THE recently concluded elections to the central and provincial assemblies have aroused serious debate about the ‘fairness’ of the election process — particularly on polling day.

Charges of poll rigging are being alleged by all sides. There have also been concerns about pre-poll rigging, which is harder to prevent.

An important element has been missing from the debate — the ability of different segments of the population to participate in the electoral process without discrimination, to articulate their choice without fear and with full knowledge of the issues that are important to them, and the views and proclivities of the candidates involved. Notwithstanding the celebratory noises about the relatively high turnout, it needs to be remembered that almost 40pc of eligible voters — almost the same percentage as those of the poor in the population — were, wittingly or unwittingly, kept outside the democratic process.

Even then, to reach the conclusion that democracy as a public good is for, of and by the rich — largely the affluent middle classes — may seem outlandish. However, if access to the democratic process (including elections) is unevenly distributed and is correlated with income, wealth or other attributes (race, color, religion, ethnicity, etc), the above conclusion seems plausible.

The raging debate about the rigging of elections in Karachi, Lahore and other cities on polling day — which possibly involves a small percentage of elite voters in the country’s leading metropolitan centres — pales into insignificance before the disenfranchisement forced on the bottom 40pc of the population through poverty, illiteracy, illness, disability, lack of transportation and other handicaps.

Even more forbidding, and inhibiting their progress, is the social exclusion, marginalisation and dependent existence of the helpless poor. For them, the thought of sharing the fruits of glorified high politics of the privileged and powerful who not only make the laws for others but dare to defy them at will is sheer fantasy.

The pervasive culture of poverty generates its own compulsions in the underclass, whose ideals, values and survival strategies are vastly different from those of the elite. Elections are seen as the rich man’s game to become richer while leaving the poor to their own devices.

The biraderi system and other patron-client relations in a feudal setting make the bulk of the landless rural population, as well as millions of workers in the informal sector, non-autonomous in the exercise of their right to vote. Those who are keen to universalise the right to vote and see the turnout rate rise appreciably above the current level, are prone to focusing on the horizontal aspect (regional, ethnic, gender diversity) more than the vertical (mainly class-based) aspect of equity in voting.

Imran Khan’s tsunami waves were strong enough to lift the boats on the shore, but not strong enough to lift those submerged.

His supporters in Lahore and Karachi are furious that the residents of DHA and other posh areas were denied the right to vote by the manipulations of their rivals, but they never pause to ask why the inhabitants of those cities’ slums were unable to cast their vote at all.

This strengthens the perception that democracy is a forbidden fruit for the poor and the elections are mainly for, by and of the rich.

The media — whose barons have profiteered from the election ads of political campaigns by running a 24-hour circus in the name of informing and educating the public — and other enthusiasts of democracy have not tired of blaming those who don’t turn out to vote for shirking their responsibility towards society, and thereby forfeiting the right to criticize the government.

But the fact is that a democracy which has an uneven playing field and restricts meaningful and effective participation of the poor is heavily tilted in favour of those who are able to participate more effectively and promote policies that are favourable to them.

While the affluent classes, including the middle class, have well-organised political parties to represent their interests, the poorer sections of the population have very weak political representational capabilities, especially after the virtual disappearance of trade unions and peasant organisations in recent years.

The agenda of the left parties has been hijacked and corrupted by the populist parties of the right (including the PML-N and Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf), who unabashedly misused the iconic revolutionary poetry of Faiz and Jalib to their advantage by camouflaging their conservative, neo-liberal and anti-poor agendas.

This does not imply that the election exercise is a waste of resources and does not serve the needs of the poor. But it does emphasise the need for building an architecture of enabling institutions and mechanisms to ensure the participation and articulation of the poor in the electoral process. This can’t be restricted merely to the reform of the Election Commission of Pakistan but needs strong affirmative action in favour of the non-participating, poverty-ridden 40pc.

But even electoral reform is unlikely to achieve much, without basic social and economic structural reforms. The basic structural change needed in the economic field includes vigorous policies to improve the income distribution and poverty situation that has deteriorated sharply in the past decade.

In the social field, the most important change needed is to ensure the much more fundamental right to education.

It is to be hoped that after seriously pursuing pro-education policies in the next five years, a new tsunami spearheaded not by affluent youth graduating from elite private schools, but by those from presently abandoned public ghost schools (which hopefully would have been rehabilitated by then) will be heading towards the polling booths.

The writer is a former professor of economics at the Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad. smnaseem@gmail.com