Electoral Integrity: Key to Corruption-free India
M.G.Devasahayam
Anti-Corruption rhetoric has been the flavour of last several seasons with a political party morphing out of it and briefly capturing power in Delhi in the winter of 2013. The party chief cum ex-Chief Minister even came out with the 'rogue's gallery' of the most-corrupt politicians who actually run India's democracy-turned-kleptocracy. Incidentally all of them have come to occupy the positions of power and influence through the electoral process.
The 'Kejriwal List' has several 'big-fish' in it. Subsequently he went ahead and filed FIR against a much bigger corporate shark. The question is: are these named-and-shamed high-level kleptocrats on the run, now that the Lokpal Act has been enacted? Far from it. Because, the legislation that has come out of the 'India Against Corruption' (IAC) movement with lots of theatrics in full media glare is more of a farce. It stands testimony to India's immense propensity for jugaad-dramatise things, but achieve nothing.
Lokpal as contemplated now is unwieldy, top-heavy, and its focus has been heavily diluted by including millions of Class III and Class IV government employees within its ambit though action on their corruption would be the responsibility of CVC. Ironically, Kejriwal-driven Delhi Jan Lokpal Bill that failed to materialize, also is in the same league-covering all public servants from Chief Minister to Group D employees making it as unfocussed as the Central Act. This serious aberration would protect the corrupt 'big-fish' while chasing petty bribe-takers. In the event, Lokpal would be damp squib while providing hundreds of well-paid sinecures and draining out huge public funds.
Even if Lokpal becomes functional it will only be a top-end, not an end-to-end solution. India's governance structure has two kinds of leadership-Political and Administrative. While the latter comprising of All India Services and State Civil Services have defined rules and norms for entry the former comprising politicians have none. Anyone with money and muscle power can get a ticket and become an MLA or MP and Minister by openly bribing and inducing voters by adopting dubious means. These 'leaders' then loot to their heart's content and all that citizens can do is to petition the high-and-mighty Ombudsman. Since most of Lokpal would comprise of former judges, the procedure is bound to be cumbersome and the wait would be long and endless.
The best way is to stop these corrupt bandicoots at the threshold. The bottom-end solution would prevent the corrupt and criminal elements from contesting elections, and if they manage to get ticket and enter the fray, defeat them. This is possible only if the electoral contest takes place with a level playing field and voting is done with ethics and not cash as principal consideration.
It is here that electoral integrity comes in. Integrity is described as "uncompromising adherence to moral and ethical principles; soundness of moral character; honesty". If there is one area where this is badly absent in India, it is the electoral process through which political leaders are elected to govern the country.It is true that the country's track record of timely elections has drawn universal admiration, particularly because in most other post-colonial countries election has been a major casualty. This has given considerable prestige to the Election Commission of India (ECI) and legitimacy to India's democratic polity and its politicians who are the beneficiaries.
But the moot point is what kind of 'leaders' get elected? Many of them do not have basic leadership qualities and are mere henchmen or sycophants of dynastic/party chieftains. Nearly a third of elected representatives face serious criminal charges such as murder, rape, abduction and offences relating to moral turpitude. Almost all of them have amassed wealth much beyond their known sources of income! They have no concern for honest governance or ecological sustainability.
Absence of ethics in voting and skewing of electoral playing field, tilting it heavily in favour of the criminal and the corrupt, has prevented honest, committed and competent youth to enter the electoral contest. Hence the acute leadership crisis resulting in diminishing of democracy and decay of democratic governance. This is the India's biggest challenge.
There are three ways in which integrity could be brought about in the electoral process:
(a) Political Reforms: This would involve major efforts to bring about inner party democracy, transparent functioning and merit-based selection of candidates free of criminal and corruption taint. This is in the hands of political parties who do not even want to be recognized as 'public authorities'. No go as of now!
(b) Electoral Reforms: Being controlled by these very political parties Government is averse to reforms. Proposals from ECI are pending for several years. No go again!
(c) Electoral Integrity Initiative: This is the electorate in action to make ECI stringently enforce its constitutional mandates, existing laws and judicial pronouncements to effectively combat corruption and criminalisation in electoral process. This is in the hands of the civil society, of course with the co-operation of ECI. This is the best option.
This option was put into practice by Forum for Electoral Integrity (FEI) in the form of an intense campaign during thefourteenth Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly election held in April 2011. ECI was fully involved and SY Quraishi, the then Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) led from the front. As a result electoral corruption was put on leash. So much so the widespread public comment was: "Earlier EC just announced the elections. Now only they are conducting it." Civil society, spearheaded by FEI, played a key facilitating role in this.
The backdrop to the campaign was the institutionalisation of electoral corruption through cash, freebies and liquor during the bye-election to the Thirumangalam Assembly constituency (January 2009). EC then was less effective and there was no civil society force to counter this venality. In the event, 'ThirumangalamFormula' of cash-for-votes evolved and touted as the sure-shot way of winning the 2011 State Assembly election.
Open brandishing of this 'terror of money-power' demoralized the voters with most of them losing hope in fair elections. Besides, being a frontal onslaught on democracy this was an affront to the dignity and self-respect of the voters, being treated as purchasable commodities. This had to be countered and combated. Only people's power in general and youth power in particular, backed up by a proactive ECI, could do this. For this civil society had to assert and voters needed to be educated and mobilized. ECI needed to be sensitized about the realities on the ground and persuaded to enforce stringent electoral discipline with the legal and plenary powers it already had instead of endlessly waiting for long-term electoral reforms and change of heart of political parties.
Thus was born the FEI, formed as a civil society coalition in August, 2010. Forum addressed and interacted with several thousand students in their campuses with the full participation of the Management and Staff. These interactions brought out the appalling disconnect between the 'first generation voters' and the electoral process. There was a general perception among college students that they are not relevant to democracy and vice-versa. This perhaps is the worst failure of India's governance and the most dangerous challenge to the country's democracy itself.
In response the electoral integrity campaign sent out clear and categorical messages that election is the foundation of freedom and democracy and vote is the most basic of all democratic rights; those who offer bribes for vote are making voters a 'partner in loot and corruption'; once a voter sells the vote he/she cannot demand any other right or services like safety, shelter, water, sanitation, healthcare, education etc.; selling the vote is like selling one's honour, self-respect and dignity and for the youth it is bartering their very future. These forceful messages had their impact.
Commencing from the day of announcement of elections-01 March 2011–ECI swung into action with Police and Income Tax observers searching and seizing millions of rupees (final total was Rs. 620 million) being moved for bribing the voters. Senior civil and police officials suspected to be aiding and abetting the movement of cash were summarily transferred. Through a well-knit communication network using SMS, Forum facilitated the steps taken by the ECI team. Impact and enormity of these seizures would be seen from CEC's statement later: "For every million Rupee seized, ECI had possibly prevented 50 to 60 million Rupees being given as bribes!"
Information on these developments spread across the state and voters gradually regained confidence on the fairness of the poll. This resulted in a much higher voter turnout– 78.12% compared to 70.70% in 2006. The 'additional' 8% voters comprising of youth, urban middle class and senior citizens had been influenced by the Forum's campaign and voted in anger. The result was that the money/muscle power did not win the election.
CEC confirmed this with a text message sent to FEI convener MG Devasahayam: "Thanks a lot for leading the civil society campaign against corruption. I consider our victory against money in Tamil Nadu more important than success in West Bengal." Gopalakrishna Gandhi, former Governor of West Bengal, settled in Chennai endorsed this in his email to Devasahayam: "The emphatic result in TN is a mercy. Anything else would have been flaunted as the public's unconcern with corruption... What a wonderful performance by the Election Commission! Congratulations to you for catalysing so much by way of free and fair polls."
Newton's Third Law-"every action has an equal and opposite reaction"-did work with ECI and people jointly pushing back corruption and money power in elections thereby restoring the integrity and dignity of election and democracy. One strong message came out of this Tamil Nadu experience - in conducting 'free-and-fair' polls if ECI and civil society come together wonders can be achieved.
Based on this faith ECI has now evolved a formal partnership with civil society through the 'Framework of Engagement'. The goal of the ECI-CSO Partnership is "to have every eligible citizen on the electoral roll and have every enrolled voter to vote voluntarily thus ensuring widest electoral participation and inclusive elections through information, education, motivation and facilitation to promote informed and ethical voting."
In the run-up to the forthcoming Parliamentary elections, electorate has some new tools to bring about integrity in the elections and choice of candidates. These include the use of NOTA option to dissuade political parties from fielding criminal and corrupt candidates. They can go for large-scale usage of NOTA as 'Right to Refuse' and take it further as an effective instrument of 'Right to Reject' moving towards cancellation and fresh election with fresh candidates if NOTA scores the highest votes in a constituency. CIC order bringing political parties under RTI Act should also be aggressively used by seeking information from political parties on funding as well as criteria adopted for selecting candidates to contest elections. Also taking advantage of Supreme Court's observation: 'Freebies shake the root of free and fair elections to a large degree' electorate should mobilise against this corrupt indulgence. Voters also must realise that taking bribes to vote is a criminal offence punishable with one year imprisonment.
Much needs to be done to transform the electoral integrity campaign into a full-fledged Movement to make India corruption-free. This is a task cut out for civil society. Electoral corruption being the mother of all corruption, this is what IAC should have done instead of fracturing into political party, forming minority government in Delhi and making a mockery of governance. All for media hype. Indeed unfortunate!
[Article is adapted version of the paper presented by the author at the "Conference on Technology, Accountability and Democracy in South Asia and Beyond" jointly organised by Stanford University and University of Mumbai on 17/18 January 2014]
परोपकाराय फलन्ति वृक्षा: परोपकाराय वहन्ति नद्यः।
परोपकाराय दुहन्ति गावः परोपकाराय इदं शरीरम्।।
( hari krishnamurthy K. HARIHARAN)"'' When people hurt you Over and Over
think of them as Sand paper.
They Scratch & hurt you,
but in the end you are polished and they are finished. ''
think of them as Sand paper.
They Scratch & hurt you,
but in the end you are polished and they are finished. ''
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