India Elections: My vote – significant or a mere trifle?

Like a lumbering Goliath, India kicked off its month-long national elections today. The turnout in India hovers around 60%. This time may be higher owing to the addition of first-time voters as Indian youth come of age and the newly politicized middle-class in the aftermath of Mumbai terrorist attacks. The media is replete with dramatic campaigns extolling each one of us to “make this vote count”. However, even as we resolve to vote, we remain unconvinced of its power, and not unreasonably so.

The Election Commission of India lists over 1000 registered political parties (majority are unrecognized) which translates to roughly two political parties for every Lok Sabha seat. This number was under 800 before the last national elections. The greater than 25% jump in number of political parties can be interpreted in two ways: the citizen is increasingly unhappy with the governance of the country, yet unable to find satisfactory representation/platform in existing parties and/or some people have wised up to the disproportionate power wielded by winning a few seats in the era of coalition politics and ideological promiscuity. Coupled with the fact India has some 714 million eligible voters, with varying levels of education and political awareness, and that however well considered the individual vote, it will count only as much as the vote purchased with Rs. 100 distributed by Mulayam Singh Yadav on holi, the power of the vote is suspect.

It doesn’t matter which party one votes for. Coalition politics renders ideology irrelevant since policies in coalition trend to the mean with extreme positions canceling each other (in action, not rhetoric). Moreover, ideological positions themselves are expendable as all parties frequently switch sides in unashamed power barter. Herein lies the unifying theme, the focal point of political activity in India, the acquisition of power. Strip BJP of its RSS/Hindutva jingoism, Congress of its election year populism and Gandhi association, BSP of its Dalit roots, and there is almost no substantive difference between the parties. Our political parties are differentiated by their marketing and vote-garnering strategies, and not their development policies. In this scenario, “voting” as an act of electing representatives for the voters’ views/ideals is completely moot. Moreover, voting is at best a point-in-time action (once every five years for national elections), and once cast allows neither reconsideration nor recall. Most importantly, once the legislature is installed, we have no transparency into their actions. Political debate is trumped by useless rhetoric and heckling, or completely bypassed as in Dec 2008, when the Parliament passed 8 bills in 17 minutes. The RTI Act too, a welcome step to create transparency is continually thwarted, the process made onerous and response often non-forthcoming. Our governance system, 1.1 Billion representated by 545 people via a pervasive opaque state, has concentrated power with no accountability.

The way forward is not floating and/or supporting another understaffed, under-resourced political party with no national or even regional recognition and further fragmenting the vote, but by banding together as citizens to create institutionalized platforms for the public to engage with the state demand transparency. One voice, one vote has no meaning, but when the public rises together in a collective display of public will, even authoritarian states listen.