YPOST

INDIA'S TRUTH BEHIND SUCCESSFUL 

ELECTION SETUP

INDIA’S general election is a massive affair. It will be starting from April 7th and will continue until May 12th, across seven phases, 815m people will be eligible to cast votes. Since the previous one, in 2009, an extra 100m people have been added to the voters’ roll. Political parties may break limits on what they are supposed to spend.Turnout is roughly the same.

60-70% of the electorate are expected to take part in this 16th general election since independence. Nor does anybody see a serious threat of violence, even in areas afflicted by Maoist or other insurgents.

On the face of it, such a triumph is puzzling. Much else organised by public officials is notably shoddy: try making use of state-run schools or hospitals, getting help from a policeman, or relying on food-subsidy schemes. Corruption, waste, delays and mismanagement are depressingly common. Notice, too, the embarrassing failures of India’s navy, plagued by fatal accidents in the past year, the prolonged lack of investment in the national railways, or the state’s failure to build enough roads, power lines or ports. How can India get the electoral process to work so well without even completing the other neccessary things?

Answer to this question is that elections are narrowly focused tasks of limited duration that are regularly repeated. Where similar conditions hold, bureaucrats prove similarly successful. One example is the ten-yearly national census; a newer success is a scheme to build the world’s largest biometric database, scanning their eyes, fingerprints and more. Another possible answer might be is that state employees respond well when given tasks of great prestige and put under careful public scrutiny. Thus India’s space agency last year launched a spaceship to Mars which continues on course, for a remarkably small budget. A third answer is that bureaucrats succeed when free from political meddling and corruption. The Election Commission is independent in nature. And whereas policemen spend much of their time collecting bribes to pay to their superiors, election officials have neither big budgets to divert without really having the perfect opportunity to extract bribes.

The electoral process may hold lessons that could be applied elsewhere. One is the value of setting a simple, well-defined target. Another lesson is the importance of transparency. It is harder for politicians to meddle and steal when bureaucrats, like election officials, are under intense public scrutiny. Extending the country’s right-to-information law, however embarrassing the rot that has been exposed, has proved immensely valuable. Last, bureaucrats become more efficient, and less corrupt, when they lose discretionary powers. Those who organise elections have no discretion to decide who is allowed to vote or where; they are only supposed to ensure it all works efficiently, leaving little incentive for people to bribe or bully them. Whoever wins this year's election could do worse than look at the electoral process itself as a model of how to sharpen up India's bureaucracy.

Sayani Mukherjee

M.Sc Media P.G 1