ONE ELECTION CAN BE FIRST OF MANY REFORMS

We should use the move for simultaneous elections to call for other political reforms, such as greater transparency in parties' internal affairs and mandatory reports on manifesto pledges

- VINAY SAHASRABUDDHE

President Krishan Kant, had openly expressed concerns about the patronage given by a large number of parties to party operators and power brokers. Putting it bluntly, Kant had said: "While in the 1950s, an MP or MLA was considered a representative of the people, in the 1960s they came to be known as their advocates and now people think 'they elect their dalals, or brokers.'"

Earlier, when the centenary session of Congress was held in Mumbai in 1985, Rajiv Gandhi had used the same term and denounced the tendency of party workers to function as power brokers.

Kant had correctly diagnosed what ails our party politics. Without mincing words, he had observed parties that are "without any genuine commitment to ideology or national programme," had become "a loose alliance of such interest groups". Considering that except for the BJP and the communists, other parties hardly have any long-term ideology, Kant's observations are not far from the truth.