Editorial 1: Other nations, other polls
Recent Context:
- Recently, One Nation One Election (ONOE) is a hot topic of discussion and the media is full of articles enumerating the positives as well as the difficulties in the proposal.
- In framing the Constitution, our founding fathers also drew from international practices. While these are found in both the form and the substance of our Constitution, they evolved ways forward that were Indian. Perhaps, the most well-known is that India is a unitary form of government with federal characteristics – a Union of States
What’s the international practice on ONOE?
United States:
- USA has presidential form of government with the slate of the president and vice-president elected by the people through an electoral college system.
- In case the president is unable to complete the four-year term, the vice president takes over. And in case of a vacancy for the VP, the power to nominate a successor rests with the president subject to it being approved by both Houses of Congress.
- With the president and vice president being elected in their individual capacity, their nominating a successor with congressional approval has a certain legitimacy, obviating the need for early elections.
United Kingdome:
- The UK is a unitary form of government but in the past decades has seen devolved “nations” come up in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.
- In all these geographies, elections for their respective assemblies are held under their own laws and at different times but basically, while there is a maximum term of five years for the House of Commons and assemblies, it is up to the respective government to call early elections.
- In 2011, the UK enacted The Fixed Term Parliaments Act creating fixed five-year terms and severely restricting the calling of early elections. But in its very second cycle, the House of Commons overrode this law and elections were held in 2017.
- The Fixed Term Parliaments Act was repealed in 2022 and the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Act 2022 revived the power of the Prime Minister to request the monarch to dissolve Parliament.
Australia
- Australia has parliamentary forms of Government. The lower House of the federal parliament in Australia has only a three-year term while most provincial assemblies have four-year terms.
- Elections are due for the federal parliament in 2025, while New South Wales held its elections in March 2023 and Victoria will hold them in November 2022 and so on.
Canada:
- In 2006, Canada, at both federal and provincial levels, enacted legislation to fix four-year terms for their parliaments with elections to be held on the third Monday in October.
- However, there being no restriction on the dissolution of legislatures prior to the fixed date, the situation today is that all the provinces have their own calendar, and the federal parliament has its own.
- Indeed, while federal elections are due in October 2025, British Columbia is to go to the polls in October 2024, Ontario in June 2026 and so on.
Germany:
- Germany is the largest federal country in Europe. To overcome its pre-WW II history of parliamentary instability, its Basic Law does not allow votes of no-confidence without naming a successor and its parliamentary system has evolved into one where coalitions are an accepted feature; all this leads to a certain stability.
- However, voting for state (Laender) legislatures is as per the laws of the concerned state and they follow their own election cycle.
- While for the present, federal elections are due in Germany only in 2025, Baden Wuerttemberg will elect its assembly in 2026, Brandenburg in 2024 and so forth.
Advantages with respect to one nation, one election
- As massive effort required in the conduct of elections and the repercussions of frequent elections on the administration and citizens at large. Therefore, ONOE has following advantages
- Enables the government to concentrate on governance once the elections are over.
- Due to frequent election, entire attention of the country becomes focused on these elections. As elective presentative gets deeply involved with these elections, as nobody wants to lose
- Along with it , it put extra burden on administrative machineries at various levels in varying degree which compromise the India’s growth and deliverances of services.
- It provides government to take major policy decision:
- As new key decisions are not taken during elections due to the code of conduct. Therefore, key policy decisions get delayed both at the Centre and in the states and local bodies..
- even when no fresh policy decision is necessary, implementation of ongoing projects gets derailed during election periods as the political executive as well as government officials would be engaged with election duties, neglecting routine administration.
- Therefore, simultaneous election will result in code of conduct once in five years and major policy decisions can be taken rest of governance duration
- Check on political corruption: one of the main reasons for political corruption is frequent elections. An enormous amount of money has to be raised at every election. Election expenses of political parties can be reduced drastically if elections are held simultaneously
- There would be no duplication of fundraising. This would save the public and business community from a lot of pressure for election donations, multiple times.
- Reduction in election expenditure ( Saving of pubic money):
- Expenses incurred by the EC can be reduced if elections are held simultaneously. As the EC would have to invest a considerable amount of money initially to put in place the necessary infrastructure.
- Reduce the burden of armed forces: As, a large number of police personnel and para-military forces are engaged to ensure that elections are conducted peacefully. This involves massive redeployment, involving huge costs. Such deployment can be curtailed with simultaneous elections.
- Check on defection of MP and MLAs: elections are held only at specific periods, horse trading by elected representatives could come to an end, by and large. Today, even with the anti-defection law in force, loopholes lead to horse-trading.
- Promotes coordination among political parties
- One of the key advantages of holding simultaneous elections is that they encourage political parties to work together.
- They would be forced to find common ground and consensus on crucial national and state-level issues, as the electorate would evaluate their performance on a broader scale.
- This could result in more collaborative policy making and a better, more harmonious understanding of issues
- Helpful in checking on populist policy of government:
- frequent elections lead to governments taking policy decisions to woo the electorate at every election. Even though this cannot be stopped fully, the frequency with which governments have to announce freebies will come down.
- Save time and less fatigue of the voters:
- Synchronised elections would cut voter fatigue and make them participate more pro-actively in elections.
- The same electoral rolls can be used for all the elections. This will save a tremendous amount of time and money spent in updating electoral rolls.
- It will also make it easier for the citizen as they would not have to worry about their names missing from electoral rolls once they are enlisted and save their time to cast their votes.
- Thus, capital saved in simultaneous election could be better allocated to critical sectors like healthcare, education and infrastructure development
Concern with respect to Hung assemblies
- A key issue that bedevils fixed terms is managing “hung” assemblies. The usual practice is dissolving the House and there being fresh elections.
- Six months is usually the maximum time allowed to elapse between two sittings of the House – governance without parliamentary approval being considered an anathema to democracy.
Conclusion:
- While the high-level committee on ONOE will draw its conclusions to suit the Indian situation, presumably its deliberations will also be enriched by international practices on federal and state elections in different parts of the world.
Editorial 2: An entity, not commodity
Context:
- Digital data has wide areas of applications in multiple dimensions of human life.
- As predictive digital technologies are reliable is sustained by the constant conversation around data.
- When a digital deployment does not work, or at least does not work as intended, we hear two pre-wired responses from the intermediaries and stakeholders who support the system: That we need more data to create better outputs and that we need better data to generate more reliable results.
Three basic principles for more data and better data naturalises
- First, that data is a neutral thing, which is a mere description of what is happening.
- Second, that data is imminently transactional, without any repercussions on the events and people that it describes.
- Third, that data is a commodity and hence can be traded off in exchange for services, benefits and conveniences.
- These three principles offer digital data as digital objects — born digitally and only tenuously connected to the experiences and lives of people it seeks to describe.
India’s Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act 2023 and its significance
- The historic emergence of the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act 2023 that India has enacted is a welcome alignment to other global and national Data Protection Regulations around the world
- It defines the use and scope of digital data by private and public institutions. The Act closely mimics the General Data Protection Regulation adopted by the European Union in 2016, the Data Protection Act enacted by the UK in 2018
- All of these regulatory instruments are critical in recognising the capacity for extracting, exploiting, and exchanging data to create targeted profiles, segregated filter bubbles, and contained echo chambers that have deteriorating effects on social, personal, political, and economic well-being of the individuals being targeted by data industries.
- The DPDP Act 2023 underscores that data is not only a precious resource but that, without protections, it can lead to extraordinary harms to the people who are connected with a data set.
- The capacity of our algorithmic networks to make correlations, causal links, and critical connections that can manipulate, target, influence, and punish data subjects is alarming and expansive.
- The DPDP 2023 forwards the cause for data privacy, individual data protection, setting up limits around the use and scope of data, and even instituting the right to be forgotten, thus setting up temporal limits on how long data can be retained in a system
DPDP Act, 2023 ensures the accountability of Private and gov institution
- These are all welcome changes which put greater accountability on private corporations and government institutions to make their data practices more transparent, consensual, and explainable.
- While it is impossible to think of a dismantling of the big-data structures that have come to rule our digital lives, the safeguards and the demands of fairness and justice that the DPDP mandates are much needed, though aspirational.
Three principles of digital data which are seen as de facto.
- In presenting data as a mere description or information about people and phenomena, it fails to look at the ethics of data generation and harvesting.
- We leak digital data all the time. This data does not just describe what we do, but they define who we are, and predict what kind of subjects we are going to be.
- Data generation is as critical a site of regulation as data circulation and usage, and we need to address that more critically in data regulation
- The excessive focus on the economic value and use of data reinforces the idea that data is a commodity.
- It doesn’t question the need for certain kinds of data or the mandate to resist datafication of our personal and private lives.
- It presumes that all data can be generated and harvested, and valued only as an economic value.
- This betrays the fact that data is embodied. It affects and is anchored in our bodily practices, and that we need better understanding of what can and cannot be translated as data, setting limits on what can be translated into data
- Limiting the time and boundary of data: While data has the potential to travel, it is not a given that it can travel so fast and so far that it can be alienated from the subject, creating digital and temporal distance so that consent is no longer possible or required.
- We have to pay heed to legal scholars and judges who have insisted that data, like dignity and life, has to be seen as an inalienable resource.
- Regulating how far data can travel without losing its provenance and consent has to be reworked during operationalization of data.
Conclusion:
- While the DPDP Act 2023 sees a historic landmark in India, which still boasts of the largest biometric citizen database in the world and has lacked a general framework to protect the use of digital data and personal privacy, it has to be seen as a first draft to establish data equity and justice.
- The aspirations of the DPDP Act 2023 will be met only if the operational realities question and critique the three principles which are often used to weaponise data against those who are the most vulnerable and precarious.