Reimagine political system to solve delimitation puzzle
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin’s decision to “up the ante” on the north-south divide by constituting a joint action committee to fight against the proposed re-delimitation of parliamentary constituencies after the next census has brought this vexed issue to the forefront.
His logic is clear and supported by recent history. In 1976, the omnibus 42nd Amendment to the Constitution froze for 25 years the allocation of Lok Sabha seats on the basis of the 1971 census to encourage population control, by assuring states that success in limiting population would not lose them Lok Sabha seats. In 2001, Vajpayee’s NDA government extended this arrangement for another 25 years in what became the 84th Amendment.
The thinking was based on the sound principle that the reward for responsible stewardship of development could not be political disenfranchisement. While a democracy must value all its citizens equally—whether they live in a progressive state or one that, by failing to empower its women and reducing total fertility, has allowed its population to shoot up—no federal democracy can live with the perception that states would lose political clout if they develop well, while others would gain more seats in parliament as a reward for failure.
The southern states have prospered while curbing their populations. While northern states like Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh had a decadal population growth of over 20 percent between 2001 and 2011, southern states like undivided Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu grew at less than 16 percent. Kerala has the country’s lowest growth rate (4.9 percent over 2001-11, or less than half a percent a year). That is one-fifth of Bihar’s. When the next census is conducted, it will almost certainly show that Kerala has lost population since 2011. Andhra Pradesh may well find itself in the same boat.
Thus, the four southern states have a much smaller population than their northern counterparts, having seen lower population growth for a generation or more. They already see themselves as being punished for their success by getting much less from the pool of central tax revenues than they used to. But an even more serious consequence will be on the vital issue of political representation in our parliament.
When the 84th Amendment lapses in 2026, it will free the Union government to redraw political boundaries to allot parliamentary seats on the basis of population. The result will be to give the Hindi-speaking states overwhelming clout in our nation’s politics—possibly even a two-thirds majority, sufficient to amend the Constitution at will. Where will that leave the south?
New Delhi’s logic is equally clear: it rests on the hallowed democratic principle of ‘one citizen, one vote, one value’. Why should 18 lakh Malayalis be able to elect an MP when it takes 27 lakh UPites to send one to the Lok Sabha?
Home Minister Amit Shah has tried to mollify Stalin by assuring him publicly that no southern state would lose any seat in the re-delimitation. That can only mean one thing: that the Union intends to reward the more populous northern states with additional seats, thereby taking the overall total much higher than the present 543 in the Lok Sabha. Some figures suggest a new Lok Sabha of some 700 members, while others point out ominously that the new parliament building has seats for 848 Lok Sabha members.
Such a prospect appals many who are already dismayed by the declining standards of parliamentary debate and absence of the forensic argument and witty repartee that made stars out of effective parliamentarians like Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Nath Pai or Piloo Modi. A parliament of 700-plus, they fear, will be even less able to debate any issue meaningfully. MPs who never get a chance to speak will be all the more willing to resort to the slogan-shouting and disruption that has already become a hallmark. At the other end of the spectrum of possibilities, the nation’s premier debating chamber will be reduced to something akin to the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, a body too large for meaningful discussion, reduced to dutifully ratifying the government’s decisions.
But what can be done? We cannot deny the principle that the more populous states are entitled to the representation they deserve in Delhi. Equally, we cannot overlook the fear in the south that their sensitivities will be overridden by a parliamentary majority of Hindiwallahs indifferent to their language, culture, history and aspirations. How can we, in the interests of democracy, federalism and national unity, reconcile the two concerns?
A look around the world’s democracies indicates that a number of possible solutions exist. But they would all require a radical reimagining of our political system.
One is to create a system of proportional representation that would allocate seats based on the percentage of votes received by each party, rather than the number of constituencies won; but this would not get around the basic fact that northerners would still account for an overwhelming majority of voters. Some have suggested introducing a weighted voting system in parliament, where the votes of MPs from states with lower populations would carry more weight; but this would be hugely difficult to design and impractical to implement.
The best idea would be to borrow a page from the US book and transform the Upper House. In the US, all 50 states have an equal voice, since each has two senators—whether it is California with 40 million inhabitants or Wyoming with just half a million. That gives small states disproportionate influence in national decision-making. The same method could ensure that the southern states’ voices are adequately represented in the Rajya Sabha, whose consent would be essential to pass bills and amend the Constitution.
Instead, Stalin has suggested amending the Constitution to extend the freeze on delimitation based on the 1971 census for another 30 years. This would allow time for further discussions, but would leave the north feeling cheated after the next census.
The best way out might yet be to decentralise power and grant more autonomy to states. If parliament could take only a handful of decisions and key legislation affecting the daily lives of citizens occurred in the state assemblies, would under-representation in the Lok Sabha matter that much? Decentralisation would allow states to have greater control over their own affairs and reduce the perceived dominance of the Union government. It would have to be accompanied by greater control by states over their own tax resources. But that’s another debate.
(Views are personal)
(office@tharoor.in)
Shashi Tharoor | Fourth-term Lok Sabha MP from Thiruvananthapuram and the Sahitya Akademi winning author of 24 books, most recently Ambedkar: A Life