Why bother with elections? Why not just boycott this increasingly unfair race? This question is being whispered around. It is time we asked this normally, without any tinge of taboo. It is also time we answered it calmly, without a rush of moral outrage. An open public debate may bring us to this conclusion: Election boycott is a good question, but a bad answer. As of now.

The debate should begin with “Why Bother with Elections?” — a question raised in the eponymously titled and defining book on the rationale of democratic elections by Adam Przeworski, a leading democratic theorist of our times. In his characteristic clinical way, Przeworski admits competitive elections may not offer the virtues we habitually associate with democracy — good governance, fair representation or social harmony. Yet elections are worth the bother as they enable deeply divided societies to live together without civil war. Those in power agree to risk losing office, and losers accept defeat because elections allow a peaceful transfer of power, or at least keep this possibility open. This is what the historic election of 1977 enabled in India, despite the preceding authoritarian interlude of the Emergency.

This happens only when electoral verdicts remain uncertain. When there is a realistic risk of the rulers losing an election that they are desperate to win. When electoral integrity does not fall below a red line. As it has in India today.

There is no objective way of measuring “electoral integrity”. But an influential 2014 paper by Pippa Norris, Richard W Frank and Ferran Martínez i Coma offers a helpful list of 11 dimensions in the entire election cycle relevant to assessing electoral integrity in any given country. Indian elections were always on the borderline in........

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