Debate on the Issue – A Brief History
In India, simultaneous elections to the Lok Sabha (House of The People) and Vidhan Sabhas (State Legislative Assemblies) were organized in the years 1951-52, 1957, 1962 and 1967. Thereafter, however, the schedule could not be maintained and the elections to the Lok Sabha and the Vidhan Sabhas have still not been realigned.
The next General Election to the Lok Sabha is scheduled for 2019. Elections for the Vidhan Sabhas of 5 States are scheduled for 2017, for 13 States in 2018, for 9 States in 2019, for 1 State 2020 and the remaining are scheduled for 2021.
The issue of simultaneous elections was debated by the Law Commission in its 107thReport in 1999 (Reform of Electoral Laws) , where in it was mentioned that – “The rule ought to be one election once in five years for Lok Sabha and all Legislative Assemblies”.
Recently, Parliamentary Standing Committee on Personnel, Public Grievances, Law and Justice presented its 79th Report on ‘Feasibility of holding Simultaneous Elections to the House of People (Lok Sabha) and State Legislative Assemblies’ on 17th December 2015.
Several structural changes will need to be done in case a decision is made to conduct simultaneous election, including possibility of Constitutional amendments to Articles 83, 172, 85 and 174 to streamline the process.
Analysis:-
Simultaneous elections to the Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabhas – the prime minister suggested it some time back, and recently the president voiced his support for the idea too – are back on the nation’s agenda. To take it forward, the government has sought the opinion of citizens on the issue through the MyGov digital platform.
In an interview given to CNN-News18, Prime Minister had said that simultaneous elections to the central and state legislatures would aid governance.
If nothing, this step would at least allow elected representatives a longer, and hence more appropriate, time-frame to evaluate public policy. Currently, from the politicians’ side, public policy evaluation is captive to electoral cycles and verdicts.
An elected representative is forced to evaluate policy not on the basis of its outcome, but on the basis of its real or perceived political fallouts almost every year. In the current system, national political parties in power are forced to do this many times in a tenure of five years (not counting by-elections), and regional parties at least twice.
One effect of this ‘electoral’ evaluation of policies is that some economically good policies are killed while still in infancy, and the bad ones continue.
For example, the reforms initiated by the Narasimha Rao government in 1991.In ‘1994, when Congress lost the assembly elections in several states, Rao decided that inflation was the thing to focus on, liberalisation be damned’.
Reforms, which ideally should have been given a longer time to play out, were underplayed too soon. Since then politicians have been unwilling to sell reforms due to short-term electoral consequences.
This is not to argue that ministers always tend to make wrong public policy choices. But the first task of a politician is to seek and maintain power; sound logic and economics comes second.
So, in a good policy vs good politics trade-off, it may be that ministers side with good politics even while knowing fully well that they would have to sacrifice sound policy.
Simultaneous elections to the central and state assemblies give ministers and representatives a longer period—five years in India’s case—where they can focus only on policy and not be weighed down by politics. Free from the fear of polls and vote-banks for five years, policy evaluation can then be taken up through the appropriate tools.
In purely economic terms, there are some policies for which the short-term political costs are too high. The simultaneous elections idea would go a long way in eliminating those costs.
This is not to say that there will be no hiccups in the idea of simultaneous elections. Here are some possible hurdles.
First, what happens if a government, state or central, falls? This will de-sychronise elections again. So provisions may have to be made that even if governments fall, a new coalition must be elected in its place, even as a stopgap.
Second, during the changeover period, some state governments will have an extended life and some shortened ones, in order to hold the first of the elections simultaneously. States which face a shortened tenure, will protest. So the changes will clearly have to be negotiated in advance with major national and regional political parties.
The key to simultaneous polls thus, is political consensus.
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- In the Large States category (overall), Chhattisgarh ranks 1st, followed by Odisha and Telangana, whereas, towards the bottom are Maharashtra at 16th, Assam at 17th and Gujarat at 18th. Gujarat is one State that has seen startling performance ranking 5th in the PAI 2021 Index outperforming traditionally good performing States like Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, but ranks last in terms of Delta
- In the Small States category (overall), Nagaland tops, followed by Mizoram and Tripura. Towards the tail end of the overall Delta ranking is Uttarakhand (9th), Arunachal Pradesh (10th) and Meghalaya (11th). Nagaland despite being a poor performer in the PAI 2021 Index has come out to be the top performer in Delta, similarly, Mizoram’s performance in Delta is also reflected in it’s ranking in the PAI 2021 Index
- In terms of Equity, in the Large States category, Chhattisgarh has the best Delta rate on Equity indicators, this is also reflected in the performance of Chhattisgarh in the Equity Pillar where it ranks 4th. Following Chhattisgarh is Odisha ranking 2nd in Delta-Equity ranking, but ranks 17th in the Equity Pillar of PAI 2021. Telangana ranks 3rd in Delta-Equity ranking even though it is not a top performer in this Pillar in the overall PAI 2021 Index. Jharkhand (16th), Uttar Pradesh (17th) and Assam (18th) rank at the bottom with Uttar Pradesh’s performance in line with the PAI 2021 Index
- Odisha and Nagaland have shown the best year-on-year improvement under 12 Key Development indicators.
- In the 60:40 division States, the top three performers are Kerala, Goa and Tamil Nadu and, the bottom three performers are Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand and Bihar.
- In the 90:10 division States, the top three performers were Himachal Pradesh, Sikkim and Mizoram; and, the bottom three performers are Manipur, Assam and Meghalaya.
- Among the 60:40 division States, Orissa, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh are the top three performers and Tamil Nadu, Telangana and Delhi appear as the bottom three performers.
- Among the 90:10 division States, the top three performers are Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland; and, the bottom three performers are Jammu and Kashmir, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh
- Among the 60:40 division States, Goa, West Bengal and Delhi appear as the top three performers and Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Bihar appear as the bottom three performers.
- Among the 90:10 division States, Mizoram, Himachal Pradesh and Tripura were the top three performers and Jammu & Kashmir, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh were the bottom three performers
- West Bengal, Bihar and Tamil Nadu were the top three States amongst the 60:40 division States; while Haryana, Punjab and Rajasthan appeared as the bottom three performers
- In the case of 90:10 division States, Mizoram, Assam and Tripura were the top three performers and Nagaland, Jammu & Kashmir and Uttarakhand featured as the bottom three
- Among the 60:40 division States, the top three performers are Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Orissa and the bottom three performers are Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand and Goa
- In the 90:10 division States, the top three performers are Mizoram, Sikkim and Nagaland and the bottom three performers are Manipur and Assam
In a diverse country like India, where each State is socially, culturally, economically, and politically distinct, measuring Governance becomes increasingly tricky. The Public Affairs Index (PAI 2021) is a scientifically rigorous, data-based framework that measures the quality of governance at the Sub-national level and ranks the States and Union Territories (UTs) of India on a Composite Index (CI).
States are classified into two categories – Large and Small – using population as the criteria.
In PAI 2021, PAC defined three significant pillars that embody Governance – Growth, Equity, and Sustainability. Each of the three Pillars is circumscribed by five governance praxis Themes.
The themes include – Voice and Accountability, Government Effectiveness, Rule of Law, Regulatory Quality and Control of Corruption.
At the bottom of the pyramid, 43 component indicators are mapped to 14 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that are relevant to the States and UTs.
This forms the foundation of the conceptual framework of PAI 2021. The choice of the 43 indicators that go into the calculation of the CI were dictated by the objective of uncovering the complexity and multidimensional character of development governance
The Equity Principle
The Equity Pillar of the PAI 2021 Index analyses the inclusiveness impact at the Sub-national level in the country; inclusiveness in terms of the welfare of a society that depends primarily on establishing that all people feel that they have a say in the governance and are not excluded from the mainstream policy framework.
This requires all individuals and communities, but particularly the most vulnerable, to have an opportunity to improve or maintain their wellbeing. This chapter of PAI 2021 reflects the performance of States and UTs during the pandemic and questions the governance infrastructure in the country, analysing the effectiveness of schemes and the general livelihood of the people in terms of Equity.
Growth and its Discontents
Growth in its multidimensional form encompasses the essence of access to and the availability and optimal utilisation of resources. By resources, PAI 2021 refer to human resources, infrastructure and the budgetary allocations. Capacity building of an economy cannot take place if all the key players of growth do not drive development. The multiplier effects of better health care, improved educational outcomes, increased capital accumulation and lower unemployment levels contribute magnificently in the growth and development of the States.
The Pursuit Of Sustainability
The Sustainability Pillar analyses the access to and usage of resources that has an impact on environment, economy and humankind. The Pillar subsumes two themes and uses seven indicators to measure the effectiveness of government efforts with regards to Sustainability.
The Curious Case Of The Delta
The Delta Analysis presents the results on the State performance on year-on-year improvement. The rankings are measured as the Delta value over the last five to 10 years of data available for 12 Key Development Indicators (KDI). In PAI 2021, 12 indicators across the three Pillars of Equity (five indicators), Growth (five indicators) and Sustainability (two indicators). These KDIs are the outcome indicators crucial to assess Human Development. The Performance in the Delta Analysis is then compared to the Overall PAI 2021 Index.
Key Findings:-
In the Scheme of Things
The Scheme Analysis adds an additional dimension to ranking of the States on their governance. It attempts to complement the Governance Model by trying to understand the developmental activities undertaken by State Governments in the form of schemes. It also tries to understand whether better performance of States in schemes reflect in better governance.
The Centrally Sponsored schemes that were analysed are National Health Mission (NHM), Umbrella Integrated Child Development Services scheme (ICDS), Mahatma Gandh National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan (SmSA) and MidDay Meal Scheme (MDMS).
National Health Mission (NHM)
INTEGRATED CHILD DEVELOPMENT SERVICES (ICDS)
MID- DAY MEAL SCHEME (MDMS)
SAMAGRA SHIKSHA ABHIYAN (SMSA)
MAHATMA GANDHI NATIONAL RURAL EMPLOYMENT GUARANTEE SCHEME (MGNREGS)