Sham consensus: Why India's parties never elect their leaders

One of the big puzzles of Indian democracy is why it repeatedly throws up dynasts at the top of almost every party. And where it doesn’t – as in cadre-based parties such as the BJP and the Communists – the behaviour pattern is still the same: deference to authority. If the non-cadre based parties prop up dynasts through simple sycophancy and petty intrigue, the other two still end up looking like the last refuges of patriarchy. [caption id=“attachment_239900” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Should the Election Commission step in and make parties elect their leaders in advance and not select them? PTI”] [/caption] In fact, the defining feature of the Indian party system is the absolute abhorrence for intra-party elections – whether it is the Congress, the BJP, the Communists or any of the regional parties. And this factor, more than anything else, makes change really difficult. Change seems to require a paternalistic nod from a gerontocrat – else it simply does not happen. Change is almost never the result of a new leader challenging the old with a bold new vision. It is about getting the old goat to nod approval. Papa has to say yes. Consider recent evidence of our extreme deference to paternal authority. In Punjab, despite the fact that the Akali Dal is being refashioned into a modern and less sectarian party by Sukhbir Badal, the latter said his father would be Chief Minister. And this is what happened. In Uttar Pradesh, Akhilesh Yadav – architect of the Samajwadi’s new image – kept telling us that Netaji – his father – would be the chief minister. Of course, Akhilesh has become CM, but only because Netaji, in his wisdom, decided to back his son’s candidature finally after seeing his own health deteriorate and the writing on the wall. In the Congress, everyone and the dog-at-the-lamppost knows that replacing Manmohan Singh with Rahul Gandhi is the planned event. But the heir apparent will play coy all the time, and his mother will dismiss queries about who will be PM in 2014 if the Congress wins with a neat “there is still time” argument. In the BJP, the party high command mandates a change from Ramesh Pokhriyal to BC Khanduri in Uttarakhand after allowing the former to engineer a revolt in 2009 in the reverse direction. The local party is only allowed to indulge in petty politicking, but the top decisions come from the high command. In the CPI(M), a Jyoti Basu is offered the Prime Minister’s post in 1996, but his party declines the offer on his behalf, forcing Basu to exclaim with anguish about his party’s historical blunder. In fact, ask yourself: when was the last time a political party elected its leader through a real contest between two or more contenders? The conclusion one is driving at is this: when leadership issues are always going to be decided by either an elder statesman or the “party,” or it depends on an advisory from Nagpur, change is going to come very, very slowly to the Indian polity. Why do Indian parties shy away from the one thing democracy is supposed to do: allow a contest to determine who has wider backing? Why do we always have a preference to settle things behind closed doors, with little consultation, and only with the blessings of the powers that be? I can see three reasons why this is so. One, the age-old habit of deferring to elders survives, and the thought of being seen as defying elders is still worrisome to most Indians. This could be one reason why we don’t like confrontations, and try and achieve consensus at any cost. Even a manufactured one that solves nothing. Two, we also frown at naked ambition. It is a strict no-no for anyone to say he is interested in being CM or PM or even a minister. The standard, phony answer will always be stated thus: “If the party members want it, then…”, “if Soniaji wants it” or “if the people want it…then I will be willing to serve them.” This is what creates space for the sycophants. Since the leader won’t lead, the sycophants have to rush in with garlands and a raucous crowd to insist that they want their leader elected. The leader will never say he wants to lead. The irony is, once they get onto the chair, these same leaders will do everything possible to retain it. But you have to first put on a charade suggesting that you are not ambitious. Three, despite our argumentative natures, Indians seem to be very unhappy about allowing for clear win-lose outcomes in confrontations. When we won the 1971 war, even Indira Gandhi allowed a Bhutto to get away without solving Kashmir. After Kargil, and after 26/11 – despite all the initial bluster we allowed Pakistan to get off the hook. Now we are happy to say that both of us are victims of terrorism. Inside political parties, when two people oppose each other, we would prefer a stalemate rather than a resolution. Thus, the BJP will not try to find out who sabotaged Khanduri’s election this time. Nor will it try to project a clear leader in Uttar Pradesh if there are too many people who will be offended by it. I would say that this unwillingness to confront differences is what keeps India from changing at a faster pace. When we won’t allow someone to win a confrontation, where is the question of winning? It is paradoxical that the world’s largest democracy prefers to run its party system in a feudal manner. We have the world’s best election administration, but we have the world’s worst system of administering intra-party democracy. All out parties are autocracies or oligarchies. Thus who gets to be CM or PM candidate is decided by a small cabal, not by an election. Who gets a ticket for a particular seat will be decided by a coterie of vested interests, not the local party members who have built the party in the area. It makes no sense that a BJP, which reportedly has so many prime ministerial aspirants – from Narendra Modi to Sushma Swaraj to Arun Jaitley to possibly even Nitin Gadkari – will never think of having a simple contest to elect the party’s PM candidate. This is bogus humility. And it applies across parties, across ideologies. If we can get this right, we can get anything right. What we need is a publicly-mandated system of intra-party elections at all levels in all parties. There is no reason why Indian parties should not nominate their candidates through a system of primaries as in America. Some years back, the Election Commission forced all parties to have elected presidents – but that is as far as the reform went. Perhaps, it is time for the Election Commission to get into the act and shove this down parties’ throats. It will force parties to elect real leaders – and send sycophants and time-servers and old-style patriarchs packing. India’s parties should elect their leaders and not select them.