The Republic at 60 – least expectations

The Republic of India is turning 60 in a year from now. And, for a country which is often hailed as the biggest democracy in the world, it’s the track record in the promotion of human rights and availability of opportunities that should count rather than the mere percentage of people who exercise their franchise every five years, or even more frequently.

But still, the popular concept, nay the myth, goes that ‘participatory democracy’ is the cornerstone of any so-called democratic polity. But participation is often limited to voting, leaving governance to politicians and bureaucrats.

The claims regarding the achievements India has had during the last six decades of existence as a democracy merit stark comparison with its western counterparts – especially the US and the UK.

Drinking is very much a social activity in Europe and elsewhere in the West. And, UK’s Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling has gone for quite a ‘drastic’ measure – he raised the duty on alcohol in his Budget.

The result – he has now been barred from entering some of the pubs in the UK. A bar in Edinburgh has put up a poster that reads: "Barred. We hereby give notice that Alastair [sic] Darling, Chancellor of the Exchequer, is barred from this pub until further notice." And, an internet campaign is going on in support of a nationwide pub ban on the Head of the Treasury.

Well, imagine the same thing happening in India where Finance Minister P. Chidambaram effects a steep hike in the tax on alcohol or any other essential commodity (alcohol too happens to be one these days, we should say), will any individual establishment or organisation in the country dare to clamp such a ban on him? That explains how vibrant and freewheeling a democracy the United Kingdom is.

Yet another event in the West has been capturing much media attention for the last couple of months: the race for winning the nomination of major political parties to run for the White House. Even the candidates for the presidency are elected after a rigorous democratic process.

Now, come to the world’s biggest democracy, and there you can witness a rarest of the rare phenomena. One gentleman is made the Prime Minister one fine morning without even having to face the electorate. And the guy who lost the Lok Sabha elections has been entrusted with the all-important, all-powerful portfolio of Home Affairs.

Interestingly, Dr Manmohan Singh holds the rare distinction of being the only Indian premier who never faced the voters in a public election. On both the occasions when he was in power – during 1991-96 as Finance Minister and the current innings as Prime Minister – he managed to make a backdoor entry to the Parliament through the Rajya Sabha. Maybe it’s constitutionally valid, but the big ethical question remains unanswered.

Of course, it’s very difficult to fit the definition of the term democracy into the state of affairs prevailing in India. Maybe, Rousseau was preaching an utopia while dwelling on ‘participatory democracy’. Abraham Lincoln sounded too idealistic envisaging ‘a government of the people, by the people, for the people’. But Bernard Shaw was more or less prophetic while defining democracy as ‘a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve’.

To a large extent, it’s the organisational grooming of the Indian National Congress that is responsible for the stifling of inner-party democracy in the country’s political landscape. Most of the parties in the opposition, a good number of them break-away groups from the Congress, too go for the nomination option when it comes to the election of office-bearers. The Left parties – especially the CPI(M) and the CPI – who conduct organisational elections from the grassroots level to the top on a regular basis are the only exception.

At 60, any democracy should have come of age. But the Indian democracy is still in its infancy when it comes to several important aspects. The Right to Information Act remains mostly on paper. Apartheid-like situations prevail in some remote north Indian villages even now. State-sponsored encounter killings are rampant. But still, we take pride for being the citizens of the world’s biggest democracy.

The latest Gandhi incarnation is all set to take over the reins of the country’s leading political organisation. And Rahul has already started talking about the need for restoring inner-party democracy in his party. Let’s hope the mindset for a change is not for the worse, and the initial enthusiasm prevails.