We landed in Banaras yesterday and were promptly greeted by
the hot summer sun and huge hoardings proclaiming ‘Abki Baar…’ - just to remind
us that we are out of cozy Bangalore and bang in the epicenter of elections
2014. Modi, the challenger to the throne
will be facing off with Kejriwal the wildcard in these elections in Banaras.
Mau strongman Mukhtar Ansari’s wife is
contesting and like much of the country it seems like the Congress has not
shown up for the elections yet.
Signs the impending contest are everywhere. In the car the
driver slips in an opinion unobtrusively, the owner of my hotel is tallying
electoral rolls as we check in. In the mutt the brahmins deliberate quietly, a
kid known to them comes by and one of them bounces him in the air regaling him
with ‘har har modi’, perhaps unaware of the latest party line, or maybe he
couldn’t care less. In the corner shops people are talking about elections over
their chai,chat, lassi and paan.
Elections are serious business here and opinions are
professed with a sense of deliberation one does not find in metropolitan
folks. The usual cynicism that big city people
have for politics is there but it is not used as a shield to insulate themselves
from the political process. Most of them are incredibly well aware about the political
context, they know about the candidates and even though some might not have
made up their mind, they will vote. In many ways Banaras represents much that
is wrong with our country today and still in its narrow and dingy lanes ‘Indias
heroic and flawed compact with democracy’ that author and historian Ram Guha
talks about, almost comes to life. And with it the thought that perhaps a quick
look at our journey as a young democracy, through data on its most significant
milestones, the 15 general elections, is a good place to start.
Worth mentioning at this time is that the much maligned task
of data cleaning is not quite as thankless as it is made out to be. Along the
way one discovers little gems that make it worth the effort. There were quite a
few about our democracy that I discovered in the course of the last few months.
For example I did not know that in the first 2 elections
(1951 and 1957), we had 86 two-member constituencies (each returning 2 members
of parliament) and even one three -member constituency (North Bengal). The
purpose of multi member constituencies was to give a stronger voice to minority
communities. This practice was discontinued in 1962 elections.
Likewise gathering and cleaning data pushes one to find out more about
things that one would not have otherwise encountered, like delimitation. Though
most of us heard of the delimitation in 2006, this was the fourth time
delimitation happened (before that in 1956, 1966 and 1976). The purpose of this
periodic exercise being to ensure that the way constituencies where organized
(and reserved) was in sync with changing demographic (due to natural population
increase, migration etc). The constitution was specifically amended in 2002 to
freeze the allocation of seats by state for 25 years, to ensure that states
that did well on social welfare measures and family planning were not unfairly penalized.
It also tells the story of the gradual evolution of
the Union of states. We had 17 after the first reorganization based on
linguistic states and now we have 35 states and union territories. Meanwhile,
new states were formed, old ones broken up, and names changed to reflect changing
sensibilities
As an aside, apart from the sheer magnitude of of it (15
elections with thousands of candidates every time) Indian elections are also a analysts nightmare for other reasons. There are three pairs of
constituencies in the country that have the same name- even the spelling. Hamirpur ( Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh), Aurangabad (Maharashtra and Bihar) and Maharajganj
(Uttar Praadesh and Bihar) make up the trio (or sextet) that will be an
irritant to many an analyst. Not to mention constituencies with very similar
names – like Ballia (UP) and Balia
(Bihar), Godda (Bihar) and Gonda(UP) , Raigad(Maharashra) and Raigarh
(Chhattisgarh).
The data also tells another story far more important than these
factoids, that of the gradual maturing of Indian democracy to reach where it is
today.
To start with the number of votes cast
was little over 105 million in the first general election in 1951. It was more than
417 million in the last general election in 2009, that’s more than the four
fold increase over 6 years, higher than the average growth rate in population,
symptomatic of a young democracy gradually taking root. Though the increase in
the number of voters has been steady there have been outliers. Every time the electorate
was called on to cast its vote, before the scheduled 5 year interval (example
in 1991, 2 years after elections in 1989 and in 1999, barely a year after 1998)
the enthusiasm has slacked and the number of votes cast has gone down. On the other
hand, the biggest increase in the number of votes polled (compared to the
previous election) is quiet visually in the 1977, 1984 and 1989 elections. In each
of these instances the electorate was stirred by extraordinary issues and
sentiments)
In the same time the number of
political parties contesting the elections has gone up from 54 to 366 and the
number of candidates has gone up from 2000 to about 8000 (actually consolidated
of late from a high of 12500 in 1996)
In the first general elections as many as 10 candidates were
elected unopposed. That number has fallen over the years to almost zero is yet another
testament of the democratic process gaining maturity.
However merely increased participation is not a strong
enough indicator of a democratic system taking root. How well democracy has
served its weakest constituents is perhaps a better indicator. In that sense, bringing
about a degree of empowerment among some of the historically oppressed sections
of society is probably one of the qualified successes of our nation and the
democratic process has played a part, credit is due to our founding fathers who
envisaged our republic thus. Even the first Lok Sabha elections had 8 seats
reserved for the scheduled tribes. Seats were reserved for scheduled castes starting
1962 and as of today, of the 543 constituencies of the Lok sabha-84 are
reserved for Scheduled castes, 47 for
scheduled tribes and the remainder (412) in the general category.
Lastly to end on a somber note, the data also reminds us is
that this compact of ours, with nationhood and democracy, heroic though it
might be is far from perfect. As late as
just two decades ago, democracy could not be freely practiced throughout the
country.
There were pockets of unrest - Jammu and Kashmir (1991), Assam (1980
and 1989) and Punjab (1984) where elections were not held with the rest of the
country because the state could not guarantee free and fair polls. Just a reminder that democracy,
so central to the idea of India, still needs a lot of nurturing.
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