Democracy is a work in progress
Bharat being the largest democracy of the world we have an obligation to show the world how to make democratic way of governing ourselves can work effectively at this scale and diversity. We have long way to go. In last two decades we have degraded electoral process and lot of unaccounted or corrupt money is flowing into this. This is one of the biggest challenge and has become major point of concern for lot of well intended citizens or leaders to stay away from active political career.
Problems and challenges in electoral politics are having so many variables that problems looks like a spaghetti mess. There is no single silver bullet. On many of the issues we are caught in catch 22 situation.
Worlds oldest democracy (by modern definition) USA is also facing many challenges even though they have functioning democracy for more than 200+ years. Lot of innovations and improvements have happened in USA around funding for political campaigns but still on certain issues policy making is not aligning with overall majority opinion. Some examples like gun laws, education loans or cost, healthcare cost etc indicate this. Crowdfunding of campaigns is still in its early stages. Majority of the funds still flow through PACs (Political Action Committees) run by the various industries. Interests of certain industries takes higher priority than larger good of the society. Hence there is a disconnect between larger social demands and actually what gets done in the hill. This problem is not unique to USA. Most of the democratic counties face this challenge at various degrees. In Bharat we have lot to improve on how we fund our political parties. We are not democratic in real sense when it comes to funding electoral campaigns for the full scale. People feel already burdened with income tax greater than 30% and average sales tax greater than 10%. They are also burdened with high inflation, raising education and medical costs. Many in middle class have many EMIs/mortgages to pay. In this situation asking people to donate to political parties or campaigns doesn’t get received well. Some people feel agitated when you try to persuade them to donate. On the other hand campaign costs have gone so high. In Bharat for upcoming Karnataka state elections it is anticipated that each candidate will spend close to 50 crore rupees for the campaign.
These are some of the objectives we need to achieve to get out of this very complicated situation. Solutions for these problems will not be sequential. It is going to be iterative and will run in cycles with incremental gains. Gains from one area will help feed improvements in other and visa versa
Objectives
- Gain efficiency in governance to reduce income tax and sales tax by 5 to 10%
- Gain efficiencies in education, housing, healthcare to reduce costs substantially. In some cases it has to go down by more than 50%.
- Incentives citizen donations to political parties beyond tax exemption on donations.
- Gain efficiencies in electoral campaigns and reduce costs substantially. It has to go even lower than current limits set by EC with the help of digitalization.
- Socialize this change continuously, seed these thoughts through academics, make it a monthly or a quarterly ritual by declaring a day of democracy when everyone will donate to a leader or party of their choice.
Lot of these efficiencies can be gained through digitalization. We have need to accelerate digitization of all these areas to make them affordable and abundant. We spend close to 5% of worlds GDP in IT right now and we have lot of ground do cover yet.
Ideally if our governance costs or taxes drop to less than 25%, citizens can be persuaded to donate about 5% to political parties. In such scenario we may have a fair chance of building political organizations which are aligned with larger good of the society. It may also make politics accessible to large number of well intended people without lot of wealth but lot of good character and intentions to serve the society.
Digitization has already started bringing some changes to democracy and I hope in coming years it penetrates deeper and touches multiple layers. I hope it helps us to “Do more with less” and remove the burden of dirty money from politics.
Accelerating digitalization of democracy is going to help drive improvements and solve some of these extremely difficult problems.
It would be very wrong to say technology alone is the solution. Along with it we have lot of work to change the mindset and bring in new ideas on how we run democracy and how we see politics as a career.
Dr Ambedkar who was the chairman of drafting committee of constitution of Bharat said this in his speech.
“However good a Constitution may be, it is sure to turn out bad because those who are called to work it, happen to be a bad lot. However bad a Constitution may be, it may turn out to be good if those who are called to work it, happen to be a good lot.
…The Constitution can provide only the organs of State such as the Legislature, the Executive and the Judiciary. The factors on which the working of those organs of the State depends are the people and the political parties they will set up as their instruments to carry out their wishes and their politics.”
On similar lines, technology can be an enabler in reducing costs, gaining efficiency, bring transparency and harness collective ideas and aspirations. However if politics is still run by bad lot technology won’t be able to help.
We have urgent need to revive our narratives on how we look at political organizations, politics, electoral campaign and it requires some fresh ideas. Lot of optimism has to be infused into all of these areas. Hope and aspiration to make it better has to be established. We need to celebrate and reintroduce great political leaders who walked on this earth before. This social psychology or mindset work is equally important as other efforts.
