By Patricia Mukhim
In India, citizens live with the assumption that they are a functioning democracy merely because they cast their votes and elect an elite group of representatives once in five years. But elections alone don’t make us a democracy. There are many other elements that make a democracy a functioning system. Democracy should offer enough checks and balances without having to wait for someone to be removed after five years even when we know the person is corrupt to the core and serves his/her selfish interests and is disdainful of the citizen, especially the poor and the powerless. And we have such MLAs/ministers in our midst. All we can do is curse them and curse our unlucky stars that they are foisted on us simply because some citizens are lured by money and driven by their own personal benefits. In our case, democracy can be an evil system. And the reason is that till date I have yet to see a single MLA consulting the public on important issues and pushing those issues in the Assembly. I have yet to hear of a minister consulting anyone other than bureaucrats whose knowledge of the world is handicapped by the fact that they commute only between their residence and the Secretariat or between Delhi and their residence and sometimes they also visit foreign destinations without bringing back any actionable learning.
Noted social scientist Dipankar Gupta speaks of the citizen elite who he says drives the agenda in a democracy. He assumes that governments tend to pay attention to the citizen elite because they are opinion builders within their circles of influence. Perhaps Gupta is talking of evolved democracies like the USA where citizens vote on reason and not because they are tempted by goodies. Gupta argues that at every historical juncture when democracy made significant advances, it was the citizen elite, or the elite of calling, who led the charge, often going against the grain of popular demands and sentiments. Gupta says that at its best, democracy shapes and changes the present realities but it requires the active intervention by the citizen elite, who are not concerned with short-term electoral calculations but have a vision for strengthening democracy. They are the ones who set the agenda that the masses follow, thereby taking the country forward on the path of true democracy. This is an ideal we can hope for in India but it will take many more years before the citizens are empowered enough to make that difference.
Let’s look at the recent parliamentary election in India. It took ten long years before citizens realised that the UPA needed a spring cleaning. Surely a country of rational thinkers should have seen through the pitfalls that beset the UPA-1 which was led by a Prime Minister without a popular mandate. Why did people give the UPA so a long rope? Was it because the other parties, then, did not have the kind of charismatic leaders (like Narendra Modi) at the helm? Did we have to wait for 2014 before voting out the UPA-2? How much did we lose as a country? Can someone to do an intensive research on the opportunity costs we have had to pay by having a government that had lost the support of the majority of citizens nearly three years ago when the 2-G, and the Commonwealth Games scams erupted but was limping along on crutches until May 2014? That we have no mechanism to recall corrupt parliamentarians and legislators is, to my mind, a huge handicap for democracy.
Gupta says that since India has not delivered meaningfully in terms of universal health, education and livelihood, it needs a band of citizen elite to initiate change but argues that this change cannot be contemplated through the short-term rationality of elections, and needs visionaries to push it through and that change can only be effected by ‘revolution from above’. Revolution is an attractive word in the North East. We have had revolutionaries galore but without a cause. So what sort of revolutionaries and revolution is Dipankar Gupta talking about? Is it possible to bring a ‘mindset’ revolution amongst the millions of voters in our country? Is that possible even in Meghalaya? What sort of revolution would that be? Did Voltaire, Descartes and other French philosophers facilitate the French Revolution?
René Descartes, the father of modern philosophy started the philosophical movement known as rationalism. This is a method of understanding the world based on the use of reason as the means to attain knowledge. Along with empiricism (evidence-based argument), which stresses the use of sense perception rather than pure reason, rationalism was one of the main intellectual currents of the Enlightenment in the 17th and 18th centuries. Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, Voltaire etc revolutionized the Western world with their ideas and spurred society to re-examine its traditions and institutions, leading to massive social upheavals. Both the American and French Revolutions were based on Enlightenment theories, leading to transformation in the ways that humans approached science, mathematics, philosophy, and the idea of the self.
Scientific enquiry and rationalism are two major deficits of tribal societies. We don’t reason well enough before forming judgments about persons and institutions. Try asking people why they voted a certain person and we will find that the element of ‘persona’ plays an important role. We are incapable of thinking of the larger good. Our vision of a good representative is very self-centred. I vote a person because he/she has done something for me at the personal level. I don’t care if he/she is corrupt and where he/she got the money from. If I have got the money to meet my immediate needs (money to start a small business, a school seat in Pine Mount school, a seat in a college of my choice, money for my football club, money to pay a family member’s hospital bills, my children’s admission fees, you name it) that’s all that matters. This is the anti-thesis of what should drive democracy. Democracy is about the collective good. And people should have the liberty to come together and decide on a common candidate that they know will serve their collective interests, rather than scattering the votes and making candidates pay money to all voters including those who won’t vote for them. This whole notion of our ‘votes being secret and sacred’ is a lot of hogwash because in states like Nagaland, even today the village headman or the head of the family votes for everyone after due consultation. I think this is far more transparent and less likely to result in electoral corruption because the candidate will not have to pay individual voters. Nor can the village head take money because if he does it will become public knowledge. This is how village republics work. But the Indian constitution with its fancy rules and regulations has turned democracy into a five year fanfare requiring thousands of crores of rupees and huge human resources to conduct. And at the end of the day do we get the Government we want? I bet no.
Look at us in Meghalaya. The Mukul Sangma Government is hardly over a year old but the public angst and anger against it is palpable. Why? Where has Mukul Sangma failed to deliver? Does he have the time to listen to peoples’ grouses or does he believe that we have given him the untrammelled mandate to do what he wants for the next five years? Is there anything wrong in asking the ‘citizen elite’ which Dipankar Gupta believes represents the public good if there are areas of governance that need sprucing up and calling them to work in tandem with the Government? Individuals can be arrogant but the Government cannot be perceived to act in arrogance. It fuels public anger.
Also revolution means that institutions be reformed and transformed to meet the current needs. We are no longer village republics dependent on the large-heartedness of the village headman who spares his time and does pro-bono work for his village because he has been elected to do so. Our governance institutions should no longer be called “traditional institutions.” This is a misnomer. They should be spruced up and the idea of honorary is passé. The Government should find way and means of funding these institutions and enable them to govern their respective areas so that garbage management, water distribution and other civic matters are not thrown at the doorstep of the State Government like they are today. Democracy without effective grass-roots governance is doomed to failure.
If Mukul Sangma is a visionary he should bring in these changes and seek central assistance. The village institutions should be funded in the way the Panchayats elsewhere are funded. Our village governance system as of today is hampered by lack of resources. In areas where the Dorbar Shnong is effective we can see models of good civic management. Within the Dorbar everyone is a citizen elite because they all mean well and have a sense of stakeholder-ship. Unfortunately, many of us don’t feel we have a stake in the Government because, whereas we can get the ear of our Rangbah Shnong, we fail to get the MLA, minister and especially the chief minister to listen to our concerns. Does this make sense to the powers that be? I hope it does.