Why the Election Commission must renew its compact with the citizen before democracy turns procedural

By Ravishankar Kalyanasundaram

Every five years, India performs the most complex civic act known to humankind — a billion people lining up to say what kind of nation they want. It’s noisy, festive, quarrelsome, often cynical, but it happens. Somewhere behind that routine miracle stands a single institution — the Election Commission of India — trusted to make choice visible and power peaceful.

If the Supreme Court is the conscience of the Constitution, the Election Commission is its heartbeat. And yet, like all hearts, it can falter when the body around it begins to tire.

The fading sound of trust

When Sukumar Sen supervised the first general election of 1951–52, the country was barely three years old as a republic. He printed 380 million ballot papers, hand-compiled 173 million names, and educated a newly literate nation in the art of choice. That exercise wasn’t just administrative — it was civilisational. It told the world that India could change governments without changing regimes.

For decades, the Election Commission embodied that faith. It was designed under Article 324 to be independent — answerable to the Constitution, not to the Cabinet. Parliament could make laws, but only the Commission could conduct elections. That wall of autonomy became the architecture of trust on which the Republic rested.

But institutions, like muscles, atrophy when they’re not exercised. The Emergency of 1975 tested every nerve of the constitutional body; the Commission survived, but not heroically. It kept the machinery running even as freedom itself was suspended — a silence that history has not forgotten.

Seshan’s revolution and the long shadow it cast

Then came the 1990s. T. N. Seshan marched in like a man possessed — part schoolmaster, part crusader. He didn’t reform the Election Commission; he reinvented it. The Model Code of Conduct became a living document, not a polite request. The defiant were punished, money and muscle were curbed, and for the first time in decades, politicians feared the referee more than the rival.

His successors — James Lyngdoh, M. S. Gill, S. Y. Quraishi — refined that culture, balancing toughness with reason. The Commission became a moral force as much as a legal one. In an age when coups were still normal in Asia and Africa, India’s ballot boxes looked almost sacred.

But moral authority, once lost, is hard to reclaim. And lately, the quiet tremors are audible again.

The new unease

Today’s doubts are not about violence or booth-capturing; they are about perception. Are appointments too opaque? Is the Model Code applied unevenly? Why are data on votes polled and votes counted disclosed with such delay? When machines count faster than people, why does transparency lag behind technology?

In an era when social media carries live results before the Commission’s own portal updates, opacity breeds cynicism. A democracy that argues about its referee risks turning every loss into a conspiracy.

The unease is not born of hostility; it is born of affection — of a people unwilling to see their most trusted institution go the way of others. The same concern animates our debates about the Finance Commission’s neutrality or the CAG’s independence. Each is a constitutional referee between power and accountability. Together, they are the invisible scaffolds of the Republic. When one wobbles, the rest tremble too.

The age of fragmented politics

The challenge before the Election Commission is no longer merely logistical. It is philosophical. India is no longer a binary democracy. Regional parties have matured into regional sovereignties. In Tamil Nadu, Telugu Desam or West Bengal, the political argument is as much about cultural identity as about policy. The national and the regional now jostle for primacy on the same ballot.

This pluralism is India’s strength — but it also demands a referee of extraordinary balance. For regional parties, neutrality is not an abstraction; it is survival. When they perceive the Commission as leaning toward Delhi, it revives old wounds about central domination.

That is why transparency is no longer courtesy — it is currency. The Election Commission must not only be neutral, it must be seen to be neutral. In the same way that the Finance Commission must show its formula for resource devolution, or the CAG must publish its audit trail, the ECI must bare its arithmetic. Counting votes is no longer enough; explaining every count is.

Technology without trust

Technology has given the Commission powerful new tools — biometric verification, satellite mapping, GPS-tagged poll teams, and VVPAT-linked EVMs. Yet technology without transparency only amplifies suspicion. The Commission’s reluctance to release granular data or share audit samples of the VVPAT system has turned what should be its greatest strength into its biggest controversy.

Just as the CAG transformed accountability by moving from ledger books to online dashboards, the ECI too must embrace digital openness: booth-wise disclosures, real-time turnout dashboards, independent audit protocols. When voters can see the process as clearly as the result, faith returns quietly.

Appointments and appearances

The Supreme Court’s recent nudge towards a collegium-style selection of Election Commissioners — involving the Prime Minister, the Leader of Opposition, and the Chief Justice — should not be dismissed as judicial overreach. It is optics as ethics. Independence must be baked into the process, not declared after the appointment.

Because perception is the new legitimacy. In the unfinished republic, credibility counts more than authority.

The digital battleground

The next frontier is digital. Deepfakes, targeted misinformation, paid influencers, and data-driven polarisation have turned the internet into a parallel campaign trail. Yet the Commission still behaves as if the contest ends at the polling booth.

Regulation cannot stop where technology begins. The ECI must work with data scientists, civic tech groups, and platforms to build a code for online campaigning — not to police speech, but to preserve integrity.

When manipulated videos travel faster than official clarifications, silence becomes complicity. The Commission need not shout, but it must speak — clearly, promptly, credibly.

From control to confidence

The Election Commission was once India’s most admired export — observers from new democracies came to learn how a chaotic subcontinent could vote in order and dignity. That reputation cannot rest on nostalgia.

Its next leap must be moral, not mechanical. The Commission’s task is not to control elections but to enable democratic confidence — to remind both rulers and ruled that power is transient, but trust is not.

As with the Finance Commission’s call for fair federalism or the CAG’s demand for transparent accounting, the ECI’s mission now is not just procedural correctness but emotional credibility — to renew the citizen’s belief that the Republic is honest with itself.

The unfinished republic

Each of India’s constitutional referees — the CAG, the Finance Commission, the Election Commission — was designed to keep the executive from becoming absolute. Together, they are the Republic’s immune system. When one weakens, the fever spreads.

Our democracy is not in danger of dying; it is in danger of dulling — of becoming so accustomed to its rituals that it forgets their purpose.

The Republic doesn’t collapse overnight; it frays through small indifferences — a delayed audit here, a quiet bias there, an opaque appointment everywhere.

The thought that lingers

Institutions age not by years but by habits. The Election Commission taught India how to vote; now it must teach itself how to listen.

For a billion-strong republic still learning to live with its differences, faith is the only glue strong enough to hold the ballot together. If the Commission can rebuild that faith — through openness, fairness, and humility — it won’t just count votes.

It will keep democracy itself from becoming a spectator sport.