TCA Srinivasa-Raghavan: Pols on the run

LINE & LENGTH

Political accountability is not the same as politicians' accountability.

Two highly regarded journalists-Harish Khare, deputy editor of The Hindu, and Shekhar Gupta, chief editor of The Indian Express-have recently written an article each on something that will, I am certain, eventually become the subject matter of Ph D theses in political science departments.

The former is about the manner in which politicians are being held accountable, that is, via the judiciary, mainly the Supreme Court. The latter is about Parliament's response to being held accountable, which is "who the hell are you to hold us, the Elected Representatives of the People of India, accountable?" Even the supposedly moral Communists, in the Office of Profit issue, have adopted this stance.

What makes them so bold? The reason, I think, is that when we talk about accountability, we don't distinguish between the accountability of politicians, which relies on the notion of equality before the law, and political accountability, which occurs at election time at the level of parties. Politicians on TV, political parties in their campaigning, and their chamchas in universities and think-tanks in "learned" papers have deliberately tried to mix up the two to divert attention.

But the point is this. In India we have a high degree of political accountability-anti-incumbency-but practically no accountability of politicians. This is unique and since we confuse the one with the other, we have the situation we are in.

This is the gap-between political accountability and politicians' accountability-that we need to close. This is the gap that politicians do not want closed.

But given that thanks to periodic elections ruling parties are not able to get away with much, it is on the accountability of individual politicians that the system needs to focus. And that is precisely what the Election Commission and the Supreme Court have been trying to do. That is what the politicians are trying to prevent.

As a result, they have come face to face with MPs from all parties, even the rare honest one, who are now talking of confrontation between constitutional bodies. This is completely nonsensical, of course, as Gupta has pointed out. How can there be a confrontation between institutions and individuals? The latter, even when they gang up, do not still amount to an institution.

The original sin lies in the erosion of the principle of equality before the law, which began when Jawaharlal Nehru refused to hold Partap Singh Kairon, chief minister of Punjab, accountable. But the process accelerated in 1974, when Indira Gandhi tried to defend L N Mishra and Tulmohan Ram in Parliament and ended up declaring the Emergency when she herself was found guilty of electoral malpractice by the Allahabad High Court.

Since then it has been long slide down. We are all distressingly familiar with its details. The Office of Profit Bill is only the next rung down on the ladder, albeit a big one, because it is custom-built for individual politicians from all parties.

This is because, as Khare points out, since the start of the coalition era, in which every MP matters, a new dimension has been added. It is that only the survival of the government matters-the CPM and the Office of Profit again-and nothing can come in the way of that.

In effect, this means that the only means of redress available to the people are elections. That is, political accountability has become a substitute for individual accountability. We have to wait for five years before the wrong-doers are punished.

But even that is not a certainty-which it would be if the notion of equality before the law were upheld. It would be certain, for example, if political parties denied tickets to the bent ones. But here the winnability criterion comes into play, and quite often we see people who should at least be under prosecution, if not in jail, being re-elected because they win for reasons that have nothing to do with their moral compass or their devotion to their constituencies. This dilutes even political accountability, as we saw when the RJD was re-elected twice in Bihar.

Two points seem worth making here, one about equality before the law, and the other about "confrontation". Where the former is concerned, it is not just compulsions of coalitions that determine outcomes. As a society, we seem not to like the idea.

So differentiation based on status is accepted as being natural, even in the media. For example, The Pioneer had this headline on Friday: "Overzealous police treating Rahul like a hardened criminal". Why two adjectives in eight words when none was warranted? What was the implication?

As for the confrontation thing, there is not a single country in the world where, at different periods in their political development, the legislature has not come to face other institutions, usually the Courts.

But there is a big difference. Rarely have the legislators in other democracies sought to change laws to defend an individual. There the party interest has always prevailed over the individual interest.

In that sense, India stands alone amongst the proper and modern democracies. Its Hammurabian-cum-Manuvadi orientation-what law applies to you depends on your status-makes it thus. It is up to the courts and the Election Commission to change it.