General Elections 2014 in India:

General election for parliament (Loksabha) and some of the state Legislative Assemblies are due during the year 2014. Present analyses indicate that no single party can gain even simple majority in the house. Hence, government would be formed after some of the parties combine together for the purpose of proving majority for forming government. These parties may claim that they would be working based on a common minimum programme acceptable to all parties. However, in practice the picture is different. Each and every party is interested in implementing individual party programme. The only common programme implemented is grabbing every opportunity for improving self state of every member of the house, both ruling and in opposition. There is a need to deal with such a possibility. Amalgamation of parties is no solution. In my opinion the concept of ruling party and opposition party must change. When every member of the house wants (at least theoretically) improvement in the condition of a common man why there should be a party in opposition. All members must be considered on the same side of the fence. If this concept is accepted then a solution is available for suchresults of election(s).

Value of Time

The present system of inviting majority party for forming election should be discontinued. This should be replaced by the inviting all members to choose head of the house (for parliament Prime Minister (PM) should be the head of the hose) President (Rashtrapati) should conduct proceedings to elect the Prime Minister. PM must be from elected representatives only. PM should be from any party irrespective of total strength of the party. Elected representative of any party in the house shall be acceptable to head the government. Once the PM is elected the next election should be for Auditor (analysing and correcting working of government) of the house. Both PM and Auditor shall have council of ministers. Prime minister and his council shall be responsible for preparing draft laws etc., good governance, and execution of all development works at the least price and with highest quality and for sanctioned quantity. Auditor and his/her council shall be responsible for bringing out lapses in execution and advise the house regarding actions to be taken by PM and his/her council for ideal governance and execution of development works. For changing PM or Auditor 2/3^rd majority of total elected house strength shall be necessary. This system shall succeed over drawbacks of coalition government.

Voters should select a candidate for voting carefully and correctly. Voters get a chance to express their opinion once in a few years. Elections cost exchequer. Hence, the period between successive elections cannot be reduced. The present chosen period of 5 years is practical. This means voters get just 1 chance in 5 years to choose a candidate who is supposed to represent them in an appropriate house. This makes it very important and inescapable to choose their representative absolutely carefully. Present practice is politicians and political parties promise some thing to voters and using propaganda machinery it is impressed on voters that this is the only important work needed by the voter. All other needs are not important. Many examples could be given such as it is impressed on people that once Rama temple at Ayodhya is constructed every Indian will become happy or appease Muslims, or slogans like “Garibi Hatao” or “Pleasant and workers Zindabad” Voters must understand that these methods or slogans cannot make any positive change in their life. For positive change lot more is needed. Every voter must think over this and list out needs in his/her opinion (political parties must make voters think in a rational way and not feed them with their selfish methods). The next step would be to determine importance of each of the needs in their individual and social life. Voter should compare capacity of every candidate contesting election with reference to his/her needs. Marking system could be simple just 0 or 1. If the candidate has no capacity or partial capacity then “zero” else “one” When marks are allotted to every candidate then these should be multiplied by priority percentage of specific need and score decided. Total of this score would be the final result of capacity of the candidates. Voter should vote candidate securing highest marks above certain predetermined value else vote candidate none from below. Some of the issues (needs) in my opinion are as under:-

1.      Integrity of Candidate: Candidate should have clear thinking about the society and which party is the best for the society. Change of political faith indicates that the candidate is selfish and only interested in promoting his/her individual interests. Voter may take this as a single need or divide it in smaller needs. This means either Integrity could be considered as single need or divided in to loyalty to political party, corruption less in public life, morale, and some more. It is advisable to make each part of a need as and independent need. All points should be treated in the same way.

2.      Thinkings and activities for Security of a common man: This could be divided in to security against enemy countries, extremists, naxalites, maoists, thieves, gangs, rapist, transport and as many fields as one is concerned about security.

3.      Development issues:  There can be many needs and these will change not only from place to place but also from group to group and time to time. Generally these would be like, education, employment, facilities, food prices, residential accommodation, communication and so on.

4.      Secularism: Religion is basically an individual need. In India it is made as a social need by pastors and political leaders. In the interest of the nation and people these needs should not be a consideration. The consideration should be secularism (see meaning of secularism here).

5.      Capability of the candidate: This would include finer needs like understanding, assimilating common man’s aspirations and difficulties, taking economically viable decisions, planning and execution of solutions and alike.

6.      Local difficulties: There are certain difficulties faced by people in a particular location such as infiltration of people from neighbouring countries like Bangladesh, over crowding in cities due to migration, will of people to join with adjoining state, water, electricity, roads etc.

Every voter must prepare a list of his/her needs and find whether a particular candidate contesting election would be more suitable than others or all are unsuitable for the post. The method is simple. Prepare a table with rows and columns and place candidates in different columns and his/her needs (criteria) in rows. One column should be for needs, second for weight age and rest for candidates. Weight age should be in terms of percentage importance of the criteria for the voter, Marks against each of the criterion shall be either yes or no meaning 1 or zero. Total (after multiplying mark with weight age) at the end shall decide the ranking of each of the candidate. Generally, highest among those who get over pass percentage (say 35 to 50 %) shall be the choice of the voter. In case none gets minimum percentage, choice will be first candidate in the list i.e. “None from below”

Table illustrating arriving at selecting a candidate for voting in an election:

Serial	Criteria	Weight age	Candidate 1	Candidate 2	Candidate 3	Candidate 4
	Integrity	100	0	1	0	1
	Security	100	1	1	0	0
	Development	75	1	1	1	1
	Secularism	75	0	1	0	0
	Capability	100	1	1	1	1
	Local Issues	100	0	0	1	1
	Other	50	1	0	1	1
	Total marks		3.25	4.5	3.25	4.25

From the above analysis Candidate number 2 securing over 50% points is ideal for voting.