By Vincent Van Ross

Votes are sacrosanct in a democratic nation like ours. It is with votes that the people elect or trounce stalwarts and political parties. The Indian electorate has voted decisively on more occasions than one.

Our electoral system, however, suffers from a serious malady. While we can vote our favourite candidates and parties to power, we cannot restrain undesirable candidates from contesting elections or winning them. .

The electoral system has been used and abused by politicians and political parties of all descriptions to introduce and plant undesirable and criminal elements into our legislatures thereby short-circuiting the very democratic structure of our country. This is a serious matter and needs to be dealt with immediately.

The problem began with the nexus that developed between politicians and criminals in the post independence era. At first, the criminals acted as musclemen and helped politicians to ensure that their writ runs in their constituency. In return, they received immunity from police and bureaucratic actions.

The role of the musclemen included intimidating victims of crime in the constituency of their patron politician to ensure that they do not lodge complaints with the police. That included intimidating people who have filed complaints with the police to withdraw their complaints. That included use of violence to silence opposition.

There came a time when the musclemen realized how hopelessly the politicians were dependent upon them. Some of them ventured out and staked their own claims to political power. And, they became political bosses of their constituencies in their own rights.

If you have a muscleman representing a constituency for some political party, it becomes imperative for the opposition party to field a muscleman who could counter him. In their efforts to win more and more seats the political parties have unwittingly inducted muscleman and other undesirable elements into their parties and legislatures.

Today, some hardcore criminals are masquerading in the guise of politicians and leaders because of this. Even though they may be guilty of many crimes, they are able to scuttle cases and prevent police complaints from being lodged against them through sheer political power.

Our politicians and political parties have used and abused the loopholes in our political system to criminalise politics in our country. The people are helpless and are unable to counter this.

We have a vote that can be exercised only during elections. That too is a positive vote. That means we can exercise our vote to vote in favour of a candidate. The candidate who manages to get the maximum number of votes gets elected.

This is where the problem lies. If the electorate is empowered to decide whether he or she wants to caste a positive vote or a negative vote, things may improve.
With a negative vote we may be able to discriminate between desirable and undesirable candidates and send a strong message to the parties that field them.

The election commission should compute the negative votes after each election. Based on the data, it should call into question the candidates who got negative votes as well as the parties which nominated them.

That way criminalization of politics may be checked to some extent. I think negative vote could work as a potent weapon in the hands of the voters.