indianotes

Recently, the government proposed the “One Nation One Election” (or 129^th Constitution Amendment Bill) for simultaneous elections to the Lok Sabha & Vidhan Sabhas.

Naturally, this being India, the proposal has sparked controversy, outrage, memes, and the usual quota of shouting matches on TV and outside parliament. Proponents cite the huge cost savings, and “Netas” having more time to attend their duties instead of constantly hopping from rally to rally. The opposition is not happy (are they ever?) and cites the death of democracy, ascribing ulterior motives to the government.

But amidst all the shouting, nobody seems to have asked the public what they want!

To understand what the “aam aadmi” thinks, I decided to conduct a small “dipstick” survey.

The first person I interviewed was a middle-aged woman. She vehemently opposed the proposal. “Now, I get a saree for each election – centre, state and municipality. And from each political party! So this is not fair.”

Another man opined, “PM Modi will not visit our city that often. So roads will only be repaired once in five years.”

An older and wiser gentleman said, “Voting makes us feel important for a short while. So it’s good to do this often.”

His companion agreed. “Rich people get to vote all the time. They are shareholders, board members, club members and what not. So they get many opportunities to vote. But we poor people only get to vote during elections. And they want to take this away from us.”

 “I sell tea outside polling booths. More elections = more business. This policy is an attack on chaiwallahs like me,” said a tea stall owner, echoing the views of many in the business community – including poster makers, taxi drivers, saree sellers… not to forget the opinion poll companies and TV channels.

Listening to all, I had a sudden revelation. Why not “One nation, many elections”!

Give the people what they want. Isn’t that the purpose of democracy?

What we need to do is create many more opportunities for people to vote, feel important, and get more freebies and holidays.

The first new elections we should consider are those of the Indian cricket coach and captain. Why leave this to selectors, when we have 1.4 billion experts? After all, every one of us knows (better than Ajit Agarkar does) who should be the captain. This could happen, say, every couple of years. When the team wins, we’ll feel we played a part; when they lose, we’ll have the satisfaction of saying, “Well, we didn’t vote for him“.

The same could be done for IPL teams. After all, shouldn’t Mumbaikars have a say in who runs their team?

Or movies. Why can’t viewers vote for the National Awards? Or music awards? Or best actor? How about a vote for the stupidest ad of the year?

Maybe the public can vote on which days to have public holidays. Why do these need to remain unchanged every year?

I’m sure you get the idea. Almost anything can be voted on. Of course, we have to be careful of Brexit-type blunders, but I’m sure committees can figure out suitable guidelines.

Consider the benefits:

• Public gets to miss work (or be late) more often. They also get more freebies and gifts.
• Media companies will be happy and can have shouting matches all year round.
• Opinion polling companies will have a field day!
• Big boost to the GDP from election expenditure, which will be continuous.
• Influencers will have many more occasions to show off their indelible ink.
• The government will be happy, since public attention will shift from politics and corruption.
• Even RaGa will be happy with so many more elections to complain about!

Finally, democracy will be strengthened – we won’t have one vote, but many!

And to start with, I think we should immediately conduct an election to decide the matter.