Disproportional representation

The triumphant “David Cameron phir ek baar” outcome of Britain’s parliamentary election might suggest that India has won a signal victory in a foreign land. But those who look beyond obvious results at what elections indicate of grassroots feeling might argue that there is reason for believing that both the British and Indian system of elections is deeply flawed and needs drastic overhaul.

A strong case can be made out for replacing the present first-past-the-post system with proportional representation. That means divisions in the electorate should be reflected proportionately in the legislature. If 30 per cent of voters support a particular political party, then that party should hold roughly 30 per cent of the seats in the British House of Commons or, indeed, in our Lok Sabha. In fact, the late Swatantra Party politician Minoo Masani strongly advocated the proportional representation system in India.

This may not be easy for us to accept, for India has never been ruled by a party that commanded, truly, majority national support. The Congress, Janata Party and the Bharatiya Janata Party have always been voted in by a minority of the electorate. It is easy to forget that even Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who conducts himself with such proud confidence as the spokesman of a new India, can speak for only 31 per cent of Indian voters. This is an all-time low for any ruling party that achieved a simple majority in the Lok Sabha. Mr Modi has performed worse than even Indira Gandhi in 1967, when the Congress won 283 out of 520 seats with 40.8 per cent of the vote, and Opposition leaders crowed one could travel from Calcutta to Amritsar without setting foot in Congress territory.

That was the nadir of Congress fortunes. It was trumpeted as a moral defeat for Indira Gandhi. Even she probably felt so, for she tried to devise some constitutional formula to delink the party’s fortunes from those of the Prime Minister. Like Mr Modi and Indira Gandhi, even the victorious Mr Cameron, who lost no time in calling on the Queen to seal his second term in office, cannot by any means claim to represent everyone in his country. The Conservatives’ 36.9 per cent share of the vote was not much higher than Labour’s 30.4 per cent. Yet, Mr Cameron has 12 more MPs while Labour has been wiped out in its traditional base of Scotland.

However much Mr Cameron’s second coming might interest and even benefit Indians, let it not be forgotten that nearly four million British voters supported a very different political agenda. I am speaking of the far-right populist United Kingdom Independence Party (Ukip), which some may see as a remote descendant of the British Union of Fascists whose founder, Sir Oswald Mosley, was Lord Curzon’s son-in-law and jailed during World War II. Ukip now has only one MP, three representatives in the House of Lords and 23 members of the Euro-pean Parliament, where it is the largest British party.

Last year Ukip reported a membership of more than 40,000. It also accounted for nearly 13 per cent of the vote on May 7. Clearly, therefore, Ukip with its anti-immigration and anti-European Union stance does speak for many ordinary British men and women. Nigel Farage, the Ukip leader, stepped down as party chief when he lost his parliamentary seat. Labour’s Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg of the Liberal Democratic Party did so too, not because they themselves were defeated (they weren’t) but because their parties fared badly. This principled exit must astonish India’s cling-on-till-death netas who refuse to relinquish the perks and privileges of office until they are carried to the burning ghat.

The British results expose a major flaw in the electoral system that we have also adopted. The bruised and bitter Mr Farage voiced a mounting worldwide criticism of the first-past-the-post system. Denouncing it as “bankrupt”, he compared Ukip with Nicola Sturgeon’s Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP). “One party can get 50 per cent of the vote in Scotland and nearly 100 per cent of the seats, and our party can get four million votes and just one seat!” he thundered.

The SNP with just under 1.5m votes (only nine per cent of the national vote) won 56 seats. Ukip with 3.8 million votes won only one, and the Liberal Democrats with nearly 2.4 million votes have a mere eight seats. “The time has come for real, genuine, radical poli-tical reform,”  Mr Farage added. The Green Party, which felt similarly thwarted since it attracted more than a million votes (3.8 per cent share) but just one seat, agreed heartily.

Britain’s Electoral Reform Society says the Conservatives would have won 75 fewer seats but would still have been the largest party in the House of Commons if the proportional voting system had been used. Labour too would have taken fewer seats while the SNP’s dramatic increase of 50 seats would have been curtailed to 25. Moreover, small groups like the Ukip, the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party would have fared much better. In fact, Ukip would have been a force to be reckoned with in the House of Commons with 83 seats.

Clearly, votes are  not equal. The ERS  calculates that because of the first-past-the-post system, Ukip required more than 100 times  as many votes for its lone elected MP than  the Conservatives did for each of theirs. Unless there is meaningful reform, therefore, many people may feel their political engagement has become irrelevant. But I can’t see any government ever willingly surrendering the advantage it enjoys. Arguably, Mr Cameron might ag-ree to some reform but no Indian Prime Minis-ter — least of all the present incumbent — will set principle above personal interest.

The writer is a senior journalist, columnist and author