Loksatta Karnataka made a significant announcement yesterday to conduct a primary election to choose our candidate for MLC Graduate election coming up.
When I mentioned this to a friend, he asked :
What exactly is this primary election ? Never heard of one!
The election is not until June 2012. Why elect candidate now?
Let us discuss the first part in this post :
1. What exactly is primary? How come we never heard about this before?
From Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_election
A primary election is where a party members select candidate that will run on behalf of the party in the actual election.  Simple. But not to be seen in India.
Let's take a step back

As every school kid that follows Indian politics with some interest knows, the great India Election Drama begins  with acquiring a party "TICKET"  from the "HIGH COMMAND"  The all knowing High Command will appoint someone to issue 'ticket's to party candidates. Thus begins the first act of impressing the committee by 'investing' huge sums of money and all kinds of favors. The party workers, that actually carry the flag and spend their valuable time and money on building the party at grassroots level rarely find themselves getting a ticket. Instead, they will have a 'candidate' hoisted upon them by high command.  Once declared as  the Candidate, his/her  first priority is to buy the support from his future campaign team.  Vote banks (each major party has one that consistently delivers!! - topic for another day) will deliver certain number of votes and mood of the voter gives some more (reluctantly forced to vote choose a party  rather than the candidate (choose the lesser evil). There are always certain number of votes that are up for sale and bidding wars deliver results.  Having paid the money for getting the ticket, for getting support from party men/women to campaign and by spending money for advertisements, hoarding, paid news, paid TV coverage, food and drinks through out the campaign, bringing people for public meetings, the candidate goes on to become a Legislator and takes a pledge to uphold our constitution!   Let's not even discuss the post election drama for minister-giri.
Where is the motivation to do self less public service? 
We are fooling ourselves by expecting our elected representatives to be clean and transparent when they come out of a electoral system that we have currently. As long as parties do not make their candidate selection process fair and transparent, as long as regular members of the party continue to be 'workers' and not get an opportunity to contest elections, it is highly likely that winning candidates will always have to 'recover their costs' not to mention amass wealth for future elections to be fought by himself and future generations of the family!
Primary elections model should be adapted by  all major political parties in this country. Let the members of the party in a particular constituency, elect one of their members in a secret ballot to be their candidate. Let there be a debate and discussion on who would best represent the party in the legislature and who will be able to take the message of the party to the voters and has a better chance of getting elected. Let Leaders emerge from within!  Once elected, all party members will support the candidate regardless of whom they supported before the primary because of the fairness of the process and their voice was heard in primary itself. Contrast that with the number of 'rebel' candidates we see in every election from every major party!
To give a concrete example of primary elections model, before any given election, a party calls for nominations from its own members much in advance.  If more than 1 nomination is received, party calls for a primary election where the  party members will cast a vote for one of the candidates. Candidates campaign internally before the election. Candidates get an opportunity to articulate  their vision and debate ideas with other candidates. The primary election itself is conducted by a neutral third party under media watch. Once a winner emerges out of a primary rest of the candidates support the winning candidate.
Primary elections can be closed (party members only) or open (with general public). Since the graduate election is some what unique and not everyone can vote (let's discuss that separately!) an open primary is ruled out. However, the spirit  of an open primary can be retained by involving non party members in the candidate selection process.  More details of this here : http://loksattakarnataka.org/node/85

What do you think? Look forward to your comments.