Democracy in the Subcontinent
Sanjeeb Mukherjee
F
Democracy and South Asia
This work addresses two crucial questions: what has democracy done to south Asia and what has south Asia done to democracy. They have indeed done a lot to each other. Some of the findings empirically confirm many of our beliefs and hunches about democracy in this part of the world. Democracy has emerged as a major force with immense possibilities, which the people have negotiated within a profoundly creative way. Yet, the outcome of this democracy in the sense of achieving justice or people’s power and participation, in any serious sense of the term, is nowhere in sight. This is the greatest paradox of this democracy. This report addresses four major themes, namely,
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State of Democracy in South Asia, a report by the Study of Developing Societies’ team, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi/Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2008; pp 302, Rs 595.
what the people think of democracy and what they want; the design of democracy, its institutions and laws and how these cope with the social diversity of south Asia; the political processes, including parties and civil society organisations and the outcomes of democracy; and the future challenges of democracy.
What Do the People Think and Want?
Most people in the subcontinent, except in Pakistan, want democracy. Half of the res pondents of Pakistan said that a democratic or non-democratic form of government did not matter to them. However, two-thirds of the respondents of the entire subcontinent gave approval for a strong leader who does not have to bother about elections. This study confirms the belief that education and democracy are directly related – the more educated, both formal as well as the democratic education one receives through political participation and media exposure, the more they would support democracy. Thus elites are more supportive of democracy than the masses (chapter 1). The popular idea of democracy in south Asia emphasises the majority principle, community rights and wellbeing rather than institutions and individual rights (chapter 2). Though the people, especially the poor and the oppressed, face violence and terror on an extensive scale, yet two-thirds of the people say that they feel safe; only 6 per cent felt unsafe (chapter 8).
The Design of Democracy: Modern democracy presupposes an individual, a citizen and a nation, but none of the three have a strong foundation in south Asia.
We not only have multiple identities, including castes and communities, bu most of them are sufficiently fuzzy. This has resulted in serious conflicts and democracy has not been able to accommodate these
diversities and conflicts. It has resulted in violence and demands for separation and secession. The state has reacted by imposing a homogeneous national identity and suppressing minorities (chapter 5). Most states in south Asia, except India, have also experimented with different forms of government, but again no specific form has an answer. Though society is predominantly local, states are national as well as centralised. With weak institutions, democracy in most of the subcontinent is fragile and tends to easily slip into dictatorships and violent internal conflicts. Lack of accountability, transparency and trust in public institutions, corruption, and extraordinary laws and provisions in the constitutions have further eroded the autonomy and strength of institutions and their capacity to defend democracy. In fact, the army enjoys a higher level of trust in the entire subcontinent, including Pakistan and Bangladesh. The judiciary too enjoys a high level of trust, Pakistan being the exception. Political parties, on the other hand, are the least trusted, especially in India, Nepal and Sri Lanka. The most important failure of democracy has been the inability of representative institutions to actually represent different sections of the people (chapters 3 and 4).
The Political Process: Though political parties are central to both democracy and the political process, and there is a high level of popular interest and identification with them, yet the people largely distrust parties. Though parties are the primary vehicles of democracy, most of them are internally autocratic and run by families or powerful individuals, where loyalty is the central bond. Though elections generate immense popular interest, yet they do not result in people’s power or even proper representation of the social diversities of the subcontinent (chapter 6). This dissatisfaction with political parties and electoral politics have resulted in the birth of a new non-party political space, a space
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occupied by social and political movements, new citizen’s organisations and initiatives, and of course, voluntary or nongovernmental organisations. This new space both deepens the democratic process as well as poses a serious threat, especially with the rise of militant religion-based political mobilisation or armed revolutionary struggles. In fact, there is considerable support and sympathy among the poor for Maoists, but not so much for their methods (chapter 7). Since this report was published, the Maoists in Nepal showed an exemplary sagacity and successfully participated in the democratic process and simultaneously made a revolution, which is democratic in the true sense of the term. The entire world is looking at Nepal for the possibilities and promise of democracy.
The most significant gain of democracy has been the creation of a new language of identity and social and political conduct and judgment, centred around the ideas and values of citizenship, rights, rule of law and a constitution. Even when democracy fails to live up to these norms, people have this new language of evaluation and criticism. This is the new culture of democracy, which has found a home in south Asia (chapter 10).
Future Challenges: The report concludes with a call for a new political imagination to build a democracy, which would ensure justice and proper representation of the people. It calls for a radical reworking of political institutions, including the state. It would require a social revolution to free democracy from the stranglehold of the dominant caste and class elites (chapter 11).
Modern democracy is primarily a procedural arrangement, where rational individuals or associations of individuals, conduct their public affairs. These individuals and the democratic states are embedded in the nation, which is unified by a common culture. Finally, governments are formed by majority votes and are supposed to uphold justice, the constitution, individual rights, social welfare and the national interest. In the modern world, traditional sources of authority and legitimacy have largely ended or considerably declined and hence popular sanction through democratic elections has become the new basis of legitimacy of the modern state; even traditional claimants to authority have to seek popular sanction. Many of these presuppositions are either absent or terribly weak in much of south Asia, creating a dissonance between the formal principles of democracy and the democratic state and the structure and discourses of society. This has caused serious distortions in the working of democracy in this part of the world. Today we need to rethink our democracies, especially in the wake of our historical experiences.
Challenging Elite Democracies
In the absence of a unified nation and the modern individual as its basis, can the nation remain the theatre of democracy in the subcontinent? South Asian societies are not only divided along castes, communities, ethnicities or religions, but are also divided between elites, who operate along larger social spaces often coinciding with the state and the vast majority of the people who primarily operate at the local level. People just do not have the social and cultural skills and economic resources to operate on the national or even regional plane. This scale turns democracy into primarily an exercise in getting popular sanction for elite rule and whenever the elites are unable to get it, they quickly dump the democratic process and opt for an authoritarian rule, which has become a routine in most of the third world. In this game Indian elites have been relatively more successful than the rest of the subcontinent. Its strategy has been to make pre-emptive democratic moves to forestall independent popular mobilisations and in the process to gain legitimacy for itself. In the west, democracy was won largely through popular struggles and was seen as a threat to elite rule in its early days. The Constituent Assembly in India was an elite body elected on a very narrow franchise; but it chose to devise a democratic polity when it could have shown its conservative caution and anxiety. Since then, a series of welfare laws and policies, including the creation of democratic local governments or the proposed reservation for women in legislatures, were in most cases pre-emptive moves by the state. Hence, if democracy has to become real it has to be decentralised right down to the village level with real autonomy and power so that people can effectively participate and exercise power.
Pre-emptive democracies are democracies of the elite, which through periodic elections legitimises itself. Elections, like the market, ensure a modicum of accountability and self-invigilation of the elites. The greatest challenge has been to transform democracy from a system of
International Seminar on
“Engagement of Developing Countries in Regional Trade Agreements (RTA): An Assessment”
Department of Economics, Mizoram University proposes to hold international seminar on the above theme during 28 & 29 October, 2008 at Mizoram University, Aizawl, Mizoram. The seminar is being organized as a part of the UNCTAD-DFID-GOI Project on “Strategies and Preparedness for Trade and Globalisation in India”. Papers on the following broad themes are invited: (i) Relationship between RTAs and multilateralism and the effects of RTA’s on international trade relations; (ii) Role of RTAs in promoting economic development of developing countries and their integration into the global economy; (iii) Economic integration in South Asian Region especially with reference to SAAFTA and BIMSTEC. Last date of submission of abstracts is on 10 September, 2008. Authors of selected papers after peer review will be intimated and offered travel support and local hospitality. Full papers will be submitted by October 10, 2008.
For further details, contact Prof. Lianzela, Mizoram University at lianzela02@yahoo.com or phone- 0389 2330707 (O) and Mobile-: 9862324657
august 30, 2008
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legitimising elite rule to a real and substantive phenomenon of people’s self-rule. This, however, does not mean the abandonment of existing democratic structures or their overthrow, but the creative and critical ability to make use of the potentialities of existing democracies; it is making use of democracy to deepen and strengthen democracy. In fact, it requires greater institutionalisation of democracy including, inventing new systems of accountability and transparency. This, I believe, is the greatest challenge facing the people of this subcontinent. It is an exceptionally difficult task because whenever the people assert themselves the elites launch a violent counter attack both on the people as well as on democracy itself. In India, the challenge to this elite rule was succinctly expressed in the Bahujan Samaj Party’s slogan, ‘vote hamara, raj tumhara; nahin chalega, nahin chalega’.
Democracy and Justice
In spite of Amartya Sen’s celebrated example of how famines do not occur in democracies, south Asia, and particularly India, is the best example of the coexistence of
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deep-rooted structures and processes of injustice and democracy. Unless democracy is accompanied by a serious theory of justice of the people, it would degenerate into a mere form or procedure. Not that the states of south Asia are not based on an official theory of justice, but these ideas of justice are narrowly bourgeois, in the sense of upholding individual rights of liberty and formal equality. Individual rights are extremely important, but only if they can be redefined to address popular justice can they be the basis of a substantive democracy. And it is on this count that democracy in south Asia has badly failed. Unfortunately, even analysts and theorists of democracy have either ignored or underplayed the question of justice. Indian democracy raises the question of justice, but only in the form of a promise, unfortunately an unredeemed promise. In the Directive Principles of State Policy of the Indian Constitution, a serious conception of justice was enunciated, but neither the people nor any political party have ever demanded that the time has come to redeem the promise of justice made more than 50 years back. In fact, this part of the Constitution is philosophically and politically as rich as the French or American declarations or even the Communist Manifesto. The Indian Constitution promises new rights, like the right to an adequate means of livelihood and the right to work. It promises substantive equality and prioritises the common good over the right to property. It further makes the promise of self-rule for every village.
It is only the absence of any serious idea of justice that explains the paradox of democracy coexisting with some of the world’s worst forms of poverty, exploitation, oppression and deprivation in this part of the world. This is also the reason why surveys of political attitudes and opinions have to be supplemented by philosophical exercises. That does not mean that the people have no conception of justice or that philosophers have nothing to learn from “indigenous ideas that pulsate in the life and mind of the masses” as Krishna Chandra Bhattacharya put it so profoundly in his essay, ‘Swaraj in Ideas’.
Email: cusanjeeb@gmail.com
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