Way back in 1954, a British author named Arthur Llewellyn Basham published a book on India’s past, called The Wonder That Was India. If Balsham were alive today, he’d possibly have written a sequel dealing with India’s present and called it The Puzzle That Is India.
When Gandhian activist Anna Hazare got the government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to yield to his demand to involve civil society in the drafting of an effective and comprehensive Lok Pal Bill, I felt a lift in my heart. At last, I thought, the government was being wise enough to heed the voice of the people – vox populi, which I have been brought up to believe is vox dei, the voice of God – and, perhaps, there was still some hope left for India’s democracy. But when, soon afterwards, partisan politicians launched a counter-attack, trying in their many devious ways to undermine the credibility of Hazare and his followers, even while agreeing that fighting corruption is a noble and desirable cause, it became quite clear that nothing has really changed. India remains the same old bundle of oddities and contradictions, a big, inscrutable puzzle.
It’s sad, because the real issue here isn’t Hazare’s credibility or corruption in high places. The issue is the people’s role in a democracy that claims to be by the people, of the people and for the people. Hazare’s fast, and the spontaneous popular support it evoked, underlined the fact, in a forceful manner, that there’s a large body of public opinion out there, outside of the government and Parliament that has never been taken into account, always taken for granted, and now wants to assert itself and be heard. To deride Hazare’s campaign and question his motive is to insult this larger opinion, diminish its value, and ignore its rightful place in a true democratic system.
Questions have been asked if civil society should be allowed to compete with Parliament, the lawful popular forum established by the Constitution. But a more fundamental question is: Does Parliament reflect the true will of the people? The popular enthusiasm surrounding Hazare’s fast made it abundantly clear that it doesn’t, that the civil society feels it should have an essential role in governance, not to compete with Parliament but to supplement its work, and a government calling itself democratic must seek its opinion on all matters that affect the greater good of the people.
These feelings aren’t unfounded. Yes, Parliament is elected to represent the people, but it isn’t a complete representation. Its members represent political parties, and political parties represent points of view that may not necessarily be shared by the wider, independent public. Besides, the principle of “majority decides”, a functional necessity of the democratic system, means that the ruling party or coalition will always be able to act in its self-interest and get away with its political designs. The opposition can do little about it even though it may represent large segments of people. The public at large can do nothing at all.
What’s worse, we’ve failed to reform the electoral process in a manner that ensures that party finances are fully above board and accountable and only clean, well-meaning candidates can sit in Parliament and state assemblies to work in public interest. As a result, civil society has little faith in politics and politicians, giving rise to a situation where cynicism is the prevailing mood and criminalisation of politics is a real threat.
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Let’s not deny that, between the influence-peddling top and the easily-manipulated bottom layers of society, there’s a vast segment of public opinion that’s either badly reflected or not reflected at all. How to give voice to this important middle segment of independent opinion is the biggest challenge for Indian democracy and should be its major concern. And one of the best ways to address this concern is to create a credible, permanent mechanism for public consultation on major public issues, independent of what goes on within Parliament and irrespective of the views of political parties. That’s the basic point of Anna Hazare’s movement.
Regrettably, in our system of governance, there’s no place yet for independent public consultation. We have all-party meetings that the prime minister and the chief ministers of states call from time to time. But all-party meetings are nothing but a partisan political mechanism and often don’t reflect the true feelings of civil society at large, those liberal, thinking sections of the public who live and work outside politics but have a mind of their own and a contribution to make.
It’s this society at large that we must aim to reach. If government and politicians don’t wake up to the larger clamour of the people, more activists will be forced to take their protests to the streets. Anna Hazare has set a most welcome trend.