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The world’s largest Governing Body (GB) meeting now happens in India, and the next meeting is scheduled for 2029 during the Indian General Elections. The Governing Body is a staggering one billion-strong electorate. This GB selects the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) to manage the country and is officially called the Prime Minister. The operational (COO), financial (CFO), marketing (CMO) and security executives (CSO) of the management happen to be the Home, Finance, External Affairs and Defence Ministers. The interesting part is that the GB members become subordinates in the organisation, in this case the country, after the GB meeting and need to follow the rules issued by the management.
Organisations have Annual General Meetings (AGMs) wherein all the GB members are expected to participate. The AGM for the largest organisation, at least considering the number of team members, viz. Bharat, currently happens only once in five years, i.e., the Lok Sabha Elections. There are other quarterly GB meetings, wherein all members may not participate, such as the General Elections for State Assemblies. The quarterly GB meetings, that is, the Vidhan Sabha elections, give the GB members the option to prioritise domain-specific issues, in this case, geography-specific concerns. This also allows local GB members to promote diversity by encouraging their regional cultural heritage.
The management has put forth a proposal before the GB. It seeks to merge the quarterly GB meetings into the AGM itself; thus, it proposes to have all key decisions made just once in five years, wherein the General Elections to the Lok Sabha and to the Vidhan Sabhas are proposed to be held. This proposal is called One Nation, One Election (ONOE). While ONOE may avoid the burden of convening frequent GB meetings for the management, there would be fewer opportunities for the GB members to hold the management accountable.
Over the last several years, the management of the country has been delivering good performance in terms of quarterly results, as measured in terms of Gross Domestic Product (GDP); however, there have been instances where the GB wants to hold the management accountable in terms of a few HR and procedural issues, such as exam paper leaks, electoral bonds, etc. However, the management, considering the size and complexity of the organisation, refuses to conduct special GB meetings, which are called referendums. There are other organisations, in this case, countries such as Switzerland and Ireland, that hold special GB meetings, or referendums. However, for the world’s largest organisation, the only chance for the GB members to hold the management accountable is either during the AGM (Indian General Elections) or during the quarterly GB meetings (General Elections to State Assemblies). Hence, by accepting this proposal of ONOE, the GB members would be left only with the AGMs, and thereby are likely to lose out on accountability as well as diversity. Hopefully, this predicament gets amicably resolved in the organisation named India, fondly called Bharat.
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