The unbearable triteness of being against everything

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The unbearable triteness of being against everything

Thursday, 08 February 2018 | Ishan Joshi

It’s entirely possible that the lok Sabha and major State elections will be held together in end-2018. That has nothing to do with the simultaneous poll debate

It is difficult in the rather chaotic ecology of contemporary Indian politics to separate issues that at times overlap but we must if for nothing else then for the sake of clarity. The initiative of the Narendra Modi Government for simultaneous elections to the lok Sabha and State Assemblies is not just welcome but very timely. We should not, however, confuse this with the possibility of the General Election scheduled to be held in the early months of 2019 and elections to the Assemblies of the three large States (which have a sizeable number of lok Sabha seats) of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh which are due by the end of 2018 being conducted together, which is a separate issue.

On the question of simultaneous elections as the norm, which is what the President of India in his address to the Joint Sitting of Parliament at the beginning of the Budget Session advocated serious, sober and sustained debate on, well, it is a no-brainer. Frequent elections not only impose a huge burden on human resources and the public exchequer but also severely impede the development process due to the model code of conduct being in place whenever there is an election in any part of the country. The Prime Minister, who has been advocating a return to the system of simultaneous polls that was in existence for the first two decades of Independent India for a while now, reiterated the need for consensus on the issue at a meeting of the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA). BJP president Amit Shah made the same pitch — taking the argument even further by suggesting a normative ideal of simultaneous elections from Panchayat to Parliament — in his maiden speech in the Rajya Sabha, asking all political parties to put India first. And the Election Commission of India has indicated its logistical readiness to conduct State and lok Sabha elections together going forward.

There are, of course, some political parties, independent voices and civil society activists who have opposed this move. The major reason among Opposition parties including committed BJP-baiters for opposing the Prime Minister’s eminently sensible call is rather obvious — it is the fear factor, i.e. the apprehension that Modi’s popularity would overshadow anti-incumbency in various States where the BJP and its allies are ruling and thereby harm their immediate electoral prospects. This is sheer political expediency not a serious argument against simultaneous polls and deserves to be dismissed for what it is. In fact, given Opposition claims of Modi’s rapidly diminishing popularity especially across BJP strongholds in northern and western India, they should logically jump at the chance to use a simultaneous poll to their electoral advantage. That they haven’t, tells us more about their claims than all their posturing. Anyway, as Shah pointed out in the Upper House, it is not as if the BJP is going to be in power for eternity. The Opposition too will be in power at some stage and simultaneous polls, which would of course require a Constitutional amendment for a fixed term for all legislatures, would be in play then too.

The substantive argument against simultaneous polls, on the other hand, made by some well-intentioned activists, rests on the ‘erosion of federalism’ principle. But that is because they tend to see federalism as an end in itself due to both ideological commitment and the imperatives of realpolitik rather than as a means to strengthening the Union. The Indian Constitutional arrangement has a clearly defined unitary impulse albeit with federal characteristics which, over time, it was thought would coalesce into strengthening One India even while celebrating diversity socially, empowering State-level institutions politically and providing a more effective governance template taking local geographies into account. Unfortunately, we have gone the other way. States are increasingly become fiefdoms of one regional political force or the other at constant loggerheads with the Centre, at times against the national interest as has been seen in Jammu & Kashmir in terms of dealing with terrorism and Pakistan, in Tamil Nadu regarding relations with Sri lanka while engaging with the lTTE and in West Bengal on Teesta water-sharing and exchange of enclaves with Bangladesh or of late the Rohingya influx to give just three examples.

Both national parties, indeed all political parties with a national outlook, need to think long and hard about whether this disturbing, fragmentary narrative serves the interests of the Indian nation-state in its dealings with the world community which is premised on the nation-state as the prime unit of interaction in the post-colonial era for the welfare of its peoples. And this is the state of play likely to continue for a long time despite the airy-fairy romanticism of privileged mutual bliss-point seekers fantasizing about a world without borders. Unless the unitary nature of India is asserted — and simultaneous polls are a feasible, democratic instrument for doing so — the project to preserve extant non-cooperative federalism in this country which is what, make no mistake, opposing simultaneous polls is really aimed at, will succeed. That is a slippery slope.

Are we, as a nation, to be led by the nose down a path enhanced by an assiduously nurtured sense of separateness which over a period of time could quite casually slip into a state-seeking separatism as has happened beforeIJ India is still a youngish modern state albeit an ancient civilisational nation and its institutions have already been stressed to breaking point by separatist impulses over the past 70 years. Do we really want more of the sameIJ How is the state to become a guarantor of good governance, which we must work towards making justiciable in the near future at least on the civil side, if those who control its levers cannot even agree on something as blindingly in the people’s interest as simultaneous elections to State Assemblies and the lok SabhaIJ

The Centre must not only hold but continue the project to unify India, of which simultaneous polls are a key component, regardless of the political dispensation in power in New Delhi and without apologia.

(The writer is Consulting Editor, The Pioneer)

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