Small changes, big impact
Posted on April 20, 2011
In the second part of this blog post examining the democratic structure and its role in facilitating political corruption, ex-IAS officer, T. R. Raghnunandan offers his perspective on small changes that could make a big difference.
It is possible to make a dramatic impact on reducing corruption, by implementing some simple reforms in the structure of elections and organization of political parties.
Short-term measures: • All contributions to political parties must be made through cheque alone and accounted for. • All political parties must be audited under the control and superintendence of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India. Parties that do not disclose their accounts and are not audited should be de-recognised. • There must be a system of totalisation of votes electronically, with appropriate safeguards, so that political parties cannot monitor voting behaviour polling booth wise. Use of Electronic Voting Machines plays into the hands of those who bribe voters because it is possible to monitor the pattern of voting at each polling station through them. Thus if a party bribes voters in one area and then the pattern is not in their favour, they can take reprisals against those who have not voted for them. Totalisation of votes electronically will reduce the tendency to bribe voters because political parties will be uncertain whether voters who accepted bribes actually voted for them. • Introduce the option for rejection of all candidates in an Electronic Voting Machine. This must be done along with a legal provision stating that if a significant proportion of voters reject all candidates there must be a re-election. This will be a strong disincentive for political parties to put up the wrong candidates, especially those with criminal records.
Long-term measures: In the longer term, we need two major reforms: • Creation of a provision for public funding for elections: Recently, the Central Election Commissioner Shahabuddin Yaqoob Quraishi stated publicly that this is not practically possible but I feel it is. If the MP and MLA local area funds are abolished, then these funds can be diverted to create a corpus fund for public funding of elections, without any additional cost to the exchequer. If the 5200 MPs and MLAs in our country are given something above Rs 32,000 crore over five years under their MP and MLA Local Area Development Grants, I have calculated that these schemes can be abolished and the amount used for public funding of elections. • Do away with the constituency-based election system: Such elections, particularly for MLAs and MPs, are not meaningful, because these people do not need to provide services to people locally. This is the responsibility of Municipalities and Panchayats. We need proportional representation, which will ensure a more correct reflection of the voting trend, in our Parliament and Assemblies. We can always have territorial representation for ward members in Municipalities and Panchayats.