Bhagwaan Buddha said "desire was the root cause of unhappiness; so let go of your desires to attain nirvana (eternal bliss)". In today's politics, he would also add "election funding is the root cause of all political scams; solve this issue to attain true win over corruption". If you think of it, he would be absolutely right. If we carefully trace back the root cause of all the major scams, only about 0.01% of the total funds embezzled are used for adding to personal wealth; 99.99% is used to fund one election or another. In India, we are truly democratic, as in at any given occasion we have one election or the other. There are Village panchayats, Zilla parishads, Taluk Panchayats, municipality, state elections and general elections. So many elected bodies and each with different lifespan, politicians find it hard to afford the continuous electioneering and tend to take up the easy route of entering into "quid-pro-quo" arrangements with corporates for generating large sums of money as party funds or embezzle the exchequer to create a large portion of grey wealth (unaccounted) which is used by political parties to bribe the voters into voting one way or the other. Today, the extent of rampant corruption is so much that having a "clean image" is more of a bane than a boon for a candidate because it hampers his ability to generate funds for fighting elections. Every political party (howsoever clean they may be) has to overlook some acts of corruption within its ranks as they need the money to fight elections and more so because the Indian electorate who knows the ill-effects of corruption do not vote (urban lot) and the ones which vote are so poor that all they care for the bribe they receive in-lieu of their vote and not the ill-effects of their voting pattern. Lack of education amongst the voting public also hampers the "informed choice" criteria of successful elections and we end up churning out wrong kinds of elected representatives. It’s a vicious circle and we need major electoral reforms to break this cycle some time in the near future.
I would like to suggest some out of the box solutions that could be tried by the Election commission of India to choke the use of illegal wealth in elections and make sure that over a period of time, the society churns out meritorious politicians. Some of the solutions are very basic and obvious ones so if you feel "Duh!!!!”, kindly bear it in mind that I have to mention these because some of the best solutions are often the simplest.
1. One ring to rule them all: Have all levels of elections (local bodies thru national assembly) at the same time or around the same time to have consistent voting patterns and effective utilization of the election funds. It is great to have the executive and legislators free of electioneering activities for at least 80% of the stipulated 5 years term. It will force them to spend the time participating in important debates in the assemblies and meeting with their electorates; planning the development of their constituencies rather than perpetually canvassing for elections. Also having consistent voting patterns will ensure homogenous governments being elected and better usage of funds allocated with governments not being at logger heads. Nations wealth will trickle down faster to the grass roots and the GDP will be a more inclusive in representation. Also, having fixed term for elected executive will let the executive to perform for a full term without fear of being dislodged midway through the term.
2. None of the above: It’s been a long time coming; we need the right to vote with a right to reject. If political parties come up with bad candidates, corrupt / criminal record candidates, inefficient / uneducated candidates; it forces the voters to choose among the lesser evil. This is not exercising the right to vote in its entirety. The voter must be able to let it known to the political parties to raise the bar for eligibility criteria for our public representatives. Every ballot must have a "none of the above" option; if the number of votes for "none of the above" goes beyond 30% of the total votes cast, then the election in that constituency will be countermanded with fresh polls ordered at a later date. The rules for this second round of polling would be that all the political parties contesting from that constituency would fund the second poll from their pockets, fresh candidates have to be picked, fresh deposits have to be made and all the candidates of the countermanded poll will lose their deposits. This would stop the political parties from dumping unelectable candidates upon us and also get more people to the voting booths as they would know they actually have a right to elect rather than choose the lesser evil. The electorate have to use this effectively and not reject candidates for flimsy or non political reasons.
3. Raise you own funds / make sure you use them: In the western democracies, there are intellectuals / celebrities who are associated with various political outfits who help raise funds for the elections. We have these eminent people giving guest lectures, sermons, doing door-to door campaign explaining the election manifesto to the general public and letting them know that if they find some substance in their plans, they need to contribute to help the candidates run for the elections. It would ensure that each and everyone (mostly) know what their candidates stands for and what are his plans for the term that he serves as the elected representatives. Corporates know if the regime is going to be industry friendly or otherwise. Working class would know if their taxes are going to rise or fall, how well the government will use the tax money it generates. Empowered with all this information, they make an informed decision to help fund a particular candidate. Collection of funds should be transparent and mostly in cheques with limits set for individual and corporate contributors so that political outfits do not use coercive means to generate funds. It also helps the electorate to identify a particular celebrity /intellectual with a particular political outfit and attracts smarter/ better people to politics which is considered a dirty game presently. Over a period of time, this cleans our polity. Since it takes a lot of effort to generate funds, political outfits will be thrifty in spending them and will budget their expenditure judiciously (since its a finite sum of money). Excess splashing of wealth or vulgar display should be stopped by the election commission. It will make the elections a victory of merit rather than a victory of money power.
4. Have registered supporters: In India, getting a ticket to run for a public post is also a source of generating party funds for all the political outfits. This method of party nominating a particular candidate is against the democratic sensibilities. Not all people planning to run for elections have that kind of money to buy out nominations. Instead, political parties should be mandated to elect suitable leader amongst them by holding impromptu election among registered party supporters (youth wing/ student wing etc.) It helps bringing up well qualified candidates who have the backing of the organization and its cadres. With this kind of backing, the candidate can generate more funds for the party to fight elections and most importantly win elections. Nominated candidates fail to enthuse the party cadres and fizz out the elections mood as the cadres think of it as a victory of money rather than victory of merit. This has to be mandated by the election commission so that better grass root candidates are thrown up and party tickets are not bought for huge sums fuelling large scale corruption.
These are a few ideas that are obvious to me which should be incorporated by our election commission if we have to stomp out corruption some time soon. Rest, I leave to the better sense of the government to add many more clauses. Maybe Anna Hazare and company can plan another crusade after they install a Lokpal. As long as my country gets the best of the politicians, I don’t care who fasts to achieve it. Petition the government, people!! Let’s force our political parties to have some suitable eligibility criteria for our representatives so that the shrill Ms. Mayawati and the rustic Lalu Prasad Yadav don’t epitomise the Indian Politician. Let a suave Dr. Manmohan Singh or an enigmatic Pranab Mukherji or a brilliant Shashi Tharoor or a calm Shivraj Chauhan or the earthly Nitish Kumar or a smart Rahul Gandhi represent the face of politics in India.
So long....
No comments:
Post a Comment