alike. This has had a number of unwanted consequences, one of which has been the progressive criminalisation of politics, which today has cast its long shadow on the quality of Parliament and parliamentarians.

The important aspect of this development is that it has happened almost surreptitiously over the past couple of decades with voices being raised against it now and then but without any concerted effort being made at the social and political levels to check its growth. The result is that the monster — engineered mainly by the sharp increase in corruption (of all types) in all aspects of Indian life — is now astride the nation, having pervaded the highest echelons of national life. To say this is not to depict a scene of uninterrupted gloom and despondency for, after all, as has been pointed out, in the ongoing electoral contest itself, in many areas the people have rebuffed attempts by extremists to disrupt the poll process with the help of the gun. As one report has it, the Naxalite call for a poll boycott in the North-East, as also Jharkhand, Chhatisgarh, Orissa and Andhra Pradesh has been "roundly rejected". In these regions, the voter turnout has been a handsome 50-70 per cent, indicating strongly that even the fear of life (the only threat that extremists can hold out in their efforts to disrupt normal life) has not been a powerful enough deterrent for average citizens to be deflected from exercising their franchise.

Although this does not come anywhere near the heady days of the fight against Indira's Gandhi's Emergency, there is no doubt that this is a bright feather in the cap of Indian parliamentary democracy, where the electorate has taken upon itself to show enemies of the republic that the spirit is indomitable and that it will require much stronger and determined elements to wreck the republican system that the Founding Fathers crafted for their children.

Even so, the monster is very much on the prowl, and there are clear signs that unless it is challenged head-on very soon it will have damaged the very entrails of the nation, creating an imminent danger to the very existence of the republic itself. Indeed, that the danger is almost upon us is encapsulated in the pithy remark of the Patna High Court — in connection with the matter of undertrials being currently in a position to run their election campaigns when they should be in the confines of a jail — that "Criminals have no role in politics". On the face of it, if politics is a noble profession, this is a self-evident truth. However, it cannot be so if politics today is no longer what it used to be in the time of our fathers and earlier. The question is: Has politics changed for the better or for the worse?

Instead of attempting a straight answer to this question, one can cite the well-established fact that the Lok Sabha today has a larger number of history-sheeters (that is, those against whom criminal and other charges have been filed) than ever before, and then ask the question whether this is good or bad for the country. By definition, it cannot be good because politicians frame laws for the country, and history-sheeters are those who have been charged with breaking the law of the land. The average law-abiding citizen must be wondering how these people have been voted to Parliament, and then he finds he has only himself to blame because without the voter's support no one (including people charged with crimes) can become an MP.

So, where does the buck stop for the progressive disfigurement of the Lok Sabha that is taking place with the passage of time? If a "ruffian" is nominated by a political party to stand for a constituency, he will use every means at his disposal to make people vote for him, even if this means a negation of elections as a free and fair exercise of the franchise.

The solution probably lies in the political parties themselves not making such nominations. But this, as experience shows, is easier said than done for a variety of reasons.

If the parties cannot be cajoled into taking such a step, the electoral laws should be changed to enforce the measure.

True, tentative efforts have been made in this direction, but the fear is that such legislation will not be enough to stem the tide that is already gathering force to overwhelm the nation.

The Patna High Court's remark at this juncture should be a reminder to the nation that the seeds of destruction have already been sown within the political system and that their elimination must take first priority if the republic is to continue to remain healthy for our children and their descendants.

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