On Free Agents & United Voters – Can this work?
Dear All, this is a lazy post – borrowing heavily from earlier posts by Atanu Dey and RealityCheck…In fact, it borrows from RC’s post to such an extent that this could have been a guest post by him (except that I have taken large chunks out to get to the main point). This matter is close to my heart and I am keen to have an extensive debate on this matter…Please do share your thoughts and ideas via the comments section below. But first, some extracts from “On the United Voters of India and Free Agents” by RealityCheck:
Atanu Dey has a really thought provoking post over at his blog called A bit on Democracy in India. The central problem according to him and shared by all of us is: How do we get men of better quality into elected office ?
…He proposes a new voting bloc called “The United Voters of Indiaâ€.
Membership to this voting bloc will be voluntary
“..but the condition is that the member adhere to the sworn duty of voting, and voting only for the candidate chosen by the association. The members choose whom to vote for through “primary†elections in which all members are eligible to vote — but it is neither compulsory nor mandatory. The only compulsory bit is that the member eventually vote at the real elections for the candidate chosen by the group.”
RC then digs deeper – to consider whether such a concept could really work…
Can a person like Atanu Dey contest on the basis of his own big picture issues and win ?
…Almost impossible – but the degree of impossibility depends on how many ‘free agents’ are in his constituency. I can confidently say that south of the Vindhyas there are very few places where such a miracle can happen. I suspect this is true even in the north
So, in effect, NO. And the reason?
…the middle class is hopelessly divided into free agents and locked in voters..
I think therein lies our challenge...How do we consolidate the free agents? How can we win with a “minority” of votes? How can we form a good voters group? Unfortunately this addresses only one side of the problem (as many commentators noted on Atanu’s blog). The other side of the equation (and I believe the harder part) is how do we get the “Good Candidate” to contest? Unless we resolve that, change is unlikely – and may be very long in coming.
Tomorrow, some thoughts on why good people stay away from politics…and how all this ties in with the root cause of corruption in India. In the meantime, please do share your thoughts and comments on whether this (these) idea(s) are practical…Can this work? What do you think?
This is not a new idea, and its not impossible as well in general. This happens in small villages at panchayat levels. But at the bigger level, if you notice, this is quite common in case of minority communities and few caste based groups. This is more formalized and controlled in case of minorities, where the state chief bishop or imam or religious head of a sect conveys the preferred candidate through church and mosque network. Ofcourse their evaluation criteria for the candidate will be community centric and there will be a some people who might go against the instructions mostly in urban areas, but the process is more or less in place and improvises for every election.
Well…if free agents can be consolidated into a voting bloc can they be called free agents? Do not disregard the effort of traditional parties. They already tried to to consolidate these free agents…. without any success.
Much has been said about the lack of voting will of urban middle class. The lesser and lesser participation in democracy did not happen in a single year and decade. There was such a time when even middle class voted. But they saw that nothing changed after they voted one out and voted another in. The new one was same as old one. That was the beginning of the end of democracy in our country. Poor in rural and urban go to vote because there is an opportunity of bottle of desi liquor and/or a kg of rice…. free of cost. Rich knows that regardless of who comes in power they own the system of governance. Consolidation of free agents is not a solution.
@Sid: Re “The new one was same as old one”, you hit the nail on the head. As I mentioned in my concluding lines, unless we have significantly better & genuinely different candidates that stand for elections, not much is likely to change…
Watch out for a post on this later this eve. Thanks
We have had men of good quality in Indian politics. Gandhi (vision for a village, great resolve etc.), Nehru (Heavy industries, Research Institutions etc.), Minu Masani (democracy and freedom), Vajpayee (Oratory, Poetry), Advani (good grasp of Vote bank politics), Rajeev Gandhi (Vision about technology), VP Singh (Vision about social mobility and simplification of Tax), Arun Shourie (Great academic mind), Pramod Mahajan (dynamic leader with a sense of purpose), Tarun Turks, Lalu Yadav(good grasp of Vote bank politics), Nitish(sensible politics at all times), Modi (fantastic commitment to all-round development), and so on to name just a few.
What we have not had is a sound economic footing. Whatever great organic economics structures India had in 17-18th century were destroyed by the British. It is also true that these structures did not lead to a strong defence capability. More research needs to be done to find out why Indian society and rulers were so carefree about external threats in those times.
If India had strong defence capabilities, would rupee have been weak? If Rupee were stronger than dollar or swill frank, would anybody stash money away abroad?
All these problems are interrelated. We need to look at social structures to address them, not at individual brilliance or merit or inadequacies.