How can minorities be encouraged to run for public office?

6 min readSep 6, 2020

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Minority political participation is where minority rights and social attitudes towards minorities meet. Conventionally, minority rights include approaches to avoid discrimination and affirm the cultural distinctiveness of the community. Minority rights have experienced substantial progress over the past decade. An important perspective in this regard is the democratic stability. While examining political participation from this view, one can note that minorities run the risk of being excluded from the political system without special protective measures. Especially in countries like India with mobilized ethnic nationalism, majorities have been unlikely to vote for parties or candidates of other ethnic groups.

While discussing minority leadership, it is important to understand the need for minority representation. Minorities in leadership positions would be impactful because their experiences are usually different and are often richer than their mainstream counterparts, in terms of the challenges they are likely to have faced being in the public services. Those minorities who run for public office mostly have experience in leading their community through various issues, thus developing skills like communication and management. Their prior exposure in leadership positions would be an advantage in leading the larger civil society, leading to better integration of minorities into mainstream society. They also act as examples to look up to and initiate a train of thought amongst other minorities to run for public office.

As we have established the need for minority representation in India, it is essential to discuss the hurdles to run for public office. Running for public office is actually quite cumbersome to not only minorities but to any individual; coming from a minority community just increases that struggle. India needs to incorporate various changes in the current system in order for it to be better accessible by the general population, in turn helping the minorities. Hence we can take a look at both common issues as well as minority specific issues.

To begin, let us take a look at the cost of running for public office. The cost of the election has increased by nearly six-fold from 1998 (Rs. 9,000 crores) to 2019 (Rs. 55,000 crores). As per the report of ADR, a person’s wealth is a good proxy for whether they will win the election or not. The below graphs show the data on the percentage of crorepati candidates and crorepati winners.

Source: Election Campaign Expenditure in India: Trends and Challenges

As we can see from these graphs, the number of wealthy candidates has increased and the correlation between winning and being wealthy is uncanny. The percentage of crorepati candidates was only 29% while the percentage of crorepati winners was 88%. Minorities in India are generally more economically backward than their counterparts, hence it isn’t financially feasible for them to stand in the election and win. The only way in which minorities can compete is by getting the support of political parties who have the economic clout. But the reality on the ground is that elections are getting expensive and parties are looking for the most electable candidate who can fund their own campaign.

We can see an increase in the number of crorepati candidates across all of the national parties except NCP in 2019. The general trend across these three elections is an increase in the number of crorepati candidates across all political parties.

Having a role model helps us in achieving our goals. Likewise, someone standing for elections from a minority community will encourage more such people to participate. Policies such as the 33% reservation for women in the legislature are crucial to motivate future generations. There is also a psychological barrier that minorities perceive themselves to be less qualified than the mainstream which is not true in reality. This happens due to the social conditioning they endure throughout their life and has been in practice for generations. Breaking these psychological and structural barriers will be central in minority empowerment.

This process can be accelerated if charismatic leaders like Narendra Modi are willing to take up the agenda and work for it. We saw in 2014 and 2019 how a lot of candidates who were politically less viable than opposition candidates won using the appealing leadership of Modi. In the same way, these leaders can help other leaders from minority communities like women, lower caste, and religious minorities to win in elections with their charm. National and state political parties can contribute to minority empowerment by showing the courage to put them as candidates as people with support from established political parties have higher chances of winning than independent candidates.

Our conversation will be incomplete if we do not speak about patriarchy and how society’s view on how an ideal woman should be has contributed to less participation of women in electoral politics and the larger civil society. An ideal woman in Indian society is expected to be ready to deal with household abuse and chores, without fighting back. Breaking these stereotypes of women in society and freeing them from the shackles of societal expectations is of utmost importance. It is way past the time to rethink women’s participation in politics because even when compared to the developing world, the representation of women in the Parliament is one of the worst in the world. We have to emulate African countries that have the most number of elected women representatives outperforming most developed countries. Countries like Ethiopia have half their cabinet filled with women representatives.

While discussing participation, we cannot overlook the power of hatred in keeping minorities away from electoral politics. Every day we wake up to the news of people from minority communities getting lynched or raped. Stories of the lynching of Dalits and Muslims, raping of women has become normal in our society. We have failed to get justice for them which in turn has made the perpetrators more brazen in their actions against them. This has made political parties believe that minorities are hated by the large civil society and they are not viable as candidates except in minority ghettos. Our first-past-the-post electoral system also acts against inclusivity as political parties only need the ‘Minority Majority’ to win the election and not the actual majority. We would be better off with Instant Runoff voting or proportional representation voting which will force political parties to act in favor of all the communities in the society.

Few suggestions to improve this situation would be to have programs in leadership and skill-building to strengthen minorities, give them more access to justice, and improve their participation and representation in getting justice. Changing stereotypes about minorities in society is imperative in making public support, good minority candidates. Reducing the power of money in politics and changing our electoral system from a first-past-the-post electoral system to a system that takes into consideration every section of the society.

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About the Authors: Raaghavi is a recent graduate in Economics from O.P Jindal Global University. She likes to work at the intersection of information failures and governance. Danish is also a graduate in Economics from O.P. Jindal Global University and is currently a Gandhi fellow at Kaivalya Education Foundation. He believes in secularism and social justice. Raaghavi and Danish share a common interest in Public Policy and Development Studies.

This article was originally published here.

How can minorities be encouraged to run for public office?

Written by Centre for Civic Engagement