Israel, the all-weather ally of India, is undergoing third legislative election in less than one year time period and that too without any clear mandate. The small country with 9 million people underwent fifth legislative election in the last seven years, thanks to its proportional representation electoral system. The country had election in April 2019, September 2019, and March 2020, but was unable to find a stable government, as every election resulted in hung assembly.
Proportional representation is among the two major electoral systems with other being the first past the post (FPTP) system, which is followed in Indian general and assembly elections. Proportional representation (PR), in which multiple candidates are elected through allocations to an electoral list, is followed in countries like- Finland, Israel, Poland, Spain, and partially in Indian Presidential election.
In simplest terms, proportional representation can be defined as an electoral system where every party gets the number of seats in the parliament in proportion to total votes to the party, with whole country, or state in the case of assembly election, being treated as single constituency. For example, in the 2017 assembly election in 403 seats UP assembly, BJP won 325 seats with 41 percent votes, SP 54 seats with 28 percent votes, and BSP 19 seats with 22 percent votes, under the FPTP system. But had it been PR system, BJP would have had won only 160 seats- half of its current tally, SP would had won 120 seats and BSP 90 seats.
In this PR electoral system, UP would have had a hung assembly, and two parties would have had to come together to form a stable government. If two or more parties failed to find a common understanding to form government, the state would have had to go repeated election for a stable government, as happening in Israel right now.
In India, BJP came to power with in full majority in 2014 general election, winning 282 seats in the 543 members parliament despite polling only 31.34 percent of total votes. When the results of the election were announced, the whole left-liberal establishment, including public intellectuals like DP SATISH, started criticizing the electoral system of India as ‘majoritarian’.
Marxist leaders like Kanhaiya Kumar argued that the election shows that 70 percent of the people of the country rejected Modi, and therefore, BJP won only because the electoral system is flawed not due to Modi’s popularity. The same flaws were not pointed out when Congress or Left was winning the election is another thing.
A plethora of editorials, analysis, and opinions were published in newspapers and other media outlets that India must change to proportional representation system as the FPTP is ‘discriminatory’.
But the complete failure of PR in giving a stable government in Israel shows that a country, which is in early stages of development cycle, could not go for such a flawed system. The complete mess of political stability in Israel is a lesson for Indian policymakers as well as for the people like D P SATISH, Kanhaiya Kumar, who started supporting PR out of hatred for Modi and BJP.
In the last few months, many international newspapers including Washington Post, The Star, tablemag, The Guardian published articles on Israel’s dysfunctional electoral system.
The links are mentioned below:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/apr/29/israel-proportional-representation
In India, the media was at the forefront of initiating the debate on proportional representation. Media organizations like News 18, Business Standard, The Wire, and prominent think tanks like ORF published articles supporting PR.
The links are mentioned below:
https://thewire.in/government/why-india-needs-a-proportional-representation-system
https://www.orfonline.org/research/the-shift-to-proportional-representation-is-it-time-for-india/
The case of Israel shows that the country should bury the debate on PR for once and all if we want a stable government, which could take strong decisions necessary for the development of the country.