Did the Poona Pact Disenfranchise the ‘Depressed Classes’? An Analysis of the 1936–1937 and 1945–1946 Provincial Elections

This article contests the conventional view that the ‘Depressed Classes’ lost out on representation by agreeing to joint electorates in the Poona Pact. It analyses the results of the elections to the provincial legislatures in British India that took place in 1936–1937 and 1945–1946 under the Government of India Act, 1935, to concretely appraise the working of the Poona Pact. The article argues that reserved seats, primary elections and cumulative voting redeemed the ability of the Poona Pact to provide both descriptive and substantive representation for the ‘Depressed Classes’.

Prioritising CAP Intervention Needs: An Improved Cumulative Voting Approach

The process to define the 2023–2027 Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) is underway. The implementation model governing the process requires each EU Member State to design a National Strategic Plan to deliver operational actions exploiting the synergies under the two pillars of the policy. Each Plan must be built from an evidence-based needs assessment that undergoes rigorous prioritisation and planning to create comprehensive, integrated, and achievable interventions. In Italy, the success of this planning process requires all interested stakeholders to generate options for the regional authorities who plan, manage, and legislate agricultural activities. This research proposes a decision-making technique, based on the cumulative voting approach, that can be used effectively when multiple persons from different backgrounds and perspectives are engaged in problem-solving and needs prioritisation. The results indicate that the model can be applied both theoretically and practically to prioritise Strategic Plan needs that involve national and regional authorities. Validation of the model allows it to be used in the next consultative processes and for expansion to socioeconomic stakeholders.

Positionality-Weighted Aggregation Methods for Cumulative Voting

Respecting minority opinions is vital in solving social problems. However, minority opinions are often ignored in general majority rules. To build consensus on pluralistic values and make social choices that consider minority opinions, we propose aggregation methods that give weighting to the minority's positionality on cardinal cumulative voting. Based on quadratic and linear voting, we formulated three weighted aggregation methods that differ in the ratio of votes to cumulative points and the weighting of the minority to all members, and assuming that the distributions of votes follow normal distributions, we calculated the frequency distributions of the aggregation results. We found that minority opinions are more likely to be reflected proportionately to the average of the distribution in two of the above three methods. This implies that Sen and Gotoh's idea of considering the social position of unfortunate people on ordinal ranking in the welfare economics, was illustrated by weighting the minority's positionality on cardinal voting. In addition, it is possible to visualize the number and positionality of the minority from the analysis of the aggregation results. These results will be useful to promote mutual understanding between the majority and minority by interactively visualizing the contents of the proposed aggregation methods in the consensus-building process. With the further development of information technology, the consensus building based on big data will be necessary. We recommend the use of our proposed aggregation methods to make social choices for pluralistic values such as social, environmental, and economic.