If Wishes were Horses

 

Now that there seems a sliver of a chance to reclaim our democracy, here’s my wish list to build it back better. 

1.     The sine qua non for democracy is a free and fair election which gives a level-playing field to all contestants so it has to start with the Election Commission of India (ECI). The latest Act for the appointment of the election commissioners should be scrapped. The earlier Supreme Court (SC) mandated selection structure with Chief Justice of the Supreme Court as member should not only be brought back but should be designated as part of the “basic structure of the Constitution.” The Chief Election Commissioner should enjoy the status and privileges of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

2.     The election should be believable by the opposition. Towards that end, the EVM related issues must be sorted out. VVPATs should be machine-read for all the polling stations and tallied with the EVM results.

3.     Election expenditure limits for the candidates are ridiculous at present. They should be fixed at a more reasonable level. On the other hand, there is no limit on the expenditure of the political party on elections. These limits should also be prescribed on a per candidate basis.

4.     All fundings for parties and elections including corporate funding should be completely transparent. The donor, the receiver and the actual beneficial ownership of the donation should be published on the ECI website.

5.     Total number of votes polled should be published on the ECI website within 48 hours of the scheduled close of polling hours of each phase. ECI should aim to hold the polls for each state on one single date to begin with, and for the entire country eventually.

6.     Democracy doesn’t merely consist of polls once in five years. It needs to be nurtured and health-checked every single day. Towards this, strength of the institutions and conventions are critical. Let’s start with the Parliament. We should borrow some of the good (great!) things of the Westminster conventions – Weekly Prime Minister’s Question hour with minimum six questions granted to the leader of the opposition, Ministerial code whereby lying in the Parliament means sacking), Conscience voting, announcement of major policy first on the floor of the House when in session and, ideally, shadow ministers by the opposition party/ coalition.

7.     To avoid railroading of the minorities and the marginalised, it is necessary that these sections have an effective representation and say in the Parliament. There are many ways of ensuring it.

8.     Once a person is elected as a speaker, (s)he should cease to have any party affiliation or to cast vote in the case of a tie. There should be no party whip for election of speaker – it should be a ‘conscience vote.’ Ideally, the speaker should be a retired justice of the Supreme Court without any political affiliation and after a two-year cooling-off period after retirement. Parliament is a forum of accountability and belongs to the opposition – the opposition should get 2/3^rd of the discussion time. No bill should be passed by voice vote.

9.     The single largest opposition party, regardless of its numbers, should nominate the leader of the opposition.

10.  Every member of Parliament must attend at least 50 % of each session failing which (s)he must forfeit her/his membership.

11.  All far-reaching legislations must go through deliberations of the Parliamentary committees. The remit of the Parliamentary Committees should be specific and defined.

12.  Now, let us come to the executive. No one should be Prime Minister for more than five years, overall, whether it’s a full term or a combination of truncated terms. Only a member of Lok Sabha should be able to become a Minister or Prime Minister – that will accord legitimacy to these offices. There should be deliberative, consultative process of decision-taking. At the minimum, all major decisions should be by the cabinet. Anything with far-reaching consequences must be widely examined through parliamentary committees and inviting comments from the public. Decision making will be a little slower in the process but it will avoid disasters like demonetisation, sudden lockdown, the now-repealed farm laws and so on.

13.  In the United Kingdom, the Civil Service enjoys serious credibility. That is because they are able to function without fear or favour. For example, when the opposition was sniping away at Boris Johnson, he appointed a civil servant, Sue Gray to enquire and everybody went quiet until the Sue Gray report. The civil servants there have recourse to a grievance redressal mechanism which ensures against unlawful transfer or termination. In India, we do not have that. We should aim for a system where the civil service should act as the first bulwark against authoritarian whimsicality. The Police needs to be independent of the political executive. Already, there is a Supreme Court order to achieve this but the politicians have found creative ways to subvert it so far. This refers to my blog: 

https://b-b-dash.blogspot.com/2023/01/the-caged-parrot.html 

14.  The appointment of the higher executive makes a difference towards the independence and integrity of the civil services. The former system of Appointments Committee of the Cabinet should be restored – currently, it is just a PMO letter box. [Earlier, all appointments of Joint Secretary and above were with the approval of the Cabinet Secretary, the concerned Minister, two seniormost Ministers and the Prime Minister.]

15.  Chief of Army Staff, Judges, Police, Comptroller & Auditor General, UPSC members and so on should be completely outside political appointment/ manipulation.

16.  The offices of Governors have come under a cloud many times, under many governments. Qualification for Governors should be prescribed. Governors should be from a panel which should be arrived at through the deliberations of a broad-based Committee. Knowledge of law should be an essential pre-requisite for the post. Once a Governor is appointed, he should continue for five years and his term should not be co-terminus with that of the Central government.

17.  The final custodians of democracy are the Courts. Judicial appointments should be ring-fenced against political overreach. The deliberations of the collegium should be made open and mandatory in a time-bound manner. Delay in judicial determinations is misused to hound officials and political rivals. So much so that the process becomes the punishment. Adjournment of hearing should be the rare exception rather than the norm as of now. I also find that when the witnesses land up, sometimes travelling great distances, the hearing is adjourned just because the concerned judge happens to be on leave on that day. Hearing, recording of evidence, etc. should be carried out by whichever judge is standing in for the day. Then, there is the matter of long vacations of the Courts. Vacation benches/ judges rarely pronounce substantive orders. It has been seen that sometimes executive actions, legislative skullduggery and even ordinances are timed to coincide with these vacations. These should be judicially dealt with with a heavy hand and promptly.

18.  The media, both national and regional, are in a bad shape. That is because the media houses are critically dependent on governments for advertisements, newsprint, etc. and also there have been unsavoury prosecutions and arrests. India must develop a system of penalty for wrongful arrest, to be recovered from the person effecting the arrest. There are many advertisements and packaging which are ostensibly by the government but, in reality, for promoting particular political leaders. All these must stop. Photographs of political leaders in offices should also be banned. Media should have a possibility of crowdfunding by putting a ceiling on such donations but making the donations tax-exempt.

19.  India has enough ability and resources to thrive on its own. What is required is stability and predictability rather than the governments interfering in too many things and actually encouraging regulatory capture. So, the golden principle should be, “If it ain't broke, don't fix it.” 

Can we as ordinary citizens do anything regarding the above? Well, just one YouTuber with courage of conviction and at great risk to himself made a substantial difference in the last election ...

Build Back Better

 

During the first of my two United Nations deployments, in Mozambique, we were initially given an orientation on a few things. One of the sessions was on election management and our expected role in it. After the long session and an even longer bit of questions and answers, the speaker exclaimed, “This has been the easiest and the most enriching session for me, probably because yours is a thriving democracy!” Our elections were a key part of that democracy and it wowed western observers to exclaim, “Elections are one thing that the Indians do well.” India's democratic traditions have also been its biggest soft power.

The recently concluded Indian elections have again wowed the observers but there is a difference – it was held under conditions when the institutions safeguarding democracy, including the Election Commission of India (ECI) were flailing.

Democracy is not a very natural thing. Democracy is very fragile and needs constant nurturing through the strength of its institutions, most so by the election machinery. The elections must not only be fair and transparent, they must also be seen to be so. Only then do the government and democracy derive legitimacy and sustainability. The ECI should constantly try to reinforce this. Instead, it chose to adopt all possible means to negate many of the efforts already initiated in previous elections by taking dubious recourse to the letter (rather than the spirit) of the laws. I have elaborated on some of the shenanigans of the ECI in an earlier blog.

To add, it was completely incomprehensible as to why the ECI obstinately refused to share information on the number of votes polled after each phase of polling although that was done during the 2019 elections promptly. After revising the poll percentages in Phase I and Phase II by a whopping six percent (Phase I, after 11 days), ECI refused to share the absolute number of votes polled. It went to the extent of submitting an affidavit in the Supreme Court to the effect that sharing the same was “unfeasible” and “undesirable.” Then they suddenly released all the data for five phases in one go. In normal times, this would be an act of “contempt of court” because either they had given a false affidavit that it was “unfeasible” and “undesirable” or they were giving false numbers. However, we live in abnormal times. 

Many political parties have expressed concerns about the EVM machines. There is a weird logic going around – why blame the EVMs when you lose and not blame it when you win? EVM or no EVM, there’s serious rigging in each election in favour of whichever is the ruling party and the challenger has to not only win but actually win by a huge ‘real’ margin to overcome the effect of the rigging. When the ECI is in a “gathbandhan” with the ruling party or cowed down by it, the job becomes doubly difficult for the challenger. While EVM machines may or may not be possible to hack, rigging through false voting etc. is much easier with EVM machines. Why can’t EVM results be tallied with VVPAT? We are an IT nation; it’ll be simple to have the VVPATs machine-read. The opposition parties have done creditably not because there are no problems with EVM-based elections but in spite of them – they could well have done much better had these problems been addressed. 

In the case of advertisements against the Trinamool Congress (TMC), Calcutta High Court intervened, calling the ads “outright derogatory and definitely intended at insulting the rivals.” Further, the Court observed, “In the present case, the ECI has grossly failed to address the complaints raised by the petitioner (TMC) in due time. This court is surprised that no resolution worth the name has been arrived at regarding the complaints till date, more so because most of the phases of the election are already over.” 

There was no level playing field in terms of media coverage. All the mainstream media are so biased in their reporting even for mundane matters that I stopped watching them long back. Thankfully, some independent YouTubers stepped up to the place, at great risks to themselves. Ultimately, their news turned out to be correct. By all accounts, they are now a force to reckon with. However, one doesn’t know for how long. On March 20, 2024, the government suddenly issued a notification of a Fact Check Unit (FCU) to identify “fake or false or misleading” online content related to the business of the Central government and demand to remove it from the internet. This would have effectively killed any press freedom on the internet and these YouTubers would have either toed the government line or shut shop. Fortunately, the Supreme Court stayed the notification of the FCU the very next day, on March 21. If only they had stayed the appointment of the two Election Commissioners … 

There is a serious problem when a stay is not granted even when the government does something blatantly unconstitutional or violative of a Supreme Court judgement. The electoral bond scheme turned out to be unconstitutional. However, while the scheme was introduced in 2017 and notified in 2018, it was deemed unconstitutional in 2024. Thus, the country’s polity operated under an unconstitutional act which turned out to be nothing but a legalised extortion racket for six long years and the illegal proceeds continue to fund dubious activities even now. When it was so blatantly unconstitutional prima facie, the balance of justice favoured a stay. The same applies to National Capital Territory of Delhi (Amendment) Act, 2023 and the Chief Election Commissioner and Other Election Commissioners (Appointment, Conditions of Service and Term of Office) Act, 2023 both of which have sought to negate Supreme Court rulings. The way two election commissioners were appointed just before the Parliamentary elections 2024 without following due process was abominable and deserved to be stayed. If, down the road, the ECI appointment Act is declared unconstitutional or illegal, we would still be governed by a polity elected under its provisions for a long five years. 

Then there were the matters of many candidates reportedly being made to withdraw, nomination of candidates not being accepted, and so on. 

With all this, the numbers do not really tell the story. The 237 seats won by the INDIA bloc feel like 337, probably more. If ECI had played fair, if SC had stayed the new ECI appointments, if the EVM related issues had been addressed, if the Electoral Bond scheme had been stayed earlier, if the media was not muzzled, if ED, CBI, IT, Governors were not weaponised to this extent and if ALL the campaigners violating the Model Code of Conduct were prohibited from further campaigning, the results may have been very different … 

When I was handling disaster management, we used to have a slogan for post-devastation scenarios, “Build back better.” Now that the Indian democracy is showing signs of limping up, I have a wish list of actions for building it back better – that will be in a later blog.

Footprints

 

The only way a civil servant thinks he exists or has ever existed is to find his name on something called a Succession Board. Most government offices have this board where the serial numbers, names of the officers and the dates they occupied the hallowed chair are written and prominently displayed, usually behind the chair. Some of these boards go back to ancient times, much before India’s independence also. 

Given this, despite putting in 33 long years in the Indian Police Service, I wonder whether I have ever existed because my name doesn’t figure in (m)any board/s. 

The problem started with my probation/training days itself. Our outdoor in-charge used to be very innovative and introduced two large brass plaques on the training ground at the National Police Academy (NPA) recording the names of all the IPS officers who had passed out from the portals of NPA. After passing out, for some reason, the Academy recommended that I should be removed from service and pursued it vigorously. They succeeded in ensuring that orders terminating my services were issued. Apparently, there were jubilant celebrations in the Academy when news of this reached there and, in the middle of it, someone decided to remove my name from the brass plaque. Fortunately, or unfortunately, the honourable President of India who is never pleased was pleased to cancel the termination order so I survived. Later, when I visited the Academy, I checked to see whether my name had been put back in. It was. While returning from the parade ground to my room, I ran into the officer/ faculty who had vigorously campaigned for my removal. He enquired, “Aur, kya ho raha hai?” I replied, “Woh sab nahi ho raha hai,” and moved on. I wonder whether the brass plaque and my name are still there. 

In the cadre, my first posting was as Sub Divisional Police Officer in Alipurduar. The post was very old and the succession board in that office contained the names of many celebrated officers dating back to really ancient times. It was a matter of pride to see my name alongside theirs. Unfortunately, the sub division has now been converted into a district so there is a Superintendent of Police there and the post and the board have ceased to exist. 

On promotion, I joined as a zonal Additional SP in South 24 Parganas district. Unfortunately for me, that zone has now been subdivided into three full-fledged police districts so, again, the old board is gone. 

My next assignment was a United Nations deployment in Mozambique. In those deployments, there are is no system of succession boards. In any case, once the mission winds up, hardly any trace of it survives. Sometimes, the country also doesn’t survive, let alone a succession board. 

After I came back, I was posted for a few months as Additional SP in North 24 Parganas district. That office has now got shifted and succession board, if any, of the post also must have been subsumed in an unmarked grave of the interminable march of time. 

On promotion, I was posted as SP, Calcutta airport. Those were pre-Kandahar hijacking days and airport security was manned by local Police of the state where any airport was situated. After the Kandahar hijacking, the government decided that the airport security would be handed over to a Central force and CISF was designated to take over the security at the airports in a phased manner. Accordingly, the security of Calcutta airport is now under the charge of an officer of CISF designated as CASO (Chief Airport Security officer). The earlier post and succession board are long gone. 

The next post, DC, Enforcement Branch, Calcutta Police was already in decline when I joined because the control orders were being cancelled one by one. It has now been fairly reduced to a long-deceased letter box and has been relocated. I have no idea if a succession board exists when the post itself faces extinction. 

North Dinajpur, the district where I was SP was carved out of another district called West Dinajpur which might have been carved out of an undivided Dinajpur during British times – the East Dianjpur part became part of East Bengal/ Bangladesh. When this happens, that succession board of the original district disappears, to be replaced by succession boards of the new units, starting with when the unit was formed. Unfortunately, North Dinajpur district has now been splintered into two districts. 

I went on Central deputation as a Commandant. This organisation was undergoing a transformation at that point of time, to becoming a border guarding force. The unit I was heading was in the hinterland and was now merged with other units and the combined unit was located at the border. With this went any hope of mine to have some kind of existence on a succession board. Later, on promotion in that organisation, I held a combination of assignments simultaneously and these combinations were changing frequently so the question of any succession board didn’t arise. 

My second central deputation was with Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS) and since the demands on the organisation were far greater than its capabilities, I devoted my entire energy into a massive reorganisation. All the designations also underwent a transformation. Thus the post of Commissioner became Director General. My name figured in the posts of Commissioner and Joint Commissioner but it’s unlikely that those boards exist any more. In that sense, I dug my own grave by organising the overhaul of BCAS.

My last assignment in the service was so insignificant that there was no succession board. I tried to find the dates my predecessors had occupied the post  so that I could create a succession board but even that record didn’t exist. Thus, I faded gently into that post-retirement good night, unseen, unheard, unrecorded for posterity. 

In my quest for some kind of footprint on the sands of time, I compiled a selection of these blogs into a book hoping that there would be at least some traces of my existence. Unfortunately, just a few days back, my publishers informed that they are winding up their Indian operations and after this month, my book will stop being listed in Amazon, etc., unless I get it reprinted by some other publishers. 

Leads me to think, do I exist? Have I ever existed? I seek solace in Einstein’s quote about Mahatma Gandhi:

But then, apparently, no one knew Gandhi until a film was made on him. I wonder whether anyone ever would make a film on me.

Dial M for Murder (of Democracy)

 

During this entire election (Lok Sabha, 2024), I have been appalled by what the Election Commission of India has done and more so, by what it has not done. The incidents have got curiouser and curiouser.

This has been the longest electoral exercise in India ever, except for 1951-52 when it was held over four months and 68 phases. However, the situation and the process were different then. 314 constituencies elected one member using the first-past-the-post system and 86 constituencies elected two members, one from the general category and one from scheduled castes or scheduled tribes. One constituency elected three representatives. The majority of voting took place in early 1952, but Himachal Pradesh voted in 1951 as its weather is usually inclement in February and March. Plus, India was a young nation and the logistics were truly challenging.

Even now, in India, elections are a mammoth exercise. The electoral roll comprises around 96 crore voters who cast their votes in 12 lakh odd booths. The sanctioned strength of Police all-India is 20 lakhs plus and the Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF) have around 10 lakh personnel. Obviously, the elections cannot be held on one single day. However, was it really necessary to have seven phases spread over 44 long days? A back-of-the-envelope calculation indicates that it can be done with three dates spread over 15 days only. How? 

During elections, due to extensive deployment of forces in an area, regular Policing, border guarding and other stresses on the Police are much less so easily, 50 % of the above 30 lakhs personnel can be mobilised. Looks like a tall ask but, if forced to, a lot of flab in terms of personnel deployed for non-policing duties (I saw one retired officer having 50 CAPF personnel in his house) can be trimmed down. In the current elections, 3.4 lakh CAPF personnel have been mobilised. That can easily go up to 5 lakhs. 

Secondly, my experience is that the personnel at the booth cannot thwart a depredation. A few polling booths are combined into a circle/sector and a force is deployed for each circle/sector. This is the force which patrols the booths in its jurisdiction and is the real deployment that makes for the effectiveness of the election police arrangement. Rather than manning the sensitive and hyper-sensitive booths by CAPF instead of local police, these circles should be made smaller and manned properly. That will reduce the absolute numbers and make for better policing. 

Half the CAPF personnel may be deployed each for Phase I and Phase II, a week apart. Bulk of the CAPF deployment in the Phase I may be relocated for Phase III and will get 10 days for movement and acclimatisation. 

Thus, the elections would be over in two weeks. 

When this is possible, why was the election spread over 44 days during the current elections? The reasons were not logistical. It was just to facilitate one particular “star campaigner” of one particular party to go around the countryside and campaign as much as possible. Unfortunately, it seems to have backfired. Badly. So, ‘Viksit Bharat’ immediately gave way to many things starting with M – Mutton, Machhli (Udhampur, April 12), Musalmaan (Ajmer, April 6), Mangalsutra (Banswara, April 21), Muslim Cricket team (Dhar, May 7), Mujra (Patliputra, May 25) and towards the very end, Mahatma, the unknown (TV interview, May 29). The whole thing was rounded off with a bout of Meditation with or without spectacles but definitely with the cameramen. 

For good measure, there were a few non-M words also, Ghuspetiya (Banswara, April 21), Vote jihad (Barasat, May 28), Reservation to Muslims at the cost of SC, ST, OBC (Dumka, May 28), the “Non-biological Divinity” (Varanasi, May 14), and so on. 

Section I (1) of the Model Code of Conduct (MCC) requires that “No party or candidate shall include in any activity which may aggravate existing differences or create mutual hatred or cause tension between different castes and communities, religious or linguistic." 

Section I (3) of the Model Code of Conduct states, “There shall be no appeal to caste or communal feelings for securing votes …” Would the M-tirades be violations of MCC? Of course, they were, apart from falling foul of various sections of the Representation of People’s Act and IPC. The Election Commission of India (ECI) was silent. It remained silent when the voters were told that not voting for a particular party would be a “sin” as opposed to voting for it which would be “auspicious.” It also remained silent when campaign interviews were telecast in areas in “silent period” before polling. The so-called meditation which was nothing but a campaign ploy was telecast all over during the silent period before the last Phase poll on June 1. 

Then there were the prodigious amounts of lies and untruths purveyed with contemptuous glee. 

“They will put Ram Lalla back in a tent...,” “They will put a Babri lock on the Ram temple...,” “They plan to bulldoze Ram temple...,” “As per their manifesto, 15 % of the budget/ resources will be given away to ghuspetiyas…,” “If you have two buffalos, their government will take away one,” “No one knew about Mahatma Gandhi until a film was made about him…” It’s another matter that no such words were available in any manifesto and around 12,600,000 books on Gandhi are available in the US Library of Congress collection. Tempos loaded with cash of Ambani and Adani were never found. 

MCC does have prohibition against lies. Section I (2) directs, “Criticism of other parties or their workers based on unverified allegations or distortion shall be avoided.” 

Experiments with weaponised lies aren’t supposed to succeed with such ease, even if they come dressed in supreme arrogance. 

Unless future Election Commissions dig even lower, the current elections will probably go down in history as the rock bottom in terms of transparency, probity and fairness, with obvious implications for its presiding deities.