In today's India, what do you need to win an election-
1. Money - Cost of fighting an election is increasing rapidly. Nowadays money in crores requires to fight an election. Why the cost has increased so much. It requires an in depth analysis in itself.
This is the increased cost which deters many so called good people to enter in election war because even if they fight election by honest means, they require huge some of money. Business class has advantage here.
2. Power - By power here I mean muscle power. In most of the places in India specially in rural and semi urban places you need this. Society is Caste ridden and caste groups some time acts also as unit of power. They have hegemony established over the masses or they have the power to instill fear in the mind of the voters. Underworld don has advantage here.
3. Popularity - Population may know a person for many reasons. For his good work like Nitish Kumar, Glamour like film stars, Cricketers like Navjot Siddhu. Not in all the cases it is bad but in most of the time they joined politics for their own power ambitions. Popularity is essential to win an election. Election campaigning is required to make you popular in your constituency. Film stars and crickets have added advantage here. Thats why most of the party field them nowadays.
How can we reform our election system to reduce effect of above mentioned three evils. Some solutions could be-
1. State funding of election.
2. Strict rule that person whose integrity is questionable, if he/she has any criminal background or any chargesheet pending should not be allowed to fight the election.
3. Political education of the masses so that they can discriminate amongst the different kind of popularity and can take more rational decision about their representative. Being a film star or cricketers does not always mean that person is not capable to represent the people. Political parties should take a call here.
One more point, I would like to mention here. Practically and realistically speaking, to have a public life, a person must have a stable private life before. A person who does not have a secured economic basis, a fixed source of income may not be too much inclined in participating in politics because he will have many other personal problems to solve. He will have to think first about his own well being, his family. It could be the reason behind that mostly rich people, film stars, business personal who has solid economic base behind them participate in political process and rise to the positions of power.
In may not be the true democracy which is based on the equal opportunity to everybody to participate in the political process. Only the rich and economically strong citizens can in reality fight elections in todays India. Rest of the people have no other choice but to influence the political decision making from outside by forming Civil Society groups, NGOs or becoming social and political activist. Still they will not wield that much influence on government as powerful corporate players can have. This is visible in the recently leaked tapes of Niira Radia which poses very wrong picture and reality of today's Indian politics.
