Representation and a Miss : The Indian Electoral system

-SHERLY SHARON (CORRESPONDENT)

What does a democracy do to show its voice? More importantly, what do citizens have to do to have their voices heard? The answer is to Vote for a candidate in the elections to represent himself. In India, this becomes a tricky question as we follow the First Past The Post system. To explain the FPTP system, a voter in a constituency has the option to vote for one candidate and the candidate with the greatest number of votes wins.

 The candidate doesn’t necessarily have to win 50 percent of total votes, if the candidate is ahead of all the others, they win the election. For example, there are a hundred voters in a constituency and 5 candidates are running for office, if the forerunner secures 36 votes but the rest of the votes are divided among their competitors, it means that he secured the greatest number of votes. The FPTP system thus facilitates the formation of a government by such candidates who haven’t necessarily scored more than 50 percent of the total votes. In this situation, all the votes cast for the rest of the candidates become ‘waste’.

Another electoral system which is implemented in many countries is the Proportional Representation system. In this system, each party is allotted a share of seats in the parliament in proportion to its share of the votes. There are many variations of the PR system which are followed by different countries around the world. 

The PR system ensures that  the entire voter body finds expression and representation in the parliament. The essence of this system is that all votes contribute to the result, not just a major portion of them. 

India follows the First Past The Post system, this method leads to a situation where the winner takes all. The legislature thus elected fails to represent a great number of minorities who have different aspirations from their MLA/ MP. Such parliament finds itself lacking the expression of different views during the discussions.

In the 2014 general elections in India, the BJP led NDA won 334 seats out of 543 seats in the Lok Sabha, that is 54 percent of the total seats, by polling 31 percent of the votes in general. While the Congress part, with 19 percent of the vote share got only eight percent of the seats. 

In UP the Samajwadi party came into power with 224 seats by polling 29.13 percent of the total votes. It lost in 2017, with 21.82 percent seats securing 47 seats.

In 1984 Lok Sabha elections, Congress party polled 48 percent votes and secured 415 seats which is almost 80 percent of the seats. 

Through FPTP, the elected governments are mostly voted into power through consolidation of votes from certain communities of the majority and such consolidation makes other communities irrelevant in the electoral landscape. Such victories evoke doubts about the representativeness of the country’s polity and democratic character.

The condition of representation of women and minorities deteriorates as  parties are more likely to offer the chance to a ‘safe candidate’, this will severely limit the diversity of candidates standing for election. This also leads to a tactical voting situation. The legislature will then over-represent a few majority groups while under-representing many minorities. This also creates a false sense of majority – the representation of the diverse communities of India is in jeopardy.

In the recent 2019 general elections in India, the total polling turnout was the highest ever with 67 percent. The BJP led NDA won 353 seats (65 percent of the seats in the Lok Sabha) with almost 43.81 percent of the total votes. The INC led UPA polled 24.59 percent of the total votes securing 92 seats, accounting to 16 percent of the seats in Lok Sabha.

The NDA headed by the BJP has a proportionally unfair majority of seats and the UPA led by INC is underrepresented. In proportional representation system, NDA would be given around 44 percent of the seats while the UPA gets around 25 percent of the total seats, which is reflective of the voter bodies ultimate choice. 

The turnout for the September 2019 Israel Knesset elections was almost 69 percent of the total registered voters. Out of the total 120 seats, the Blue and White party won 33 seats securing 25.95 percent of votes. The Likud party won 32 seats with 25.10 percent of the vote share. This amounts to the Blue and white party getting almost 27.5 percent of the seats and the Likud party, 26.6 percent. 

These statistics reflect Israel’s Knesset electoral representation rather than just a show of a majority. In the 2019 EIU’s democracy ranking report, Israel stands in the 28^th position with a 7.86 score and India in the 51^st position with a 6.90 score. India dropped 10 ranks since the previous report. 

M.C. Raj, the founder of Campaign for Electoral Reforms in India, called the present FPTP system “engineered towards the exclusion of the disadvantaged sections of society, especially the downtrodden, women and minorities.”

The FPTP system rewards the parties which target and treat certain electoral parts or vote banks. “The country must think about an alternate system to replace FPTP, because currently, the electoral system is itself the root cause of many problems of governance. Money and muscle power has increasing influence over the outcome of electoral battles. It is, to a large degree, the negation of basic tenets of democracy.”, said Satish Mishra in his paper discussing Proportional Representation and India.

In the PR system, majority means more than 50 percent of the votes and the votes otherwise are not wasted, they are used to provide representation to all the voters. This would allow for the representation of smaller parties, marginalised communities and minorities in proportion to their numbers. It would lead to the formation of a strong opposition and would allow different sections to present their views. 

I believe that the electoral system in India must change and it should adopt a variant of the PR system. This switch would pave the way for wide electoral reforms in the country; it would improve the democratic and representational landscape.

REFERENCES :

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