Accountability of the public representative in India – a call of exigency and enforcement!

By Rusen Kumar

Cooperatives, trusts, hospitals, schools, colleges, and indeed all NGOs are regulated entities. It is only political parties that are not subject to any regulation or regulator.

Political parties are perhaps the only entities in our country who enjoy anomalous privileges and benefits without any public accountability.

India democratic synopsis

India is one proud nation and veteran nation for having oldest and deepest democracy for its humongous population of around 1.25 billion subjects. A framework of bottom-up phenomenon, the governance lies in the hands of public representatives (PRs).  In India, we have 552 Lok Sabha members, maximum of 250 Rajya Sabha members and there are currently more than 3 million elected representatives (of which more than 1 million are women) for panchayats at all levels. The public representatives are one amongst the people, chosen by the people, to represent as a voice of the region. And this practice, called the ‘democracy’ is followed even for an election of the lowest most public representative, the Sarpanch of a village. Such deep meshed framework of choosing representatives, through a thorough yet transparent system is indeed a matter of pride.

The mechanism of choosing and functioning of these individuals are scrutinized under the scaffolding of the Constitution of India. But there are no Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), or framework to assess their performances, match their promises with the manifestos or disqualify them from contesting next election of the basis of performance evaluation.

Repercussions of the soft spot treatment

In India, it is a sad paradox that even a small enterprise, if is listed, is mandated to follow statutory guidelines of its governing agency in all its processes. Just exceeding a net profit of Rs.5 crores, the same enterprise is again upheld to re-invest 2% of its profit under the strict guidelines of CSR Act of India. And the same investment is again scrutinized at multi levels by internal and external audit system. The reports are put up in public forum for further mass scrutiny. But it is also unanimously applauded as a good practice to keep transparency in the system. Companies are regulated under company law. Listed companies have to additionally comply with Securities and Exchange Board of India regulations. Cooperatives, trusts, hospitals, schools, colleges, and indeed all NGOs are regulated entities. It is only political parties that are not subject to any regulation or regulator.

Political parties are perhaps the only entities in our country who enjoy anomalous privileges and benefits without any public accountability. The state of affairs of our political parties today is pathetic. There are, among MPs, 475 crorepatis and 233 criminal charges against them and 159 of them have serious charges like rape, murder, kidnapping and crimes against women etc. The situation at the state legislatures is no better. A large number of political parties are run like private enterprises controlled by an individual and his family members. Most political parties display very low intra-party democracy. Quite often, party tickets are sold or given to the ones with strong arms the ‘bahubalis’. Candidates view contesting elections as an investment leading to greater corruption. The level of corruption seems to have reached an all-time high which is evident from the recent representation by Karnataka Contractors’ Association to Prime Minister Narendra Modi which has been widely covered by the media in recent days.

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India spent Rs 1,997 crore in 4 years (till 2020) on MPs’ salaries, reveals RTI query. Quite a hefty amount! Then the question is how is this industry of name’s sake public representatives are liberated from any form of obligation, assessment or even penalization in terms of their performance?

Why should a public representative be made accountable?

India is a developing country that needs to grow as a country in a unified manner. Politicians and political parties work for the betterment of our country, and it is essential for people to let them do so. However, making someone unaccountable for their words and promises negatively encourages them to make more unfulfilled and absurd promises. It also leads to lies and deceit.

The current scenario of not holding political parties and PRs accountable, or not compelling the ruling parties to fulfil their promises, is reducing the election manifestos into a mere document, filled with rhetorics, that feed gullible and innocent voters. It is indeed, a devious way of gaining political power, and thereby deceiving the very same people who tried giving them a chance by innocently believing in their tactics.

The provocative questions to answer

The idea that political parties should be held accountable for their poll promises may be a good one, but, it isn’t an efficient one.it would eventually lead to ideologically and intellectually guarded decisions and declarations, that would defeat the entire concept of all-round development in India or a particular state.  

Several institutional weaknesses affect the quality of democracy. One of the biggest challenges for improving the quality of democracy revolves around how to build more effective accountability mechanisms. Most countries have seen a failure of horizontal accountability, and hence it is important to strengthen vertical accountability.

So now we come to the crux of the problem:

1. Given the plethora of individuals (the politicians) vying to be people’s representative, how do voters decide which politician will best serve their interests?
2. How does a citizen subsequently hold elected representatives to account during the term for which they have been elected?
3. By extension, how does the citizen hold the legislative and the executive (elected government and appointed bureaucracy) to account during the term?

It is also evident that empowering citizens to be able to hold their government accountable by vertical accountability framework is incredibly complex in practice. Citizens get a chance to remove the elected representatives only at the end of the term, and may have no recourse during the term to remove them or to force them to work in public interest.

It is, therefore, important for PRs to be made accountable for their promises, and convert, what is a mere morality, into a legal responsibility. Furthermore, such electoral promises should be made legally binding, if not constitutionally binding. A strict legal accountability would lead to a strict sense of obligation on the part of political parties to fulfil their promises. Making a political party legally accountable for all their promises would lead to parties only focusing on one problem at a time, whilst voluntarily choosing to ignore the other problems. This shall not just have one sided benefit for the people, but shall also create, a trust blanket, a better and accelerating work culture of public representatives.

Some of the spontaneous impact of holding PRs accountable shall be:

Transparency is also in the interest of public representatives (PR)

Public representatives have much to gain in paving the way towards transparency and accountability in their functioning. The loss of public trust in the political establishment has a lot to do with inaccessibility of these public representatives other than during election campaigns, their opaque finances, and the monopolizing of party tickets to candidates with serious criminal cases. These representatives make or influence directly or indirectly, the policies undertaken by the government at the centre, state and now in local bodies as well. It is difficult to be persuaded by the argument that though these representatives control the political executives – who are their appointees – they should be allowed to escape the obligations or norms that transparency imposes, and escape accountability. Once a framework of accountability is developed and implemented, public shall have better trust on the system, representatives and also on election promises.

PRs have to make less efforts to convince voters in their favor

One major advantage of holding people accountable for their promises is that it would lead to people being responsible for their actions. It is possible that this would lead to an eventual confidence in the fact that those who would join politics or a particular political party, would actually work for the betterment of the society, rather than those who join politics for perks and privileges. It might also lead to a betterment in the quality of our politicians, and create a path of growth and development, instead of deceit and unfulfilled promises.  A PR making promise shall be accountable on the promising he is making and the people shall be sure to believe his words. Efforts from PRs shall be less and impact shall be more.

Assessment and the retrospection is the key to prove and improve

The key issue of accountability is linked with how closely the individual matches its actual goal and how the manifesto of the party released before the elections is reflected in the performance of the PR when in power. Once the mandate of assessment and performance evaluation is linked to public representatives, he shall be directed towards meeting the promises mentioned in his manifestos. This ultimately shall prove his will and dedication towards his promises, and eventually improves the areas, where he lacked.

Action over the PR shall invoke Trust

The dissatisfaction, distrust of common public towards their public representatives is disturbingly normal in India. Annual assessment of a PR and subsequent action or penal action on them shall create transparency and deep trust in the working of the system.

Shall break vicious dynastic cycle and fresh blood shall get a chance

If sufficient subsequent action is taken against a low performing PR, and he gets disqualified for next election, public shall voluntarily or in compulsion try fresh blood for the administration. This shall eventually break the dynastic functioning of political framework, which sometimes thrones incompetent individual at responsible places.

Accountability shall put stop to scams and unethical accumulation of wealth

The suggested evaluation of wealth by a PR in a year shall also highlight his wealth accumulation in the year. Although the wealth disclosures are mentioned the nomination papers of an individual, but we suggest a check of wealth accumulation in a year. Beyond which, that particular individual shall not be allowed or even enforced towards Individual Social Responsibilities (ISR). Of Corse, the SOPs for ISR have to be laid alongside with this.

The ultimate gauging tool – Prepare, Assess and Act on Individual PR’s Annual Report

Here the suggestion is for preparing and evaluating an annual report by each of the PR, even at the bottom most level of the hierarchy. This annual report should be a comparison between his promises, manifestos and targets achieved. It should list his achievement in the year, hurdles faced, unique initiatives and also future plans. In addition his annual wealth accumulation/ depletion, his legal standing etc should also be a part of this annual report. This report should be a criterion to decide on his nomination acceptance or cancelation. This report should also be put in public domain for people to access before they decide to cast their votes.

Strengthen the Election Commission of India & the Courts of India as monitoring agencies

Strengthen the ECI by providing constitutional security of tenure to all its members which is currently available to the Chief Election Commissioner only. Declare the registered political parties as public institutions as their sole aim is to capture governments. ECI should not register any political party whose very name betrays its links with any religion or caste or creed. Empower the ECI to lay down stringent conditions for the functioning of registered political powers and make non-compliance of these conditions punishable, including deregistration by the ECI. These conditions must ensure that the parties have limited tenures for their elected offices at all levels; they function on secular and democratic principles and are accountable and transparent in their affairs, besides others. A separate constitutionally mandated regulatory authority should be created to ensure that these parties’ function in accordance with the conditions of their registration.

The High Courts of states and the Supreme Court of India should strive to create a better situation for the voters and ensure that India does not appreciate false promises. There must, therefore, be some legislation, that holds political parties or individuals from political parties liable for non-fulfillment of their promises, which they so confidently declare. In 2013 a full bench of the CIC delivered one such historic judgment by declaring that all national parties came under ‘public authorities’ and were within the purview of the RTI Act. Accordingly, they were directed to designate central public information officers (CPIOs) and the appellate authorities at their headquarters within six weeks. The people of India, i.e., the voters need to keep a track of political parties who make promises and fail to fulfill them, and it is important for the people to express their discontent in a legal and efficient manner.

Reform charter for better functioning of Parliament

Parliamentary government revolves around the consent of the people through elected representatives. Parliament is an instrument for expressing public opinion and voicing public grievances, restraining the Executive and ensuring its responsibility and accountability to national sentiment and will. Its core functions include constituent, legislative, deliberative and oversight of executive. Effectiveness of Parliament is contingent upon the degree to which it echoes public concerns on a range of issues ranging from the individual to the nation’s development and hence, it shall keep its eyes and ears open to the public opinion. – M. Venkaiah Naidu, Vice President (29-October-2019) (Text is a Part of 15-point reform charter for better functioning of Parliament)

Conclusion

As noted by Dr. B.R. Ambedkar in his famous Constituent Assembly speech, “The working of a Constitution does not depend wholly upon the nature of the Constitution. The Constitution can provide only the organs of State. 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.” It is hoped that the top court will further the positive advances made in this direction. Since sunlight acts as the best disinfectant and our political parties tirelessly claim themselves to be apostles of honesty and integrity, it is expected that they would walk the talk. Political parties in present times are free to make as many promises as they desire, without any legal obligation to actually fulfill these promises. However, in a democracy like India, it is important for people to be accountable for their promises and not be free of consequence. If the common people of India are liable for their promises in the court of law, why should the people who rule the country, and the people who aim to rule the country, be exempted from such liability?

The Author

Rusen Kumar is the Managing Editor at India CSR Network.

Views are personal.

(CopyRight@RusenKumar)