In this rainy season, my village is suffering from several difficulties which people of the village were already aware of and have made the local bodies aware of as well. But, as usual, when there was time, nothing moved and now when there is hardly anything, the local administration is trying to do some damage control. But, I doubt myself when I call this damage control because our system is usually late or inefficient and hence they exhaust themselves in the zero hours of each incident; this means damage control has become their routine job. There are multiple reasons for it and I emphasise that the systemic functionaries are not the exclusive culprits.
We have done several manipulations in our development journey, we are yet a poverty-stricken country, we are yet to have the appropriate number of systemic-functionaries and yet to have a helpful, aware and vigilant society of well-off citizens. In this condition, the state bears a huge responsibility. And, when it is seen through the lens of democracy, it becomes hugely magnified. With democracy as the guiding principle, when I visualise the scenario in which our system works, it appears to be an aspiration of fixing ‘accountability in damage control’. Have we been able to do it? If yes, we don’t have any stand to call for systemic enhancement, and if no, we must ask “Is our system accountable to anybody?”. The immediate answer to the last question is ‘Yes, to the people of India’. But then, if it is so, why are we facing immeasurable problems in leading a dignified life after paying so many taxes. It indicates that we need to revisit the answer and find out the reality.
Are People Unimportant In A Democracy?
My villagers are crying for a drainage system to cope-up with the rainwater, but nobody listened for the last 6 months. Will they be able to claim that they are the assessing authority of the accountability of local governments? It doesn’t seem like that. They are in a peculiar situation in a democracy where local government i.e Panchayat hardly has any functional capacity, both in terms of administration and finance. The Intermediate Panchayat hardly has any specific executive power or required resources, meanwhile, the District Panchayat has no executive powers and supremacy on resources. The Member of Parliament is responsible for such a large number of people that he hardly meets anybody’s needs immediately and reaching any authority beyond that will again lead one to the same unresponsive system. Now, aren’t the villagers left with their fate?
The Emergence Of Symbols To Represent Parties
It has not happened overnight. Ignoring the suggestion of Mahatma Gandhi to dissolve the Congress Party, the congress started the journey of political representation in India through a party gateway which was so fervently followed by other parties, including the communist parties, that we didn’t dare to explore a new path. In 1950, the Election Commission of India was established, in the same year, Representation of People Act – 1950 was enforced, following the Act, in 1951 India elected its representatives for Indian Parliament for the first time, and the candidates were represented by symbols.
The justification for the promotion of symbols on ballot papers was that Indians, who will be electing their representatives for the first time, are a community with just 18% literacy and will not be able to read names of candidates. At that time, the system was not in a position to put high-quality pictures of candidates on the ballot papers. Hence symbols. But, in the following two decades, it appears that the political parties realised that their existence will always be dependent on representatives of the people of India and that destabilised them. Therefore, in 1968, Election Symbols (Reservation and Allotment) Order-1968, comes into existence. This order recognises parties of state level and national level, it reserves symbols to parties and hence gives them stability.
Redefining Democracy?
The reservation of symbol means that regardless of the person, constituency and geography, the symbol for voting a person from a particular party in any part of India, will be the same. It simply creates a huge opportunity for parties to launch and facilitate group-ism, polarisation and control the debate centrally. After making an established base, the parties made the final move of having acute control over the representatives of people by bringing 52nd Constitutional Amendment Act in 1985 which is the 10th Schedule to the Constitution, popularly referred to as the ‘Anti-Defection Law’.
It controls the representatives to the extent that they can’t even remain silent by abstaining from casting their vote if they don’t agree with the party they belong to. And, if they do so, their candidature will be expelled. It is a unique kind of situation where we don’t have even a single such strict law for the representatives to be aligned with and dedicated to the will and wish of the people they represent and get payment from. So, our situation curates a new version of Abraham Lincon’s definition of democracy as – ‘Buy the People, Far from People, Off the People’!
Weaknesses In The System Are Facilitating Political Parties
It’s not like we are following the party system without any objection, but we are in a situation where those who want to demolish it, don’t have power, and those who get the power have to be abided by the party rule first. So, keeping the contemporary system in mind, it is a kind of wish to have a party-less and people-centric parliament in India. There are two major aspects of debates regarding the involvement of parties in the whole politics of India: 1- Who will administer each and every candidate in such a vast country? 2- The state cannot finance the contestant for election. Through parties, an agency like the Election Commission of India keeps control over each and every candidate by controlling the high-command of the respective parties.
About the state-sponsored election, in the constituent assembly debates, the bill proposing the same,was rejected on the basis of the logic that sponsorship of state for contesting election may create a situation where everybody of a constituency may step up to contest an election and which will incur a huge expense on the part of the state. But, in the same debate, it was also mentioned by a learned member of the constituent assembly, Shri Loknath Mishra, that the system of direct election of MP (Lok Sabha) by an average of 70 Lakh people is something unviable for the MP himself to payback the mandate.
We ignored it completely and today we are in a position where those who are reachable and may be made accountable (the panchayats and Municipal Corporations) don’t have enough authority and resources, those who have authority and resources are not reachable; fixing accountability of their work is a daydream.