Where am I?
Published by Ravikiran Rao March 15th, 2004 in GovernanceIf I vote in the coming Lok Sabha elections, my vote will be the least valuable in India. Where am I?
Turns out that my vote is not actually the least valuable. That honour goes to a resident of Outer Delhi, which has a constituency size of 3.1 million. My constituency - Thane comes second - 2.7 million.
It is surprisingly difficult to find this information. Google failed me by not giving me the information immediately. I had to go deep into the Election Commision site and dig out this pdf link.
Anyway the point is that they stopped delimiting constituencies after 1971, to avoid rewarding states that have failed to control their population. An unintended result of this is that urban areas are severely underrepresented these days. Worst hit are the new urban areas like Mumbai North, Thane, Navi Mumbai and Outer Delhi. Perhaps it would be a good idea to delimit within a state, i.e. keep the number (or the proportion) of seats for a state constant, but redraw constituency borders within the state to reflect shifts in population.
In the largest constituency?
The question my dear Anand, is, which is the largest constituency?
I would have liked to say Bombay but I guess its Delhi (outer)??
It must be outer Delhi. According to India Today, it is the largest.
“If I vote …” - and why won’t you vote?
I will vote.
Well, I think there is no really compelling reasons to freeze the increase in the number of constituencies with the possible exception of the following:
1. Smaller states particularly the southern states, perceive a reduction in their political clout. Especially since the caste divisions in the north have now made governments critically dependent on southern regional parties for survival.
2. Big Parties don’t want smaller parties and the alternative opinions that could be seriously discussed in the mainstream. I think a look at the representation in the local bodies especially villages will show that there is a large amount of political underbrush (independent and small party representation), growing at the feet of the big timber, and if this underbrush has to be heard it has to subordinate its message to that of a larger party, into which it must merge or with which it must align.
Both these reasons are good enough for real-politikers and Partycrats but not really “Democratic”.
An interesting article I once read suggested smaller states, not just the ones that we have seen formed over the last few years, but much smaller, something like 47 states. Maharashtra for instance would be divided in 5 states : Mumbai, Konkan, Marathwada, Desh and Vidharbha. The article was published in Seminar Magazine sometime in the 70s, and made a cogent case for the reorganisation of the states based on geo-resources rather than linguistics. Pipedream, but definitely more “Democratic”.