Have you ever heard of a Republican or Democratic senator or member of the US House of Congress dumping their parties and crossing over to the other?
Or indeed a Conservative or Labour or Liberal Democrat legislator in Britain doing so?
Or anything of this nature in any other European democracy?
I dare say not.
But here in the largest democracy, such canny crossovers, come election time especially, are now getting to be legion.
I fear that being the mother of democracy, the maternal instincts of the matrabhoomni are too indulgent.
The Supreme Court has recently struck two salutary blows to bring an increasingly derailed democracy back on track. This by first pronouncing the electoral bonds system of political funding unconstitutional, and a potential breeding ground for quid pro quos, even money laundering, and, second, by cancelling an indulgent immunity thus far enjoyed by legislators in denoting gratifications received either to cast votes or make lobbyist speeches in parliament and assemblies as legislative privilege.
The court, squarely calling the practice by its proper name, ergo bribery, has struck this down and held such subjects to be liable to criminal procedures just as any common citizen.
To the best of our anticipation, these two initiatives will not but clean up much that has gone wrong with the mother of democracy.
But, the biggest distortion, we are afraid, remains to be set right – one that goes to the heart of the authenticity of the principle of representative government as being the foundation of democracy before anything else.
Also read: Nearly 45% of MLAs Who Defected Between 2016 and 2020 Joined the BJP
The citizen seeks to ask the question of the defecting legislator of a given ideology/political party: “How is it that you so cavalierly abuse my franchise by crossing over to an outfit I did not vote you to without my say so? Having gone over to a rival party, you no longer represent me and the constituency that sent you to the legislature. In your new avatar thus you occupy a space for which you have no representational mandate.”
If the citizen is constitutionally correct in this complaint, clearly we are not running an authentic democracy but a form of a corrupt kleptocracy, wherein the value of a vote may be brought to nought by politicians for whom politics is no longer a service but a corporate career, permitting smart corporate moves from one company to a more lucrative one.
Philosophical individualism, which is the hallmark of the capitalist way of life, thus becomes also the hallmark of political life, throwing to the winds the public accountability of those who are meant, indeed oath-bound, to represent and further the needs and interests of the people who have made them legislators.
Sadly, the anti-defection law, much as it was slated to bar this practice of lucrative crossovers, has proved woefully inadequate to counter the cunning of the power-hungry offspring of the mother of democracy.
The honourable Supreme Court may therefore lend its usual constructive ear to the suggestion that such legislators who wish to desert their authorised and representative political beat and go elsewhere must be required to go back to the people for a fresh mandate to do so in bypolls organised for the purpose, and funded by the concerned subjects.
It is of course the case that only parliament can make a law to enable this to happen, and not the top court.
Also read: The Battle for 2024 Is Between Modi and His Corporate Backers, and the People of India
But were the top court to express itself on the question, one that has occupied it so intimately in recent days, the citizenry may feel both vindicated and bolstered to take up the cause till the executive of the day is pressured enough to do so.
After all, doing so would only bring further repute to Bharat Mata as truly the mother of democracy , a dame who frowns sternly at rogue children who have turned the nation’s political life into a ball park, if not a bull ring.
The top court may concur with the view that the system of franchise cannot be permitted to degrade into a political IPL, or a stock market, where only the exchange value of the day determines political choice, leaving the electorate to beat its forlorn breast, and have no recourse but to lord Ram.
Badri Raina taught at Delhi University.
