BEL unit, Bengaluru

Readers may remember reading my despatch from September 2019 in which I had explained how Bharat Electronics Ltd. (BEL) did a volte face under The Right to Information Act, 2005 (RTI Act) about supplying information relating to Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) and Voter Verified Paper Trail Units (VVPATs) deployed during the 2019 General Elections to the Lok Sabha.

After demanding copying charges of Rs. 1,434, the Central Public Information Officer (CPIO) returned the money claiming that BEL did not hold some of the information and that disclosing names of Engineers deputed to provide technical support for these machines at the constituency-level, would endanger their lives. The CPIO also refused access to operational manuals relating to these machines. The CPIO of Electronics Corporation Ltd. (ECIL) which also supplied EVMs and VVPATs for use during the same elections had also denied information sought in an identical RTI application.

Now in a welcome turnaround, ECIL’s First Appellate Authority (FAA) has upheld my first appeal and directed its CPIO to provide access all information which he had denied earlier.

Meanwhile BEL’s FAA directed the CPIO to transfer the queries relating to the number of EVMs and VVPATs deployed during the 2019 Lok Sabha Elections to the Election Commission of India (ECI) but upheld his decision to reject information about Engineers and operational manuals used.

After being rejected by BEL and ECIL, I had submitted an identical RTI application to ECI’s CPIO. He did not bother to send a reply for more than 40 days. Now I have filed a first appeal and am waiting for the FAA’s decision in this case. ECI’s CPIO is also required to reply to similar queries transferred to him by BEL’s CPIO.

A tale of three RTI Interventions

After closely scrutinising some of the election-related information and statistics that ECI published, on 17th June, 2019, I decided to file two identical RTI applications seeking the following information from BEL and ECIL which neither they nor the ECI have placed in the public domain:

“I would like to obtain the following information pertaining to the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs), Voter Verified Paper Audit Trails (VVPATs) and Symbol Loading Units (SLUs) supplied by your company for use during the recently concluded General Elections to the Lok Sabha, under the RTI Act:

1) The maximum number of votes recordable on each EVM supplied for use in the 2019 Lok Sabha Elections,

2) The maximum number of votes printable on each VVPAT Machine supplied for use in the 2019 Lok Sabha Elections,

3) The district-wise number of Control Units of EVMs transported across India for use in the 2019 Lok Sabha Elections,

4) The district-wise number of Ballot Units of EVMs transported across India for use in the 2019 Lok Sabha Elections,

5) The district-wise number of VVPATs transported across India for use in the 2019 Lok Sabha Elections,

6) The district-wise number of thermal paper rolls used in VVPATs transported across India for use in the 2019 Lok Sabha Elections,

7) A clear photocopy of the List of Engineers with name and designation, deputed for carrying out tasks relating to the preparation of EVMs and VVPATs that was sent to every District Election Officer in India for the purpose of the 2019 Lok Sabha Elections,

8) A clear photocopy of the List of Senior Level Engineers with name and designation, deputed for supervision and coordination during the preparation of EVMs and VVPATs that was sent to every District Election Officer in India for the purpose of the 2019 Lok Sabha Elections,

9) The total number of SLUs used by your Team(s) of Engineers during the 2019 Lok Sabha Elections,

10) A clear photocopy of the official document handed over to every District Election Officer during the 2019 Lok Sabha Elections containing details of every SLU allocated to your team(s) of Engineers,

11) A clear photocopy of the User Manual prepared by your company, pertaining to the VVPAT machines used during the 2019 Lok Sabha Elections, if any,

12) A clear photocopy of the User Manual prepared by your company, pertaining to the SLUs used during the 2019 Lok Sabha Elections, if any,

13) A clear photocopy of the application filed with the Office of the Patent Controller for securing a patent on VVPAT, if any, along with the postal address of such office, and

14) A clear photocopy of the application filed with the Office of the Patent Controller for securing a patent on SLU, if any, along with the postal address of such office.”

ECIL CPIO’s RTI reply:

ECIL’s CPIO did not bother to send me a signed reply. Instead he uploaded some text on the RTI Online Facility without a signature replying as follows:

1) RTI Queries 3, 4, 5 & 6: ECIL’s CPIO claimed that information about EVMs and VVPATs despatched to the Lok Sabha constituencies and the number of thermal paper rolls used for printing the ballots is not readily available and they will be sent as soon as they are received.

2) RTI Queries 7 & 8: The CPIO denied access to the list of Engineers who were stationed in the constituencies to do prepare the EVMs and VVPATs for polling and their superiors who supervised the whole exercise claiming that it was personal information exempt under Section 8(1)(j) of the RTI Act.

3) RTI Queries 10 & 12: The CPIO rejected access to the User Manual of the Symbol Loading Units and the official document related to them, handed over to the district administration after the candidate information is loaded on the EVMs and VVPATs. The CPIO says that it is classified information and attracts Section 8(1)(a) and 8(1)(d) of the RTI Act. Section 8(1)(a) exempts information which will prejudicially affect security and strategic interests of the State. Click HERE for the ECIL-related RTI application and reply.

First appeal sent to ECIL and the FAA’s order

Aggrieved by the ECIL CPIO’s unsigned reply, I submitted a first appeal with the FAA in September, 2019 arguing as follows:

1) ECIL’s CPIO had committed an procedural error by not sending a signed reply;

2) As more than three months had passed since the completion of the 2019 Lok Sabha Elections, information relating to RTI Queries 3-6, that is, constituency-wise deployment of EVMs, VVPATs and thermal paper rolls used in VVPATs should now be available for disclosure;

3) The List of Engineers deployed by ECIL at the constituency-level cannot be treated as personal information whose disclosure would violate their privacy because they were performing public duties;

4) The VVPAT and Symbol Loading Unit User Manuals and VVPAT patent application are also information that must be in the public domain and that the CPIO had not issued a speaking order justifying how the exemptions were attracted.

ECIL’s FAA examined the issues raised in the appeal and directed the CPIO to collect all the information and supply it under the RTI Act. However, the FAA has not specified a time limit for compliance. Click HERE for the 1st appeal and ECIL FAA’s order (1st attachment).

First appeal sent to BEL and the FAA’s order

Aggrieved by the BEL CPIO’s decision to reject access to the information sought in a similar RTI application, despite demanding additional fees initially, I had submitted a first appeal with the FAA in September, 2019 arguing as follows:

1) It is difficult to understand as to why the CPIO who initially charged additional fees calculating the exact number of page for every RTI query, later on claimed that he did not hold the information about the constituency-wise deployment of the EVMs and VVPATs;

2) It is not clear as to how the disclosure of details of Engineers deputed would endanger their lives; and

3) The CPIOs’ revised reply denying access to most of the information which he was prepared to disclose initially indicated that he was under pressure from some internal or external agency to change his stance.

BEL’s FAA upheld the CPIO’s refusal to supply information relating to the Engineers deployed, the operating manuals relating to VVPATs and SLUs and the application submitted for claiming a patent on the VVPATs. However, she directed the CPIO to transfer the first part of the RTI application to the ECI to answer queries relating to the constituency-wise details of deployment of EVMs, VVPATs and thermal paper rolls used in VVPATs.

Click HERE for the 1st appeal and BEL FAA’s order (2nd attachment).

ECI’s treatment of the RTI application for similar information

As both BEL and ECIL had initially rejected my request for information about EVMs and VVPATs deployed during the 2019 Lok Sabha Elections and the list of Engineers deputed to render technical support, I submitted an RTI application with the ECI seeking similar information. ECI’s CPIO did not bother to send a reply for more than 40 days. So I have filed a first appeal. Now ECI has to make a decision not only on this first appeal but also make a decision on the RTI application transferred to it by BEL, in accordance with the FAA’s orders.

Click HERE for the RTI application and the first appeal submitted to ECI (3rd attachment).

Lack of uniformity of treatment of similar RTIs

Even after 15 years, the implementation of the RTI Act in many public authorities is not predictable. Identical RTI applications yield diverse responses. This is a clear indicator of the failure of the system to make the transformation from secrecy to transparency as envisaged in the preamble of the RTI Act. The political leadership which only pays lip sympathy to the democratic values of transparency and accountability, the lack of seriousness and commitment from the bureaucracy to making this transformation and the clearly demonstrable weaknesses of the oversight mechanisms such as the FAAs and Information Commissions are to blame for this state of affairs.

However, the ECIL FAA’s order provides the proverbial silver lining to the dark clouds of poor implementation. The FAA appears to have recognised the imperative of transparency in all matters relating to elections (except voters’ choices) and directed the CPIO to disclose all information. As there is no time limit in his order, I will wait for a month before I explore the need for approaching the Central Information Commission (CIC). As for the BEL, I will challenge the FAA’s order upholding rejection of a part of the RTI application, before the CIC. Meanwhile, the wait for ECI’s response to my first appeal and the RTI application transferred from BEL continues.

—

*Programme Head, Access to Information Programme, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, New Delhi

Courtesy: /counterview.org

The post 2019 polls: ECIL seeks disclosure of information on EVM, VVPAT; BEL, EC equivocate under RTI Act appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The committee, set up by the ECI in January 2018, comprised several officials of the commission itself, together with representatives of the ministries of Information & Broadcasting, Law & Justice, and Electronics & Information Technology. Also, in the panel were representatives of the quasi-judicial Press Council of India (PCI) and the self-regulatory organisation of private television news channels, the News Broadcasters Association (NBA).

During the consultation process, over a series of meetings that took place through 2018, the committee invited the views of the country’s national and state political parties, the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and social media companies: Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, and Google. Its report was submitted to the ECI in January 2019. But the contents of this report were not known till July 12 after it was obtained through a right to information (RTI) application by Srinivas Kodali, an independent researcher and analyst based in Hyderabad, who then made it public.

Curiously, while Kodali was able to obtain the report via his application, another RTI application made on 25 February by an activist named Aditya Kalra (that was reviewed by these authors) seeking a copy of the same report was denied by the ECI on May 20, three days before the results of the elections were announced. The reason why the ECI denied Kalra the report was that the third parties involved in the consultations, namely, the social media companies, were not in favour of disclosing the report on grounds of “confidentiality.” 

Too Little, Too Late

On March 5, 2019, the election dates were announced and the Model Code of Conduct (MCC) came into effect. A fortnight later, on March 19, the ECI called a meeting of representatives of social media and other online “intermediary” companies, following which, the commission issued a set of guidelines for social networks and updated an application for citizens to report violations of the MCC. A day later, on March 20, the IAMAI put out a “voluntary code of ethics” that was intended to “safeguard [social media platforms] against misuse to vitiate the free and fair character of the 2019 general elections.”

The newly released ECI committee’s report makes it clear that the IAMAI’s code of ethics was derived entirely from the recommendations made by the committee and was essentially a list of measures suggested by the IAMAI itself to the committee. As we shall see, the committee was functioning during a period that had witnessed high-profile battles among different stakeholders in the internet space over proposed changes to the Indian law on online intermediaries.

It can, hence, be argued that in the absence of a clear legal framework and being caught in the middle of a highly polarised debate, the ECI committee had a very few options before it in its attempts to put in place a stronger enforcement structure for online news relating to the election campaign. It had bitten off far more than it could chew. A statement released by a group of civil society activists and retired civil servants soon after the code of ethics was issued, raised a number of questions on the process followed by the ECI.

Over and above the issues relating to online communications, a significant recommendation of the committee related to amending Section 126 of the RP Act to include the print medium within the ambit of the prohibited media that could be used for campaigning during the 48-hour silence period. In order to implement this recommendation, the law would have to be amended. This suggestion was favoured by representatives of all political parties consulted by the ECI committee barring one, and that was the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Committee’s Proceedings
The “task of the committee,” according to the report, was to “initiate a multi-stakeholder engagement process to take stock of the critical gaps in the extant Section 126 of the Representation of People Act, 1951” and “examine the challenges in its implementation and enforcement and suggest suitable measures”. Headed by Senior Deputy Election Commissioner Umesh Sinha, the committee included eight other officials of the ECI along with nominated members from the various ministries listed earlier besides representatives of the PCI and the NBA. Other stakeholders were special invitees.

In its initial discussion, the committee examined Section 126 of the Representation of the People Act, which, in its initial form in the 1951 Act, prohibited the convening, holding or attending, joining or addressing any public meeting or procession in connection with an election during the period of 48 hours prior to the close of polling. This section was amended in 1996 to include prohibition of display of election matter by means of television, cinematograph or similar apparatus.

The committee noted that more than two decades after the 1996 amendment, advancement in communication technologies had raised issues in the context of the implementation of Section 126, particularly due to the presence of 24×7 news channels beamed nationwide using cable and direct to home (DTH) satellite technology, and the ubiquitous presence of online social media platforms or “intermediaries.” The panel first examined comparable “silence periods” in different election systems across the world and how various attempts had been made to tackle the unique challenges posed by online media.

The committee identified three areas where there are frequent violations of election rules – television coverage including live coverage of political events and interviews of political leaders by broadcasters during the silence periods, the “systematic and organised” use of social media platforms by political actors to “manipulate and deceive the voting public, and ­undermine electoral verdicts,” and the anomaly in Section 126 introduced by the 1996 amendment, whereby campaign prohibitions during the silence period extended only to electronic media and did not include the print medium. The committee’s view was that all media should be treated as covered by Section 126, and towards achieving this end, it suggested that the law be amended to include print media, and a framework devised to govern social media platforms or online “intermediaries.”

In this context, the committee examined guidelines on “norms of journalistic conduct” issued by the PCI, comparable “guidelines for election broadcasts” issued by the NBA, and the 255th report of the Law Commission of India on electoral reforms that had recommended that the print medium be added to Section 126 of the RP Act, and the terms “television, cinematograph or similar apparatus” be replaced by “electronic media” – that would be taken to mean internet, radio and television including internet protocol (IP) television, satellite, terrestrial or cable channels, mobile and other such media”.

Responsibilities of Intermediaries
At this stage itself, the contours of the legal terrain that the committee was entering was rather unclear. This was made evident by the fact that the committee included in its record the fact that the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY) had issued in 2018 a draft Information Technology [Intermediary Guidelines (Amendment)] Rules, meant to create a mechanism for time-bound communication between government agencies and online intermediaries, to ensure, among other things, that these platforms were not used to violate the law. In order to achieve this goal, the rules originally issued in 2011 would have to be amended, rules under which intermediaries were duty bound to observe due diligence and observe guidelines as prescribed by the Union government.

At the committee’s first meeting, on February 9, 2018, all the stakeholders concurred with the ECI’s view, namely, that the guiding principle to be followed was that both “print and digital media should also be covered under Section 126”. The report describes a “general consensus that the restrictions surrounding the 48-hour period were not to be compromised and that a general code of conduct for all media during elections could be developed.” The member representing the NBA specifically suggested that “electronic and digital media” be defined to include websites, web channels, blogs, vlogs (or video logs) and so on, and the provisions of Section 126 should be uniformly applicable on all media and stakeholders.

This is where the principal difference between print and television and online media or “intermediaries” first came to the fore. While MEITY agreed that Section 126 could be interpreted as covering all media, its representative Rakesh Maheshwari submitted that intermediaries only provide the wherewithal for uploading content and did not have control on the content uploaded. In the absence of bodies like the PCI or the NBA, as far as online intermediaries are concerned, they are governed by the Information Technology (IT) Act. Section 79 of the Act provides immunity to media intermediaries on condition that they issue rules and regulations for users and take down content which is violative of any law in force. Maheshwari expressed the view that the commission could consider issuing advisories to intermediaries and to political parties and candidates.

Despite the structural difference between traditional media and online media though, the ECI committee continued to entertain the hope that a “code of ethics” could be developed for intermediaries and users using base documents of the PCI and the NBA.

At the committee’s next meeting, on May 1, 2018, the MEITY representative agreed to this idea, submitting that the ECI could consider issuing an “advisory to intermediary sites about the specific requirements of election law which are to be observed by users and in particular, political parties and candidates with verified accounts”.

At its next meeting on June 4, 2018, the committee was joined by Snehashish Ghosh, associate manager for public policy in Facebook India. In his presentation, Ghosh informed the committee that Facebook has a mechanism in place for reviewers to attend to complaints about the content posted by users. He said Facebook India had employed about 7,500 individuals as reviewers, a number that could be augmented for the election period. While complaints made by individual users were reviewed against Facebook’s “global community standards”, complaints by the ECI would be treated differently against not just Facebook’s standards but the law of India as well. Stating that “there is already a policy of taking special care during elections”, Ghosh assured the committee that prompt action would be taken on any complaints by the ECI.

The committee made certain specific requests to Facebook through Ghosh, which were:

(a)whether it would be possible to increase the number of reviewers;
(b) whether it would be possible to provide a mechanism within the platform for the election machinery to flag complaints about violations;
(c) whether it would be possible to block posting of election advertisements during the 48-hour silence periods; and
(d) whether it would be possible for Facebook India to collect details of expenditure on political advertising to enable the Election Commission of India to monitor expenses in this regard.

Stating that these requests would be considered, Ghosh also suggested that the committee consult the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), an industry body for intermediaries and online businesses.     
                                                                
At this meeting, for the first time, the structural difference between print and television on the one hand, and digital media on the other, was spelt out for the committee. Vikram Sahay, joint secretary, Policy Division, Ministry of Information & Broadcasting informed the panel that there is no regulatory authority for intermediaries akin to the PCI or the NBA, and that the IT Act was the only legal framework to regulate online intermediaries. He informed the committee that in April 2018, the I&B Ministry had set up a committee to formulate regulations for registration of intermediaries. In July that year, this committee was merged with a broader inter-ministerial committee on “investment in critical national infrastructure, digital broadcasting and related issues”.

More on this a little later in the article.

“Subsequently,” the ECI committee’s report states, “a series of consultations took place with intermediaries like Google, Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and IAMAI.” However, the report only discusses the inputs by IAMAI. A letter sent by IAMAI President Subho Ray, “suggested a co-ordination mechanism” for the ECI to report violations for the online platforms to act upon. It was this letter that later found its way into the committee’s recommendations and became the “voluntary code of ethics” issued by the IAMAI. The suggestions were broadly the following:
 

1. The ECI should designate an officer for reporting violations under Section 126 of the RP Act to relevant online intermediaries.
2. Online intermediaries would endeavour to provide a priority electronic channel to this designated officer; the designated officer could use this channel to notify the respective online intermediaries of content that the ECI believes violates Section 126 of the RP Act.
3. In order to ensure a prompt response, specific links to the content that violates the Section along with any accompanying reason and context should be included with any request made by the designated officer.
4. Relevant online intermediaries would be committed to promptly responding to such notices regarding content, when notified by the authorised officer.

An expanded version of these suggestions formed the committee’s recommendations as far as digital intermediaries were concerned.

Consultations with Political Parties
Parallel to the consultations with government departments and digital intermediaries, the ECI committee solicited views of all the recognised national and state political parties. While many did not respond initially, a meeting conducted on August 27, 2018 saw representatives of most parties attending and placing their views.

On a number of issues, most parties had identical demands and suggestions. On the inclusion of print media within the prohibitions contained in Section 126 of the RP Act, all parties aside from the BJP expressed support. These parties included the Indian National Congress, the Trinamool Congress, the Nationalist Congress Party, the Aam Admi Party, the All India Anna Dravida Munnettra Kazhagam, the All India Forward Bloc, the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, the Indian National Lok Dal, the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, the Shiv Sena, the Telugu Desam Party, the Desiya Murpokku Dravida Kazhagam, the All Jharkhand Students’ Union, the Naga People’s Front, among others.

Whereas certain political parties did not offer a specific view, the BJP was the only party that expressly called for the print medium not to be included in the ambit of Section 126 of the RP Act. This suggestion, despite the opposition of the BJP, found its way into the committee’s final recommendations. However, to implement the recommendation, the RP Act would have to be amended and so far the Narendra Modi government has shown no indication that it will do so.

Aside from this issue, four other subjects that found regular mention in multiple parties’ submissions were:

(a) the phenomenon of paid news,
(b) the “menace” of fake news,
(c) pervasive campaigning via the social media, and
(d) the ineffective nature of the silence periods during which time television channels broadcasting across the country regularly featured interviews with political leaders.

On the issue of paid news, which was not under the committee’s remit, this issue had earlier been examined in a detailed report of a sub-committee of the PCI, of which one of these authors of this article was a co-author. That report, since its completion in 2010, is yet to be acted upon.

Significantly, two parties – the Dravida Munnettra Kazhagam and the Jammu & Kashmir National Conference – demanded that a wider consultative process be conducted to deal with the issues under the committee’s remit.

Intermediary Liability Tussle
While the committee finished its work and quietly submitted its recommendations to the ECI on January 10, 2019, it did so against a backdrop of a high-stakes battle that was playing out regarding the regulation of online intermediaries under Indian law. There was debate on the question of intermediary liability, in the context of the government seeking to come up with a regulator for online intermediaries. There was no visible action on the ECI committee’s recommendations until March after the MCC was already in effect.

Intermediary liability is a legal concept which governs the responsibility of online platforms for user-generated content. India has so far adopted what are known as “safe harbour” protections in its regulation of online intermediaries through the IT Act of 2000. Section 79 of the Act provided an expansive version of safe harbour protection in its original version. Intermediaries were not liable for third party content as long as they had no knowledge of its illegality and exercised due diligence.

The IT Act was amended in 2008, bringing in a new, more detailed Section 79. This amendment, along with rules issued under it in 2011, required intermediaries to exercise due diligence, and set up a notice-and-take-down mechanism, in order to avail the safe harbour protection. This meant, in practice, that as long as users were notified that they are not supposed to post illegal or harmful content, and the intermediaries took down any infringing content reported to them within 36 hours, the safe harbour protection applied.

In the Shreya Singhal case in 2015, in which the Supreme Court famously struck down Section 66 (A) of the IT Act, it also read down the notice-and-take-down requirement of the safe harbour provision, restricting it to only those cases where a court order for a takedown had been served on the intermediary.

The Modi government felt a need to make the safe harbour provision even more stringent, or even, to reimagine intermediary regulation altogether. Union Electronics and IT Minister (who is also the law minister) Ravi Shankar Prasad said in Rajya Sabha on July 26, 2018 that “rising incidents of violence and lynching in the country due to misuse of social media platforms” necessitated a change in how online intermediaries were governed. He even suggested that if intermediaries “do not take adequate and prompt action, then the law of abetment [would also] apply to them”.

The draft amendments to intermediary guidelines were released for public comment by the government in December 2018 leading to a huge hue and cry. In those guidelines, the government lurched heavily to the other side of the line of safe harbour – proposing to make it mandatory for online platforms to “proactively” seek out “unlawful” content and break end-to-end encryption in those cases, to enable the law enforcement authorities to trace the content’s origin.

The draft amendments also proposed that intermediaries would have to retain all data for 180 days, double the prevailing 90 days, and inserted a monthly requirement to inform users about legal requirements. In addition, the draft rules proposed that any intermediary with more than five million users would be required to incorporate itself in India, even if the company was based abroad.

These draft amendments led to a controversy, both among a section of intermediary companies, and among global advocates for a free and democratic internet, but for different reasons. The New York Times called it “Chinese style censorship” and Medianama’s Nikhil Pahwa, one of India’s pre-eminent activists on digital rights issues, described them as “a serious and imminent threat to the open internet in India”

Organisations such as the Internet Democracy Project, the Global Network Initiative, and the Internet Freedom Foundation all issued public statements against the draft rules and sent their submissions opposing it to the government. A number of intermediary companies themselves and their representative bodies including the IAMAI also came out against the draft rules, and sent submissions to the government.

Interestingly, some Indian intermediaries supported the proposed rules, and stood by the government. These included companies such as Reliance Jio, Sharechat, Hike, Ola and MakeMyTrip.

It was in this fraught atmosphere that the committee’s recommendations, seeking precisely a solution to the question of how to deal with content on online intermediaries, reached the ECI. No action appeared to have been taken on it till March 19 – that is a fortnight after the election dates had been announced and the MCC had come into force.

IAMAI’s “Voluntary Code of Ethics”
On March 19, the ECI called in representatives of social media companies for a collective meeting, and on the same day, issued a set of guidelines for social networks and updated an application for citizens to report violations. This set of guidelines was nothing but the recommendations of the committee report, which consisted of the following:
 

1. Intermediaries should voluntarily undertake information, education and communication campaigns to build awareness for their users about unlawful conduct during election and, in particular, during prohibited period of 48 hours.
2. Intermediaries should work with the ECI to evolve a notification mechanism by which the ECI may notify the relevant platform of potential violations of Section 126 of the RP Act. The ECI shall appoint an officer as the designated officer to liaise with the intermediaries.
3. Intermediaries should open a special grievance redressal channel for the ECI and appoint dedicated persons/teams during the election period to interface with and take expeditious action upon receipt of an order from the ECI.
4. Intermediaries should send a report to the ECI on the measures taken by them to prevent abuse of their platforms. Publicly available transparency reports that detail the actions taken by intermediaries on content blocking, could be one form of such regular reporting as they are updated frequently to improve transparency and ensure accountability.
5. No intermediary shall host any political advertisements without the prior approval of an ECI appointed Media Certification and Monitoring Committee (MCMC), and should endeavour to deploy their political advertisement transparency tools in India. They must facilitate transparency with regard to political advertisements by maintaining a repository of political advertisements with information such as the sponsor, expenditure, and targeted reach of such content in an aggregated manner.
6. Intermediaries must commit to facilitating transparency in political advertisements by clearly distinguishing/labelling political advertisements, including utilising their pre-existing labels/disclosure technology for advertisements in general.
7. The IAMAI should coordinate with intermediaries and should periodically monitor the cases of violation and promptness of the action taken by the intermediaries.
8. The IAMAI may be asked to setup a monitoring committee to periodically study the actions of intermediaries with regard to their conduct regarding election matters.

The very next day, on March 20, 2019, the IAMAI released a “voluntary code of ethics” for the intermediary companies to follow during the general election. Under this code, the intermediary companies stated they would:
 

1. Endeavour to, where appropriate and keeping in mind the principle of freedom of expression, deploy appropriate policies and process to facilitate access to information regarding electoral matters.
2. Endeavour to voluntarily undertake information, education and communication campaigns to build awareness including electoral laws and other related instructions, and to impart training to the nodal officer at the ECI on the mechanism for ending requests as per procedure established by law.
3. The intermediaries and the ECI would develop a notification mechanism by which the ECI can notify the relevant platforms of potential violations of Section 126 of the RP Act and other applicable electoral laws. Valid legal orders would be acknowledged and/or processed within three hours for violations reported under Section 126 and expeditiously for all other valid legal requests.
4. The intermediaries would create a high priority dedicated reporting mechanism for the ECI and are appointing dedicated person(s)/teams during the period of the general elections to interface with and to exchange feedback and may assist with taking expeditious action upon receipt of a request from the ECI.
5. The intermediaries would provide a mechanism for the relevant political advertisers, in accordance with their obligations under law, to submit pre-verification certificates issued by the ECI and/or the MCMC of the ECI, in relation to election advertisements that feature names of political parties and candidates for the 2019 general elections. Further, they would expeditiously process and take action against paid political advertisements lawfully notified to them by the ECI that do not feature such certification.
6. The intermediaries would commit to facilitating transparency in paid political advertisements, including utilising their pre-exiting labels/disclosure technology for such advertisements.
7. The intermediaries would, pursuant to a valid request received from the ECI via the IAMAI, provide an update on the measures taken by them to prevent abuse of their respective platforms.
8. IAMAI would coordinate with the intermediary companies on the steps carried out under this code and IAMAI as well as its participant organisations would be in constant communication with the ECI during the election period.

The election period saw repeated run-ins between the ECI and the intermediary companies. One instance, reported by one of the authors of this article in The Real Face of Facebook in India, is illustrative.
 

“Within days of the MCC coming into force, Facebook had a run-in with the election authorities. A show-cause notice was issued to BJP leader Om Prakash Sharma (who is an elected member of the legislative assembly of Delhi from the Vishwas Nagar constituency) for putting up an advertisement on Facebook politicising the Pulwama attack by using his own photograph and those of other political leaders (including Prime Minister Modi and BJP President Amit Shah) together with a picture of Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman, the Indian Air Force officer who had come back to India after his aircraft had crashed in Pakistan.

“The Election Commission asked Shivnath Thukral, Facebook’s Director, Public Policy for India and South Asia, to remove the adertisements shared by the BJP leader. His reported response was stunning. He asked what specific legal provisions had been violated by the disputed advertisement.”

Clearly, the voluntary code of ethics was not sufficient to deal with such instances. 

Civil Society’s Response
On April 5, 2019, a statement was issued as an outcome of collective reflection and a consultative process involving a number of civil society organisations and retired civil servants including two former chief election commissioners of India, which found fault with the ECI’s modest efforts to combat the dangers of misinformation and unaccounted mass campaigning via social media.

The statement took note of the ECI’s consultations with digital platforms and the IAMAI, as well as the IAMAI’s voluntary code of ethics, and while welcoming these developments, pointed out that the entire process had been conducted without any transparency, public inputs or civil society engagement.

The statement issued an appeal to political parties to “recognise the threat of money power in the elections and evolve a consensus to enact a legislation to cap the expenditure of political parties in elections”. To the ECI, the statement appealed that it monitor compliance of spending by political parties, ensure disclosure by political parties on their IT cells, contractors and advertisements to the ECI, ensure disclosure of all digital spending during the election campaign by political parties and candidates to the ECI.

The statement also called for the ECI to conduct an independent audit of the declaration process for political advertisements, suggesting specific steps towards such an audit. It also called for the creation of a nodal department within the ECI to address the “growing threat of fake news” and for the ECI to ensure that online platforms are not used to target communities on the lines of caste, religion, ethnicity, and linguistic identity, or in any other way that violates the MCC. The full statement can be read here.

Where Now?
What the release of the ECI committee’s report has made clear is that regulation of online content in the context of elections became largely an impossibility due to a lack of a cohesive and coordinated framework regulating online intermediaries in general. Until the government’s efforts in this direction reach some sort of conclusion, which can take place only after it considers and makes decisions on a host of other issues such as the questions of data privacy and data localisation, no effective regulation on online content, whether for the conduct of free and fair elections, or to prevent the spread of fake news, or to protect vulnerable individuals and communities from online campaigns against them, will be possible.

Courtesy: Newsclick.in

The post Election Commission Failed to Curb Fake News Online Before 2019 Lok Sabha Polls appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Polling in the remaining constituency, in Tamil Nadu, stands deferred. The counting commenced on May 23rd and concluded the next day.
The broad outlines of the outcomes were, however, available on the first day of the counting itself.The incumbent regime came back to power with a bang.

Never before, in the recent past, India was so keenly awaiting the results, because never before in the recent past India stood so sharply divided.

So much so that the Time magazine described Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi as India’s “divider in chief” on the cover of its May 20 issue. Modi’s picture was on all international issues of the magazine except the United States edition.

The cover story, written by novelist Aatish Taseer, has the headline: “Can the world’s largest democracy endure another five years of a Modi government?” A second one, however, by Ian Bremmer, treats Modi far more positively, suggesting that Modi is “India’s best hope” for economic reform.

Even otherwise, much before that, on March 15, a parliamentarian from the ruling BJP, since 1996 with some gaps in between, Sakshi Maharaj — also a saffron-robed Hindu monk — had predicted that after 2019, there will be no election in 2024.

Even before that, on Jan. 25th, “(i)n his customary address to the nation on the eve of the 70th Republic Day, President Ram Nath Kovind Friday [had] said that the 17th Lok Sabha election is not ‘once-in-a-generation’ but ‘once-in-a-century’ moment”.

All in all, the extraordinary salience of this poll, broadly mirroring that of the 1977, was widely acknowledged.

The Poll Outcome

In a nutshell, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), in a “landslide” victory, won 303 seats (out of total 242 for which polls were held), up from previous 282, and the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance won 353 seats. The Indian National Congress won 52 seats – up from 44, and the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance won 91. Other parties and their alliances won 98 seats.

In as many as 16 states and UTs together, the BJP secured more than 50% of vote shares.

Nationally, the BJP’s vote share was 37.36% – up from 31.34%, while the Congress secured 19.49% – down from 19.52%.

In terms of vote share, the next three largest parties are: AITC (4.07%); BSP (3.63%) and SP (2.55%).

However, in terms of number of seats, DMK – a Congress ally, is the third largest party with 23 seats – all from Tamil Nadu.

One of the other notable aspects is that the Congress failed even to open its account in Rajasthan – with total 25 seats, won a lone seat in Madhya Pradesh – out of total 29, and only 2 out of 11 seats in Chhattisgarh.

Congress had won the state assembly polls in these three states, under the same leadership, displacing the ruling BJP, led by Modi-Shah duo, just about six months back.

It, however, did fairly well in Punjab – winning 8 out of total 13, where it had scored a convincing victory in the last assembly poll in early 2017. Its vote share rose marginally, as compared to the assembly poll – from 38.5% to 40.12%.

It did rather spectacularly – more so, keeping its overall dismal performance in mind, in Kerala, winning 15 out total 20 seats and its alliance partners another 4, conceding only 1 to the CPI(M) – the leader of the ruling coalition in the state.

In Tamil Nadu, it won 8 out of total 38, as the second largest partner in the DMK-led alliance.

The CPI(M) is down from 9, last time, to 3 – 2 in Tamil Nadu, as a constituent of the DMK-led alliance, and 1 in Kerala, as the leader of the ruling LDF.

It could not secure even the second position in any of the seats in its erstwhile bastions – Tripura (2) and West Bengal (42).

The AAP is down from 4 (all in Punjab) to 1 (in Punjab). Last time, it had come second in all the 7 Delhi seats and 1 in UP (Varanasi). This time, it conceded the second position to Congress, in 5 out of the 7 seats in Delhi. Did not contest from Varanasi.

The AITC is down from 34 to 22 seats (all in West Bengal), with a small rise in vote share.

The BSP is up from 0 to 10 (all in UP, in alliance with the SP and RLD), with some fall in vote share.

The DMK is up from 0 to 23 (all in Tamil Nadu), with some rise in vote share.

The Landslide in Historical Perspective

The poll outcome, this time, has been dubbed by quite a few media outlets, very much in tandem with their roles all along, as TsuNaMo (= Tsunami + Na(rendra) Mo(di)) or its various variants.

The label may be pretty well justified in terms of its (devastating) impact on the psyche of too many Indian citizens.

And, it is also a fact, this is by far the best performance by the BJP ever.

This time, it has won 303 seats and secured 37.36% vote share as against 282 and 31.34%, last time, the best till then. Its previous best performance had been in 1998: 182 and 25.59%.

So much so that even “sober” analysts have now started terming it as the confirmation of India’s transit, commencing in 2014, from, the now extinct, “Congress system” – a term coined by an eminent social scientist, late Rajni Kothari19, to denote the dominance of India’s multi-party democratic polity by the Congress, to a new “BJP system”.

So, it won’t be quite out of place to have a relook into what was the “Congress system”.

In 1952, the very first general election, the Congress had won 74.2% of the total seats, as against 3.3% by the second largest party and 45.9% vote share as against 10.6% of vote share. (The second largest parties in terms of seats and vote share were different.)

In 1957, 75.1% of seats and 47.8% of votes, whereas the second largest, in terms of seats – 5.5%, and the one in terms of votes – 10.6%.

In 1962, 73.1% and 44.7%. The second largest in terms of seats – 5.9% and the one in terms of votes – 10.0%.

In all these three polls the Congress mascot had been Independent India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru.

The “Congress system” did not only mean the dominance of the parliament by the Congress but the states as well.

Nehru would pass away in 1964.

The “Congress system” suffered a very major jolt in 1967, by losing a number of state assembly elections.

The INC suffered significant losses in 7 states which included: Gujarat where INC won 11 out of 24 seats while Swatantra Party won 12 seats. Madras where INC won 3 out of 39 seats and DMK won 25 seats. Orissa where INC won 6 out of 20 seats and Swatantra Party won 8 seats. Rajasthan where INC won 10 out of 20 seats Swatantra Party won 8 seats. West Bengal where INC won 14 out of 40. Kerala where INC won only 1 out of 19. Delhi where INC won 1 out of 7 while remaining 6 were won by Bharatiya Jana Sangh. The decline in support for Congress was also reflected by the fact it lost control of six state governments in the same year.

That, essentially, signalled the end of the “Congress system”.

Nevertheless, even in 1967 parliamentary poll, the Congress had won 54.4% of seats and 40.8% of votes. The closest opponents: 5.9% and 10.0%.

In 1971, in the parliamentary poll, the Congress faction led by Mrs Indira Gandhi would, however, score a very convincing victory: 68.0% and 43.7%. The nearest opponents: 4.8% and 10.4%.

The number of seats won by the Congress, as compared to its vote share, came down because higher index of opposition unity.

Regardless, the era of unilateral dominance by the Congress party had ended in 1967 itself.

The Congress, under Indira Gandhi — post-Emergency, suffered an ignominious defeat in 1977, with its vote share plunging to 34.7% and seat share to 28.4% – this time as a result of across the board opposition unity coming on top of widespread popular revulsion against the Emergency. The party that replaced the Congress in the parliament was, for all practical purpose, a coalition of parties, which could not hold together for far too long.

The era of coalition, effectively, got inaugurated.

The Congress would, however, reach its peak parliamentary poll performance in 1984: 78.6% of seats and 49.1% of votes. The nearest opponents: 4.3% and 7.7%.

But, that would prove to be just a flash in the pan, which had been, understandably, triggered by an extraordinary situation marked by bloody Khalistani movement in Punjab, consequent Hindu exodus, capture of the famed Golden Temple by the armed militants, followed by the “Operation Blue Star” by the Indian Army causing a large number of deaths and severe damage to the temple, the assassination of the Indian Prime Minister by two of her Sikh bodyguards, sparking off massacre of Sikhs in Delhi and also elsewhere.

The “national security” card was used by the Congress, now led by the just deceased Prime Minister’s only surviving son, to the hilt.
To that extent, the just concluded poll bears an eerie resemblance with that one.

The fall of Congress, since ’84, has been fairly steep.

The “Congress system”, as it appears, had been born with Jawaharlal Nehru as the first Prime Minister of India and withered away with his death.

Regardless, this time, the BJP has won 51.93% of seats and secured 37.36% of votes. The Congress, the nearest opponent, in terms of both seats and vote share: 21.40% and 19.49%.

Moreover, except for Kerala, the Congress had, till 1984, fought the general elections, by and large, without any ally. That’s far from the case with the BJP.

Even leaving aside the situations in the states, the present situation can hardly be bracketed with the Congress dominance till 1967, not even during the period from 1971-84, barring 1977-80.

There is, of course, a more salient dividing line separating the two – while the “Congress system”, despite some serious aberrations, operated broadly to strengthen the “Idea of India”, that underpinned the Indian Constitution, this time, that very notion is faced with a mortal threat.

Two Advance Signals

Even before the actual counting of votes began, two advance signals, as regards the likely outcome, became available. One, explicit, the other, implicit.

The obvious signal was, of course, the results of the various exit polls, released after the conclusion of the final phase of polling on May 19th.
The exit poll projections, however, widely diverged.

While the India Today-Axis predicted (around) 352 seats for the (BJP-led) NDA – with a clear and emphatic majority by a margin of (around) 80, and (around) 92 seats for the (Congress-led) UPA, the NewsX-Neta, at the opposite end of the spectrum, predicted 242 for the former and 164 for the latter, and, thereby a hung parliament with the NDA enjoying a clear advantage.

It is specifically in this context, the second (implicit) signal became significant.

Reproduced below https://himalmag.com/a-collective-madness-india-elecions-modi-namit-arora-2019 is an introductory comment22 to a mail posted by this analyst on May 21.

Considering the provisional figure of 67.11% of polling this time, it’s a rise of 0.71% points over the preceding poll in 2014 (66.40%, as reported by the wiki). 2014 itself had seen a jump of a rather phenomenal 8.50% points: 66.40% – 57.90% (as reported by the wiki).

The outcome was that since 1984, for the first time, a single party did win absolute majority, even if it had fought the poll in alliance with a few others and its vote share of 31.34% was the lowest ever for a party winning absolute majority.

The fact that the voting %age has further gone up, even if only marginally, would tend to indicate a wave, given the phenomenal jump in the preceding poll.

The only plausible candidates available to cause a wave are Pulwama/Balakot and anti-minority prejudices/anger.

The Nyaya (read: NYAY), in any case, meant for the bottom-most 20% of the populace, most difficult to be accessed, is hardly a competitor.

The other likely candidate could be strong disaffection with the present dispensation – the hoax of “Acche Din”.

But, that’d have, normally, had brought the polling percentage down, not pushed it up.

Btw, exit polls, almost unfailingly, miss the magnitude of a large swing.

But, all these are, admittedly, speculations. One’ll have to wait for the 23rd, just two days away.

In the event, the NDA won 353 and the UPA – 91.  That is pretty close to the projections made by one extreme of the spectrum of exit polls – by India Today-Axis.

The Drivers

The last time, the BJP, as an opposition party, had polled 31.34%.

It may not be too irrational to assume that, by that time, it had accrued a rather stable/core support base of at least around 20% – 2/3rd of its total votes polled.

In 2009, it had polled 18.80%, in 2004 – 22.16%, in 1999 – 23.75%, 1998 – 25.59%, 1996 – 20.29 and 1991 – 20.04%.17, 23
Thus, around 20% may be taken to be rather steadfastly committed to the ideology of “Hindutva” – an Indian shorthand for Hindu nationalism/supremacism.

The last time, Modi could gather around additional 10% points over and above its (presumed) core support base.
The reasons were, as it appeared then, mainly the following:

I. Rampant corruptions indulged in by the outgoing UPA-II and, the preceding, UPA-I. The public perception of the corruptions was triggered by the then CAG reports and court cases and, further, sharply aggravated by the agitation led by Anna Hazare – an ex-military man, paraded as a Gandhian, collaborating with a Hindu Yoga guru-cum-entrepreneur having a large fan base, Baba Ramdev, and aided by among others, his the then lieutenant Arvind Kejriwal.

II. The consequent “policy paralysis” on the part of the government, as trumpeted, especially, by the corporate media.

III. Modi being able to raise and communicate these issues from his campaign platform, with telling effect, and his promise to end corruption, bring back black money – accompanied with the alluring assurance of depositing Rs 15 lakh in every poor/salaried person’s bank account.

IV. This was further accentuated by his call of “Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas!” (With All, Development of All!). Also tersely captured in the slogan/promise of “Acche Din!” (Better Days!). This had gained considerable credibility based on the, skilfully constructed and forcefully propagated, narrative of “Gujarat (the state of which Modi was the Chief Minister by then for well over a decade) model of development”.

V. The last, but not the least, was resort to (accentuated) communal polarisation, in a calibrated and targeted manner, aided by the Muzaffarnagar riot in western UP.

While the collapse of the “Acche Din”– the enchanting promise of better days, should have had effected significant erosion in the floating votes gathered last time, Pulwama-Balakot, or rather the (concocted?) narrative30 built around it, aided by a conniving EC and blared ad nauseam by the obliging, and “patriotic”, media – the electronic even more so, made it a surefire game changer.

The ruling party, in a way, got merged with the (brave) armed forces of the country.

Modi claimed and got the full credit for the (presumed) resounding slap delivered by the Indian forces in the face of Pakistan.

He would thus urge the (first-time) voters: “can your first vote be dedicated to the veer jawans (valiant soldiers) who carried out the air strike in Pakistan. Can your first vote be dedicated to the veer shaheed (brave martyrs) of Pulwama (terror attack)?”

“Ghar Me Ghus Ke Marunga”32 (I’d finish you off, by invading your holes!) – the shrill cry emanating from the Indian Prime Minister, was, arguably, the most emblematic campaign line of the Modi-BJP camp.

The main opposition in the field, the Congress, found itself utterly helpless.

It could neither challenge the narrative – that might have had proved even more disastrous, nor posit an alternative narrative with matching appeal, more so, given the biased nature of the media.

The “NYAY” – in any case, ostensibly directed at the bottom-most 20%, presumably, the most difficult to be accessed, was just no match, even if one sets aside the issue of credibility.

Despite the, apparently, spirited fight-back, the inevitable has happened.

A wave of nationalist jingoism unfailingly helps a right-wing party, particularly, if in power.

Thus Vajpayee had scored a clear victory in the 1999 poll, on the back of the Kargil War – facilitated by a monumental failure of the military intelligence on the Indian side, despite the far premature and ignominious collapse of the coalition government led by him. He would, however, suffer a defeat, next time (2004), unaided by any such surge, despite successfully running the coalition, this time round.

Moreover, no factor is a stand-alone entity.

The surge of jingoism emerged out of the latent, or even overt, feelings of animosity towards the (hated) “other” – the Muslims, persistently cultivated by the regime.

The surge only helped to cross the tipping point, to propel the voter vote for Modi/BJP, despite all his glaring fiascos – on the economic front, in particular.

Reproduced below is a rather longish, nevertheless worth citing, extract from a recent write-up carried by a South Asian journal:

“Five years later, barring qualified progress in some areas – toilets, roads, renewable energy, cooking gas – Modi’s promise of vikas has turned out empty. Even governments we rate below-average have arguably delivered similarly spotty progress, as in the preceding UPA regime. Make in India, Skill India and Digital India mostly remain slogans. Demonetisation showed the gaping idiocy and dangerous autocracy in Modi’s decision-making, which callously overruled the advice from experts that only a miniscule amount of black money was in cash. Far from raising India’s prestige and soft power in the world, the press in Europe and North America mostly brackets him and his movement with dubious figures like Trump, Putin, Ergodan and Bolsonaro. Modi has said the climate is not changing, our tolerance for the weather is. He holds asinine views about ancient Hindu feats in genetic science and cosmetic surgery. Despite a historic windfall from low oil prices, he now presides over a deepening farm crisis, an economic slowdown and the highest unemployment in 45 years. Vikas?”

In 2014, Modi ran on a platform of vikas but mostly delivered Hindutva. In 2019, he ran on a platform of Hindutva, with little talk of vikas, smart cities, beti bachao, black money, or Skill India. In 2019, Modi wore his religion on his sleeve. He and his party incited fear of the ‘other’ and made dog whistles and thinly veiled threats of violence and genocide. He gave Lok Sabha tickets to noted communal bigots of the RSS, including one who calls Godse a patriot. So what can we rationally expect from Modi this time? Even less vikas, I think, when the mandate is clearly for Hindutva, paving the way for the far right’s dream of a Hindu Rashtra, a state legally conceived not as secular but a Hindu polity and whose structures and institutions are based on the forms and priorities of Hindu culture and religion.

So how did Modi win this time? A big part of the answer is the powerful opium of Hindu nationalism. The BJP won because a great many Hindus are high on Hindutva. The Sangh Parivar has learned to exploit the well-known cultural inferiority complex of the Hindu middle class, which grew out of India’s colonial encounter with Europe. Alongside, they stoke fears that a billion-plus Hindus are under siege by Muslims, refugees, leftists, Pakistan and pesky “anti-nationals.” The well-funded propaganda arms of the BJP and Sangh Parivar spread a lurid and manufactured sense of historical hurt, key to sustaining Hindutva nationalism. Run by an army of paid trolls, they fan both hate and pride by peddling fantasies of past greatness, military might, superpower dreams, surgical strikes and fake news. The ordinary Hindu’s sense of history is now filled with malicious lies and manufactured resentments against pre-colonial Muslim rule and he wants to settle the score by punishing today’s Muslims.
…
During the voting season, I’d predicted that BJP’s decision to lead with Hindutva and its cynical post-Pulwama airstrikes would be a winning strategy. It more than offset their failures on the economy – a trick that countless demagogues have tried. Stated differently, the BJP’s actual performance on the economy became irrelevant against the joys and psychic highs of Hindu pride and nationalism, which the BJP stoked, playing the people like a fiddle. The BJP turned hate and anger into an animating, intoxicating and rallying force – risking the unleashing of even darker forces that, in time, they may not be able to control. Among other big contributors to the BJP victory were a brazenly partisan media that stumps for Modi and cultivates support for authoritarian rule; high octane propaganda on social media; and a hopelessly divided political opposition, who undercut each other’s votes in India’s first-past-the-post system.

That’s fairly comprehensive.

However, it does appear to severely underrate, though not outright overlook, the salience of the Pulwama/Balakot factor in the last poll.
In fact, with the Election Commission very much on his side, Modi, further accentuated its effect, making a mincemeat of the Model Code of Conduct, via a nationally televised address to announce the successful firing of an anti-satellite (ASAT) missile in the outer space – the first time for India, when the poll process was already on.

(In fact, it looks rather miraculous that for the bulk of post-poll analyses – across the lines, Pulwama-Balakot – so very glaring, as if, just never happened!)

Consequent to the stirred up jingoist surge, Modi could further reinforce the strongman (56”) image – built up assiduously over the last five years using the official machinery to the hilt, of himself.

Other than that, another analyst puts spotlight on three (presumably decisive) factors: Money – highly asymmetric access to financial resources (largely engineered via a controversial Act, legislated through stealth, for the specific purpose), (Electronic Voting) Machine and Media – acting, by and large, as a partisan player.

The point made regarding the EVM is, however, pretty much controversial. The social media, manipulated by a huge troll army, also, predictably, played some part. Apart from toilets (under Swacch Bharat), Ujjwala (cooking gas for poor households) – as mentioned in the extract reproduced above, regardless of patchy performance, the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi also appears to have played a role. So did rural housing scheme.

But, these sundry factors – including 10% reservation46 for “economically backward” members of the castes/groups not till then covered by the provisions of “reservation”, in themselves, cannot but be anything more than minor add-ons.

The main and, in fact, the only national opposition – relentlessly campaigning against the ruling Modi/BJP, the Congress, presented a fairly decent poll manifesto. But, with its limitations of resources – in terms of finance, as compared to the ruling party, organisational structure and, perhaps most importantly, the way it was treated by the mainstream media, it failed to reach out.

Apart from that, its masthead slogan – Ab Hoga NYAY (Now Justice Will Be Done), had, apparently, a basic design flaw. One, the NYAY scheme, meant to give out substantive cash doles to the (economically) bottom-most 20% households held no promise for the rest 80%. Two, it had the issue of credibility – whether it could be really implemented, given the financial constraints and structural limitations of government machinery. Three, it might have had even evoked adverse reactions, in various degrees, from the rest 80% – out of envy from those just falling beyond the limit and the better off ones, in particular, conceiving it as a forced waste of their “hard-earned” money. Fourth, the bottom-most 20% is, in any case, conceivably the most difficult to be accessed.

Its main attack line against the BJP was: Chowkidar Chor Hai! (The Guard Is A Thief!). It was, primarily, based on the visibly murky Rafale jet deal steered by none other than Modi himself. But, the roles played by the Supreme Court, the CAG (ref.: https://www.livemint.com/politics/news/cag-sees-17-savings-in-renegotiated-rafale-deal-1550039618464.html), the financial watchdog, and, most of all, the media turned out to be pretty much unhelpful. Consequently, it also failed to find a resonance.

The failure of the opposition parties to form a united national alliance – a la 1977, to confront the BJP – apparently, quite a non-feasible proposition – as it appears, eventually mattered rather little.

Just stunned by the official outcome, some of the opponents – both party and non-party, of the regime have claimed that the BJP victory has been engineered by way EVM tampering by the ruling party.

This, however, has been rather compellingly negated by one running a fact-checking website and enjoying considerable reputation for objectivity despite known leftist political inclinations.

The same issue(s) had been dealt with in even greater details by an expert, associated with the opposition CPI(M), drawing similar conclusions:
“It is not our argument that Indian EVMs are hack proof. No machine built by anybody, however competent they are, can be made free from hacking by skilled hackers. We have argued that it will require physical access to the machines – whether in the factory or outside – to carry out this hacking.”

As we have described in detail while discussing the administrative procedures, the EVMs have to pass the various verification procedures that involve representatives of political parties. These checks require that political parties understand and have an informed participation in these processes. Apart from physically verifying the EVMs, there are also randomisation procedures that involve the presence and participation of political party representatives.

Therefore, hacking such a system can be done only with a massive conspiracy, and with either the wilful participation of the opposition parties in this conspiracy, or their complete ignorance of what is going on.

Nevertheless, the final conclusion drawn by this author needs be taken with all seriousness and implemented.

Finally, elections must not only be fair but also seen to be fair. Therefore, our argument is that the ECI must not use the VVPAT as just an ornament forced on it by the Supreme Court, and do a token verification. It should do a real verification by tallying the paper slips of the VVPATs with the electronic count in the EVM. Only then will the ECI be able to put to bed the suspicions people have of their votes being hijacked by a ghost in the machine.

Moreover, the process of filing complaints on observing discrepancy between the button pressed and the paper trail displayed needs be made more complainant-friendly than it is now.

There should also be mandatory counting of all paper trails where the winning margin is 1%, or below, of the total votes polled.
Lastly, a look at how the voters have voted.

The votes cast, as is well-known, are anonymous.

Even then, surveys by non-government institutions are carried out to explore the profiles of the support base for various contesting parties.
At least three noteworthy analyses are available in the public domain. These are not congruent.

Yet, the essential point that emerges is that the BJP has, this time, further consolidated Hindu support, across caste divides. But, it, nevertheless, still enjoys more support from the rich and upper castes, even though there has been a sharper rise in case of lower castes, including Dalits, and Adivasis. In stark contrast, little support from the non-Hindus – 10% or thereabout.

All in all, Hindutva in combination with Modi’s carefully constructed image as a strongman riding on the upsurge of jingoism triggered by the narrative built around Pulwama-Blalkot trumped his rather dismal failure on all other fronts and very much neutralised the opposition campaigns.
The roles played by the (supposedly neutral) Election Commission and the mainstream media were, apparently, of huge significance.
Also the grossly disproportionate access to financial resources.

Of course, Tamil Nadu and Kerala are the two most glaring exceptions. There are a few others as well.

But, the BJP virtually swept the heartland, except in Punjab.

What Now?

As far as the opposition camp is concerned, the first response to the defeat is dismay and disarray.

The main opposition party Congress, with its President, Rahul Gandhi, announcing his decision to quit his post regardless of the urgings to the contrary by its highest decision-making body, Congress Working Committee (CWC), is still in turmoil.

Others also appear to be rather nonplussed.

The case of the West Bengal Chief Minister is an illustrative example.

The Muslims, the bete noire of the BJP (and its ideological anchor organisation, the RSS), are, apparently, dispirited.

Some eminent Muslims have, reportedly, written to the Prime Minister welcoming his address on May 26 to NDA MPs and offered “utmost cooperation” to him in reaching out to the community.

Another, known name from the community, has, on the contrary, in a reasoned and spirited appeal, urged the community to make common cause with “(l)iberals, social democrats, socialists, communists, large sections of the underprivileged, the poor, and sections of scholars” in the fight for dignified survival.

Obviously, all these are indicative of the ongoing turbulence within. The BJP – the Modi-Shah duo, in particular, is, obviously, only too elated.
Modi is taking this opportunity also to refashion the organisational power structure. What, however, is far more germane in anticipating the developments in the coming days is that the BJP/RSS has a project – to supplant the “secular” and “democratic” Indian state with a “Hindu Rashtra” (Hindu nation state) – the contours of which are, understandably, not etched in stone, but, even then, would mean complete negation of substantive democracy and pluralism. Of still greater salience, the journey towards it has got to be propelled by constant stirring up of hatred and violence against the constructed inimical “others”, in order to mobilise the Hindus as “Hindus”, drowning out all other competing identities.
Taking off from that basic proposition, the new regime is likely to have two major focal points on the “political” front:

I. Dismantling of all opposition – both party and non-party.

Towards that, dislodging, maybe even dismissal, of, at least a few, opposition-run state governments.

ED, IT, CBI raids on opposition politicians; also, in some cases, buying out.

Tightening the screw, in a myriad ways – including enhanced digital surveillance, also as regards the civil society organisations and dissenting individuals.

II. Sharply spiking communal polarisation by way of (phased?) nationwide roll-out of the NRC, also scrapping of Art. 370 (and Art. 35A) and putting to good use the Mandir-Masjid issue(s), as per the demands of the situation.

Other expected developments are:

(i) Further intensification of non-state physical violence.
(ii) Mega sale of PSUs.
(iii) “Economic reforms”.
(iv) Stepped up trashing of environmental norms and safeguards.
(v) Tightening the grip over the education infrastructure and institutions.
(vi) Further defanging of watchdog institutions.
(vii) More repressive laws, if felt necessary.

While the actual (detailed) work plan will evolve and be calibrated, based on the perceived ground situations, and be punctuated with some measures to project a “people-friendly” image – to confuse and divide the potential opposition, there is little scope that the general direction would be anything significantly different from the one sketched out above.

It would no longer be business as usual, not even by the standards of the last five years.

Conclusion

Modi 2.0 very much presents us with the looming threat of the dismantling of the “India” – embodying the values of “democracy”, “pluralism” and “egalitarianism”, that had been wrought out in the crucible of the epic freedom struggle and, in the process, finally emerged on the 15th August 1947 – in pursuance of a project to supplant it with a “Hindu Rashtra” (Hindu nation state) – by mobilising the Hindus of India as “Hindus”, drowning out all other identities linked to language, culture, gender, caste, class etc., constantly stoking hatred and violence against the constructed inimical “others”.

Regardless of all the (innumerable) flaws and shortcomings that “India” – real and even notional, encapsulates, the success of the above project would prove to be an unmitigated disaster for the vast majority of the people inhabiting this land.

What could offer at least some chance to avert such a predicament is a broad front/fronts: consisting of political parties, as many as possible – including their associated mass organisations, and non-party civil society organisations – based on the common agenda of saving democracy/democratic rights and unity of the country. Backed, actively, by right-minded, otherwise diffused, individuals. On top of the, ongoing and to be taken up, myriad specific issue-based struggles, by various constituents in their own ways – unitedly or independently.

Determined and consistent resistance has got to be offered on all available terrains – including parliamentary, legal, media (both traditional and new) and the streets, and in spaces – political and civil.

It is, admittedly, a stupendous task given that (i) the regime has the levers of the state power under its control – providing it with a disproportionate advantage to set and control the narrative (Pulwama-Balakot being a graphic illustration), and (ii) coming on top of its not too inconsiderable success in vitiating the “Hindu” psyche, via persistent and diligent work, by the RSS and its myriad affiliates, over decades and decades.

Moreover, much of the “opposition” may start melting away even before the real fight starts.

However, one has no option but to hope against hope and fight back.

Courtesy: Counter View

The post India’s 2019 Parliamentary poll outcome: Drivers and consequences – An exploration appeared first on SabrangIndia.

In this episode of ‘Bol ke Lab Azad Hain Tere’, senior journalist Abhisar Sharma talks about how the current central government is only interested in gaining political mileage from the deaths of security personnel. No media channel questioned the government about the death of 13 soldiers in the AN-32 crash recently. Retired army officer Mohammad Sanaullah was termed as a foreigner and was sent to a detention camp. Six soldiers died when a MI-17 crashed in February this year, it was found later that it was shot down in friendly fire and the Indian Air Force was asked by the government not to reveal this fact till after the general elections were over.

Courtesy: News Click

The post Don’t Shed Crocodile Tears for Martyrs! appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Image Courtesy: Facebook

VBA was founded by Prakash Ambedkar on March 20, 2018 and registered on March 15, 2019, just before the general elections. Apart from Asauddin Owaisi’s AIMIM, VBA also garnered support from over 100 small political parties and social organisations. Talks of a pre-poll alliance with the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) fell through earlier in 2019, with the older parties labelling VBA as the B-team of the BJP… and this is what cost the Cong-NCP alliance dearly. The Congress won one seat and the NCP just four.

VBA upsets the Cong-NCP applecart

In many constituencies that have hitherto been considered stronghold of the, VBA candidates won a significant number of votes, often placing third and denting the vote share of INC-NCP candidates. This is true in constituencies like Buldhana, Gadhchiroli-Chimur, Nanded and Parbhani. Additionally, the VBA turned it into a legitimate three cornered fight in Sangli, which is a major Congress bastion and the constituency of another former chief minister Vasantdada Patil! Even in Akola and Solapur, the two seats from where Prakash Ambedkar contested, the Congress would have benefitted from a pre-poll alliance with the VBA. Let us take a closer look at the numbers here.

Buldhana: In Buldhana, VBA candidate Siraskar Baliram Bhagwan won 1,72,627 or 15.41 percent of the votes, coming in third behind Shiv Sena’s JP Ganpatrao (5,21,977) and and NCP’s Dr. Rajendra Shingane (3,88,690). VBA’s votes thus, exceeded the margin of victory.

Gadhchiroli-Chimur: VBA candidate Dr. Rameshkumar Gajbe won 1,11,468 or 9.75 percent of the votes coming in third in this constituency. Once again this was higher than the margin of victory with BJP’s Ashok Nete winning 5,29,968 votes and INC’s Dr. Namdeo Usendi getting 4,42,442 votes.

Nanded: In Nanded, INC’s star candidate and former Maharashtra chief minister Ashok Chavan lost by a narrow margin of just over 40,000 votes to Prataprao patil Chilkhalikar. While Chavan won 4,46,658 votes, Chilkhalikar won 4,84,806 votes. VBA’s YN Bhinge won 1,66,196 votes that could have made all the difference. Had the Congress entered into a pre-poll alliance with the VBA, Chavan would not have suffered such a humiliating defeat on his home turf.

Parbhani: In Parbhani, the VBA candidate Alamgir Mohammed Khan came in third with 1,49,946 votes, a number that is far greater than the winning margin that was just over 42,000 votes! While Shiv Sena’s Sanjay Jadhav won 5,38,941 votes, NCP’s Rakesh Vitekar wasn’t far behind with 4,96,742 votes.

Sangli: VBA’s Gopichand Padalkar won an impressive 3,00,234 votes here snapping close at the heels of Swabhimani Paksha’s VP Patil who won 3,44,643. Though BJP’s Sanajaykaka Patil emerged victorious with 5,08,995 votes, the close contest between the candidates who placed second and third made it a three cornered contest.

In Akola, combined votes of VBA chief Prakash Ambedkar (2,78,848) and INC’s HB Patel (2,54,370) would have given BJP’s Sanjay Dhotre (5,54,444) tougher competition. In Solapur, Ambedkar ended up playing spoilsport for another former chief minister Sushil Kumar Shinde. INC’s Shinde who won 3,66,377 votes, lost to Siddheshway Shivacharya who won 5,24,985 votes. The victory margin of 1,58,608 was under the 1,70,007 votes won by Ambedkar!

VBA also performed admirably in Beed, Hatkanangle, Osmanabad, Maval, Amravati, Chandrapur, Hingoli, Latur and Yavatmal-Washim.
But it wasn’t just far flung semi urban or rural areas where the VBA made its mark. VBA candidates also won an impressive number of votes in Mumbai. Sanjay Bhonsle won 63,412 votes coming in third in Mumbai South Central. Niharika Khondalay won 68,239 votes bagging the third spot in Mumbai North East.

Given that the VBA had decided to contest all 288 seats in the upcoming assembly elections in Maharashtra, perhaps it is time that secular parties start taking the party seriously and forge alliances to improve their electoral prospects.

The post Does the VBA’s performance in 2019 signal Maharashtra’s subaltern sunrise? appeared first on SabrangIndia.

In an era where national elections have become a strange cross between an episode of Big Boss and twenty-twenty cricket, it has become quite difficult to take the end results very seriously. This is even more so when, there is widespread suspicion of the poll itself being rigged through massive deletion of names from voter lists and possible tampering with the Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) used[i].

Yet, what does one really do when, a man you think is a hate-mongering demagogue, devious fool and selfie-obsessed megalomaniac becomes the Prime Minister of your country for the second time in a row? And that too, returns with a thumping majority in parliament – so bloody thumping it feels like King Kong dancing on your dinner table!

Well, the first thing you do is recover your balance (after a few stiff ones) and ask some very basic questions about WTF is really happening? Did a majority of Indians vote on real issues and in their own best interests or were they manipulated through fake news, slick marketing and heavy doses of emotional blackmail?  Were they swayed by Hindu extremist sentiment and hardline nationalism and if so why? Why are Modi’s opponents disunited and in such a mess – or are they reflecting some other truth about the state of Indian polity today?

National policies everywhere are shaped by a cabal of clever ideologues, corporate lobbies and even foreign powers –so does this election make any difference to the lives of voters? What are the implications of Modi Regime 2.0? What is anyone, who wants change, supposed to do?
That’s a mouthful of questions, but there can be even more and here I will attempt to answer some of them, as briefly as possible.

Why did Narendra Modi win?
Elections emerged historically as a means of obviating the role of violence, fear and hatred in bringing about transitions of power in human societies. Every now and then though, all three make cameo appearances in the theater of participatory democracy, sending scared voters sheep-like into the arms of a benign-faced, butcher-in-chief, waiting with sharpened knives.

And so they did in the 2019 Indian elections too – a very mysterious terrorist strike killing 40 security forces in Indian Kashmir, a dubious retaliatory attack by the Indian Air Force on Pakistan and talk of possible use of nuclear weapons between the two countries. Well before the first votes were cast, incumbent Prime Minister Narendra Modi had cast himself as a warrior, pretending  the Indian military’s exploits were all his very own. All this was backed up further by massive amounts of money power, fake news, crude invectives and deployment of majoritarian dog whistles.

The gamble paid off handsomely. Finally, when the results came in Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, a shrill advocate of pseudo-nationalism, saw its tally of seats in Parliament rise well above the majority needed to form government. Sweeping aside all other debates, concerns, basic needs across the country large sections of the public seem to have voted Modi as supreme leader for the next five years, during which he and his coterie of corporate fixers, will shape everything from education to economic policy, affecting the lives of 1.3 billion Indians.

Where did the Opposition lose out?
While using the ‘trauma of Pulwama’ to gathere votes Modi also turned the elections into a presidential-style contest, claiming the image of a ‘strong and decisive’ leader. His main opponent – Rahul Gandhi of the Congress – despite a spirited campaign and a great party manifesto emphasizing solutions to public problems, could respond adequately – mainly also because he refused to  fight Modi’s war hysteria with any kind of counter hysteria. While he focused a lot on Modi’s alleged corruption or incompetence, Rahul also failed to offer a compelling vision of his own for India’s future – or at least communicate it to the population in an effective manner.

In other words, the results were really as much a rejection by the Indian public, smitten with Modi,  of all the alternatives presented by his opponents, as an endorsement of Modi himself. Overall, ‘Brand Modi’, burnished by outrageous propaganda, seems to have trumped every other negative factor working against the BJP, including record unemployment, crisis in agriculture and the effects of the disastrous demonetization and GST policies.

Aiding Modi’s campaign further was also the complete inability of opposition parties to present a united front against the BJP – with petty political considerations and even big egos coming in the way. To use an analogy from twenty-twenty cricket, Modi was handed a free six off the last ball by his quarrelling rivals, when all he needed was just one run.

At a more deeper level the biggest weakness of Modi’s political opponents was they did not have a coherent answer to Modi or the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s increasingly ascendant idea of ‘Hindutva’ – that claims India should belong exclusively to Hindus, with all other religious denominations accepting their status as second-class citizens. The opponents of the BJP and RSS, including the Congress party,were unable to counter this by popularizing the Indian Constitution’s secular nature nor convincingly connect up in any way with the grand anti-imperialist legacy of the Indian freedom struggle. Things have come to a pass where members of the BJP, including currently elected MPs, openly celebrate Nathuram Godse, who murdered Mahatma Gandhi – the greatest leader of India’s struggle for independence.

At yet another level, barring some state governments, non-BJP parties do not seem to evoke much public confidence when it comes to delivering good governance – whether health, education, infrastructure and so on. Also, while almost all politicians operating nationally are there only to get power and steal from the state treasury – it is only non-BJP ones[ii] who get painted as being corrupt by the ‘Modified’ media. In the case of the BJP such theft is cleverly blurred from public view by saffron scarves and loud slogans of ‘Jai Shri Ram’. Either the opposition folks should get a suitable slogan to cover up their thievery or try to stop stealing altogether if they can[iii].

What next for India’s Opposition?
Surprising as it may sound, I think while Modi and BJP have won nationally, they are going to lose steadily at the state level in the coming months and years. And this is simply because the same people who voted for Modi to be PM are not necessarily going to vote for his proxies in their own states. There is a deep dissatisfaction on the ground against many BJP-led governments, particularly in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state. If the BJP’s opponents unite and put together a good alternative set of policies, with a clear leadership, they can beat the BJP in any future election at the state level.

Non-BJP parties, which are already in power in different states around the country should also offer examples of good governance and delivering genuine welfare to their people in order to break the carefully constructed myth of Modi  as some kind of ‘genius’ on economic development or good governance.

At the same time, it must be pointed out here that, while most of the Modi government’s policies have been disasters there are some that are working in several places. The BJP’s opponents should study these success stories – building of toilets, provision of electricity and gas cylinders, improvement of infrastructure etc. and support them too, if they are really beneficial to the public. A blind strategy of opposing everything done by BJP governments, is neither good for public welfare nor will it improve the opposition’s public credibility.

BJP as the old Congress?
While Modi and Amit Shah have often talked about a ‘Congress-mukt Bharat’ ironically, the fact is that it is the BJP itself,which has become an updated, more ruthless and obviously more communal version of the Congress of the seventies and eighties. It is not a coincidence at all, that a vast number of BJP MPs and MLAs, are in fact former Congress operators, who jumped ship to protect their personal interests.

Interestingly, though Modi is a gaudy farce compared to the grand tragedy that Indira Gandhi was, the comparisons between the two do have some validity. Like Indira, Modi too is a leader much larger than his own party, brooking no dissent and eliminating all competition – including from senior leaders, who founded the BJP. Indira Gandhi, when cornered by her opponents, also imposed the infamous Emergency – a drastic move that one can easily see Modi emulate if challenges to his power mount in the years ahead.

What about Rahul Gandhi’s Congress now (let’s call it Congress RG, now that BJP has become the old Congress!)?Rahul, though hobbled by the toxic legacy of his party (which he should completely disown), has tried to bring the focus of Indian politics to social welfare, decentralization of power and respect for diversity – so the future surely belongs to him. His stature can only grow as the Indian public understands what he is trying to do better and figure out that Modi has sold them snake oil with dollops of venom in it.

The trick for Rahul, to rebuild his party, is to work towards much greater ideological clarity, attract good people with political talent, be in regular touch with the grassroots and do effective street-level agitations on burning national issues. However, it is difficult to see the Congress RG get back to power in a national election, without a lot of coalition building and willingness to share power with other players. If they fail other non-BJP political forces will have to rise to fill the slot of an effective national opposition.

Was Modi’s victory a vote for ‘Hindutva’?
Yes, it was but no one knows to what extent and how explicitly. As mentioned before there were many other political factors involved.

But honestly what the hell does that really mean in a country, where Hindu majoritarianism has always been an implicit part of mass politics, since Indian independence from British rule, with all major political parties – from right to left – led by upper-caste Hindus? No Muslim, Sikh, Christian or for that matter Dalit/ Adivasi politician –could have won any national election on their own – even in the period when the Indian polity was supposedly far more ‘secular’ than it is today.

And let us face it – while the concept of Hindutva has today attracted people across many castes – it is ultimately meant to uphold the privileges of the ‘savarnas’ – the Hindu upper castes, because it is their definition of ‘Hindu’ that dominates.

And this domination is enforced through the mysterious idea of the ‘Hindu Rashtra’, a savarna utopia seductive to its followers and frightening to everyone else, that has  been around for over a century or more in various avatars. For most purposes, it is an instrument of permanent fear to keep the ‘tukde tukde gang’ and their ilk in line. In fact it is quite like Narendra Modi himself,  a macabre ‘Phantom of the Vedic Opera’, that terrorizes everyone from a distance, but scoots when you get closer! Point being, it is never going to happen in the future, because it has always been with us all the time!

What the BJP, RSS together with various front organizations have done, in the last couple of decades, is openly weaponized Hindu upper caste hegemony – spreading fear, anger, anxiety and hate – while very meticulously converting a large section of the Hindu population also into a stable vote bank, blurring caste, class and regional distinction in the process. What the non-upper caste Hindus, hopelessly divided among themselves, get out of this process is similar to ‘Sanskritisation’ – whereby from being only once-born (according to Hindu scriptures) they hope to become 1.5 or 1.6-born –by imitating the twice-born savarnas, becoming vegetarian and worshipping the cow! No one knows, when they will wise up to the fact, they are not only giving their loyalty but also paying royalty to those ‘above’ them in the social order!

Sociologically, this process has been aided by dramatic changes in the Indian economy since its liberalization– incidentally initiated by the Congress party in the early nineties[iv] – spurring widespread urbanization, concentration of wealth in a few hands and massive rural migrations to cities.  For many of these geographically uprooted and culturally displaced sections of the population the meta ‘Hindu’ identity projected by the RSS and BJP has given a sense of belonging to a larger community – making them willing to give up more local identities of language and caste.

Further, deflecting attention from harsh living conditions and economic misery they have found – in the Muslims and other minorities, deliberately pushed below them in the social order – an easy target to vent all their frustrations against. This scapegoating of minorities, which one can see in many the countries undergoing similar social transformations, is not going to change very easily, given it has become an integral part of ensuring success in electoral politics – unless of course there is a fightback by other social forces espousing a more potent vote-winning idea.

What are the long-term implications of Modi’svictory?
There are many ominous trends, but the real dangerous one emerging from the 2019 elections, is the way the Indian armed forces themselves have been coopted by the Modi campaign.

Apart from fudging facts about how successful their so called ‘surgical strike’ inside Pakistani territory really was,the Indian military meekly accepted Narendra Modi spreading half-truths or even claiming a personal(though very cloudy) role, in the actual operation.   Most appallingly, the Indian Air Force  hid, till the elections were over,  the fact that during a shootout with Pakistani fighter planes, they had shot down their own helicopter, killing six officers. These martyrs were given a very quiet burial, along with many other politically inconvenient facts.

This mixing of Modi’s needs with the military’s priorities is going to have serious repercussions in the future for both Indian politics as well as society. Though it seems unthinkable right now, if politicians continue to use the army for furthering their own causes it will only degrade the latter’s capabilities in real terms apart from politicizing them in a crude, electoral way. And, if the men in green get a taste of political power it is the country’s democracy that will turn black and blue – exactly like what has happened in neighbouring  Pakistan.

What can citizens do?
Over the next five years, what is clear is that Modi Regime 2.0 is going to face an even more dismal economy than before and this will surely spillover to the streets of India sooner or later. Whether it is unemployment, shrinking business opportunities, rural distress – there is no evidence to show Modi or his team have a clue about how to solve these problems. The global economic situation is also not likely to improve and help the domestic one very much.

This is a period, where more and more ordinary citizens should organize, educate and agitate to ensure a fair share of resources goes to those who need it the most. In particular, apart from organizing around civic and other local issues at the national level, there has to be a widespread movement against the phenomenal income and wealth inequalities in India today.

There will also be greater resistance from  the states to the tendency of Modi and the BJP – seen rightly as mostly a party of the Hindi belt – to monopolize power,  resources, while imposing their narrow cultural hegemony. While the new Modi regime may foolishly seek to repeal Article 35 A and Article 370 to remove Kashmir’s special status under the Indian constitution, it should be prepared for many more Kashmir-like situations brewing in other parts of India.

How long will people of such a vast and diverse land put up with a bunch of cow belt brahmins, banias and thakurs dictating terms, before showing them their middle fingers[v]? Also, if large sections of the BJP are openly rejecting Gandhi and the spirit of the Indian freedom itself by celebrating Godse, what is anyway left of the India that was born on 15 August 1947?

In a sense, we are headed into the turbulent period that followed Mrs. Gandhi’s electoral victory in 1971 and leading up to the Emergency. This time around though, a Modi-run Emergency will be far more serious and drastic,as it will also come with the diversionary tactic of targeting religious minorities and whipping up nationalist hysteria.

That is why the fate of India’s minorities, also Dalits and Adivasi populations, is inescapably bound with that of Indian democracy itself – injustice towards one will become injustice towards all very fast. The sooner political forces opposed to Hindutva recognize and organize around this principle, the more effective they will be in fighting the looming period of dictatorship and oppression ahead.

India has beaten the Emergency once before and will thrash it once again.

Satya Sagar is a journalist and public health worker who can be contacted at sagarnama@gmail.com

[i]Though there are some anecdotal reports of EVMs malfunctioning or not tallying with paper records there is no hard evidence of large-scale manipulation of these devices available yet. More research awaited.
[ii]Lalu Yadav, Mamata Banerjee, Mayawati, Kanimozhi – all anti-BJP politicians have been selectively picked out as being ‘very corrupt’ while there was no corruption involved during Modi’s demonetization madness or the purchase of Rafale fighter aircraft!
[iii]I do believe that stopping ‘corruption’ will only increase violence all around as India is a land run by various warlords, who will take by force if not allowed to gain by subterfuge. Stopping corruption is not a priority at the moment, except for those whose forefathers stole long ago and now claim ‘legal ownership’ over property.
[iv]Did you know Namo’s first break as a chaiwallah was given by none other than MMS?
[v]This can be done in a very polite and culturally sensitive way. Contact me for further details.

Courtesy: Counter Current

The post Phantom of the Vedic Opera Returns appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Mumbai: A citizens group announced a nationwide protest against EVMs on May 30. Besides Azad Maidan in Mumbai and Jantar Mantar in Delhi, protests against EVMs are reportedly being held at Sardarbag in Ahmedabad, Subhash Fourway in Allahabad, Azad Maida in Panjim and Lohia Maidan in Margao, Goa, and more.

 
“The outcome of the recent Parliamentary elections has shocked the entire nation. We always believed that EVMs are hacked on a massive scale by the BJP and our belief is strongly substantiated by numbers now. The website of the Election Commission (EC) shows that the “votes counted” do not match with “votes polled”, in all the 48 constituencies in Maharashtra. It did not match in 203 assembly constituencies of Madhya Pradesh also. This is enough to prove that EVMs were manipulated and it is therefore very clear that the results cannot be believed in,” the citizen’s collective said.
 
“Many people from across the country are posting on social media, on the discrepancies in the votes in their constituencies. We have all witnessed the malfunctioning of EVMs and looked on bewildered at the suspicious movements of thousands of EVMs, which were even found in hotel rooms,” their letter said.
 
“Right from the first phase of polling, almost the entire media was reporting that the NDA is going to suffer a minimum loss of 140 seats. More than 50% population that is dependent on agriculture was extremely disappointed and angry with the Modi Govt due to the worsening agrarian crisis and rising rate of suicides. The issues of Demonetization which itself was the biggest organised scam ever, the extremely anarchic implementation of the GST, rising unemployment, the Rafale scam among many other issues, were supposed to be the key issues against the government. Where did it all the anger and discontent disappear?” they asked.
 
“Moreover why is there a complete “Sannata”, a “Silence” across the country, even after Modi returned to power by securing over 45% votes for the NDA??? Why aren’t the citizens jubiliant?? This shows that the people are stunned and in a state of utter disbelief. They too did not expect a victory for BJP – and that is why we call it the “EVM Sarkar”,” they said.
 
“We have all seen the biased approach of the Election Commission during the entire two-month long campaign. We are all aware that like all the of other instutions of our parliamentary democracy, the EC too has been subverted by Modi,” they said.
 
“Also very interestingly when the EC was asked to go ahead with the Ballot Papers, the excuse they gave was very weak and beyond ridiculous. The EC had given an extremely absurd reason on 19th January 2019. The EC stated, “We do not have sufficient time to go for the paper ballot”. For 60 years, the EC used to print ballot papers AFTER the scrutiny and withdrawal of nomination forms. The election was supposed to be held in April and May, but the EC said it did not have time to opt for ballot papers. Truly unbelievable, even by the low standards of the current EC,” they wrote.
 
“Amit Shah boasts of making BJP the biggest political party in the world with a membership of over 7 Crore active members. He talks about having 25 youth per booth and an incharge for every page of the voter list. But then, why is the biggest political party in the world scared of conducting elections by Ballot Paper?? The only answer is that BJP is capable of the mass manipulation of the EVMs, but not the masses. They know that they cannot win an election conducted under transparent, free and fair conditions,” they said.
 
“We thus Go to the Peoples Court! Thus, we have decided to go to the people. We will protest against this massive EVM hacking. We are sure that people will join the movement to end the use of EVMs in our electoral system and call for a return to the Paper Ballot System. It must also be emphatically stated that the overwhelming majority of the democratic nations of the world use Ballot Paper and have discarded the EVMs. Infact the EVMs pose a clear danger to our entire Electoral Parliamentary Constitutional Democracy and thus must be immediately discarded and done away with,” they said.
 
“Let the people come out and voice their opinion, anger, opposition, express their disbelief and a vote of no-confidence in the EVMs. The Supreme Court should find its spine and set aside these elections. Let there be free and fair elections by paper ballot and then only will the people reaffirm their faith in our democracy. We have thus called for a national day of protest on the 30th of May and appeal to all the citizens, social movements and political parties to come out and organise protests in all the cities, towns and villages across the country. EVM HATAO – DESH BACHAO! SAVE OUR DEMOCRACY – SAVE INDIA!” they said.
 
The letter was signed by Retd. Justice Kolse Patil, Dr. Suresh Khairnar, Niranjan Takle, Shabnam Hashmi, Ravi Bhilane, Feroze Mithiborwala, Pratibha Shinde, Kishor Jagtap, Jyoti Badekar, Salim Alware, Dhananjay Shinde, Adv. Niranjani Shetty, Com. Charul Joshi, Prof. Kunda Pramila, Dhammarakshit Randive, Prabha Pandey, Santosh Gawli, Sancia Sequeira, Kranti, Rina Kamath, Shambuk, Aamir Qazi, Kashinath Nikhalje, Yashodhan Paranjpe, Swati Kunchikore, Afaque Azad and Siddharth Pratibhavant.
 

The post Countrywide protests against ‘EVM Sarkar’ appeared first on SabrangIndia.

In this episode of ‘Present, Past and the Future’, senior journalist Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay is in conversation with Balveer Arora, an eminent political scientist and Anirudh Deshpande, associate professor at the History Department, Delhi University. They speak about the recent electoral verdict which marks an inflection point in India’s social and political history. The verdict showed that barring Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and a few other places, these elections were primarily driven by just two sentiments – consolidation of people along a majoritarian identity and confidence in one person.

Courtesy: Newsclick.in
 

The post Verdict 2019 and Beyond appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The BSP, SP and RLD pre election alliance in UP was formed keeping in view the percentage numbers that these parties had secured in the previous general elections of 2014. The combined vote share of these parties was nearly 42 percent then and it was anticipated that they would be able to secure their shares in this election too and the candidates of the alliance will be in winning positions in nearly all the seats in UP. But things did not go as they expected, BJP again has been able to get 62 seats in UP and its vote percentage has also increased. As was in 2014, in this election too SP could get 5 seats only and RLD has not been able to open its account, on the other hand BSP has been able to increase its number from 0 to 10. To some the alliance may seem a complete failure and for others it may look like a beneficial prospect for the BSP, but a close analysis of the post 1980s politics of the state enables us to understand the nuances through which the caste based identity politics has been shaping the contours of the political arena of the state. The percentage of vote that the BSP has got in 2019 is 19.3 and it is nearly the same as that of 2014 which was 19.6. Also in the state assembly elections of 2012 and 2017 its vote share has remained between 25 to 22 percentages. My intention in giving so many numbers here is only to show that though the number of seats of the BSP has been varying, its vote share has been remaining more or less the same. It only shows that whether Mayawati and her party has been doing good or bad for its core voters or even if she is remaining indifferent towards them, the voters of the BSP had kept on voting for her. And these are the inevitable repercussions of the identity politics. The percentage numbers of the allied parties was expected to club to bring the number of seats but it did not and on the other hand the percentage number of the allied remained nearly intact. Interestingly, though the numbers play a big role in identity politics, but it did not bring the colours in case of the alliance. I will trace here some of the key feature of identity politics in UP especially in the context of politics of the BSP and will try to delineate how this caste based politics has been like a pitfall for the dalits of UP.

The alliance and BSP
The present alliance was actually in alignment with the idea which founder of BSP, Kanshi Ram was propagating right from the inception of the party. Though Kanshi Ram used to talk about bringing all the SC, ST, OBC and minorities under one umbrella of Bahujan, here in this alliance the more prominent parts of the Bahujan, i.e. Dalits(specially Jatavas), Yadavas and Jats were the players and they did vote for their party. But the baggage of the caste based identity politics simply did not allow the Jatavas to vote for SP and RLD in most of the cases. And so was true for the Yadavas and the Jats. This specific voting preference of these castes has to be located in the context of the demography and changing politico-economic conditions of the state in the post independence period. Certain intermediary castes which were big in numbers and also who also got good control over land recourses after the zamindari abolition became dominant castes. Yadavas, Jats, thakurs and Kurmis were the prominent among them. And thus Yadavas and Jats among others as dominant castes have been the immediate oppressors of the dalits. So Kanshi Ram’s idea of bringing together all the non savarana caste hindus, and making a grand coalition against Brahmanical hegemony could not work for this simple reason. And even among dalits the caste Jatav is most numerous, i.e. 57 percent and they have been most ardent followers of Ambedkar. In this practical sense any attempt of bringing together these castes would be a difficult task.

In the 1980s, the period when lower castes were seeking assertion through identity politics, the BSP and its Dalit constituency employed three strategies to achieve its objective. The first was to publicly showcase Dalit caste identities with great pride. The second strategy was that of adopting individual caste titles to their proper names. The third and final strategy was of puncturing upper-caste pride through the Dalit adoption of the former’s caste titles, supposed to be the exclusive preserve of the caste Hindus. The presence of Ambedkar’s statues in the Dalit localities motivated and shaped the contours of their politically charged identities. In UP and adjoining areas of Bihar and Madhya Pradesh where the BSP gained most of its success, the pattern of relationship between the Dalits and Shudra castes are not much different from the cases mentioned above. Dalits in UP constitute 21.1% of the total population in the state and among them only single Dalit Chamar-Jatavhas 57% of the total Dalit population followed by Pasis who are 16% and then comes the Dhobi, Kori and Valmiki. Because of this unique distribution of Dalit castes in UP, there is no significant competition and rivalry between these Dalit castes and they can be politically united with a common community interest. Unlike the Dalits of other states, Jatav-Chamar has been financially well and politically more organized since the days of BabasahebAmbedkar.  These factors concerning the economic and political condition of Dalits in UP has brought them in constant opposition and tussle with other social groups of the state. Apart from Brahmin, Kshatriya (among them Thakur and Rajput) and Vaishya castes, the post-independence period is marked by the economic and political assertion of the Shudra castes that constitute nearly 45% of the total population and among them especially the Yadavas, Lodh, Pal-Baghel, Kurmi and Jats are very well-off.

These demographic conditions in UP has kept the Dalits and Shudras in constant rivalry and this rivalry has actually increased after the 1980s with the growth of identity politics in the state. STs constitute a small section in the state and the religious minorities have always remained in dilemma on the question of which party is of their own. In this sense Bahujan as a category based upon the alliance between dalits, shudras and minorities had the lacunae of cohesive and organic unity. Though the Shudra and Dalits identified themselves as politically allied upon the call of their leaders, Shudra would not have been ready to form a Bahujan front under the leadership of the Dalits. In 1993 with the BSP and SP alliance, slogans like Mile MulayamKanshiram, Hawa me Udgaye Jai shri Ram (With the alliance of Mulayam Singh Yadav And Kanshiram, Ram (Temple) got blew away in the air) were in the political air but, this alliance was possible against a common oppressor Brahmanism and only under the leadership of both.

Consolidation of votes and Opportunist Alliances
Thus in spite of having bahujan at its core, the BSP could only consolidate the dalit votes in general, and the chamar (jatav) votes in particular. After contesting the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections for nearly 10 years, the Party in 1996 Lok Sabha elections could secure 3% of upper caste votes, 4.3 per cent of yadava votes, between 15 and 20 per cent of the peasant, artisan and other backward castes votes, nearly 25 per cent of koeri votes but, it got 45.7 per cent of pasi vote and a very high 73.8 per cent of the chamar votes in UP. Thus, except the koeris, no other backward castes had any particular closeness to the BSP. In the next elections to come after 1996, BSP could see tiny decrease in its votes among non jatav, non pasidalits, who eventually inclined towards The BJP but, the BSP actually started gaining among the upper castes. While only 3.6 per cent of the BSP’s voters in 1996 came from upper castes, this percentage went up to 10.2 in 1998. There is a possibility of lower class upper caste voters getting influenced by the schemes for thepoor that Mayawati launched when she was in power earlier though for a brief period. Even in the next UP assembly polls in 2002, this trend of consolidation of Dalit votes together with upper caste alliance especially the Brahmins became much clearer.  In 2002 the BSP got 67% of dalit votes with that of Brahmins’ increased to 6%. Muslims by now have been voting largely for SP and rest were with Congress and BSP. By then it was very clear that the core voter of BSP is only dalits and among them especially Chamar-Jatav and possibility of an opportunistic alliance with the upper castes led by Brahmin were becoming tangible.

In fact making and availing the opportunistic alliances was never a new thing for Kanshiram and Mayawati both. The initial alliance with the SP in 1993 was formed considering the two competing mobilisational strategies of caste and communalism. While the Hindu caste cleavages arising from the Mandal reservation policy attracted BJP, the BSP moved closer to the SP representing the backwards. It contained the Hindutva of BJP and constructed a “Bahujan Samaj” based upon dalits, backwards and tribals drawing inspiration from Ambedkar’s conception of an autonomous Dalit Movement with a constantly attempted alliance of dalits and shudras. This strategy proved successful in the 1993 elections and was perceived as the victory of the secular forces and lower orders against entrenched upper caste rule. The fall of the SP-BSP coalition in June 1995 inaugurated a post- Bahujan phase when BSP formed three coalition governments with the BJP in 1995, 1997 and 2002 and an electoral alliance with Congress. In 2002 Mayawati formed a coalition government with the BJP despite the ill-fated previous alliances and In return she extended support to the BJP in the Loksabha. The government lasted for 16 months. It was a tactical shift for attaining political power by any mean.

This desperation of Kanshiram to form the governments by any means was actually the manifestation of his pragmatic implementation of Ambedkar’s motto that political power was the master key for dalit liberation and that acquiring this masker key should be the prime dalit strategy. It was through the policies of these initial coalition governments that the BSP was successful in consolidating its vote bank. Apart from symbolic transformation of the landscape of UP like changes of names of places and erection of Ambedkar’s statues, policies related to health, education, housing, employment and social welfare, targeting Dalits resulted into near exclusive appropriation and then consolidation of dalits as core voters of the BSP.

Even later on with the party’s emphasis on sarvajan hitaya policy and their preparation for a long period, in UP assembly elections of 2007 the party garnered 30.46% votes with 206 seats which were enough for a full majority government. This victory was seen by political analysts as a victory of the social engineering method, based upon dalit-brahmin alliance of the sarvajan policy adopted by Mayawati. Scholars like Vivek Kumar, on the contrary argue that the dalit-brahmin alliance in UP was not part of any social engineering process but a pure political adjustment. Whatever explanations one come across, the fact remains that it was the success of Mayawati’s bargaining with the non-dalit social groups of the state, whose leaders she later awarded with high positions in the upcoming government. More interestingly, as BSP secured 77% of dalit votes, it was the victory of mayawati’s politics vis-à-vis dalits; they stood by her rock like and won her unencumbered power. Skepticisms were there that the Sarvajan strategy during the process of adding upper caste votes to the BSP may lead to danger of alienating some of the Jatava/chamars, who constituted her core constituency, but not only just then, even in the upcoming elections, the dalits in UP chose Mayawati over all the other competitive. Be it in the state assembly elections of 2012 and 2017 or in the parliamentary elections of 2009, 2014 and 2019, the percentage of Jatava/chamar votes that the party garnered remained more or less the same. On the other hand the lucrative savarna vote, which made the BSP shift its policy towards SarvajanHitaya, has been constantly moving away from the party,  bringing it on its electoral margins.

The inexorable treachery of Identity Politics
Even after BSP took the road toward decline since 2009, Mayawati has kept on saying that her vote bank has remained intact and the core voter of the BSP still has faith in the Party. And she is quite correct in this, as the core voter of the party has been the Dalits of UP and among them especially the Chamar-Jatav, who has been voting for the BSP since its inception and till today consider it as the only party representing and working for the interests of the Dalits. Despite various measures undertaken by Mayawati which stood in complete opposition with the ideals and aims of the party founder Kanshiram, Dalits in UP has always remained with the party and they do not seem to disassociate themselves from the BSP in the near future to come. One can mention here the 2007 policy of Sarvajan Hitaya Sarvajan Sukhaya, when Mayawati in her effort of establishing an alliance with all the castes of society including the Savarna, completely sidelined the ideal of Bahujan for the interest of which Kanshiram always strove. The policy of Sarvajan Hitaya off course brought huge success for the Party in 2007 assembly elections and made Mayawati the chief of a full majority government. Dalits of UP saw it as an opportunity and envisaged thatMayawati can also become the prime minister of India by continuing on this path of Sarvajana. She gave the call for social engineering for the next general elections and Dalits started their mission 2009.

Things did not happen as they expected, the BSP could secure 21 seats in the 2009 general elections and its vote share also came down. The hopes of Dalits of UP to see their Behenji as the prime minister were lost, but their confidence in Mayawati as the savior of Dalits and in the BSP has remained as strong as it has always been. Since then the party has not seen any significant elevation and on the contrary things have come to such an extent that by now the party has only 10 members in Loksabha and Just 19 members in the UP state assembly and that is all that the BSP can boast about.

What happened exactly that the Party which once became the third largest party at the national level very swiftly after its inception is seeing such worst days? Various Dalit intellectuals and ex-members of the party who even have been long time companions of Kanshiram see this condition of the BSP as the result of deviation from the mission of Kanshiram which happened because of over ambitions and selfish nature of Mayawati. These veterans consider Mayawati’s Sarvajan policy as a breach from the missionary path of Kanshiram and held her over ambitious nature, responsible for the failure of the mission. Keeping in mind the time, energy and resources that most of these sidelined veterans have given for nourishing and developing the party, their anger against Mayawati is justifiable, but their explanation for the demise of the BSP to be only the policies and character of Mayawati is problematic. Since these causative factors fail to explain why the Dalits in UP are still intact with the BSP and why they still have all the trust and hopes in Mayawati and her symbols, one is coerced to critically look at the identity politics that the BSP has been doing right from its beginning. For understanding this complex phenomena one needs to look deeply at the process through which the Dalits in UP started identifying themselves with the symbols which the politics of BSP has created. This method also explains why the BSP when in power could not do significantly for the materialistic development of the Dalits, though Kanshiram always talked political power to be the master key which would bring all-round benefits for the Dalits.

What identity politics actually does is that it tries to bring together members of caste/castes for political assertion. The unification process generally takes place through the means of certain symbols. The politically charged identities once created, becomes indelible and in the long run the assertion does not happen materially. The Jatavas of UP are actually witness to the same process of creation of politically charged identities and in such a politics they have reached a juncture where there assertion seems a chimera. The politics of BSP can be seen as non Ambedkarite in the sense that instead of annihilating caste in consolidates it through identity politics for political gains.

Skand Priya, Assistant Professor, Shivaji College, DU

Courtesy: Counter Current

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Of the 724 women who contested the 2019 general elections, 78 will be sworn in as members of parliament (MPs)–the largest-ever contingent of women in India’s parliamentary history. More than 60%, or 47 of these women, are first-time MPs, said Gilles Verniers, co-director of Trivedi Centre for Political Data (TCPD).  Some, such as eight-time winner Maneka Gandhi, are veterans.

There are billionaires–the richest being Hema Malini of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) with assets of Rs 250 crore, according to the Association of Democratic Reforms. And then there is Remya Haridas, the daughter of a daily-wager father and a tailor mother. With assets of Rs 22,816, the 32-year-old is Kerala’s second-ever Dalit woman MP and the only woman MP from the state this year.

Reportedly shortlisted in a talent hunt conducted by Congress president Rahul Gandhi back in 2011, the music graduate contested as a candidate for the Congress-led United Democratic Front, conducting a campaign that used music and singing to connect with her audience.

Haridas’s political rivals scoffed. But on counting day, she had defeated incumbent P.K. Biju of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), or the CPI(M), by securing 52.4% of the vote share.

One step forward…

In percentage terms, the gains made by women in the 2019 general elections are small: they form 14.6% of the house, up from the 12.1% (66 women MPs) of the outgoing 16th Lok Sabha.

“You cannot bring change immediately,” Chinta Anuradha, who describes herself as a “staunch supporter of the feminist cause” and won on a YSR Congress ticket from Amalapuram in Andhra Pradesh, told IndiaSpend. “But women are now getting into politics from different streams and are being taken seriously by political parties. That is a good start and we will very soon reach our rightful numbers in parliament.”

All four women candidates fielded by the YSR Congress in Andhra Pradesh have won–two of them, including Anuradha, for the first time.

In Odisha, the Biju Janata Dal (BJD)’s decision–unprecedented before this election for any party–to reserve 33% of its parliamentary seats for women candidates, has paid rich dividends with electoral victory for five of its seven women candidates. These include Chandrani Murmu, a BTech graduate who on counting day was, at 25 years, 8 months and 11 days, the youngest woman MP to be elected this year. Murmu won on a BJD ticket from Keonjhar, defeating her nearest rival, two-time MP Ananta Nayak of the BJP, by more than 66,000 votes.  

Along with two women MPs from the BJP, Aparajita Sarangi from Bhubaneshwar and Sangeeta Singh Deo from Bolangir, seven of Odisha’s 21 MPs are now women, representing a quantum leap for women’s representation from 9.5% in 2014 to 33.3% in 2019.

Source: Analysis by BehanBox, an upcoming digital platform for gender issues based on data from TCPD. Note: Does not include Tripura and Meghalaya, where one of two MPs each (50%) is a woman.

The reverse has happened in West Bengal, where despite All India Trinamool Congress (TMC) chief Mamata Banerjee allocating 41% of all seats (22 tickets) to women, the proportion of women MPs has shrunk from 28.6% in 2014 to 26.2% this election.

Despite this, West Bengal remains a significant state for women’s representation with 12 of its 42 MPs women–two from the BJP and 10 from the TMC, including Mahua Moitra, a former investment banker who returned from London in 2008 to join politics and once showed her middle finger to news anchor Arnab Goswami, then with Times Now.

Moitra has since involved herself in privacy issues, filing a public interest litigation against the Narendra Modi government’s proposal to monitor the social media.

Despite the euphoria caused by the ‘highest number of women ever elected to the Lok Sabha’, 13 states and union territories have in 2019 failed to elect a single woman candidate.

These ‘zero women MP’ states include Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Goa. In the union territories of Dadra and Nagar Haveli as well as Daman and Diu there was no woman candidate in the first place.

Source: Election Commission of India data on 2019 Lok Sabha results analysed by IndiaSpend.

In Mizoram, history was made when a woman contested parliamentary elections for the first time. Lalthlamuani said she had received a “signal from God” and contested as an independent candidate. The 63-year-old runs an NGO, Chhinlung Israel People Convention, which comprises of Mizo Jews who believe they are one of the 10 lost tribes of Israel. On counting day she had polled 1,975 or 0.4% of the votes.

Of the 14 MPs of Assam, one is a woman. But the Gauhati parliamentary seat saw a spirited contest with five women among its 17 candidates.

In the end, former Guwahati mayor Queen Oja, who contested on a BJP ticket, defeated her nearest rival, the Congress’s Bobbeeta Sharma, a well-known name in Assamese TV and films who, by virtue of once winning a beauty contest in Assam, invited some ‘Queen vs Beauty Queen’ headlines. Oja’s victory by a margin of more than 5.5 lakh votes makes her the first woman to represent her constituency since 1977.

“Nowadays women are aware about politics but not so active,” Oja said to IndiaSpend over the phone. “To come up, women need the support of their families and communities. But first they must get involved in society and community issues.”

A glass ceiling was also broken in Arunachal Pradesh, which saw a woman contest a parliamentary seat for the first time. Jarjum Ete contested from Arunachal West on a Janata Dal (Secular) ticket but was defeated by the sitting MP and BJP minister Kiren Rijiju who got 63.2% of the vote share compared to Ete’s 11.95%.

Of the two seats in Meghalaya, Tura has been won by Agatha Sangma, another dynast who is the 38-year-old daughter of the deceased P.A.Sangma, a former Lok Sabha speaker. This is her third electoral victory since she first won a by-election to the 14th Lok Sabha.

The north-east remained male dominated, with its 25 constituencies spread over eight states collectively electing three women–one more than in 2014.

Some northeastern states, Manipur for instance, had no woman candidate. Nagaland has never elected a woman to its state assembly (legislature). Its sole woman MP has been the late Reno Mese Shaize.

Losing big

Some notable losses for women candidates include Aam Aadmi Party’s Atishi, an educator and activist, who managed 17.44% of the vote share in her East Delhi constituency. In a three-way contest between the BJP, Congress and her own party, Atishi came in third after the BJP’s Gautam Gambhir (55.35%) and the Congress’s Arvinder Singh Lovely (24.24% vote share).

In Silchar, Assam, the Congress’s Sushmita Dev lost to the BJP’s Rajdeep Roy by 81,596 votes. Dev is a long-time advocate for 33% reservation for women in parliament and in state assemblies (legislatures).

The BJP’s Jaya Prada, a former actor who faced a sexist campaign by her nearest rival, Samajwadi Party’s Azam Khan, lost Rampur by more than one lakh votes. And the Congress’s Kumari Selja was defeated in Ambala, Haryana, by 3.42 lakh votes by the BJP’s Rattan Lal Kataria.
Several women lost to stronger women candidates–Tamilisai Soundararajan of the BJP to DMK’s Kanimozhi Karunanidhi, and TMC’s Ratna De to the BJP’s Locket Chatterjee.

In at least 50 constituencies, women stood second, shows an analysis of the results of all candidates on the Election Commission of India website.

In three of these constituencies the margin of defeat was less than 10,000 votes. Mamtaz Sanghamita of TMC lost in Bardhaman-Durgapur, West Bengal, by 2,439 votes. In Koraput, Odisha, the margin of Kausalya Hikaka’s defeat was 3,613 votes. And in Maldaha Dakshin, also in West Bengal, BJP’s Sreerupa Mitra Chaudhury lost by 8,222 votes.

Dynasts

As usual, the new batch of women MPs includes dynasts. Overall, 30% of all new Lok Sabha MPs belong to political families but women candidates this election were more dynastic at 41%, said political analysts Gilles Verniers and Christophe Jaffrelot in The Indian Express on May 27, 2019. All the women candidates fielded by the Samajwadi Party, Telugu Desam Party, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and Telangana Rashtra Samithi are dynasts, they pointed out.

In two states, Punjab and Maharashtra, all the women MPs are dynasts.

Harsimrat Kaur Badal, the wife of former Punjab chief minister Sukhbir Singh Badal–who, after Hema Malini, is the richest woman MP with assets worth Rs 217 crore–has retained her Bathinda seat. The Congress’s Preneet Kaur, wife of current Chief Minister Amarinder Singh, has won back her Patiala seat, which she had lost in 2014, by winning 45.17% of the vote share.

All eight of the women who have won from Maharashtra claim political lineage. The daughter of NCP chief Sharad Pawar, Supriya Sule, for instance, will be making her third entry into parliament as the MP from Baramati, her father’s old constituency.

Two of the newly elected women dynast MPs from Maharashtra are related to each other. Poonam Mahajan is the daughter of slain BJP leader Pramod Mahajan. She defeated her nearest rival, Priya Dutt – incidentally, a fellow dynast and daughter of former Congress minister Sunil Dutt — in Mumbai North Central with a decisive 53.97% of the vote share. Poonam’s cousin, Pritam Munde, is the daughter of Gopinath Munde who was married to Pramod Mahajan’s sister. Pritam contested on a BJP ticket from Beed and, like her cousin, won with more than 50% of the vote share.

All dynasts did not win. Perhaps most notably, Samajwadi Party’s Dimple Yadav, the wife of former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav, lost in Kannauj by a narrow margin of 12,353 votes to the BJP’s Subrat Pathak.

Breakthrough newbies

And then there are newbies who have worked their way up through grassroots leadership. Pramila Bishoyi, 69, studied only until class 2, speaks no Hindi or English, has never stepped outside Odisha and has two sons, one of whom runs a tea-stall.

Yet, it was for her success in launching a women’s self-help group in his constituency of Aska that Biju Janata Dal (BJD) head Naveen Patnaik asked her to contest from the constituency from where he had launched his own political career 20 years ago.

The story goes that soon after elections were announced, Bishoyi’s son got a call saying that the chief minister wanted to meet his mother, so could she please come to Bhubaneshwar, some 160 km away? There was no money for taxi fare, so he demurred. A few hours later, a car drove up to bring her to the state capital where she was given the ticket.

When the votes were counted, Bishoyi had won 54.52%, defeating her nearest rival, the BJP’s Anita Subhadarshini, by more than two lakh votes.

‘Giant killers’

While the term ‘giant-killer’ is being used to describe BJP’s Smriti Irani who defeated Congress President Rahul Gandhi in Amethi by 55,120 votes, there are at least three more among women MPs.

The most famous is terror accused Pragya Singh Thakur, who praised Mahatma Gandhi’s assassin Nathuram Godse as a “desh bhakt” (patriot). Her words caused a few blushes for the BJP’s leadership, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi said, “[I]n my heart, I cannot forgive her.” Yet, on counting day, she had wrested the Bhopal seat with a decisive 61.54% vote share from her nearest rival, Congress veteran Digvijay Singh, who managed 35.63%, losing by 3.64 lakh votes.

In Tamil Nadu, Jothimani Sennimalai, an award-winning writer and poet who contested on a Congress ticket, defeated M. Thambidurai of the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) by more than 4.2 lakh votes to become the first woman MP from Karur.

In Karnataka’s Mandya, Sumalatha Ambareesh, the widow of former actor and Congress MP M.H. Ambareesh, was denied a Congress ticket, and so contested as an independent. She defeated her nearest rival, Nikhil Kumaraswamy of the Janata Dal (Secular), who is the son of former chief minister H.D. Kumaraswamy and grandson of former prime minister H.D. Deve Gowda, by more than 1.25 lakh votes.

(Bhandare is a Delhi-based journalist who writes frequently on gender issues confronting India.)

Courtesy: India Spend

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