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India needs a balanced election system

The whole world has witnessed the United States presidential race, that almost appears to be occurring in some neo-democratic country, so ludicrous has been its unfolding. Even at the time of writing, there is no clear winner, and the battle is now going up to the Florida supreme court. Watching Uncle Sam, who forever lectures the world on democracy, getting a taste of his own medicine, has its lighter moments and the cyberworld is full of jokes.

On a more serious note, however, is the question about the popular vote and the electoral college system. Most Indians find it awful that the head of the world's most powerful country is not elected by the popular vote of his country but by an electoral college system. The electoral college system gives greater strength to the states rather than to the citizens themselves in choosing the country's president.

As numerous articles have pointed out, the US founders adopted this system because the southern states, smaller and with less people, feared that the north would dominate them. Hence, this complicated system that actually gives the southern states a slightly larger share in the House of Representatives and which prevents the US president from getting directly elected by the people but through the states.

In India, we are now witnessing the phenomena of northern states running away with the population (especially Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, even after their recent bifurcations) while the more prosperous southern states have seen their populations stabilise or even decline a wee bit.

In the early 1970s, the Indira Gandhi government froze the seats in Parliament as per the 1971 census. The reason was simple: at a time when the government was seeking massive population control, a system that gave states with more people greater representation ran counter to the concept of population control (the VHP believes that Muslims don't practice family planning with the aim of overtaking the Hindu population, which only shows how deep rooted this fear can be).

More than 30 years after family planning was born, south India and some other states have succeeded while key major states (in north-central India) have failed. If today, Parliament is made truly representative (assuming a freeze at the total number of seats at 544), then while UP and Bihar gain seats, Tamil Nadu and Kerala will lose seats. Thus, we'd actually be rewarding those states that thoroughly failed in curbing their population growths.

No wonder the present NDA government extended the present freeze on Parliament delimitation for another two decades.

What is worse in India is that even in the Rajya Sabha, the seats are as per the states' population, unlike the US Senate that gives every state, irrespective of size, two senators. Thus in the Indian context, some states are far more important politically than others, whereas the US at least recognises the equality of all states in the Senate, if not in the House of Representatives.

If in the US -- where the difference between the person from Texas and Maine is only the accent in his English as compared to India where language, culture, all change -- the small states were worried about being overwhelmed, what about India? The best example of the lack of difference in the US is the fact that while George Bush is governor of Texas, his brother governs Florida. In India, this is highly improbable (though not impossible) because here, no two states are alike.

More than south India, what about other small states of India, who remain on the margins of India's federal politics? States that are, because of India's emphasis on numbers, actually disenfranchised!

Which Indian politician is really worried about the way, say, Mizoram votes? Or Goa? But everyone is worried about the polls in UP or Bihar or Maharashtra. Because in a popular vote system their numbers alone make up for the others!

It is not surprising that some of India's most vicious separatist movements are actually among people who have thus been disenfranchised (Kashmir, Nagaland, Mizoram) whose voice counts for little in imperial Delhi, people who are on the margins of the so-called mainstream.

In fact, if today some people are demanding (and getting) separate states, it is because they feel that they are hardly heard in the state capitals. If Uttarakhandis feel lost in Lucknow, how do the Nagas feel in Delhi?

While the huge Indian state machinery has been able to keep under control various small and splintered separatist movements, should other larger groups start feeling disenfranchised even as states like UP and Bihar (and other north-central states) keep increasing their population, then Indian unity will be in trouble. Uttar Pradesh, as per current trends, is not expected to stabilise its population till 2100. This massive disparity in population is not sustainable, while Tamil Nadu and Kerala have already stabilised and might actually go into a decline.

Should India also go in for an electoral college that would try to balance the big versus the small? After all, everyone will agree that if anything, states that actually controlled their population in the "supreme national interest" actually deserve to be awarded more seats in Parliament, not less.

There are no easy answers here. Even a simplistic answer that all states must be equally represented in the Rajya Sabha is flawed because unlike the USA, in India the state-formation process is still incomplete (we just had three new states; more will follow). And obviously a permanent freeze on delimitation will not work because sooner or later, north Indians will demand, justifiably, numbers must count in Parliament.

The only solution is to ensure that the northern population stabilises alongside the rest of India, but that really is not happening right now and not happening fast enough.

In such a situation, it is clear is that India will have to devise a new election system that balances, finely, the difficult dilemma of people versus region, a method that rewards population control yet does not disenfranchise millions of north Indians by not taking into account their numbers. In short, something of an electoral college system, but one that satisfies all.

It is an unenviable task.

EARLIER COLUMN:
Demography and Democracy

Amberish K Diwanji