Natural selection or election
- Sangai Express Editorial :: March 27, 2014 -

Another election is just around the corner and understandably many people are in a state of excitement.

This time it is the parliamentary election, more precisely voting for election of two Lok Sabha MPs from the State.

As compared with State Assembly elections, national parties have much bigger stake than local or regional parties in parliamentary elections.

Yet, no political parties whether national, regional or local can engage themselves with State Assembly elections and parliamentary elections separately.

From the perspectives of political parties and candidates, every election is crucial and they are eager to win every election.

But from the outlook of voters and given the electoral system and (actual) practices seen in India, elections do no matter enough to the level it ought to be in a democracy.

Elections per se are crucial and inevitable for a democracy. But juxtaposition of democracy and the electoral practices seen in India gives a very awkward picture.

The Indian electoral system has a plethora of disadvantages and shortcomings.

The inconsistency between the votes registered for a party and the seats conquered in State Assembly or Parliament, the multitude of political parties, personality cult in party system, utilization of communal allegiances and armed hoodlums, excessive employment of muscle and money power, wrongful utilization of governmental machinery, corruptive exercises like booth-capturing, intimidation and impersonation of voters are ubiquitous negative features of Indian electoral system.

The threat of booth occupation has been prevalent from the days of second general election of 1957, particularly in Bihar.

The incident slowly and steadily was diffused throughout the country in various kinds and degrees and Manipur is no exception.

Since the Indian republic came into being, the periodical elections, as some people see, are grand festivals of showdown between rival candidates in the form of flexing muscle power, throwing money power and browbeating ignorant or rather innocent voters. Generally, those candidates who were stronger and richer won the elections.

The question of popularity or competency seldom figured in the electoral system of India.

The fact that almost one-third of the Indian MPs have multiple criminal records and around half of them are millionaires says something very significant.

It is in this context some observers say Indian electoral system is dubious.

However, all along, the mass were made to believe that they were electing their own representatives and that they could elect candidates of their own choice.

How true this assertion is needs serious introspection and scholarly engagement. The far-reaching state propaganda machinery has been churning out edifice after edifice of false propaganda and lies misleading the unsuspecting public.

We wonder the present set of MLAs and MPs, and their predecessors, the so-called representatives were actually elected or selected.

We just cannot imagine the degree of electoral malpractices and arm-twisting tactics that our sitting MLAs and MPs would have probably employed in the previous elections.

By saying so, we don't mean their rivals fought the elections fairly. And we call them our representatives and the country a republic.

The whole concept and understanding of republic and democracy needs re-definition in this part of Earth.

A closer analysis of the preceding elections indicates that it were the candidates who decided their own fates during elections, not the mass.

Winning or losing an election all depended on how many millions a candidate can spend, how effectively he/she can employ all sorts of arm-twisting tactics and how much he/she can hoodwink the mass by means of volumes and volumes of lies, and of course impressive promises which would never see the light of day. After all the rival candidates have utilised all the resources and wits, and when they matched each other in every department, then it appears that it is Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection, not the mass which would ultimately elect the most 'capable' candidate to the State Assembly or the Parliament.

'Poor candidate' is something hardly found in the lexicon of Indian electoral system and the same applies to Manipur.

A poor candidate winning an election, how well qualified he/she may be, is something very rare in the entire electoral history of the country.

The way elections are contested in this part of Earth may be best described by Herbert Spencer's famous phrase 'survival of the fittest'.

The tragedy is Herbert Spencer coined this phrase after reading Charles Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection and he was broadly referring to physical fitness but a people's representative or a legislator needs much more than physical fitness.

We sincerely hope there is genuine election this time. Heaven forbids election continues to be Natural Selection.