Build a Toilet to Contest an Election – A Fair Restriction?

The Bihar government says you have to have a toilet to contest a local village election. Does this exclude the poor?

On August 4, the Bihar Assembly passed a legislation that anyone contesting for panchayat and urban local body elections must provide an affidavit stating they have a toilet inside their homes.

In October 2014, just before the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan was launched by Narendra Modi, the Gujarat Assembly too had passed a similar law.

Rural sanitation and open defecation are serious health hazards in India, and a multi pronged approach is necessary to tackle the issue. Demanding that those who want to serve as elected representatives should lead by example may not be unreasonable.

However, material qualifications for voting or holding public office have not existed since the constitution came into effect in 1950. The last time property qualifications for contesting elections or voting took place was during the 1935 colonial era legislation.

Does enforcing such a qualification now, no matter for how noble a cause, go against the spirit of democracy?

Toilets are Neither Free nor Universal

In a statement in Parliament in 2013, the then Minister for Drinking Water and Sanitation Bharatsinh Solanki put the total cost of building a toilet between Rs 10,000 and 10,500. Over 90 per cent of this ought to be covered by grants and subsidies from government schemes with construction of toilets under the Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA), making the cost negligible.

However, not all families have equal and universal access to government schemes. Village elites have been known to corner the benefits from MNREGA, and no government scheme or subsidy has universal reach.

Even if this were not the case, even Rs 900 is a significant amount for a BPL (Below Poverty Line) family. About one-third of Bihar’s population falls into the BPL category, with an annual family income of less than Rs 20,000.

Given this state of affairs, isn’t the demand introducing an economic qualification for participating in the democratic process?

Following the Letter of the Law, But Not it’s Spirit

Both the Gujarat and Bihar government are well within their legal rights to determine the qualifications of candidates contesting for Panchayat elections. According to the 73rd Amendment Act, which instituted Panchayati Raj elections in 1992-93, the powers to determine the rules of elections lie with state legislatures.

However, the principles of equality before law and universal franchise, have an implicit injunction against economic qualifications for public office. Now something as needed as toilets may seem harmless, even useful, but it does exclude the poorest from power.

The legislatures of Bihar and Gujarat may have had their hearts in the right place when they wanted local leaders to set an example by building toilets. But in both principle and practice, the move is an undemocratic one.