As part of proposal for electoral reform, the Election Commission of India (ECI) has proposed that the political parties in our country need to qualitatively improve their functioning in adopting democratic values and norms of the Constitution in their internal party organisations, besides a self-adoptive code of conduct to follow.
It also said to build institutional mechanism within the party for planning, thinking and research on crucial socio-economic issues before the nation along with training for socialising party cadres and preparing them for responsibilities of governance while assuring social inclusiveness through legal provisions with fair representation of women and weaker sections in party positions.
These are being proposed based on the recommendations of various commissions' reports such as the National Law Commission and National Commission to review the working of the Constitution, etc. Political parties have increasing role in modern democracies as they are selecting the representative of the people to govern. The implementation of the Constitution lies in their hands.
If the parties themselves do not follow the constitutional principles; how they are going to deliver the mandate of the Constitution? So, complete adherence to the Constitution must be the first step to form a political party which must be exhibited in practice within the party and outside in public.
The party leaders and cadres must bring into practice the established democratic and constitutional values in their personal and family life and become model for other citizens to follow in public life for building an egalitarian society.
But it has been noticed that during elections many of the parties do not follow the democratic values and constitutional provisions but adopt such easy means of mobilization using caste, community and religion cards and do physical violence to influence the voters in their support to get elected.
In a country like ours with such diversity, continued existence of thousands of castes, communities and practice of different kinds of religions, the casteist and communal mobilisation has a deeper impact on the marginalized sections ,poor , and caste discriminated communities and religious minorities, especially over their political participation as a voter/citizen.The process of communal divide further widens our continued socio –religion difference by posing a threat to human relationship, social unity and our collective co-existence as a nation. It is against the founding vision of makers of modern India, the freedom fighters, members of Constituent Assembly, and contrary to the principles of our Constitution that still keeps us united as a nation in the world.
During last 70 years of practice of democracy as a nation, it has been found that the democratic values are deteriorating with increasing in poll violence and communal mobilisations, and formation of parties in caste and communal line, besides using religion, caste and ethnic symbols and names to seek votes.
The political parties in every society are change agents. They must act without any communal interest, casteist mindset and gender bias, that is beneficial to any particular caste, religion or social group and region.
Rather than dividing people the political parties must play a role in connecting people for realization of justice, liberty, equality and the parties are to be responsible to build up themselves as an inclusive secular place by bringing people from different walks of life as socio-religious groups with gender neutrality. So it expected that the parties themselves must stand above the narrow political motive.
The second most important concern is the intellectual engagement of political parties in the socio-economic and socio-political issues of the nation in terms of understanding the issues and finding possible solutions based on research, debate and discussions involving the larger masses in the interest of the nation.
We the largest democracy in the world but all our voters are not literate and educated enough to behave as responsible citizens/voters as they easily fall into traps of all kinds of disruptive forces. Political education of the masses is highly required to build up a healthier democracy and political parties have a major role in spreading political literacy among the vast masses.
As a first step the parties must prepared themselves as political educators of the masses. It is expected that the party cadres and leaders must have sound knowledge over the economic and social issues, governance and political science. They must have adequate information about Constitution and laws being in practice.
In order to do that it is suggested that the political parties must make institutional arrangements within the party for research on vital issues affecting the country and arrange for training activities for its cadres to raise their standards.It must be mandatory for all political parties to impart training to all their cadres on Constitution of India and the laws relating to representation such as the Representation of Peoples Act 1950 and 1951, Conduct of Election rules 1961, Election Symbol Order 1968, and Anti-defection Law 1985 etc.
The intellectual engagement of the parties will encourage people from different educational and professional background to join the parties which will qualitatively improve the politics and attract more people in serving the nation and restrict the entry of vested interest groups, goons and criminal and uneducated people in public life.