India already has world’s biggest elections. Should they be bigger?

SOUMYAJIT SAHA and KIRAN SHARMA,

PUNE, India/NEW DELHI — Last Tuesday, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s six-day campaign roadshow through the state of Maharashtra reached Pune.

Billboards on highways leading into the city of 4.4 million, normally enlisted to promote new car models and housing developments, already carried Modi’s face and the emblems of his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its allies. After Modi arrived, police blocked key roads to speed his way to a college sports ground where party cadres had carefully arrayed tens of thousands of folding chairs for rallygoers.

The crowd eventually reached 70,000, party cadres would later claim. To keep the throng from getting restless as they waited, a pair of cameras mounted on swinging cranes beamed close-ups of attendees’ faces onto massive onstage screens while overhead drones captured wide-angle views to amplify the turnout for social media posts.

“To empower the people of Pune, there is a need for investment, infrastructure and industry, and we have worked on all three points,” Modi said before cajoling rallygoers to register their opposition to any restoration of the special constitutional status of Jammu and Kashmir, a Muslim-majority Himalayan region that was stripped of statehood in 2019, by holding up the flashlight on their mobile phones.

Modi’s Maharashtra trip this week — his third in two months — included eight similar rallies, each of which likely cost 2 million rupees to 4 million rupees ($23,700 to $47,400) to stage, according to estimates by local party leaders. Together they illustrate how Indian elections have become sprawling affairs requiring copious resources and manpower.

In Pune, ads for the BJP and its allies occupy billboards normally used to promote new car models and housing developments. (Photo by Yuki Takahashi)

Maharashtra residents are due to elect representatives to their state assembly on Wednesday, when voting also wraps up for Jharkhand’s legislature. Earlier in the year, some 15 million election workers were deployed to 1.05 million polling stations to give the country’s 968.8 million registered voters the chance to cast their ballots in India’s general election.

Making that exercise work cost the Election Commission of India between 135 billion rupees and 202.5 billion rupees, according to an estimate by CMS Research House in New Delhi. That outlay covered the balloting for four state assemblies elected alongside the national parliament — but not separate elections for assemblies in 27 other states and federally governed territories. All told, around half of each year is often taken up with electioneering at the state or federal level.

Modi, whose victory in the general election has made him the first leader since the country’s inaugural prime minister to win three consecutive terms, wants to bring in more order by aligning the scheduling of national, state and local elections — making what is already by far the world’s biggest election even bigger.

His government argues this would save taxpayer money and also benefit the economy, business, education and society as well as improve voter engagement.

“Frequent elections are becoming a hindrance to the country’s progress,” Modi said in his Independence Day speech on Aug. 15. “The country needs to come forward to embrace the concept of ‘one nation, one election.'”

Opposition parties are wary, however, suspicious that the prime minister’s main motivation might be entrenching the BJP in power at all levels of government. In this view, synchronized elections could keep voters preoccupied with the national agenda, to the detriment of regional parties and local issues. Currently, the BJP and its coalition allies govern 19 of 28 states, including Maharashtra.

BJP officials say 70,000 supporters gathered to hear Prime Minister Narendra Modi speak at the campaign rally in Pune on Nov. 12. (Photo by Yuki Kohara)

National and state elections were well aligned during the first two decades after India’s independence in 1947, when the Indian National Congress party dominated government largely across the board.

As more states and parties were formed over the following decades, Congress’ grip was fractured, and different election calendars took on their own rhythms. During the term of Congress Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1983, the Election Commission proposed to arrest this trend with resynchronization.

The idea has repeatedly resurfaced since, under both Congress and BJP governments, without moving forward. A key obstacle is that implementation would involve constitutional amendments requiring two-thirds support from both houses of Parliament to adjust, among other language, how legislative terms are defined.

Some are skeptical full synchronization will ever happen again.

“Now, there are so many issues involved,” said V.S. Chandrasekar, retired executive editor of the Press Trust of India news agency. “You can’t in the name of saving expenditure create a forced democracy.”

Election workers in Srinagar check electronic voting machines and records on Sept. 24 ahead of the second round of voting in Jammu and Kashmir’s legislative election. (Sipa via AP Images)

Alignment would also be “against Indian diversity” in the view of Narayan Bareth, former information commissioner of Rajasthan state. He suggests Modi’s push is an attempt to distract the public and opposition parties from pocketbook issues like inflation and unemployment.

A special committee led by former President Nath Kovind appointed by Modi last year to look into the question assembled a raft of evidence and arguments to bolster the case for alignment in an 18,626-page report delivered in March.

“The most important factor is that frequent elections create an atmosphere of uncertainty,” the committee said. “Due to the ongoing cycle of elections occurring in various parts of the country, political parties, their leaders, legislators, and both state and central governments tend to devote their time and resources towards the upcoming elections, rather than focusing on matters of governance.”

It is not just the distraction of campaigning. The Election Commission’s Model Code of Conduct bars officials from announcing “financial grants” and new public works, among other restrictions, from the date an election is scheduled until usually a couple of days after the results are announced. This can produce “policy paralysis and [a] governance deficit,” the report says.

Such freezes can be a problem for companies, which are also legally obligated to give workers time off to return to their hometowns to vote. That can sometimes involve a multiday journey across hundreds of kilometers.

The current chaotic electoral approach can affect education too: Schools are often used as polling places, with teachers drafted as poll workers, necessitating an extended suspension of classes for preparations.

The committee report argues that the current system can also lead to more crime, as law enforcement personnel are diverted to election security. It further posits that frequent campaigning “spurs passions and other divisive social forces” around identity politics, though some critics would link that tendency to the BJP.

The committee even argued that aligned elections would benefit the country’s gross domestic product and inflation rate while citing examples of how turnout rates in state elections have sometimes been higher when held alongside federal polls.

Election workers tally votes in New Delhi on June 4: India’s general election involved 15 million election workers. (Photo by Suzu Takahashi)

While 32 political parties offered their support for the study committee’s findings, 15 registered their opposition, most prominently Congress.

“This is against the constitution, this is against democracy, this is against federalism,” Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge posted on X in September after Modi’s cabinet accepted the study committee’s report.

His party has been keen to play up local concerns in Maharashtra. At a rally in Mumbai on Nov. 6, Rahul Gandhi, who leads the parliamentary opposition on behalf of Congress, claimed that land in the city was being seized for the benefit of billionaire businessmen close to the prime minister.

“The factories, whether for manufacturing iPhones or for building Boeing planes, are being snatched from you and taken to states like Gujarat,” Gandhi said, referring to Modi’s home state.

Indian National Congress supporters gather to hear Rahul Gandhi address a campaign rally in Mumbai on Nov. 6. (Photo by Soumyajit Saha)

Other Congress officials say the rising cost of living is a leading issue in Maharashtra. “Inflation is eating into people’s savings, and the billionaires are benefitting at the cost of the poor,” said senior cadre Anwar Sheikh.

Congress is pouring its energies into getting out its message, though it can hardly match the BJP’s blitz. All told, candidates and parties account for around three-quarters of overall Indian election-related spending, which reached 1.35 trillion rupees in this year’s parliamentary vote, according to CMS Research; the group puts the Election Commission’s share at just 10% to 15% of the total.

This year’s election expense tally was more than double the country’s 600 billion rupee bill for the last general election, in 2019. In the view of N. Bhaskara Rao, CMS chairman and founder, soaring spending reflects the changing nature of India’s politicians.

“Do we have people’s representatives [in parliament]?” he asked rhetorically before answering himself: “They are corporate representatives.”

source : asia.nikkei