Opinion Primary colours
The Congress primaries are a small but radical experiment, and will be closely watched.
The Congress primaries are a small but radical experiment, and will be closely watched.
For all that Rahul Gandhi has been mocked for repeating himself, the one idea he insistently champions is, in fact, key to many aspects of political dysfunction. In a seeming bid to advance inner-party democracy, the Congress party has begun an experiment with semi-closed primary elections in 16 Lok Sabha constituencies. MP candidates for those areas will chosen by an electoral college, including present and former office-bearers from the block, panchayat, zilla and tehsil level, as well as members of party cells like the Youth Congress, NSUI, Mahila Congress, etc. Candidates too, can be chosen from the pool of anyone who has contested with a Congress ticket at any level, or anyone who has been working for a public cause.
What kinds of candidates it throws up, how they attempt to persuade the electoral college and any debate among them should be transparent and public too. This test is at an embryonic stage, and its outcomes will be closely watched to see how the model can be widened, and where abuse and fraud could creep in. The Congress is being cautious, not destabilising too many MPs in this round, and experimenting largely only in places it has lost.
But in concept, this is a promising sight. Most parties have some form of collective decision-making, the BJP and DMK cadres, the Left parties with their exhaustive procedures of internal democracy — but hardly any party has chosen candidates through an internal election or mass local participation. The Congress, old and tired, routinely accused of deferring to the “high command” and their coteries for ticket distribution, is now signalling the possibility of a bottom-up choice. If done sincerely, the idea could truly reverberate — if local workers realise that they can choose who represents them nationally, and if more people see that access to political structures does not involve sophisticated intrigue.
In the US during the Progressive Era, the traditional political machine, which involved local party bosses and county committees wheeling and dealing in closed backrooms, dispensing patronage and mobilising support, was weakened by primary elections, which made parties more directly receptive to their constituents’ interests. The bet is that giving grassroots leaders a voice and creating clearer ladders to move up within the party, would deepen the quality of participation.
The Congress’s trial run will be scrutinised, not just by the NGO of former election commissioners it has chosen to evaluate the process, but also by those interested in its wider application. For its own sake, this must not be conducted with an eye on creating temporary goodwill, or subverted by self-interest of any kind.
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