The primary fear about the present government undertaking the exercise of delimitation is that its motivation is neither democratic nor federal, but electoral. One has seen over the years how intensely the party in power is invested in the idea of staying in power. Its goal is to achieve chiranjeevi status, and it is not overly concerned if the path to this involves the bending of a law here or the whittling of a provision there.
Thus, the elaborate deception staged in April when delimitation was veiled in the fine gauze of a women’s representation Bill, only to be defeated by an unusually united opposition. Why is the opposition worried? Because it rightly fears that delimitation as proposed by this government will result, firstly, in an asymmetrical redistribution of parliamentary representation and, secondly, in a targeted redrawing of constituency geographies.
The first is antithetical to federalism because a pure numbers game reduces the presence in Parliament of the southern States with lower populations and packs it instead with northern State members, which profits this government because its vote share is concentrated in the Hindi belt. The second outcome is entirely undemocratic because it allows parties to choose their voters instead of voters choosing them.
Our Cover Story looks at these aspects of the proposed delimitation, from calculating how the numbers will play out, to why the federal equation itself must be reworked in tune with the times, to asking why delimitation has been kept outside both parliamentary and judicial oversight. But I talk here about something more fundamental: the idea of representation itself. In a country of a billion-plus people, it is the promise that each adult voter’s voice will be heard in New Delhi that is the beating heart of the democratic body. Representation here does not mean mere voting; rather, it is the line that connects the dots between voting and governing. It is not just sending a member to Parliament once every five years but demanding their responsiveness and accountability every day.
If we envision democracy as an open space where diverse issues are raised, discussed, challenged, and revised by multiple voices, that is the multiplicity that Parliament seeks to reproduce. Its members represent various regions, tribes, castes, and demographics, who raise concerns and seek solutions on behalf of these different clusters.
None of them, whether MP, Prime Minister, or Speaker, is sovereign or sui generis; they merely represent the many. How then can the only voice pronouncing laws be that of the ruling party? Rather, it must be the collaborative roar of the billion-plus people that is India. Does that happen in Parliament? No. Debates are regularly disallowed, opposition speeches cut short, members evicted, and parliamentary committees disregarded. Why, Doordarshan does not even turn its lens on opposition speakers. The formal practice of representation is thus already broken.
It is into this space that protesters step in. People get impatient when their voices go unheard. They spill out into the streets, they march, they demonstrate. The street then becomes a legitimate site for the enactment of democratic representation. The people transform into their own representatives, replacing the elected MPs. Protests are but the shifting of representation, from Parliament to people, who believe they articulate their concerns better than the people they voted to speak for them. It happened when the insensitive farm laws or the Citizenship (Amendment) Act were passed, and now in response to the massive failure in the education system, when the Cockroach Janta Party is taking to the streets. But such informal enactment of representation too is stopped by the government, which calls it seditious, anti-national, and harasses and jails protesters.
When this government dislikes the very idea of representation as embodied in a democracy, why does it care whether seats are redistributed according to population or not? Why does it want to increase Lok Sabha seats from 550 to 850? This government openly says it does not represent all citizens, then why obsess about Lok Sabha strength? Simply organising a show of hands in Parliament is a meaningless spectacle. Representation cannot be reduced to presence alone; it must be an inclusive and accountable presence. When this is so conspicuously absent, any talk of delimitation sounds suspect. And when one closely questions motive, one realises it might be to fundamentally alter the democracy itself, and not just its federal character.