The Hindu : Can "1971" be undone?

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Wednesday, Jun 25, 2003

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Can "1971" be undone?

By Harish Khare

Synchronisation of the Lok Sabha and Assembly polls is an idea whose time has come. But it cannot be sneaked in by the BJP.

INDIRA GANDHI introduced a brilliant innovation to Indian politics when she decided to go in for early elections in March 1971. In the last week of December 1970, she exercised a Prime Minister's most potent power to get the Lok Sabha dissolved, setting the stage for a "mid-term" election in March 1971, one full year before the fourth Lok Sabha could finish its term. In one stroke, she fundamentally changed the architecture of Indian politics.

Apart from garnering a famous victory for Indira Gandhi, the mid-term poll stratagem achieved three things: first, it crafted a prime ministerial dimension on to the Lok Sabha election, making it a contest for or against this or that prime ministerial contender(s); second, it posited a decisive de-linking between the Lok Sabha and Assembly polls, and by an extension, brought about an uncoupling of national sentiments and local mood; and, third, the de-linking provided the institutional flip to the rise of regional parties.

After 30 years, Indira Gandhi's brilliant innovation is the cause for much dismay. The problem is seen as one of too many political contentions and contests. It is widely conceded that there are too many elections, too much fragmentation, too many political parties, and consequently too much distraction for those who want to deliver "good governance". Every leader and every party has necessarily to walk on eggshells, unwilling to offend this or that section. Too many elections are a positive hindrance in pursuit of hard decisions and produce a deleterious dilution of a hard state. The unending cycle of elections at the national and the State levels is deemed to be defeating the very purpose of democracy. An institutional perversion has set in at the core of constitutional politics.

The BJP wants to fix this malady. But because the party and its leadership have zero credibility, the constitutional prestige of the Vice-President, Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, has been invoked. The BJP-proposed solution is its old fixation: a fixed term for the State legislatures and the Lok Sabha. The BJP had indeed hoped that the National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution would oblige it on this count; the Commission merely suggested a constructive vote of no-confidence.

In fact, ever since Atal Behari Vajpayee lost the vote of confidence in 1999 by one vote, the BJP has sought to sell to the nation various solutions for "stability". The country, mercifully, has not bought the BJP's so-called remedies against instability. The reason is simple: the citizens could see through the martinets' political film-flammery. Hollow stability has never been a guarantee for good governance.

Now, once again, the BJP leadership is trying to agitate the public mind on "simultaneous elections" to Parliament and State Assemblies. Just because an idea originates from the BJP, it does not ipso facto become politically incorrect. A credible case can, in fact, be made for finding honest and fair ways of reversing "1971", without giving in to the logic of the fixed-terms-for-legislatures ploy. "1971" needs to be reversed because the polity has vastly transformed itself since. The communication revolution has brought about an emotional, cultural and political integration of the entire polity as one dynamic whole. State-level electoral contests are no longer State-level affairs. Reverberations of every provincial contest are felt way beyond the local boundaries.

In this process, the Congress has suffered the most. Because the post-Indira Gandhi "charismatic" leadership in the Congress was presumed to have the magical power to win single-handedly every election — national, State, zilla parishad, panchayat — for the party, any electoral setback at the State level would cause exaggerated repercussions for the "leader". Rajiv Gandhi lost his sheen after the Congress defeat in Haryana in 1986; P. V. Narashima Rao lost his "reformist" courage after the party lost in Andhra Pradesh in 1994 and invited challenges to his prime ministerial authority. In its turn, the BJP, too, has not remained immune from this syndrome. Mr. Vajpayee's leadership suffered grievously after the BJP's loss in his home State of Uttar Pradesh in 2002; by the same reckoning, L. K. Advani felt emboldened enough by the Gujarat victory to try stepping on Mr. Vajpayee's toes. And, after its defeat in Himachal Pradesh, the party has completely turned its back on sensible governance as it stumbles from one electoral defeat to another. The two leading parties are now performing on a level-playing field.

Every electoral loss or victory looms disproportionately large because of the explosion of electronic news channels. The new medium's capacity to create feverish, even if entirely transient, "public moods" has even eroded the leaders' presumed gift for knowing the people's pulse.

The new breed of leaders — the Venkaiah Naidus, the Arun Jaitleys, the Amar Singhs, the Ambika Sonis — who shine under the klieg lights become intrinsically handicapped when it comes to the demanding task of good governance because they have very little idea of the public mood or popular discontent, and are, therefore, unable to look beyond a temporary electoral loss or victory.

There is an unfortunate dimension to the problem. The political costs of every electoral defeat appear disproportionately large because every political party has practised, at least since 1991, intellectual duplicity. All political parties have carried on with the process of "economic reforms", but none has been able to sell the liberalisation/globalisation policy package because no leader or party has the confidence to withstand the opponent's glib charge of being "anti-poor"/ anti-people. No leader has been able to demonstrate the competence or the courage to take a hard decision and to tell and convince the nation of its long-term benefits. Such clay-footed leaders are all too eager to put off "reforms" till after the next victory. Inversely, the prospect of an electoral contest next month generates unhealthy vibes; take for instance, the outbreak of jingoistic rashes among the Advanis and the Fernandeses on the eve of an Assembly poll. Good governance has become just something the political parties attend to in between two elections.

High-decibel, low-cunning politicians have, over the years, abused their constitutional discretion and betrayed the electorate's trust to create "too much" of electoral democracy. The doctrine of constitutional functionality demands that the polity find a way of fixing the election-overload without in any way tinkering with the basic structure of the Constitution.

Assuming the BJP leadership's intentions are honest, synchronisation of the Lok Sabha and Assembly polls is an idea whose time has come. But the idea cannot be sneaked in by the BJP under the radar screen. It will have to be an open and a transparent solution, to be worked out with the enthusiastic consent of at least the two largest political parties, the Congress and the BJP.

Obviously, a constitutional amendment would be needed. The amendment will have to be based on the principle of political fairness: that is some of the State Assemblies' tenure would get guillotined while those of others would have to be necessarily extended. The rule can perhaps be that at the time of the next Lok Sabha elections, those Assemblies with more than half their term get guillotined while those which have completed less than two-and-a-half years get an additional five years. Disadvantages and advantages would have to be evenly distributed. The "synchronisation" proposal can be reviewed after every 20 years. Such a limited exercise should go a long way towards restoring our system's effectiveness in attending to collective ills.

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