Election in India is more than a democratic tool to ascertain people’s choice. It is a jamboree that has several elements, including making the electorate aware of the nuances of the process.
To be at the helm of this electoral system is a responsibility and an experience that goes deep down to the grassroots level. Former chief election commissioner Navin Chawla’s book Every Vote Counts — The story of India’s Elections, which Meghalaya Chief Electoral Officer Frederick Roy Kharkongor is currently reading, gives an insight into this “credible electoral system” in the country.
Kharkongor says the book was suggested to him by a few colleagues in the Election Commission. “When I chanced upon the book recently at an airport, I picked it up.”
“I must, however, confess that I have not gone through the book in its entirety, but whatever I have read appears to lucidly capture the daunting task of conducting the world’s largest electoral exercise,” the CEO adds.
The book also poses many questions like how does one conduct a completely free and fair election when substantial number of stakeholders, voters and representatives alike believe that laws are meant for X& Y but not for them, Kharkongor shares.
As the book unfolds, it attempts to provide an unflinching and kaleidoscopic view of how the electoral machinery works in the world’s largest democracy, he adds.
Chawla gives a ringside view of Indian elections drawing on his vast experience of conducting 28 assembly elections. The author writes, “The early chapters include a kaleidoscopic account of the efficacy of the electoral machine – the subject of study in management schools globally.”
Kharkongor says he chose to read the book keeping in mind the parliamentary elections this year. “I feel that this is a book that every aware and concerned citizen might want to read apart, of course, from my own professional interest in the subject in the context of my current duties,” he explains.
Kharkongor finds the book “extremely relevant”, especially for him with his current assignment as CEO “having also conducted elections earlier as a district election officer in 2008 followed by parliamentary elections as a returning officer of a parliamentary constituency in 2009 and then in the capacity of CEO supervising a parliamentary by-election in 2016 followed by the 2018 State Legislative Assembly Polls and a string of elections thereafter covering an adjourned poll and three bypolls and now on the threshold of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections”.
The book gives a highly riveting and fascinating account that narrates the myriad challenges of holding elections in difficult areas like Maoist-affected constituencies, strife-affected areas like Jammu and Kashmir and cogently records how the Election Commission continuously endeavours to surmount problems and challenges through technologies like EVM and VVPATs, besides administrative arrangements like the model code of conduct, while triggering thinking on many unfinished tasks such as tackling money power in elections, emerging demons like “paid news” and influence of social media on elections among other challenges and dragons which require to be slew.
“So far, each of our elections held has reaffirmed our commitment to democracy — no mean feat particularly when we are witnessing constant attempts at extinguishing democratic freedom in many parts of the world. In many countries that obtained freedom at around the same time that we did, elections have actually served to provide autocratic regimes with a veneer of respectability,” Chawla writes in his book.
A former chief election commissioner had called the elections in India an ‘undocumented wonder’. “This book through its 12 chapters is a pioneering effort in the sense that it takes us on a journey that enriches our understanding of how the electoral system is unfolding while also pointing the way to certain electoral reforms and interpreting for its readers the emerging electoral trends that could very well shape the direction which our democracy could take in the coming years,” Kharkongor sums up.
(As told to Nabamita Mitra)
Reading suggestions for the week:
1. Nervous States: Democracy and The Decline of Reason by William Davies
2. Kazaki and Other Marvellous Tales by Munshi Premchand and translated
by Sara Rai
