BUDDHA (Bottom Up Democracy for Development and Happiness of All)

Today the bane of democracy lies in enormous amount of money that is required for conducting an election on the part of the government as well as on the part of individuals as well as parties to fight an election. The latter leads to plutocracy – only those with a lot of money can think of seriously running in an election. It also makes corrupt means of amassing money an essential tool to be relevant in elections and hence in democracy. There is urgent need to develop a way of holding an election that would not require enormous sums of money for holding an election as well as for fighting an election. BUDDHA (Bottom Up Democracy for Development and Happiness of All) system will fulfill this need. Additionally, it has potential to benefit the society in many other ways, as discussed later. First let us briefly describe the system.

Under BUDDHA system essentially we organize people in groups of 100 with similar interest and aspirations at level E1, elect 20 out of them to level E2 and join them (on their own volition) with four others with compatible interests and desires to make it a group of 500 at E1 and 100 at E2, which would go on to elect 20 to level E3. Continuation of the same process another time will yield a group of 2,500 at E1 for a Mohalla, 500 at E2 and 100 at E3, which in turn would go on to elect 20 level E4. Thus in a Mohalla Sabhaa we will have a 20-member working committee, 100-member Council at E3, five 100-member Councils at E2 and twenty-five 100-member Councils at E1, the grassroots, and their corresponding working committees and other committees of around 20-members each. The method of election from one level to the next higher level has been described later. In the Mohalla Sabhaas people from all of these groups should come and express their concerns but if something has to be decided by a vote, it should be decided by the 100-member council. The method of election of 20 out of the 100-member group has been explained below.

After the society has been structured in a terraced pyramidal shape briefly outlined above, it can be used for many purposes like taking opinion polls, taking census, etc. The group of 20 can collect various kinds of data (opinion polls, census, etc., including electoral vote) from the group of 100 that elected it and pass on the information to a central data collection agency. As the group of 20 is a representative body, representing likeminded 100 at the grassroots, the former is likely to more truthfully collect the opinion and other data regarding the latter than the data collected by an individual from another class deputed by the government.

The BUDDHA structure is already in a pyramidal shape yielding leadership (in the form of some kind of socio-political proportional representation) of the people at the bottom (the grassroots). However, if desired, one can hold an election using list-PR (list-Proportional Representation) system of election.

The possibility of using the BUDDHA structure for holding elections without much expense suggests its use for holding primary elections. An election used for electing a party’s nominee is called a primary election. In the USA they use primary elections to nominate of all parties for contesting the main election following the primary. This aspect of American elections totally frees the country from the disease of political sycophancy. Most people don’t even know the name of chairs of the largest parties because they do not play any role in picking party nominees. The USA suffers from the usual devastating consequences of FPTP, however, it is at least free of the many ill consequences of party bosses picking party nominees.

The ill consequences of party bosses handing out party tickets to various applicants are: (1) Sycophancy towards the party bosses becomes more important for new as well as old political figures than working for their electorate. (2) Because how much sycophancy would be enough to get a nomination is not easy to decipher, political career is very uncertain, driving most people away from political career. (3) If a person does not get nomination from one party, s/he hops to another party that may be wedded to a diametrically opposite ideology. This makes people suspect that all politicians are nothing but hypocrites and opportunists lacking any ideological conviction. (4) Requirement of sycophancy on the part of those seeking a party’s nomination drives away self-respecting honorable people from political life. (5) When it is party bosses who hand out party nomination to candidates, after election these candidates become mere rubber stamps of the political bosses, subverting the quality of democracy and reducing it to tyranny of the political bosses. The political bosses might as well hold as many chips as the number of their MPs or MLAs and make decisions like what they do in corporate board rooms, with each of the directors holding chips in proportion to the company shares they possess. One can think of many more ill consequences, but I will stop here.

As we need to start nomination process sooner than later, this time around various party leaders may perhaps keep on giving nomination to the deserving candidates without any kind of primary election. However, at least for some of the seats nomination should be decided by election via BUDDHA structure. It will provide an incentive to the new members to go to the people and organize them in the BUDDHA structure. In addition, we should elect 100-member advisor councils and its working committees for various level representatives like Ward Councilors, MLAs, MPs, etc. As for Mohallas, currently we do not have any official who is supposed to take care of a Mohalla. But that’s to our advantage because instead of electing a single individual as a representative of a whole mohallaa (via FPTP), we can elect a working committee of around 20 backed by a 100-member Mohallaa Council via BUDDHA system representing the mohallaa more democratically and inclusively. All of these possibilities should provide amole of incentive to all most educated individuals and others with leadership aspirations to participate in the formation of various 20 & 100-member groups and electing some to higher levels of representation. As people get involved in constructing the BUDDHA structure, people will get to know this simple way of uniting the masses and democratic empowerment. No matter whether we eventually use the BUDDHA structure for nomination process or not, just formation of the same can be a very creative and constructive way of uniting people in a democratic structure. There is saying: “People united will never be defeated!”