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That brings
us to the first point: these elections are purely a mandate
for change. The voters are changing their governments
in a desperate search to find one that matches their expectations.
Almost every election result in the past 15 years and more,
for both the state and the central governments, is a reflection
of this singular fact.
The second
point is that the composition of our legislatures does not
truly reflect the voters' actual choices.
Late in the night
of May 13, some very interesting data came in: early reports
on voting patterns across the country indicated that both
the Congress-led and National Democratic alliances secured
around 35% of the total votes cast across the country. Actually,
there seemed to be less than 1% difference in the vote shares
of each side. What does this mean? Only that the Cong vs.
NDA match should have really ended in a draw. But, finally,
why did the NDA end up losing a test match it should have
drawn? Because, in India, we follow the First-Past-The-Post
(FPTP or Plurality) system where seat share in Lok Sabha need
not correlate to the vote share obtained. That is why, even
though the Congress- and BJP-led alliances have secured nearly
equal number of votes across the country, the Congress + Allies
ended up with 216 seats (or 40% seat share) while the BJP
+ Allies managed only 186 (or 34% of the 539 seats announced).
The Congress alliance, which
claimed the peoples' mandate and has readied itself to lead
the next Indian government (while I am writing this article),
has a positive vote swing of only 0.1%! (These are initial
statistics, let me emphasize). And this was equally true in
1999, except that NDA was the beneficiary then.
The gap between popular support
and legislative strength (vote share vs. seat share) becomes
obvious even when we consider the results of our state election.
The TDP-BJP alliance secured around 40% of the votes but obtained
only 17% of the seats (49 out of 294) in our Assembly. On
the other hand, the Congress-led alliance got around 48% of
the vote share but ended up winning 77% (or 227 out of 294)
of the MLA seats! Even a moderate difference in the vote
shares of the TDP-BJP and Congress-Allies got translated into
a stunningly huge difference in the seat share between
the two sides. This is the real reason behind the completely
one-sided result in our state elections. And again, this was
true in 1999, and TDP benefited then.
The FPTP system under some
circumstances could lead to the formation of even more skewed
and un-representative legislatures. For example, let us suppose
that a party manages to secure 51% of the votes cast, in every
parliamentary constituency of the country. In that case, it
is guaranteed to end up winning 100% of the seats in the Lok
Sabha. The remaining 49% of the votes cast in the country
simply end up getting deleted (this is the age of the electronic
ballot, mind you). The voters who cast these 'wasted votes'
will not find even a single candidate of their choice getting
elected. And that, probably, would be the height of un-representativeness
in any electoral system.
The real problem of FPTP system
is relating to the quality of candidates and the money power
and muscle power they muster. The need to win the marginal
vote to get elected in a constituency forces parties to nominate
"winnable" candidates. Once they do what it takes
to win, they have to misgovern to make money. Governments
may change, but things remain the same. The real solution
lies in fundamental reforms of our electoral system.
Let me end with another statistical
tid-bit: this time, MPs from forty-five distinct parties and
groups will be sitting 14th Lok Sabha!
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