[Following is the transcript of CNN’s Interview with chief election commissioner T.N, Seshan. The interview was telecast by CNN]
Q: Mr. Seshan, what do you identify as the main problems in the India Election system?
‘A: Our elections still contain an unacceptably large amount of in one sense, cash, criminality and corruption, in another sense; I use the 3 M’s of our existence: money power, muscle power and minister power. Bach of these can be explained namely there are far too many wrongdoers who are getting into the legislatures and are people who ought to be in jail who are not in jail but elsewhere, While there is corruption in every part of the world, Indian corruption owes a great deal to political corruption related to elections.
Q: Can you tell us some of the measures you took to reform the system ‘after you took charge five and a half ‘years ago?
A: More security forces are employed than ever before. More communication facilities are used than ever before. The ostentatious use of money is now very rigidly controlled and officials who misuse their position are brought down with a very heavy hand. Loudspeakers will not be allowed to blare forth after 10:00 PM
‘and our implementation is so good that last time several federal and state ministers were pulled off the stage at 10:00 PM by local police officials saying that your time is up and the loudspeaker is switched off.
Q: Do you expect allow voter turnout in Kashmir?
‘A: In Kashmir there will be two kinds of worries. There will be some people who are angry and alienated who may not come to vote, There are other people who may like to come to vote but are afraid, whether the angry people may deal with them angrily if they vote, So one of the concern: that the voting in Kashmir, in order to carry a sense of credibility must achieve a certain percentage, I can’t tell you an exact number at which one would say the voter turnout is satisfactory. I can start telling you when it would be considered unsatisfactory, shall we say, if it is in single digit number, then you would know that the system has not worked.
Q: You were among the first to tame politicians, Can you give us some interesting stories about how you went about doing this?
A: In 1991, when our present prime minister was standing for election, I had to go and tell him in very polite language that some of the methods being used by his party were not quite acceptable. In May last year, the government wanted to hold the elections in Kashmir. | went and looked at the place and said that the job of the Election Commission is never to stop the elections but to conduct the elections which are reasonably free and reasonably fair. To merely conduct an election to make it appear to the world that you have conducted an election is something which I have never believed in. Q: What point are you trying to prove?
‘A: The idea is to make sure that the entire country accepts in one voice that the Election Commission. It’s not somebody’s nice Pomeranian pup, it is everybody’s Alsation.
: Did the prime minister want a delayed election?
A: I think it is fair to describe the ‘answer in hagian English to say that a later election would not have been something which would have caused the prime minister unhappiness, One ‘suggestion made was that the Kashmir assembly election should be done earlier so that the parliament elections would then get postponed to sometime in May June, We did not consider it possible to accept the proposition. Q: It takes guts to go against the wishes of the prime minister of India, a: Oh yes, because fear is not a word in my dictionary. I have a0 answerability to 930 million people and 590 million voters and that does not permit fear. In the entire spectrum of people connected with political gerrymandering, there is nobody who is not my enemy and they are collectively put together, very powerful influence powerful in power, powerful in money, powerful in willingness to resort to difficult means. I can tell you that from threats of physical dams ‘age to myself to threats to kidnap my wife, my wife cannot go to the vegetable bazar now to buy vegetables for fear she might be kidnapped. There is only one thing if! Wanted to prove my impartiality to the world, it proves: by the fact that no single political group in India has nothing but, shall ‘we say at the very best, dislike for me: The result is that I now go around the country with an enormous amount of personal protection. Q: Why is your mind disturbed?
A: 1am worried about the future of my country. Many things which are going on here frighten me. The breakdown of structures frightens me. The breakdown of systems frightens me. The breadth and depth of corruption frighten me, today that cancer has probably crossed the primary or even secondary stage and bas reached the stage of metastasis. This is what frightens me, It is in the lungs, it is in the heart, it is in the kidneys, it is in the Parliament, it is in the executive, It is in the journalist profession, which is considered the fourth estate in the text books of political science, it’s happened in education, it has happened in environment, it has happened in culture. India’s condition today looks to me like a marriage ball an Indian marriage ball the day after the marriage, Somebody has poured a little coffee here) Somebody has thrown a banana peel there, Somebody has done something else somewhere The place is dirty, it should be cleaned up. This entire thing is large question of ethics. Indian living has departed from the necessities of ethics so dramatically that unless you sit down and pull it back you will cross the brink and get shattered to pieces.
Q You has called bureaucrats pumps and journalists prostitute. Why do, you think so low of them?
A: The civil service of this country. in which! Lived 36 years and of which I clawed my way up to the highest level has not exactly covered itself with glory. I think that today they don’t stand up for what they ought to stand up, I have told every journalist, you call me a rascal, I won’t care, but don’t twist my words by swallowing half a sentence in between, or interposing sentences. I can give you an ‘example of some of the best newspapers, best within quotes, newspapers and journals in India, which have used interviews with me, where you drop sentence in the middle and make appear as if I said the Prime Minister is a worm, Talking about the Prime Minister during the course of conversation, I said several things. At some point I said even ‘a worm will turn. And I certainly was not referring to the Prime Minister. Two sentences earlier talked about my relationship with the Prime Minister and the magazine one of India’s allegedly most respected magazines went and said “The Prime Minister, whom Mr. ‘Seshan described as a worm.” I said there wasn’t work for one donkey in the Election Commission. Sometime later I said two more gentlemen were added to the repertoire of election commissioners, and the magazine wrote and said I called my two colleagues donkeys, now I call that journalistic disaster.
Q: Your critics say you are an arrogant man with a massive ego. What is your response? A: I have said this before modesty is the virtue of fools. Q; The Election Commission was: just another body before you took. Charge and made it high profile, How” have you managed this? A: Well, I don’t think you could have asked a more difficult question. I have done nothing extraordinary. It is that every time it was necessary to stand up and fight, [have stood up and fought.
Article extracted from this publication >>May 8, 1996
