Let's bring the D word out in the open: Southern politicians are mostly talking nonsense on delimitation

Hopefully, this can be my last post on the women’s reservation constitutional amendment bill (and delimitation), which was defeated on Friday, 17 April, in the Lok Sabha by a united opposition.

The elephant in the room is the D word, delimitation. Delimitation is a constitutional requirement in all democracies. It is periodically undertaken usually after every major census. A statutorily appointed Delimitation Commission looks at the census population figures and tries to equalise the total population in each constituency so that each vote has roughly the same value. This implies that states where populations grow more slowly than the rest will lose seats, while those which see growth will gain. This is in keeping with the most basic democratic principle that each person’s vote must have the same (or roughly equivalent) value. If a populous state’s vote value is worth only 0.75 percent that of someone in a less populous state, it is a violation of the one-person-one-vote.

The D word has become a dreaded one in Indian politics because it involves a political powershift, though only in terms of Lok Sabha seats. Delimitation happens regularly within states and local bodies.

Fear of loss of Lok Sabha seats may be real, but the flaws in this argument should be obvious to anyone who is not a southern (or opposition) politician.

First, the assumption that less seats means less power is, of course, not quite correct, for power does not flow only from legislative strength. It comes for the size of the economic power that a state wields too. No matter how many Lok Sabha seats Tamil Nadu has, its status as an economic powerhouse (No 2 in state GDP after Maharashtra) will not reduce, unless laws are specifically designed to hold it back – which can anyway be challenged in the courts. Or else why does the US wield so much power with a population one-fourth India’s size?

Second, anybody who thinks that power equations must be sealed forever, on the basis of what once was, is living in a fool’s paradise. It is no different from the UN Security Council continuing with its post-World War II voting rights for five permanent members, when some of them are no longer powerful. It is no different from the upper classes opposing the rise of new classes (or castes), some on their own merit, and the other through affirmative action. It is about the rich seeking to perpetuate their power by keeping the poor down. Power structures will always change in a dynamic situation, and states must thus seek to compete not on legislative power alone, but other things.

Third, nothing is irreversible in terms of demography and population. The big Hindi states may today have the largest populations, but populations tend to converge towards growth, and if the south think it is such a growth magnet, its population share will again rise. In the US, California, Texas, Florida and a few other states attract a lot of migrants, and that is why they have the largest electoral votes. If Tamil Nadu and Karnataka focus on becoming the growth engines of India, they will attract migrants, and their population shares will rise – but only if they don’t turn xenophobic, as Donald Trump’s America is now becoming.

The idea that the south’s Lok Sabha seat count must remain the same no matter what happens is similar to the pre-20^th century voting entitlement, where you had voting rights only if you had property or were not female. If this idea were to be implemented today, one could, say, for example, that taxpayers must get twice their voting entitlement since they are the ones bankrolling the state and subsidising the poor. So why should the poor get more votes numerically when it is the relatively rich who are enabling their survival?

Swaminathan S Anklesaria Aiyar, writing in The Times of India on 19 April, makes three brilliant arguments on why the opposition should not have resisted delimitation and the women’s quota bill, debunking all arguments put forth by the richer south.

One, he rubbishes the claim that just because the south brought down birth rates, it cannot claim a disproportionate share of Lok Sabha seats. He points out that “in no other democracy is equal representation sacrificed to reward family planning.”

Two, Swaminathan also junks Telangana Chief Minister Revanth Reddy’s argument that population alone cannot be the basis for delimitation, which again has “no precedent in any other democracy”.

Three, higher growth and per capita income is its own reward. They (the southern states) have “already reaped fantastic economic gains through progressive policies like family planning. They do not need additional political rewards through disproportionate seats”.  

He does not deal with the federal principles argument, but I will.

Some politicians raise the bogey of loss of federalism, but this principle applies only after the one-person-one-vote basic democratic requirement is met. Federalism is a part of democratic governance, not an essential pre-condition for it. Federalism is merely an arrangement for power sharing between various levels of government that seeks to push decisions down to the levels where governance is closer to the people. A unitary non-federal set-up is not less democratic than a federal one, but this could come with some voter angst in large, diverse countries like India due the distance between citizen and government. 

One can criticise the Prime Minister and his party for springing the women’s reservation bill without adequate preparation and consultation. One can also criticise him for doing politics over the issue. But then will politicians do less politics when it suits them? Aren’t southern politicians not doing politics over delimitation, which is the most fundamental of democratic pillars?

Also, one wonders why an Akhilesh Yadav, whose Samajwadi Party would benefit if Uttar Pradesh gets more seats, should be on the side of those who dread the D word. If I were a Hindi belt politician, I would have every right to file a petition in the Supreme Court saying that we Hindi states have been denied our fundamental right to one-person-one-vote by the freeze of delimitation since 1976.

There is no running away from it. The D word must be tackled head on if democracy is to survive. By offering all states a 50 percent rise in Lok Sabha seats if they agreed to the women’s reservation bill, Narendra Modi was again trying to bring in the D word through the side door.

He should have brought it through the first door. Delimitation is the issue and the longer we take to resolve this issue, everyone will be the loser.