.... the brain is not a vessel to be filled,
It is something to be IGNITED

Questions and Opinion

PROPOSAL & VIEWS of HEMANT GOSWAMI
from his book "Towards a Perfect Democracy - Alternatives"

We shall be much better without political parties and they can be very well sacrificed without affecting efficiency or performance. The present concept of people voting for parties where it hardly matters who represents the party is something like a “Puppet” getting elected on the behalf of the Political Party. The parties are not regulated by any law, they are not accountable to the people, parliament or the constitution; the parties’ office bearers are not always elected representatives and can even be headed by people who are otherwise disqualified to contest election. The concept of the “High Command” virtually puts non-elect at the helm of the affairs which is against the spirit of the constitution. After the inclusion of the Tenth Schedule, the political party office bearer/president has secured much more power and is placed parallel to the office of the Prime Minister. The concept of “Party Whip” even chokes the very voice of the elected representatives and even the pretence of being master of their own mind is exposed. Even before independence there were political parties but still they find no mention in the Constitution which suggests that they were not intended to be.

After the independence, the beginning of political parties might have been guided by noble causes but the new structures provided that any ambitious person could rise now and then supported by unlimited black money or foreign funding and form a political party with all sort of non-practical, non-beneficial, mass support generating nonsense ideas and big promises. They would ask the ordinary illiterate, ignorant, innocent and under educated public to elect by marking the ballot paper with a stamp on the symbol of the contesting party. Most of the issues raised by such parties are to divide the voters to gain comparative advantage for there parties; division can be on the basis of caste, religion, region or any such issue.

Even the stamping of the symbol on the ballot paper was a sly method devised to solve the problem of illiteracy instantly. This enabled the people who were illiterate and could not even read the name on the ballot paper, to vote. Since in a country like India, illiterate and uneducated people are in majority, and in a democracy, majority forms the government, that means, they are the people who are to direct the fate of the election, and as a bonus, they are also the least demanding, as they are not even aware about their natural and legal rights. They are happy with the same old but bigger promises made more persuasively every time. These uneducated or semi-educated people lack analytical skills, so they become happy merely with a promise and their ire regarding unfulfilled promises can be easily tackled by making new promises and/or manipulative actions. How can they be left out?

This was the biggest fraud played on the people of India and the process of democracy. It is not out of place to remind that there is a whole set of law devoted to punish the thieves, thugs and cheats but the politicians of the present day are allowed to cheat publicly and boldly and still allowed to go scot-free, without even a blemish. Nothing wrong is seen in it.

Right now, we have a multi party system in India, we have all seen, that it is full of pits and holes. It is often asked, if not multi party system, then what? Against a Multi party system, there are advocates of even a two party system in democracy. But this too will defeat the purpose of democracy, as people will lose interest for the reason that they do not have much choice. Apart from this it will limit the deserving from holding public office. It is claimed that even in a two party system, independent contestants can always contest, but those who are familiar with mass psychology and voting patterns know it too well that most of the people always vote for a candidate or party who is more likely to win and come to power so the independent shall always be at disadvantage vis-à-vis the party candidate. Many other combinations and election processes are suggested under varied forms of party system, but all fail the test of perfect democracy.

Here is an example of the process of seeking public office by various political groups which highlights the pitiful plight of people under the present party based democratic structures.

Every political party, in any kind of political systems which advocates parties, desirous to come to power, always target its propaganda against the existing policies of the outgoing Government and always formulate a counter policy so as to unseat the existing Government through perceived or propagated weaknesses in the governance and its policies. It always feeds the unsuspecting people on sugar coated promises after calculating the mass support base of an issue (also called a populist promise), so that a party may get a relative majority support. The promises and projected objectives of the aspiring party are to prove the point that the existing structure and the existing policies are all wrong and anti people and that the Country is not being managed efficiently. Even if the truth remains that the party forming the existing Government is more efficient than the aspiring party. The propaganda is still to prove the contrary. There is always a bunch of people who feel wronged and are not contended under all kind of governments. This feeling of discontentment is made to grow by constant propaganda and contradictory claims, as well as by highlighting the relatively minor shortcomings or failures of the government.

Once the struggling political party comes to power, it by its own self contradictions can not follow the same path which the previous Government followed. So the new party tries to follow a different course of action even if its pitfalls are visible to them. To change their agenda and objectives would result in loss of face and additional opposition from fanatics, which the party-men fear will result in loss of power.

They feel that adopting a not so practical idea is far less dangerous than changing tracks and moreover they can always slow peddle the hot issues which brought them to the corridors of power. Since public memory is short, so after a while such politicians can be sure, that not many people will remember the real issue, and by that time their term will finish, they can then always bank on a new popular issue.

A party which gets votes and comes to power on a populist promise can never support an alternative pattern till the time it is at least once voted out of power in the intervening period. All this results in continuous contradictions in the objectives of the nation and waste of its resources.

During the struggle for power there would always be a political party pretending to have an ideology opposing the existing one. It would be foolish to assume that the political parties always have a clear objective and a political party constitutes of like minded people. Though I wouldn’t deny that the members of every political party are unanimous in at least one objective, that of being in power. Making assumption about any political party having a super brain (collective intelligence) working on an agenda directed only towards the welfare of State is the most foolish assumption.

It would be correct to say, that in a party based democracy, elected by any kind of voting system, none of the political parties have any State Welfare Objective or an agenda for the State, but are only interested in seeking power for themselves. Acquisition and retention of power become so dear an objective that all required development and welfare activities become a luxury in which the politicians very rarely indulge.

It is interesting, though disturbing, to note that majority of the people seeking election for a public office are not clear about their own objectives. And if asked about their purpose for contesting election, give all sorts of nonsense answers. It is not uncommon to witness contestants for election, who do not know the difference between the two houses of the parliament or can explain a single difference between the legislative assembly of an Indian State and the Upper or the Lower House of the Indian Parliament. The irony is that such people get nominations by political parties (for extraneous considerations) and subsequently get elected to the parliament.

Assuming that there may be a political party formed out of purely ideological reasons. Even in such a case during the struggle for power, which is necessary for implementation of its ideology, the political organisation have to invariably compromise on many issues including the ideological issues. Moreover, when this power acquisition struggle becomes one generation old, the next generation always and invariably lose sight of the ideology and views the ideological goals only as a mean to acquire and retain power. The ideological goals are relegated to the position of a superficial cover. Assuming further that this political organisation comes to power after a long struggle, In such an event the political organisation always use the Government and the powers of the Government for private purposes, like, to maintain the political organisation, to consolidate its position and develop it further, to create resources for the future and above all to adopt steps helpful for retention of power.

If political parties serve no purpose, then why have them? It may be advocated that every political party has its agenda for the Country and comes to power to implement it. The statement is a farce. It is difficult to say that any political party which has been voted to power has done anything other than what was absolutely necessary or anything extra which could not be done had there not been that political party? All of us know the falsehood of such statements and in our sub-conscious know the reason of forming the political parties.

It is strongly suggested that all political parties must be abolished and anybody desirous of working for public must contest in his individual capacity. The Parliament should constitute of all such elected independent members. The Parliament constituting of the independent members should discuss and decide the National objectives and issues and all the members must follow the agreed objectives. Much more could be achieved if we have a National agenda to be decided and followed by those elected in their individual capacity on the basis of their personal influence among the public.

It is possible that even in such an arrangement the elected members of the Parliament may form a lobby for support on any issue and may join hands together for propagation and execution of certain ideas and ideology. This would be a healthy practice as there would be as many lobbies as there are issues and each lobby will consist of different set of members though some may be common to more than one lobby, this will give rise to healthy and unbiased discussions and it would be possible for the convinced members to change their views and shift sides. Each member shall be acting on his intelligence, understanding and conscience and shall not be legally or morally bound to support a view of any particular group or person. On the whole each member shall be acting in the best interest of the State and not a group.

It is for sure that whenever a No-party system is propagated, the political parties will protest with all their might and will try to point out all kind of loopholes in the No-party system, but this would be nothing unusual. In all transitions such things happen. In a democracy an anarchist or a dictator will always complain that the system (i.e. Democracy) is deficient and that he and certain sections of people are being oppressed, so will the political parties and the political brokers complain in a No-party system.

There must not be any political party in a Perfect Democracy and only public representatives and a National agenda.

SECOND ISSUE

PROPOSAL & VIEWS;

There may be two chambers of elected representatives in Parliament, as we presently have in India, the “Lok Sabha” and the “Rajya Sabha”. But the style of election, leading to appointment in the parliament, as practised presently is totally against the spirit of democracy. So there is a total shift in the proposed system of election to occupy the House in Parliament, from the present setup in India.

In an election for the representation of people in the Government, members of both the Houses are proposed to be selected from the same election. As already existing, there shall be two Houses of Parliament, Upper House and the Lower House. Elections shall be conducted through secret voting by the qualified voters, as it happens presently.

In such an election, the candidates polling maximum number of votes in their respective constituencies must be elected to the Upper House of the Parliament and the candidates polling the second highest number of votes in their respective constituencies shall be elected to the Lower House of the Parliament (call by any name). The votes polled by the elected members of both the Upper and the Lower House of Parliament must not be less than 60% of the total numbers of votes polled. If this is not the case, a re-election should be conducted.

When the two candidates polling the highest number of votes fail to muster the support of even 60% of voting voters, re-election must be conducted. In the re-election only those candidates, who constitute the upper 75% of the votes polled should be allowed to contest provided that the candidate contesting in the second stage have secured a minimum 10% of the polled votes in the first stage. Any candidate may retire at this stage also, provided the retiring candidate would not be allowed to canvass for election of any candidate, and a new candidate shall not be allowed to contest at this stage. For example: in an election candidate I, secures 35%, candidate II, 20%, candidate III, 21%, candidate IV, 9%, candidate V, 4%, candidate VI, 3% and candidates VII, VIII, IX & X between 0.1 and 3.5%. It means in the re-election only candidate I, II & III will participate as they constitute 76% of the polled votes and moreover the other candidates in this example have less than 10% votes because of which also they become ineligible to remain in contest. In re-election in such cases, it is highly likely that the highest two candidates will have a combined polled votes percentage of 60%.

If in a rare case even after the re-election the top two candidates are jointly unable to secure even 60% of the votes then the candidate securing the highest number of votes polled shall be nominated to the Upper House by the President provided the nomination is upheld by 60% of the voting members of the Parliament. Similarly the candidate securing the second highest number of the votes shall be nominated to the Lower House again, provided that 60% of the voting members support the nomination. Ideally all such nominations should be passed by the House but when members have reservations on the nomination of a particular candidate for any reason and do not support his nomination, in that event, if any one of the nomination of a area fails either in the Upper House or in the Lower House, there shall again be a re-election among the top three candidates (in terms of votes polled) of the area.

It must be noted that all the democratic States, including India, following democratic political system in the present form, are not democratic in their true nature on one more account. The highly undemocratic practice is that, a person may get elected to the Parliament even if there is a 80 % voting against that person. This discrepancy is one of the greatest ironies of present day democracies. Most of the candidates who are elected to the Parliament have the mandate of less than even 50% of the people. It is most unfair in any democracy not to regard the public mandate. Though it is claimed that democracy means selection of representative through public mandate.

In a Perfect Democracy, it is must that at least a minimum of 60% people, if not more, get representation in the Government through their elected representatives. For this purpose also, if other reasons are not enough, I propose that both the candidates, the first and the second in terms of the vote polled be elected and for their election they must have between them polled a minimum of 60% of votes but a percentage higher than that is always appreciated.

Since as I proposed and hope, that there must not be any political party in a Perfect Democracy so the voters in such a democracy are supposed to elect the most virtuous candidate among the contesting candidates. Without any political affiliations, organisations and institutions to back these candidates, it can be safely concluded that a candidate contesting under such a scenario, and then subsequently getting a good number of votes, must be a good administrator and virtuous enough. Virtue can not be the asset of the candidate polling the highest votes, it is scattered everywhere and it can be safely assumed that even the candidate securing the second highest numbers of votes is considered virtuous enough to represent by a considerable number of votes (in a No-party system), so electing two candidates in this manner will reinforce the objectives of Perfect Democracy even further. This is one more reason for putting forth the proposal.

This system will result in two candidates being returned from the same constituency in the same election.

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