Can you imagine your city’s representative, i.e., legislator, detailing out their own manifesto and chalking out a measurable and actionable plan vis-à-vis how they will achieve the goals set by them for the constituency? Also at the end of their term, they list out all their pre-term plans and prove how they achieved each task promised.
Hard to believe, right?
But it is possible. It just needs the following:
- The intent of all the stakeholders in the political space (and the Election Commission).
- A rigorous framework (a brief rough-sketch follows) to be drawn-up for enabling the choice of the best candidates amongst the constituents.
- Generating sufficient interest amongst people through social media campaigns, thus spearheading a movement for the same.
The Logic
Hitherto, our democracy has advocated almost an open field for the choice and election of legislators. There are very few and rudimentary hurdle criteria defined. The logic seemed to allow all constituents to be eligible. But is that desirable?
Most countries have a very large youth population. These youngsters are technologically savvy and have ambitions that are much different from their elders. Their lifestyles, type of jobs, almost everything is diverse from those of their parents. Shouldn’t the legislators, therefore, be aligned to these new age constituents?
Moreover:
- Most good schools and colleges in the world have a rigorous system to ensure that the best students get admission.
- Organisation’s build a robust recruitment process, with various levels of interviews, before the right candidate is chosen.
- The CEO of an organisation, principal of a school, dean of a college/university are all supposed to be very good administrators (other than the necessary qualifications for the role). More often than not, these are the most educated and/or best suited versus the rest of their colleagues to be given these positions.
So, why should our legislators not be chosen after a comprehensive and thorough selection (qualification and experience related criteria) and election (franchise) exercise?
So let us make an attempt to create a basic framework which can create a paradigm shift in legislator choice and selection.
The Choice of Candidates:
At the outset it is important to define the eligibility (basic hurdle) criteria for political parties to choose candidates for representing constituencies:
- Qualification: Preferably a graduate in any discipline (whether Part-time / Full-time/ Distance Learning). Honorary degrees are not acceptable.
- Age: At least 30 years on the announced date of election.
- Preferred age: Between 30 and 55 years.
- Mandatory experience: Should have (either pre or post-graduation) at least 5 years of experience in any field (self-employed experience is also valid. But family business experience is not acceptable).
- Preferred experience: Higher weightage for prior experience as a legislator/minister/bureaucrat; an employee with an NGO; SBU head with a for-profit organisation.
- No conviction in a criminal/civil court case. This rule is relaxed if the candidate has spent more than 6 years after being release from prison.
So does the public play no part in the selection of their representative? Far from the truth! There is a lower weightage for the above-mentioned hurdle criteria, while a higher weightage is reserved for the votes that the candidate (chosen using the above-mentioned criteria), can garner in the election that follows.
The Framework:
Choice of candidate by political parties – The hurdle criteria mentioned in the section above will provide a choice of eligible candidates to a political party. The party can then use the following matrix to ascertain the marks scored by each candidate.
The Political Party can choose any of these candidates by assessing the strength of each candidate to garner votes. They can assess the same by using the following Table:
Table I, II & III will also be used by the Election Commission (or the organisation appointed in the country for holding elections) to adjudge the chosen legislator post the votes are polled and weightage applied.
It will be made mandatory for the chosen candidate to declare the following to the constituents during the election campaigning stage:
1. The manifesto of the Party represented by them. This manifesto, a brief document should enumerate the improvements intended in the constituency and the work they intend to accomplish. All the objectives defined in the manifesto should be quantifiable and measurable.
2. This manifesto should be a public document uploaded on the Election Commission’s website.
3. Once chosen post the election, the legislator is supposed to ensure that all the tasks promised by in this manifesto are completed during one legislative term.
4. The legislator is supposed to declare at the end of the legislative term, whether they fully or partially achieved the objectives and tasks supposed to be achieved. This declaration will be in the form of a dossier and will be uploaded on the Election Commission’s website as well.
An Example Of Candidate And Legislator Selection
Let us assume that the following four candidates stood for elections to be selected as a legislator from a particular constituency:
Hence the overall marking for these 4 candidates as per Table I, II & III is as follows:
* 75% for PP criteria and 25% for QE
Hence, from Table V above, it is evident that this method is quite comprehensive in its approach and gives an opportunity to deserving candidates to be selected. If a candidate is short in marks for a particular criterion, he/ she can try to better their score in the other criteria. For instance, in the above example:
- Candidate D comes very close to being selected, though he scores relatively lesser marks in the QE category.
- Though polling lesser number of votes than D, Candidate B manages to win the elections due to higher QE category marks garnered due to her prior experience as a legislator.
Moreover, with 75% weightage, any candidate getting higher proportion of votes, can beat candidates with higher QE score.
Conclusion
Some errors or corrections in the methodology proposed can be debated. For eg., normalisation of votes %; weightage for votes vs QE criteria; even on the validity of some of the QE criteria; addition or deletion of some of the QE criteria; etc. However, the need of the hour is a criterion-based, or let us say, ‘credentials based’ legislator selection system.
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