How democratic is the “world’s largest democracy”?

India conducts general elections to the parliament once every 5 years (notwithstanding other factors). This periodic spectacle gives weight to the claim that India is being ruled by people who have been selected by the people and the parliamentarians represent the will of the people. But is this claim really true? Let’s look at the numbers from the last general elections which took place in 2014.

In 2014, general elections, there were approximately 834 million eligible voters[1]. Of these 834 millions, approximately 553 million or 66.3% voted. Of these 553 million who voted, approximately 261 million voted for winners. In other words, the current parliament represents the will of 261 million (~31% of eligible voters or ~47% of people who voted) people. What this means is that the parliament does not represent the will of the people, in fact it does not even represent the will of the majority of the electorate. These numbers are even more meaningful when on considers the distribution of powers between the state and the centre[2].

Perhaps, a case can also be made for instituting a system of ‘proportional representation’ instead of ‘first past the post’ system. Of course, none of the bigger parties will agree to such a system, because it would not be in their interest. The point here is not that parliament is illegitimate but to highlight the fact that an entity cannot be called democratic simply because it conducts regular and fair elections.

Election Results – Comparative performance of BJP and INC

The results of the 2014 general elections are shown in the map below :-

The vote share of top 10 parties was as shown –

Party	Votes	Percent Voters	Percent Electors
Bharatiya Janata Party	171,657,549	31.00	20.58
Indian National Congress	106,938,242	19.31	12.82
Bahujan Samaj Party	22,946,182	4.14	2.75
All India Trinamool Congress	21,259,681	3.84	2.55
Samajwadi Party	18,672,916	3.37	2.24
All India anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam	18,115,825	3.27	2.17
Communist Party of India (Marxist)	17,986,773	3.25	2.16
Independent	16,743,719	3.02	2.01
Telugu Desam Party	14,094,545	2.55	1.69
Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress Party	13,991,280	2.53	1.68

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) emerged as the single largest party securing 282 seats (out of 543) in the parliament. Indian National Congress (INC) was the next largest party securing only 44 seats. The performance of BJP in different constituencies is shown in the map below.

It can be seen that the BJP performed extremely well in the so called ‘Hindi Heartland’. It can also be seen that the BJP has secured major victories in the south also (especially Karnataka). However, apart from Karnataka, the BJP predominantly depended on it allies in the South.

The performance of INC in different constituencies is shown in the map below.

In general, INC’s performance was much worse than BJP. The comparative performance of BJP and INC is shown in the plot below.

The median percentage of votes received in a constituency by the BJP (~43%) is much higher than that of the INC (26%).

Purely from the perspective vote share, INC performed especially poorly in four states namely – Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh. Together, these four states represent a total of 186 seats in the parliament (~34%). If the INC wants to regain power at the centre, it has to perform well in these states in the next elections or forge alliances in these states. Perhaps, one silver lining in otherwise a gloomy performance for the INC is that it still has a reasonably large footprint in India. It is interesting to note that even though in Rajasthan, INC did not capture even a single seat, it did get approximately 30% of the total votes.

Consequences of an alliance

In the last few months, there have been speculations of a grand alliance (‘Mahagathbandhan’’) against the BJP[3]. What challenge would such an alliance pose to BJP’s electoral dominance? The map below shows the consequences of an (hypothetical) alliance in 2014.

The map shows whether the BJP’s vote share was higher than the 2nd and 3rd placed parties. In this scenario, BJP would have won 192 seats which is 90 less than its current tally of 282. This decrease is concentrated in Uttar Pradesh (UP) and Bihar (BR) where BJP’s tally reduces from a total of 93 (71 (UP) + 22 (BR)) to 41 (33(UP) + 8 (BR)). There is obviously an assumption here that in case of an alliance everyone who voted for the 2nd or 3rd placed party would vote for the pre-poll alliance. However, this indicates indicates how fractured the electorate was in these states and the BJP would be most vulnerable in these states in case of an alliance. This was evident from some of the recent results of by-elections in these states [4].

References

[1] All the data used in this article was sourced from https://github.com/datameet/india-election-data/tree/master/parliament-elections

[2] Punchhi Commission Report

[3] For more information in on the ‘mahagathbandhan’ refer :-

[4] https://www.firstpost.com/politics/uttar-pradesh-and-bihar-by-election-results-a-look-at-how-bypolls-have-turned-out-for-incumbents-and-oppositions-4391541.html