This is the first time since independence that a former President is roped in to head a committee to justify the acts of a government that is going the extra mile to make its point.
Published Oct 01, 2024 | 9:00 AM ⚊ Updated Oct 01, 2024 | 9:00 AM
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Finally as apprehended, the Union Cabinet adopted the High Level Committee report on “One Nation One Election” headed by former President Ram Nath Kovind a couple of weeks ago. This decision is fraught with multitudes of questions rather than presenting coherent answers to the nation.
Most importantly, a former President heading a committee itself is a Constitutional impropriety. This is the first time since independence that a former President is roped in to head a committee to justify the acts of a government that is going the extra mile to make its point.
Secondly, this is also perhaps the first time that certain constitutional amendments are proposed, which, in fact, are aimed at hollowing out the essence of the Constitution.
Most commentaries focused on how this idea of “One Nation One Election” goes against the basic structural doctrine developed by the Supreme Court over time.
Without going into that aspect, I shall dwell on the contents of the report and how it is curated as a fallacious argument to advance the ruling dispensation’s political ambitions. This article also tries to reason how the recent history also twisted and misinterpreted to suit the ruling dispensations’ political goals.
The report, in tune with the hallmark of the BJP era’s bulky charge sheets, ran close to some 19000 pages. However, the actual operational part of the report is not more than 200 pages.
The remaining approximately 18,700 are mere annexures running from the 1932 Franchise Committee report to various reports including Law Commission reports, Parliamentary Standing Committee reports and laws related to local bodies from all the states apart from written submissions from state election commissions.
Though in the preface the report said that this had the potential to impact the lives of the whole nation, the consultation process adopted by the HLC is not akin to it.
The consultation process merely includes readymade think tanks that usually toe the government of the day’s line and few individuals who are not much in public glare.
The set of judiciary whom the HLC consulted is the ones who refused to go against the Modi dispensation on various issues of public importance and the actuality of public consultation reflects that there are only 21,558 responses from the general public.
Most importantly, civil society institutions such as the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), People’s Union of Civil Liberties and former Election Commissioners are noticeably absent.
Similarly, the HLC which took oath to work irrespective of their political differences could not get a response from the Indian National Congress.
The thing to be noted is that most of the political parties that responded to Modi’s call for a “One Nation One Election” are directly or indirectly allied with the BJP since 2014. This raises doubts over the impartial public consultation process set in motion by the HLC.
Apart from several inconsistencies and improprieties, the report is also filled with conflict of interest in my opinion.
Economist NK Singh who co-authored a paper titled “Macroeconomic Impact of Macroeconomic impact of harmonising electoral cycle- Evidence in India” with Dr Prachi Mishra is part of High Level Committee (HLC).
Quoting from the report, the HLC stated, without any substantiation or proof from field experience, “The findings in the paper suggest relatively higher economic growth, lower inflation, higher investments, and improved quality of expenditure following periods of synchronised elections, as compared to those that were not synchronised.”
This is nothing but hypothetical expectations, similar to economists’ forecasting of recovery from the subprime global economic crisis, and thus relying on such reports is problematic.
To be precise except assertions, the said report “Macroeconomic Impact of Macroeconomic impact of harmonising electoral cycle – Evidence in India” does quantify actual losses due to the existing electoral practice in India.
Since independence, perhaps, this would be the major policy reshuffle planned based on allegedly intangible costs caused by a prevalent system.
The growth story of India since 2014, under the present dispensation, is a cause of concern. A recent paper published by the United Nations University felt that India’s economic performance is hard to assess as the government had not published any official data on employment since 2011.
The same applies to data transparency, which is essential for the independent evaluation of economic growth. The key question is: When no such data is available for review by independent economic and institutional experts, on what basis can the High Level Committee conclude that continuous elections are slowing the nation’s growth prospects? This remains a trillion-dollar question.
The HLC report impromptu commentary tries to convey that the election cycle causes uncertainty in policy decisions and tries its best to establish a connection between the trio — uncertainty, delayed decision-making processes and the delays in execution of the project. It also tries to establish that the delayed execution of projects brings policy paralysis.
This whole narration shifts the discussion from key foundations of economic growth — availability of credit, consumer confidence and investor confidence in the policy framework adopted by the governments of the day and its international linkages.
To mention here, the consumer confidence index reports periodically published by the Reserve Bank of India never admitted that economic growth took a hit under Modi’s dispensation.
And also it does not establish any connection between the electoral cycle and economic advancement. When that is the case, how come the High Level Committee, handpicked by the Modi government, concluded that the country is facing paralysis due to continuous elections? Nobody knows.
For any country, credit availability and the ability of consumers to spend on essential and non-essential items become the core of the economic policy foundation.
Credit availability is linked to and influenced by several factors including boom and bust cycles in international finance capital as the country’s economy is integrated to the same both vertically and horizontally.
Consumers’ ability to spend is linked directly to the realisation of surplus profit, for which the ability to spend lays the foundation.
For the ability to spend, though the working population of the country has the ability to earn, the actual availability of employment opportunities is the key. On this count, the government faltered very badly since 2014.
That is the reality due to which the government is not at all willing to release official data.
The High Level Committee’s report and discussion actually tried very hard to cover up these basic details and used the unrealistic and baseless argument that the democratic process and elections are the root cause of the economic failure or lack of economic growth in the country.
Thus the High Level Committee on “One Nation One Election” left many more questions unanswered than it answered. The logic it tried to develop not only fraught problems but also fraught with lack of sufficient data, corroborative evidence and even basic estimates.
(The author is a public intellectual, practising as an advocate in Hyderabad)
