Primary Lessons

Be it setting a corporate strategy, taking an executive decision, or running an election, there is absolutely nothing wrong in following the better principles practised elsewhere, and thereby, picking up the right lessons from other's experience.

One of the positive aspects of the American system is its primaries - a process in which the party members at the grass root level decide on who their candidate will be for Presidential elections. Neither the party leaders or their high command or their inner voice or the party's parent bodies get to decide that. By letting the very ordinary workers of the party have their say in an important decision is truly extraordinary, very much applying the core decmocratic principles in letter and spirit.

While we in India go around the world proudly proclaiming our democratic values, our score on inner-party democracy is zilch. Could we name any party of relevance in India that has got a bottom-up approach of multi-layered internal elections leading to the election of party chief?

Though the law stipulates that all parties registered with the Election Commission of India must have structured internal polls, every one knows how the law takes its course in this case. In seven out of ten parties in India, there is often a first family who collectively or individually decide and appoint / nominate one of their sychopants as the office bearer or party candidate. In case of the other parties, it is very difficult to effect a change of guard. For instance, Bharatiya Janata Party hasn't got a first family like Congress or DMK or AIADMK. Every year, the office bearers including the party president get elected through the bottom-up method. But does one need to be told about the influence of Advani-Vajpayee duo, irrespective of who the party men elect. There is no doubt that this depressing aspect is one of the many banes of our electoral setup.

Surprisingly enough, this concept of inner party democracy has found takers at certain countries that are least expected to implement. Only last month, the world witnessed African National Congress - South Africa's ruling party elect a new leadership team replacing the incumbent Thabo Mbeki, who also happens to be the country's president. Interesting bit in this is that a good number of Mbeki's cabinet received the boot from party positions and it was no one but the ordinary party workers who made those decisions. After all, South Africa's tryst with democracy has only been for the last fifteen years or so.
South Africa's neighbour in the north - Zimbabwe is certainly not a place that could be juxtaposed with democracy. It is a place where the government uses the police and army regularly to curb anti-government thoughts. Yet, Robert Mugabe's ruling Zimbabwe African National Union - Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) has just chosen its candidates for the forthcoming parliamentary elections through US style primaries. If you care to look at the number of ministers and party seniors, who have been denied party nominations, it will certainly be surprising.

The intention of this post is not to belittle India's democratic values by comparing it with Zimbabwe or any other country. India's democracy has reasonably stood the test of time - especially if you view it in the context of her immediate neighbours. But only when those values are imbibed at every level of the society, the nation could reap the real benefits of democracy. It is on this context that one stresses the need to let go off false pride and learn from others.