Month: May 2014

By Pradip Phanjoubam

One of the things which has come across in a rather troubling way in the aftermath of the resounding BJP victory in the recently concluded Indian Parliamentary elections 2014 is the difficulty of determining a majority verdict in the Westminster model of Parliamentary democracy, particularly in a multi-party scenario as is the case in India. Long after the elections are over and the verdict announced, the debate continues as to whether it was a fair majority the winners won. As we know now, the BJP won a majority on its own with a comfortable margin of 282 in a house of 543. Together with allies, the BJP led NDA totaled 336 MPs.

More election data, as they unfold, however has revealed more than apparent. Most importantly, as it turned out, the number of seats the winners won did not seemingly correspond with their vote shares. To be more precise, only 31 percent of the votes polled went to the BJP and this extremely low percentage was what won the party its clear majority, and according to reports, this is the lowest votes polled percentage ever for a party to win the majority in an Indian election.

Thankfully, though this percentage is alarmingly low, the BJP at least was the party which not only returned the most number of MPs but also its 31 percent vote share is the highest of all parties in the fray, somewhat moderating the debates which followed the election results. But here too it is not totally bereft of causes for further consternations. The Congress which lost miserably, returning only 44 seats, had a vote share of 19.3 percent. This leaves them behind the BJP by just 12 percents votes polled. In other words, for only 12 percent more votes, the BJP was ahead of the Congress by 238 seats. This, as Siddharth Varadarajan notes, amount to 12 percent vote difference transforming into 500 percent seat difference. Something obviously is seriously wrong with this system’s way of determining a majority, a democracy mechanism popularly referred to as the first-past-the-post system.

Before digging deeper into the seeming inconsistencies brought to the fore by the election results, a little discussion on the nature of this universally acknowledge flaw in the system would be interesting. The Anglo-Saxon model of democracy which allows for the direct election of legislators by the electorate within segmented constituencies, hindsight knowledge has underscored, is essentially meant for a polarized two party contest. If this was so, chances of big discrepancies between vote shares and seats shares reaching alarming proportion would have been minimized. In multi-cornered contests, as is a normal feature in Indian elections, the flaw in the first-past-the-post system can be grotesquely accentuated, as the country is getting to see this time.

Indeed, in this system, theoretically a party can win majority vote share but lose all seats. Consider a radical scenario in which a party fields candidates in all 543 constituencies but comes a close second in all of them. This party would end up with no MPs at all in the Parliament. Another party may field just two candidates and win both. This second party would therefore be ahead in terms of MPs though with only a negligible vote share overall. Yet a third party may field candidates in all constituencies, win 272 narrowly and lose the rest miserably. With 272 MPs in Parliament this party would have the majority to form the next government, but obviously would be below the vote share won by the first party which could not return even one seat.

Under normal circumstances however, the mathematical doctrine of probability, and human nature, would ensure the party which comes out victorious at the end of the elections not only garners the most seats in Parliament (or Assembly) but also is somewhat proportionately ahead of rivals in vote share too. This flaw manifested in most previous Indian elections, but not as stark as this time. The alarming gulf this time, as experts have surmised, is an indication of the peculiarly fragmented nature of political loyalties of the average Indian at this juncture of its history, in response to the manners election issues were pushed during campaigning.

This being what it is, though the election determined what is deemed a “majority verdict”, the debate continues whether it was truly a majority the winners won. There have been suggestions that the Indian electoral system should be modified to bring in elements of the other popular democracy model, that of the proportional representation system, to make the Indian system a hybrid of the two.

A glimpse at what might have been in a hypothetical situation of India, instead of the Anglo-Saxon model, adopted the proportional representation system followed in much of Continental Europe, should be enlightening. In such a scenario, the 2014 election verdict would have meant the BJP would be entitled to send deputies to 31 percent of the total seats of the Parliament and Congress 19. It would have been a hung Parliament and a coalition government would have been the only option left.

In the first-past-the-post system, it is a number of independent micro decisions made by different electorates in varied constituencies in varied regions which determine the aggregate winner. In the proportional representation system, the aggregate is primary and the constituencies secondary. Determining the majority’s will in a vast country like India obviously is not as simple as it seems. I would imagine the problem borders the metaphysical. A rough analogy would be the continued necessity for two different approaches to the calculation of critical area in mathematics, hence both integral and differential calculus remain vitally relevant.

Writing of this problem in “All Life is Problem Solving” German philosopher Karl Popper says both the democracy models have their strengths and weaknesses. If we have seen the flaws of the Anglo-Saxon model this time, the proportional representation system too is not devoid of shortcomings. As for instance, a particular region may totally reject a party, but at the end of the election, the region can end up with deputies of the party it rejected representing it. Popper’s conclusion is, it does not matter which democracy system is followed for the most important virtue of democracy is that it is a system in which the people can change their government without the need for bloodshed.

Returning briefly then to more seeming disproportion between seats won and votes polled by different parties in these elections, here are a few more cases. In UP the BSP got 20 percent votes, but won no seats at all. Likewise as P Sainath writes, in West Bengal, the Left Front got nearly 30 percent of the vote and just two seats. The Congress got less than 10 per cent but took four. The Trinamool Congress got 40 per cent of the vote, but 80 per cent of the seats, winning 34 of the 42 in the state.

Quite obviously, nobody is seriously thinking of having the Indian democracy model changed with retrospective effective. The BJP won, there can be no question about it, and this answer is final this time, and will stay till the next general elections. But, perhaps the results this time are an indication that the system needs an overhaul in the future.

One more observation needs to be made here. Though the number of seats it won is limited this time, in terms of votes polled, the Congress did not lose as badly as it is made out to be. This also means, the party cannot be still written off, as many commentators are almost hasty and enthusiastic to.

So much for the discussion on democracy models and their suitability to the Indian reality: This column would not be doing justice if it did not also take a brief tour of the post election mood in Manipur too, for indeed political punditry and crystal gazing is not altogether a new pastime here amongst the intelligentsia and the public at large.

Of peculiar interest are some speculations on the possibility of the Congress government in the state facing the danger of being destabilized by the BJP government at the Centre, and this through the institution of the Governor on whose recommendation Article 356 of the Constitution can be invoked to either dissolve or keep a state government in animated suspension. This scenario however is unlikely, especially after the controversy over its misuse and the Supreme Court case on the matter in the S. R. Bommai v. Union of India case in 1994.

Though the apex court ruled that the provisions of Article 356 was justiciable, the 1994 judgment which opened the imposition of President’s Rule to judicial reviews, has put a check on arbitrary dismissal of state governments by Article 356. Correspondingly, and happily, there has been a sharp decline of states being put under President’s Rule ever since. It is quite unlikely then that the soon to be installed BJP government under Prime Minister designate Narendra Modi would be eager to court legal controversy just as yet, if ever, on such matters. Moreover, Manipur’s current governor, it must be recalled, was appointed by the outgoing Congress government at the Centre.

The only way the Manipur government can become destabilized then is by the fickle loyalties of our MLAs. They could, as has become the notorious and shameful character of those who chose the political vocation in the state, begin their usual game of back-stabbing and horse-trading, putting up their political loyalties for auction to the highest bidders. It is a disgraceful fact that in the pre-1994 days, and before the introduction of the Anti-Defection Law, Manipur ranked as one of the foremost to have invited the President’s Rule, having been through it 10 times since it attained statehood, all on account of MLAs shamelessly crossing the Assembly floor.

With the tough Anti-Defection Law still in place, this scenario of political turncoats shaking up the government would be highly improbable. The sound recommendation then is for the Congress government here to get down to the serious business of governing the state. The loss at the Centre, if not anything else, should have made it drop its own arrogant clout of invincibility. The realization of the futility of the delusion of immortality is supposed to make even the most powerful humble.

I would just flag one goal which this government has not made enough effort to achieve before concluding. If at the completion of three terms, this government leaves the state as electric power starved as when it assumed power 15 years ago, in this age when the highway to progress itself has become synonymous with electric power, history will not ever forgive it and its helmsmen. The familiar excuse of bad law and order sabotaging progress will not be able to exonerate its sins either.

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2014/05/is-democratic-majority-myth-or-reality-how-stable-is-manipur-govt/

“…because what I was writing demonstrated that the fundamental problem was political and not moral, as people believed”
– Marquez

By Soibam Haripriya

The oeuvre of Marquez should not be left unread, uncommented. One of the most fascinating piece of work however could be said to be his autobiography -Living to tell the tale. The events from his life that inspired him to spin tales around to create novellas and novels are all there. There would be no other work that would inspire one to take up the vocation of writing than his autobiography where the proof that he would take up this ‘overwhelming vocation’ was described as ‘the only force capable of competing with the power of love’. More and more people today seem to live in places which are not their place of birth. The nostalgia evoked by his writing could ring true for many more of us. The feeling of a world changed and the eternal nostalgia of the past is what the living recounts. Places where the world ends and oceans without shore on the other side are part of his childhood that urged the imagination. What then is magic realism is rather realism in itself. This could be the cue to go back to the novella Chronicle of a Death Foretold. What is striking is not that the protagonist Santiago Nasar was killed but the knowledge of the inevitability of his death. This theme urges one to think about this one premonitory word – inevitable. To stretch this work further one can certainly put this statement that it seemed inevitable that Narendra Modi was to win the election; a person who is for many, the symbol of communal hatred and carnage and for many others the face of development and good governance. What is the fundamental problem of this face of development and governance is that both these terms are peddled to us as ideological neutral concepts. What is the fundamental problem of this also is the fact that Gujarat does not top the country in ANY development indicators. Gujarat, in the Human Development Index (HDI) computation of Jean Dreze and Ritika Khera ranks 9th among 20 major states, yet people claim to have voted for him as he would bring about development. The fact of Gujarat being in the 9th rank is also not a position in which he and the BJP had contributed. On the other hand the name Modi is less associated with BJP and more with the RSS whose ideology need not be recounted for anyone here. Ironically Kerala the state which stands first in Human Development Index among the states in India is touted as being based on the Gujarat model. This is the story of a good lobby – media, corporate houses and therefore the inevitability of his victory in spite of (or perhaps one cannot be sure maybe because of) him having incited hatred against minorities and therefore he is projected as the face of an unapologetic Hindutva. This might come as a leap of imagination, looking at post May 16 India and Marquez but clearly the theme is magic realism and realism. The well known activist Mukul Sinha who fought many cases for the victims of Gujarat riots in Modi’s Gujarat and whom many of us in Manipur also knew him as the counsel for the fake encounters in Congress led Manipur passed away a few days before the May 16. He passed away on the 12th of May, 2014. It seems as if he couldn’t bear to see the premonitory claims of the media but then again, magic realism is as much about realism as it is about magic.

While the name Marquez could be almost used interchangeably with magic realism it should be remembered that the magic realism that marked his work are actually pages from his life and that of his parents and grandparents and pages from the collective history of a country marked by conflicts and dictators; a place not very different in its political manifestation than that of ours. The fact is that his work is as much mundane as it is magic and as therefore as much grief in its reality.

 

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2014/05/remembering-marquez/

By M.C. Linthoingambee

People and animals have always co-existed hand in hand creating histories that outlives even our very own lifetime. Although in the least expected time there have been moments where they even bought us unexpected happiness and surprises. The legend of Balto, a Syberian Husky who led his entire sled thereby saving an entire village from a growing epidemic by delivering medicine in the cold and harsh winter madness of Alaska is immortalized in a 1995 film. The legend of Hachiko, a Japanese dog breed of Akita is another true story made into a film depicting his remarkable loyalty to his owner through his wait for his owner for nine years after his owner’s death at the station where the duo often greeted each other and bade their goodbyes at Shibuya Station in Japan. There are many more such stories where animals have shown their loyalty or shown exemplary courage by saving their owners from peril.

I immediately thought of these stories following the outrage over arrest of a man for kidnapping and killing of a dog who was a dear member of a family by a group working for the welfare of animals and operating in Manipur. Yes, it is against the law to kill even animals. It is the fundamental duty of every citiizen of India to owe a duty of care for all animal species. In a developing country like ours, with nearly a bigger number of poor people we are often reluctant to care more for any animal as we find it difficult to feed our own mouths. The number of stray dogs that looms in Delhi are far greater than the beggars in the street.

We do things sometimes without realizing the illegality of its places. What are illegal or simply to be taken as being against the law? It is illegal to put any poisonous substance in the food of an animal, it is illegal to transport any animal in any manner that will cause him or her unnecessary suffering which are inclusive of loading cows, horses, etc into trucks, airplanes in a crowded manner. It is also illegal to kill homeless animals for the best thing to do in such a situation is to report them as a means of nuisance to the municipal authority of the region. We have seen the attempts of capturing cows from the streets from the streets of India by them even and they see to their proper care by assigning them to new homes and take up other precautionary measures. The Animal Welfare Board of India has established a code of conduct for municipalities. Failure to follow the code can invite contempt of court proceedings. Sections 428 and 429 of the Indian Penal Code make it illegal to disfigure or cause injury to any animal for a monetary price. It also makes it illegal to throw acid on cows. The Code also makes it illegal for cars to purposefully injure or kill dogs, cats and cows on the street. Offenders can be reported to the local animal protection group and police station and a case filed under the above-referenced sections. Punishment is a fine of Rs 2000 and/or a jail term of up to five years. Many of these stray animals also become the liability of research that may assure to put science one step closer to a great fundamental creation but they should not be treated this way. The Rules for Experimental Animals, as formulated by the Committee for the Control and Supervision of Experimental Animals, state that only animals bred for the purpose of research by institutes registered by the Committee may be used for experimentation (although, of course, such animals suffer and feel pain just as much as strays or any other animal). It is illegal for any medical, educational or commercial research institute to pick up stray animals from the street or from the municipal pound for this purpose. Any offender of such crimes is highly liable to end up behind bars if they chose to resist and continue with such acts willfully. It is also important that the population of animals are controlled and kept at par with the human population by not causing damages to the animals. The Animal Welfare Board of India has developed a set of guidelines for all municipalities directing the implementation of the Animal Birth Control (ABC) programme. If there is an animal welfare organization in the area, urge it to take up the ABC programme. The existing legislations like the Wildlife Protection Act, 1967 and the Prevention of Cruelty to animals Act, 1960 are the major shareholders that concerns in keeping the animal species safe.The Animal Welfare Board of India (AWBI) had formulated a draft Animal Welfare Act, 2011, and submitted it to the Ministry of Environment and Forests to replace the outdated Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960.

Somehow, we have all failed to give the same faith they gave us as always man still continue to pose serious threats to man’s best friend. I do not mean to judge for there are also those who owns pets and exercise this duty in their own ways.

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2014/05/feline-canine-and-all-the-animals-we-love/