Vote does it mean?

The cynical arithmetic of post-poll alliances can confound a voter’s assumptions in voting for a particular party, as ideologies and
policies are thrown overboard in a bid for power. In such a scenario, can a voter ever know who or what she is voting for?

The most basic principle of logic, as laid down by Aristotle, is that A cannot be ‘A’ and ‘not A’ at the same time. If you act under the assumption that A is not A, then you’re either mistaken, an idiot, or irrational, according to Aristotle. The elections next month might prove the Indian voter to be all three, if post-poll alliances come into play in the formation of the next government. For, no matter how wisely you cast your vote (or vote your caste, as the case may be), you could still end up with a government formed by a party you hate — and supported by a candidate whom you voted for only because he/she contested against the party you hated.

To take an example, in Maharashtra, you could vote for the ‘secular’ Sharad Pawar, whose NCP has a pre-poll alliance with the Congress, because you don’t want the Sena-BJP ‘communal forces’ in power. Now, given the Shiv Sena’s manifest readiness to support any Maratha candidate for PM, you could very well have Pawar’s NCP joining hands with the Sena after the elections. This means that as a ‘secular’ voter, you voted for a winning candidate and yet got a ‘communal’ government. If that isn’t a mockery of voter’s choice, well, there are plenty more such scenarios.

In Orissa, the ruling Biju Janata Dal (BJD) and the BJP were seeing each other till the other day. Now the BJD, angling for the secular vote in the aftermath of the attacks on Christians by Hindutva groups, has dumped the BJP and is making passes at the Congress. So, if you live in Orissa and don't like the BJP, whom do you vote for? The BJD? Think again, because there is nothing to stop Naveen Patnaik from embracing the BJP post-elections. As Debabrata Mishra, a Bhubaneswar-based educationist, puts it, “The BJD may join the Third Front or any other front seeing the opportunity available. It’s all one big joke at the expense of the voters.” 

In West Bengal, things remain the same hysterically, thanks to Mamata. The Congress has remained weak here because of its reliance on the Left at the Centre. Mamata’s Trinamool has for long promised to emerge as an effective opposition to the Left and an alternative to the Congress. But reports say that she can easily go either the UPA way or the NDA way. So if you want to vote for the Trinamool because you don’t like the Left, then you have no way of ensuring that your candidate doesn’t end up as an ally of the Left in a UPA government. So if you hate the Left, as per Aristotle’s principle, vote for Trinamool, and don’t vote for Trinamool.

In Tamil Nadu, the PMK (Pattali Makkal Katchi) chief S Ramadoss unabashedly proclaims that he is always part of a “winning alliance”.
Which is a rather cute way of saying that he will go with whoever is most likely to form a government, no matter what you, as a voter, may have had in mind when you chose him over, say, some other political chameleon. Besides, the Congress has been alternatively allying with either the DMK or the AIADMK. When two sworn enemies can be allies of the same party at the centre, it means a DMK supporter may have to vote for AIADMK, or vice versa.

Clearly, the willingness of political leaders to ally with any political party, for the sake of power and irrespective of policy or ideological reservations, can confound voters’ intentions in voting for a particular candidate/party. Is there a way out of this electoral anomaly of the coalition era?

COVER STORY

Delhi-based psephologist Sanjay Kumar asserts that the issue goes beyond post-poll alliances. “The voter gets conned even by pre-poll alliances,” he says, and elaborates, “The NCP is contesting as an ally of the Congress. In a given constituency, it puts up a candidate and the Congress doesn’t. Now, there would be voters who’d want to vote for the Congress, but in the absence of the Congress, they are forced to vote for the NCP. You can say this is also a way of diddling the voter of his rightful choice to frame the mandate he wants.”

Bhubaneswar-based psephologist Surjya Narayan Misra has a different take. “In India, don’t even think of a concept such as ‘mandate’. It is an academic word. Those who understand its meaning do not vote. We have around 750 political parties. Around 50 per cent of the people — which is more than the population of the US — are illiterate. But it is they who vote. Political parties are just making the most of this reality,” he says.

Even politicians are willing to admit it. “Political morality is at its lowest ebb,” says L Ganesan, president, Tamil Nadu BJP.

“Unfortunately, even educated voters cast their ballots for a winning candidate rather than voting for a good candidate.”

So, do we need some kind of a regulatory mechanism, say, through the Election Commission, to freeze pre-poll alliances? Kumar doesn’t think this will work. “If you ask the voter whether she prefers parties forming alliances post-poll, or a fresh election, I would say most voters would prefer a solution which leads to the formation of a government.”

The voters DNA spoke to, however, wouldn’t agree with Kumar. Says Delhi-based Sanjeev Sharma, a chemical engineer, “Political parties who break alliances formed before the polls in order to reap post-poll benefits should be penalised. Such greed for power amounts to cheating the voter.”

Amala Revathy, a lecturer in Chennai’s Loyola College, believes that there should be a law similar to the anti-defection law which would prevent parties from switching their allegiance. “The Election Commission (EC) should frame rules for this,” she says. The anti-defection law, in its present form, applies only to individuals and not to parties.

Jagdeep S Chhokar, former dean, IIM (Indian Institute of Management) Ahmedabad, who, with his colleague Trilochan Sastry, founded the Association for Democratic Reforms, believes that the solution lies in changing the way elections are fought. “At the moment, there are no regulations for running a political party. The Constitution did not even mention it until 1985. Only in the tenth Schedule (Anti-Defection Act) that the Rajiv Gandhi government brought in, does the term ‘political party’ find a mention. Therefore, there is no law to oversee their functioning. If we had a law which says that post-poll break-up would be considered as defection, then such opportunism wouldn’t take place. Unfortunately, such a law too will have to be passed by the same political parties,” he says, hinting that this is not likely to happen any time soon.

In the meantime, voters have to go out and cast their ballots, knowing they can be taken for a ride by the very candidate they vote for. It would appear they have little option but to get set for a stomach-churning ride on the electoral rollercoaster.

With inputs from Ram Raj in Chennai, PK Surendran in Bangalore, Subhashish Mohanty in Bhubaneswar, Josy Joseph and Nistula Hebbar in New Delhi, and Sumanta Ray Chaudhuri in Kolkata