Panchayat & urban local body elections
Nothing spent to win. Nothing owed after.
The founder's proposal for how the next local elections in Rajasthan could be fought — and, just as importantly, what this movement will not do in them.
The arithmetic
A seat that is bought has to be paid for
This is not an accusation against any person, past or present. It is subtraction, and anyone can do it on the back of a receipt.
What a mayor's seat is fought at
Five to six crore — the founder's own estimate, from his years as a contractor in Bharatpur.
Crores
What the office pays across five years
A fixed allowance, published in the rules, and nowhere near the first figure.
An honorarium
What closes the gap
Your ward's development budget — tax you have already paid, spent before it reaches the ward.
Your money
Remove the first figure and the third one has nothing left to do. That is the entire model — everything below is only how you get there.
What the model asks
Six things, in order
Treat the vote as a five-year decision
It leaves your hand once and does not come back for five years. Someone who was paid for that vote has, in the same transaction, been paid to stay quiet about everything that happens afterwards.
Screen candidates in the open, before polling day
Education, public record, how they earn a living, and what they did with any responsibility they already held. The criteria get published first, the assessment against them second — in that order, so the standard cannot be bent to fit a name.
Ask candidates to spend nothing
No cash, no liquor, no fuel, no printed walls. If an idea is worth voting for, it should be able to travel on people's own phones without being bought a ride.
Put the undertaking in writing, in public
Before polling day rather than after — what will be published, how often, and what happens if it isn't. A promise made in public is the only kind anyone can hold you to.
Open the seats that were never offered
There are graduates, engineers and lawyers in these wards — a great many of them women — who were never considered for a seat because they could not fund one. Take the funding out and the shortlist changes on its own.
Keep counting after the result
The election is one day; the term is five years. A published monthly record, and a fixed window for answering a complaint — not a file that moves quietly from one desk to the next until the term runs out.
The limits we set on ourselves
Four lines this movement will not cross
We will not register as a political party.
The founder will not contest any seat.
No member of the founder's family will contest any seat.
We will not take money from any candidate, in any form.
This model asks voters to judge candidates. It puts none of its own on the ballot. If any one of these four lines is ever crossed, you are entitled to disregard everything else on this page.
One request
Vote selfishly
Not for a party, not for a symbol, and not for whoever arrived at the door with something in hand. Vote for the drain outside your own house, the school your own child walks to, and the water your own street will have in June. If enough people vote that narrowly, the arithmetic at the top of this page stops working for everybody who depends on it.
Where this belongs
Panchayati Raj began in this state
India's first Panchayati Raj institutions were inaugurated at Nagaur on 2 October 1959 — in Rajasthan, before anywhere else in the country. Whatever has happened to local elections since, the idea itself started here. There is no better place to try repairing it.
Start today
Put your name behind the movement
Name, mobile number, district and panchayat — that's all we need. We'll take it from there.