The country witnessed one of the greatest farces in our history last week. Most of us were glued to television channels and social media, amused, enraged, sarcastic, hopeless, gloomy, and resigned as the tragicomic drama unfolded in Karnataka. It had all the ingredients of a blockbuster masala film: Shady business tycoons chasing shadier elected representatives with money, politics played in bars and swimming pools of resorts, multi-billion-rupee bribe offers, demented TV anchors screaming like banshees, missing MLAs, accusation and counter-accusation by paid propaganda social media warriors, shameless and flagrant claim of moral high ground by all the sides—the drama was breathtaking to put it mildly. And the way it has ended, one gets a feeling that what we saw was just a trailer.
Winston Churchill had infamously predicted that in independent India, power would go to rascals, rogues, and freebooters. All Indian leaders will be of low calibre. They will fight amongst themselves for power and India will be lost in political squabbles. One can imagine the ultra-racist Churchill, the evil man responsible for the great Bengal famine that killed more people than Hitler’s concentration camps, laughing from his grave.
The Parliament has not functioned properly for many days now. Most bills are neither debated nor discussed, and find backdoor entry through the ordinance route. People have resigned to the fact that except for increasing the perks and allowances of the members, most legislative assemblies or Parliament seldom debate anything in a civilised manner. The only difference between drunken brawls in country toddy shops and those happening in the elected representative Houses is that: drunkards in toddy shops do not use up our tax money.
The problems of Westminster style of democracy and the ‘first past the post system’ is now glaringly seen after 70 years of its existence. In the ‘first past the post’ system, a candidate getting even 25 percent vote can be in a commanding position. We have seen parties forming government with 18 percent mandate or 31 percent votes. Rarely has any political party crossed 50 percent vote share. It is a mockery of the will of the people. Once we elect a member, we have no power in influencing their decision till the next term. We can only watch helplessly as our elected members behave irresponsibly and put themselves for sale to the most unscrupulous bidder. The capability to spend astronomical amount of money for election campaigns, the cunning to cause religious polarisation and riots and shamelessness indulging in corruption and nepotism and brazen talent to justify anything in the name of ‘Chanakya Niti’ have become the necessary skills to be a successful politician.
One wonders whether Indians deserve democracy. Skeptics say Indians are wired to be supplicants before the powerful and would point to the long list of tyrants who ruled India since time immemorial. It would be interesting to see how experiments in democracy in ancient and medieval India fared and whether we have ever succeeded in these experiments. Though there are references about Gram Sabha or village councils across India, one of the most fascinating ones is found in the village of Uthiramerur of Kanchipuram district of Tamil Nadu.
As per the Chola inscription of 921 AD, the council or Variyam as it was called then, had these conditions for electing its members: An existing committee member for the past three years, an existing committee member who or whose relatives had failed to submit accounts, anyone who or whose relatives had committed incest, theft, adultery and associating with criminals, one who had stolen the property of others were ineligible to be elected to power. The tenure for any particular committee was one year and the member was ineligible to contest after that for the same committee. The candidates were elected using a lottery system. Minimum age was 35 and maximum age was 70 for the contestants.
The candidates who were elected had the powers to execute only the routine administrative matters. For important matters, the entire village voted and the elected representative had to ensure the village council decision was executed. The village councils had the power even to veto the decisions of the great Chola Emperor like Raja Raja Chola or Rajendra Chola. The system was followed across the country until absolute tyranny of Islamic rule replaced it. Visionary rulers like Akbar revived the village councils to some extent, but with British colonial rule, the system further degraded to a feudal totalitarianism. When Mahatma Gandhi was talking about Gram Swaraj, he was referring to this village democracy.
What if we have a lottery system to elect our representatives? The campaigning in the name of caste, language or religion will have no bearing on the pot luck. The representative so elected will be required to do only routine administrative works. For any important bills, every citizen should vote on real-time basis. With the help of technology, one can easily vote through phones or interconnected voting booths in every village and city ward. One can even have a floating popularity index for each act and law. This is not just a wild thought. It is one among many options to find an alternative to prevent the rot that is creeping into our society. There can be no doubt that our democracy needs a tweak,urgently.
Anand Neelakantan
Author, columnist, speaker
mail@asura.co.in