Say no to continual elections

Following the recommendations of a high-level committee led by former president Ram Nath Kovind to streamline the widely scattered schedule of national, state and local elections, the Union cabinet has reportedly approved two constitutional amendment bills for likely introduction in Parliament. Predictably, the return of the ‘one nation, one election’ issue to news has set off a flurry of objections by several opposition leaders.

- BAIJAYANT 'JAY' PANDA

The single most striking aspect of India’s continual elections cycle can be summed up in one phrase. It is that India has the lowest ratio of the time available for governance vis-a-vis the time demanded by campaigning. Simply stated, there is no other nation that compels its polity to devote anything close to such a vast amount of time to campaigning.

Instead, all other democracies allow their elected officials far more time to devote to governance, without continual engagement in campaigns for regional and local elections. Of course, this refers only to democracies, of whom India is not just the largest in the world, but also the largest ever in human history. Any comparison with non-democracies, which do not have to bother with elections in the first place, would be as irrelevant as comparing apples and oranges.