Any discussion about the general elections in India tends to veer towards who would be the next Prime Minister. That is understandable considering that parliamentary elections decide the executive leadership of our country. But wait, lest we forget, we live in a parliamentary democracy where our vote is supposed to elect the representative of our constituency. Unlike the presidential system, we don’t directly elect the executive head of government. Thus, a pertinent question comes up. How do we pick which candidate in our constituency to vote for? A simple question for which I could find no simple answers. The predicament is especially perplexing for people who do not hold any predisposed allegiances. Taking a cue from American jargon, they can be categorized as ‘swing votes’. The use of the word ‘votes’ instead of ‘voters’ is a deliberate objectification. After all, ideally only objects should be traded or subjected to puppeteering. Objectification of constituents where the political system accords no value to individuals beyond their franchise is a cruel reality of our democracy.
I remember the advice from a close friend during the last general elections, “vote smartly, not idealistically, so that your vote isn’t wasted”. In other words, his sermon was to vote for the party whose leader I would like to see as the head of government, irrespective of that party’s local candidate. While it can give a deceptive feeling of empowerment, the effectiveness of such a strategy of voting has evidently failed to usher in a transformation at the level of most individual constituencies. Talking of my own constituency, I can’t think of a single noteworthy contribution that any elected member of parliament, during my years of voting, has made that has had a significant positive bearing for the constituents.
In organizational and business studies, bottom-up strategy is largely peddled as the modern approach towards management. Peter Drucker, more than 60 years ago, predicted the advent of information and technology driven knowledge based organizations where the traditional manager-subordinate hierarchies would be replaced with groups of knowledge workers. This evolution necessitated a change in management approach. With knowledge workers constituting the core of most organizations, there participation in the process of strategic management became desirable and logical. Bottom-up strategy facilitated this integration, thus becoming the vogue in business management. Drucker also predicted with uncanny percipience that 21st century would see an information driven transformation of society with knowledge flowing freely and widely. On similar lines to the knowledge evolution of organizations, this represents a broader social revolution as unshackled flow of information continues to grow and transcend the traditional social and economic barriers. We are, thus, moving towards a world where more and more of the populace are becoming knowledge members of our society.
Considering that the knowledge evolution which organizations underwent was subsequently witnessed in the wider society, can the transformation in the approach towards organizational management expand to our electoral reasoning as well? Democracy represents the will and power of the people to choose the governance of the society that they constitute. As our society is evolving, so should our reasoning. Therefore, in terms of our participation in democracy as constituents, it becomes important to deliberate on the rational we follow to elect the representatives that govern us.
When Dr BR Ambedkar advocated the parliamentary system of democracy for India over the presidential system, his main argument revolved around “stability versus responsibility”. He argued that parliamentary system would be more suitable for a diverse country like India as it entails a ‘daily assessment of responsibility’ of the governing leadership. This – according to him – is absent in the presidential system, and this downside outweighs its advantage of providing stable governance. It is not difficult to understand that Ambedkar based his views on the principle that – apart from the opposition – elected representatives constituting a government would also continuously assess the performance of their leadership (read as: the PM and her cabinet of ministers). If they feel that their own leadership is working against the expectations of the electorate, they would go against their party allegiances to bring down even a majority government. Thus, the sublime bottom-up concept of periodic assessment – every general elections – of constituency representatives (members of parliament) by their constituents and daily assessment of the governing leadership by these representatives. This was the idea that enabled Ambedkar to convince the post-independence constituent assembly to pick the parliamentary system for the Indian democracy.
Critics of the parliamentary system over the years have argued that the ‘responsibility’ principle is idealistic and in reality has not come into play over the decades of Indian politics. There can be arguments to the contrary. The next question to ponder over is the reason for the absence of the desirable continuous assessment and responsibility from the Indian political system. I believe that it lies in the selection of our representatives to the parliament. Could it be that we, the electorate, are responsible for defeating the very strength of the parliamentary system that was supposed to ensure that the Indian Republic is governed with daily responsibility, which was given precedence over stability?
Most Indian elections have been fought over tall personalities, right from the first one around Nehru and to present one around Modi. It is comprehensibly convenient for political parties to fight over personalities rather than policies. Propagation of policies entails accountability while promotion of personalities is expedient. In the latter case, if a party faces political oblivion, rather than undertake a long-drawn process of deep introspection and policy transformation, they can hope to bounce back right away with a much facile change in the projected leadership. In evidence: BJP jumping from Advani to Modi, INC from Singh to Gandhi. The situation has evidently grown further skewed over the decades to the present state where political parties openly appeal to the electorate to vote for a strong and stable leader. The result is a heavy dose of demagoguery and targeting of political leadership with abhorrent personal vilification, rather than criticism of governance policies.
For the parliamentary system to provide just and efficient governance, it is imperative that the electorate play to the system’s strength, ‘responsibility through continuous assessment’. Such a functioning is contingent on all constituents electing their individual representatives meticulously so that they can be held personally accountable for governance policies of the leadership or party that they back. This is akin to the bottom-up approach of organizational management. As the power to govern flows upwards towards the top leadership, the assessment and responsibility of governance flows downwards. For the first time in India’s democratic history, the current knowledge evolution of our society provides fertile ground that can facilitate the success of this approach. With the data at our disposal in today’s information age, there is no excuse for repeatedly electing non-performing representatives, or alternating between the same candidates every elections.
Bhagat Singh, in his writings, warned us against the perils of hero worship and idolizing leaders. He held that merciless criticism and independent thinking are essential tools for affecting positive change in governance and society. Ironically, the ballyhoo about stability and strongman leadership – the concepts that our founding fathers held as incompatible with their vision of India – is more than ever today. Whether we, the electorate, can think rationally and parry this agenda of our political establishment that stands to impede accountability in governance and public policy is entirely in our hands. It’s a choice between the rhetoric of stability and the rationality of responsible governance. There is no doubt that our transformation into knowledgeable and rational electorate will happen. Whether we swing towards rationality now or procrastinate and leave it to the next generation is the real question.
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