Yogendra Yadav
The world is full of clever answers in search of a genuine question. When talk of One Nation One Election (ONOE) began, it looked like a grand policy solution in search of a real problem. Either a remedy in search of a disease, or a medicine worse than the disease. It looked like a sequel to demonetisation, another brainchild of a modern-day Tughlaq’s penchant for something grand sans a vision or a blueprint.
Noting the alacrity with which the present regime has gone about pushing this scheme and reading the Report on Simultaneous Elections in India of the High Level Committee (HLC), I am now convinced that One Nation One Election is not just a quixotic yet harmless fantasy. It fits into a larger political design that has been in the works for long. Originating in the middle-class fantasy to save the republic from the public and the bureaucratic quest to evacuate democracy of its popular content, this design has now fused with the rulers’ desire to tame and defang democracy.
The 281-page report (18,345 pages with annexures) is a made-to-order document whose conclusions were written into its terms of reference. Just as the RBI was asked to invent virtues of demonetisation, the HLC was designed to discover the rationale for ONOE. Packed with pro-regime cheer-leaders of ONOE, the HLC has obediently filled in the details of the legal-constitutional formalities and administrative logistics required to roll it out.
The compulsion to discover a rationale makes for strange reading. The report claims that constant elections account for a loss of “about 300 days in an average year” in some states like Maharashtra (p.167). The ONOE would offer “equitable opportunity to political workers” (p.155) since the same leader won’t contest for MLA and MP. Not just that, ONOE would lead to “reduction in instances of hate speeches” (p.156). It would solve the problem of “voter fatigue” (pp.153-4) — a problem I never heard about in two decades of doing research on Indian elections.
Here is a nugget of constitutional wisdom coming from the “Constitutional Expert” member of the HLC: India is “a combination of Presidential and Parliamentary forms of government” (p.109)! Consider this piece of reasoning: “The synchronised conduct of elections fosters a sense of civic cohesion and national unity, as citizens across the country participate in the festival of democracy collectively, reinforcing the bonds of citizenship and fraternity.” (P.145) This reminded me of school children expounding on the countless benefits of their latest “invention” for a science project.
Shorn of such verbiage, or a dubious polling exercise, the core argument is that simultaneous elections would improve the quality of governance: Cutting down on the diversion of government machinery, saving in state expenditure and reduction in the time window of policy freeze due to the operation of the Model Code of Conduct. These are valid arguments whose weight needs to be assessed carefully. How disruptive is the diversion of government machinery (typically three disruptions in five years that ONOE would reduce to two, not one) for elections? How does this compare to other disruptions caused by visits by big leaders or large religious congregations, for example? What proportion of the government’s budget is spent on elections? How does it compare with the money spent by candidates and parties? As for the much touted argument about “policy paralysis”, for each state government this amounts to a period of just four months in five years. The idea that the central government is hamstrung by state assembly elections is belied by the big-ticket announcements on health and agriculture (not to mention the cabinet approval of ONOE itself) made by the Modi government in the last fortnight when the MCC is in operation.
Besides, this rationale for ONOE must contend with an alternative solution. The Election Commission has the powers to club all the assembly elections falling within six months of one another (which it chose not to exercise in the case of Maharashtra, Jharkhand and Delhi); this can be extended to 12 months. The EC that is willing to club all the Lok Sabha and assembly elections in one go can surely be asked to reduce the duration of the election to a fortnight and no more than three phases. And the Model Code of Conduct can be amended to provide for continuity of regular governance during the election period. When ordinary pills can do, why go for a surgery?
Even if you grant all the benefits of ONOE, these need to be weighed against the serious damage this scheme would do to our constitutional democratic structure. As many as 15 recognised political parties, mostly from the INDIA bloc, have opposed ONOE. The undeniable fact is that ONOE is not the simple administrative change in the electoral calendar that it is made out to be. It would upset the basic principle of accountability of the executive to the legislature inherent in our parliamentary system of governance. The HLC suggests a solution to this problem by creating another problem of holding elections for the remaining part of the tenure even if it is for just one year. The proposal to align the tenure of state assemblies as well as municipal and panchayat bodies with Lok Sabha is a violation of the federal principle of governance. In this sense, ONOE seems to be in violation of the “basic structure” of our Constitution.
More than the administrative, legal and constitutional issues, the deepest problem with the ONOE is the political design inherent in it. Clearly, holding the national and state elections together would give an edge, a small to moderate vote swing, in favour of a national party and against regional parties. My hunch is that the BJP may not have won a clear majority in the Odisha assembly but for simultaneous elections in 2024. The political vision underlying ONOE assumes that nation-wide political players are the only trustworthy custodians of national interest.
At the deepest level, ONOE is a desire to cut down the clutter of democratic politics. It is no coincidence that the HLC Report devotes maximum attention and space to discussing the political economy of simultaneous elections. Through an elaborate econometric modeling — elegant in its math but dubious in its assumptions and conclusions — it argues that ONOE would lead to political stability, faster economic growth, predictable policy environment and lower populist pressures. This is very much in line with a long strand in our public life that I had once identified as “middle class fantasies” of electoral reforms.
Those who dominate the social and economic life of this country are increasingly impatient with its messy politics and have been coming up with one solution after another to “clean” the world of politics — reduction in the number of candidates, minimum threshold of votes for regional parties, law against “freebies” and so on. Certain sections of the political class — led by, but not confined to, the BJP — are in sympathy with this reasoning and would like to cut down on the headache of elections, of constantly being on tenterhooks, of the sword of accountability.
They can’t do away with elections altogether, but the next best thing is to limit this mess to just once in five years. So that the business of governance can be carried out undisturbed by the people for four years and nine months. In its essence, ONOE is antithetical to democracy.
