One of my friends with considerable experience in relevant fields and highly imaginative and analytical mind had prepared some notes on rating/ ranking of elected representatives in terms of performance against their own set goals. I have however felt that all politicians, their associations/ parties, all legislative and executive bodies of elected representatives as well as each elected representative and each official of any poltical party should be under continuous rating scan and such rating should not only cover performace against targets but also their record in honesty, moralty, educationsl standrds, association with goos and corrupt people, theit ethical standards and their living style and financial condition. That more and more Indians are thinking on similar lines for improving the quality of democracy augurs well for the utility and relevance of Indian democracy to the country’s future citizens...
If democracy has to be any meaning and purpose in this twenty-first century, there has to be an independent non-official market for at least four different types of political ratings:
(a) Rating of each Government: comparison of actual performance with three benchmarks: with promises/ goals, comparison with governments of other countries/ states/ regions/ localities, comparison with ideal standards.
(b) Rating of each political party on similar benchmarks as also over time for the same political party,
(c) Rating of each elected representative, and
(d) Rating of each legislative body like the Parliament or the Senate on a half-yearly rolling basis.
With regard to (d), it is necessary to point out that the institutions of legislative bodies or the Chief of State are definitely constitutionally sacrosanct, but no individual legislative body or individual Chief of the State or any individual government or any particular elected representative with given tenure is any more sacrosanct than the individual citizen. Even the Parliament's own performance and procedures should be subjected to independent rating without any fear of Parliamentary retaliation through resolution or action by the Parliament.
All the four ratings are equally important, even if they may be somewhat inter-related. Without these ranking systems in place, democracies, republics and communist regimes are actually inferior form of political system than monarchies of the medieval or ancient times.
My friend suggested that the rating of elected representatives be done under the aegis of the Election Commission. He was worried about how an independent rating agency could compel the people it rates to provide data. If the rating agency does not get data then how does it rate?
I would not like to rely merely on the Election Commission or Official Agencies. Such Rating should be done by one or more independent non-political bodies using experts who affirm that they do not either support or are against any political party, government or elected representative anywhere in the world. If there are multiple agencies doing the same job political ratings, this should be rather welcome. Transparent free market for providing rating services is what is required - no Govt., no elected representative, no political party can go to court against any such rating so long as the detailed process of rating is made transparent and worksheets are available to the public within 24 hours of any rating announcement.
It is better for the citizens to rely on the market development of credible rating. Initially, no political party or government would like to provide data. But there is lot of data available in the newspapers, electronic media, the election commission, the parliamentary/ legislative bodies' records, the party manifestoes, press releases, party newspapers and websites. These can be used in the rating model. For some parameters and variables, estimates can be used. and, for some other parameters, low scores would be used because of the non-cooperation of the parties in providing information despite requests made to them. Then the ratings are published along with complete partywise worksheets with notes on information/ estimates the rating model has used. Once these are published at regular intervals in newspapers and internet sites, some parties will contest the rankings on incorrect information and methodological issues. These criticisms have to be responded with revised ratings. Once the political parties get drawn into debates over rating, they would get trapped because they have to accept the information used or release correct information available to them. These become scrutinisable in the public domain. Politicians change parties and are also in power struggle within their parties. The confidants of such politicians may turn out to be a good source of information. Once these debates start, public will become more aware of political parties activities, secret trades, and other bad things. This will generate a pressure on parties to become transparent and give disclosures.
A well-thought out strategic game has to be there with the rating agencies: the release of information, use of estimates, the use of secret sources, moves to attract information, moves to create public pressure on releasing the True information, use of investigative journalists reports, the response to criticisms, the credibility of the model and its robustness (sensitivity) to small errors or large errors in information used, the credibility of experts of who make judgments on relative weights and analysis of the inconsistency between actions and policies of party as revealed through their speeches and behaviour, etc.
The task is not going to be easy in the beginning: but becomes easier and easier with time after the first few rounds of data collection, analysis, and estimation work are over.
Who will fund this? Any group of non –government voluntary agencies and Civil Society Foundations could provide funds. Or, retired, wealthy businessmen could provide funds. In an era of globalization, an international foundation operating from an advanced country can do this if it has resources. If Wall Street Journal can monitor what is happening in rural areas of emerging developing countries, organizing the development and implementation of such political ratings would be rather simple affair for an international association of newspapers and magazines as also universities.
If we were to do this by Law, it will not happen. If we want Government to do this it will be another mockery. In the US, some left-minded people ran a TV channel only on Democracy for a few hours in a day with donations - it probably did not survive beyond a year. On the other hand TV serials based on what goes on in the political parties: these channels get lot of public viewer ship and commercial advertisement s- of course they run the risk of sudden death because of the arm-twisting by the powers that be. But some succeed. But the ultimate test of political ratings would have to be the thousands, millions and billions of the citizens of different countries and localities.
Success does not come from mere ex-ante guarantees/ risk mitigation strategies: success comes through using such strategies, dynamically changing them to fight the obstacles.
This posting is a kind of lecture-bazi. But hopefully this posting will generate alternative ideas to the people who would like tyo keep their controls of legislative bodies, elected representatives, political parties and governments: on this Mahtma Gandhi Birthday, I may be incapable of making hard work, making sacrifice and practicing Satyagraha: but there may be millions who can practice what Gandhi preached to domesticate the wild animals that the philosophers of the World have created in the form of political parties so that people really control political party behaviour rather than become the victims of political party behaviour.
Oct 1, 2009
Ranking Political Parties against ideal becnchmarks
Political parties need to be rated against desirable attribute benchmarks, irrespective of whether they are in the ruling government or in the opposition and irrespective of whether they are national or provincial, regional or local parties or even banned/ underground parties.
Intellectuals should develop a broad range of criteria with sub-criteria. Political parties can submit information to the Rating agencies on all aspects of their mission, operations, support, base and performance. Even if they do not submit required by rating agencies the rating agency itself can collect required information as far as possible and rate them. Such rating should be done for base year and thereafter updated every month based on latest developments and information. Each criteria and each sub criteria will have appropriate weights and measured in a scale of 0 ( zero, the lowest) to 10 (the highest).
The broad criteria could include:
1. Objectives with sub-criteria as relevance of objectives to civilized society, clarity in expression of objectives, consistency among objectives and the relative priority of the objectives, quantification and measurable property of objectives (vague objectives could be given low points),
2. Organisational Strength: number of members, number of active members, educational background of the top 10 functionaries/ officials), the number of whole-time members and their emoluments and benefits, the quality of inner party democracy, etc
3. Leadership Capability & skills: educational and professional attainments of the top 10 or top 5% of the officials/ functionaries, the closeness and accessibility to the members and the public at large, quality of the written documents of the party available to the public in terms of content, clarity of content and effectiveness of communication, quality of public speaking of the top 10 leaders, the quality of debating and negotiating skills of the top 10 leaders, the gender composition of top leadership, the team spirit and co-ordination among top 10 leaders, etc.
4. Knowledge: The depth of knowledge of the top 10 leaders at each level in international political and economic relations, in economics and finance, in social and religious issues as also in general sciences and technology as relevant to the common citizens, competence in high school mathematics.
5. Societal Orientation: Exposure to and familiarity with the lives (style, habits, preferences, aspirations and difficulties / concerns) of the people of different economic and social strata among the top 10 leaders at national and local levels.
6. Negative Baggage: criminal record, record of failure in academic examinations, corruption, promotion of relations and loyal, loan servicing record, income tax records, connections with criminals/ Mafia,
illness record, abuse of power, law violations record - both for the 10 top leaders and the party functionaries at all levels in general.
7. Income - Expenditure and Assets and liabilities record of the Party - whether certified by competent auditors/ auditors report thereon, income and expenditure in cash and through bank cheques etc, etc.
8. Performance: in terms of protecting/ rescuing people under threat or actual oppression/ extortion, non-violent and non-disruptive campaigns conducted ( call of bandhs/ strikes/ processions with adverse effect on national production activities earning negative points), performance in terms of participation in debates and attendance in parliament/ legislative/ civic bodies, etc.
9. Electoral Performance: percentage of votes polled in national/ regional and local elections, percentage of seats won to percentage of seats contested, etc.
10. Use of technology: visitor-friendliness, content, updating, and responsiveness to inquiries in respect of websites, use of mobiles. emails and Internet in part-offices, use of audio-visual computer technology in party meetings, etc.
The above are just illustrative criteria and sub-criteria.
Let political parties demonstrate their knowledge, skills, apptitudes, intellect, governance standards, social responsibility, transparency standards, and civilized behaviour through scientific evaluation by independent rating agency. Let them compete to earn good rating instead of formng oligarchic cartels to exploit the people with mere lecture-bajis. Let them face the electorate continuously and not just durng election campaign elections in democracies.
Intellectuals should develop a broad range of criteria with sub-criteria. Political parties can submit information to the Rating agencies on all aspects of their mission, operations, support, base and performance. Even if they do not submit required by rating agencies the rating agency itself can collect required information as far as possible and rate them. Such rating should be done for base year and thereafter updated every month based on latest developments and information. Each criteria and each sub criteria will have appropriate weights and measured in a scale of 0 ( zero, the lowest) to 10 (the highest).
The broad criteria could include:
1. Objectives with sub-criteria as relevance of objectives to civilized society, clarity in expression of objectives, consistency among objectives and the relative priority of the objectives, quantification and measurable property of objectives (vague objectives could be given low points),
2. Organisational Strength: number of members, number of active members, educational background of the top 10 functionaries/ officials), the number of whole-time members and their emoluments and benefits, the quality of inner party democracy, etc
3. Leadership Capability & skills: educational and professional attainments of the top 10 or top 5% of the officials/ functionaries, the closeness and accessibility to the members and the public at large, quality of the written documents of the party available to the public in terms of content, clarity of content and effectiveness of communication, quality of public speaking of the top 10 leaders, the quality of debating and negotiating skills of the top 10 leaders, the gender composition of top leadership, the team spirit and co-ordination among top 10 leaders, etc.
4. Knowledge: The depth of knowledge of the top 10 leaders at each level in international political and economic relations, in economics and finance, in social and religious issues as also in general sciences and technology as relevant to the common citizens, competence in high school mathematics.
5. Societal Orientation: Exposure to and familiarity with the lives (style, habits, preferences, aspirations and difficulties / concerns) of the people of different economic and social strata among the top 10 leaders at national and local levels.
6. Negative Baggage: criminal record, record of failure in academic examinations, corruption, promotion of relations and loyal, loan servicing record, income tax records, connections with criminals/ Mafia,
illness record, abuse of power, law violations record - both for the 10 top leaders and the party functionaries at all levels in general.
7. Income - Expenditure and Assets and liabilities record of the Party - whether certified by competent auditors/ auditors report thereon, income and expenditure in cash and through bank cheques etc, etc.
8. Performance: in terms of protecting/ rescuing people under threat or actual oppression/ extortion, non-violent and non-disruptive campaigns conducted ( call of bandhs/ strikes/ processions with adverse effect on national production activities earning negative points), performance in terms of participation in debates and attendance in parliament/ legislative/ civic bodies, etc.
9. Electoral Performance: percentage of votes polled in national/ regional and local elections, percentage of seats won to percentage of seats contested, etc.
10. Use of technology: visitor-friendliness, content, updating, and responsiveness to inquiries in respect of websites, use of mobiles. emails and Internet in part-offices, use of audio-visual computer technology in party meetings, etc.
The above are just illustrative criteria and sub-criteria.
Let political parties demonstrate their knowledge, skills, apptitudes, intellect, governance standards, social responsibility, transparency standards, and civilized behaviour through scientific evaluation by independent rating agency. Let them compete to earn good rating instead of formng oligarchic cartels to exploit the people with mere lecture-bajis. Let them face the electorate continuously and not just durng election campaign elections in democracies.
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