Thomas Hobbes was of the view that since the first law of nature enjoined individuals to seek peace, the only way to attain it was through a covenant leading to the establishment of the State. Individuals surrendered all their powers through a contract to a third party who was not a party to the contract. This took place when every person said to the other, “I Authorise and give up my Right of Governing my selfe, to this Man, or this Assembly of men, on this condition, that thou give up thy Right to him, and Authorise all his Actions in like manner” (Hobbes 1991:120)
Similarly a contract was executed by every Indian when the Constitution was adopted. The contract was, “WE, THE PEOPLE OF INDIA, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a SOVEREIGN SOCIALIST SECULAR DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC and to secure to all it citizens: JUSTICE, LIBERTY, EQUALITY, and FRATERNITY…IN OUR CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY this twenty-sixth day of November, 1949, do HEREBY ADOPT, ENACT AND GIVE TO OURSELVES THIS CONSTITUTION.
So far, the contract was good because each individual by consenting to a set of rules guaranteed basic equality with every other member, so that no one can possess more rights than another. But out of this contract emerged the Leviathan, the embodiment of absolute power. The problem then arose with the practical necessity of constituting “that great Leviathan, the Mortal God, to which we owe under the Immortal God, our peace and defence.” The Leviathan is supposed to be the sole source and interpreter of all divine and natural laws, while it is not itself subject to civil laws. This would imply that those at the helm of affairs are immune to charges of crimes and corruption as long as they manage to capture power by whatever means, fair or foul.
We are caught up like a cat chasing its own tail under the grip of this Leviathan. We in Meghalaya feel that the society is not at all in order. Everyone is putting the blame on the heads of some unknown scape-goats for the ills of the society. The people’s representatives complain that the people want nothing but only money during the time of election campaigns. So they have to gather money by whatever means to be able to stay in power. The people on the other hand complain that the people’s representatives are ki lei san snem (five-year gods) who corrupt and consume all their rights, and hence they should be heavily taxed during election, for that is the only good they can do to them. Then the majority of the people in our society, especially in the rural areas expect the representatives either MLA’s or MDC’s to provide for their daily needs such as text books for their children, money for their medical bills, rice, sugar and meat for their picnics or religious gatherings, or transportation expenses for their excursions, or even for simple bai-sha (casual expenses). Religious institutions are expecting the people’s representatives to bear the expenses for the construction of costly pandals, food for the delegates, and even decorations for numerous religious functions and gatherings. They least care for good laws that would improve social living and socio-economic infrastructure. Instead of investing scarce resources in permanent assets that can rescue people from miserable poverty, they would opt to waste valuable resources in a one-day programme of temporary joy that ends with the sunset. For every social function big or small, they only expect a politician and no one else, to grace the occasion as the chief guest even if his position has nothing to do with the interests of the committee, or has little knowledge about the subject of the occasion, all because they need donations from his pocket. This is the mentality of the people. Freebies are in their minds not democracy. We cannot blame the people for ignorance of the real good of democracy. It is the fault of the political leadership which failed to educate the people to grow in political consciousness right and proper. The political leadership is simply happy to gamble for gain in people’s ignorance and poverty because they know that people may complain during the five year tenure, but they would again dance to their magical tune at election time, they would shout and fight and commit violence in support of their candidate, they have no other way but to follow the existing system. The idea of casting the vote for non-of-the-above, does not apply because non-of-the-above is neither a person nor an ideology to be voted for.
If the government departments are in good working order and deliver services to the people in all matters relating to health, education, agriculture, social welfare, youth affairs, rural development etc. why should the people rush to a representative for personal donations? If religious leaders understand that a representative is elected for righteous governance in a just society, why shouldn’t they instruct their flocks not to tempt their representatives to be corrupt by expecting endless donations for religious functions? “The answer my friend is blowing in the wind”. We have a project at hand to churn out a good and functioning democratic society; we have a good Constitution for guidance in our methodology but we cannot get good results because we are dealing with imperfect samples. The success of any project with an expected result would not only depend on a proper methodology but it depends much more on the nature of the samples and materials we are dealing with. We may complain term after term that we have inefficient, or even corrupt and heartless representatives, but that is the natural outcome of the project with the existing materials and samples we have at hand.
This is the Leviathan we have created through our social contract which, without mature and effective censorship became the heartless and corrupt institution in the social system. For the purpose of this article I would define the Leviathan as “that confused system of power which overwhelms us and against which we have many complaints, but which we cannot locate its actual centre in any particular human person”. The Leviathan is supposed to be a third party to whom, by contract, people surrendered their rights. It is a legitimate authority, which in the past could be personified in a king or a raja, but in the modern democratic society it exists in the rule of Law ultimately under the control of the political authority. In a malfunctioning democratic society like ours, the Leviathan becomes diffused in various power centres: the government, the business mafia, the outlaw militancy, the pressure groups etc. It is true that many groups can be political actors in a democracy, but the exercise of power is a monopoly of the State through the government. Besides other factors, the increasing rise of militancy in the State is because the government has lost its sociological legitimacy to control power though it may retain its legal legitimacy. Even the government itself is in the grip of the Leviathan. All have various complaints against the way this Leviathan is functioning, but each one of us is complicated in various degrees in strengthening and enforcing the existence and power of this great beast.
Rousseau said that “man is born free but everywhere he is in chains”. On the contrary, a man may be born in chains but his will is always free, and this freedom is the deciding factor in the highest degree. This human will is subject to any order only by its own will. So the concern for informed human will is of utmost importance. It should be the bounden duty of the political leadership to create conditions for up gradation of the human will in the society to a higher enlightened level, consistent with the expectation of the type of political system in practice. As it is now, the character of the political leadership, coupled with people’s general ignorance, ferments a sweet but poisonous potion which can conjure up in their minds an existence in paradise in the world of dreams, but find themselves in purgatory when awake.
To end this cat chasing its tail syndrome, there is no other way but the development of the political consciousness of the people in the right direction through general education with purposive effort by the political leadership, and then only would we be free from the