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Fifty years of independence should be an occasion for joy and
celebration, of pride in having accomplished the objectives our
statesmen had set for us, and an opportunity for setting our goals
for the future. Instead, one is filled with a feeling of
apprehension over the results of five decades of independence.
An appreciation of the illness that plagues our nation necessarily
implies an appraisal of the objectives and results that successive
governments in independent India have followed and the consequences
they resulted in. It is important to emphasise that our most
valuable asset when compared to the rest of the developing world is
our democracy.
It is essential that, as citizens, we are able to appreciate the
awesome nature of the enterprise that we undertook at the time of
independence, and if that experiment has not been entirely
successful, that we do not succumb to the temptation of blaming
democracy for the ills that confront us today. The success of the
reforms in China can easily lend itself to the view that repressive
authoritarian regimes are more efficient in accomplishing the task
of macro-economic stabilisation and adjustment.
However, the Hungarian economist, Janos Kornai, in his celebrated
work The Road to a Free Economy, decisively refutes this view. He
cites the work done by two economists (S. Haggard and R.R. Kaufman
on Economic Adjustment in New Democracies) who comparative study of
44 authoritarian and 39 democratic system showed that one of these
systems was markedly better in solving these tasks than the other.
It is therefore not the institution of democracy that is to blame
but the political elite which interpreted that institution in a
manner that has reduced its functioning to the ballot box, vote
banks and populism. Democracy only begins with the ballot box, but
to institutionalise a system of checks and balances the process
should develop through a palpable strengthening of the many
institutions that are integral to a democratic society, In our case
this would include the system of panchayati raj, regulatory
mechanisms, public interest litigation Lokpal, the media, the
judiciary, the Election Commission, non-governmental organisations
and many others.
But this has not happened because of a variety of reasons that are
specific to the Indian context. These include the functioning of
the party system which, since the late sixties, has become
personality-oriented and has yet to decisively move away from that
mould; the polarisation of Indian society along caste fines in
which the idea of social justice has been reduced to the ubiquitous
system of reservations; the introduction of religion into the
political sphere; and the numerous fissiparous tendencies that have
crept into the body politic.
This has caused a severe erosion of the credibility of the
political system. Self-serving politicians representing groups with
vested interests have begun to tear away the threads that were so
painfully woven into a beautiful texture in the first two decades
following independence. With the influx of money and muscle power
into the electoral process, the credibility of the political system
has reached an all-time low. The image of the Indian politician in
the public imagination evokes feelings of revulsion, indifference
and disgust because it is widely believed that the fruits of
development in the past 50 years have been appropriated by babus
and netas to the deprivation of the people at large.
As a result of these factors, the democratic process in India has
not moved beyond the ballot box; the rural and urban poor, on whom
much of the political system depends, have remained on the
periphery. This is in a large measure caused by the fact that,
unlike in Western Europe, the Indian political system has been
unable to incorporate the multiple stakeholders who comprise our
society into becoming partners in the developmental process.
Consequently, while the Indian political system is characterised by
a substantial degree of participation, it is deficient in
governance and accountability. It grieves me to think of the
consequences if this state of affairs is allowed to continue
unabated.
There must be a return to the collaborative attitude that
characterised Indian society in the two decades after independence
when the fervour of national reconstruction was at its peak and
when the vast majority of our population was galvanised into the
building of a modern industrialised India.
The essence of democracy is partnership. This involves
establishing long-term strategies with multiple stakeholders who
comprise our polity, economy and Society and on whom the future of
our country will be built. We have to create conditions where
these stakeholders develop a vested interest in the development of
the national interest.
I am reminded of the powerful, euphemism credited to the late
J.R.D. Tata: "Find the right man and set him free." That policy is
what an enlightened political system in India needs today: identify
major stakeholders and release their creative energies into the
building of a vibrant Indian future
Accountability, credibility and good governance can only be brought
about if the political system makes a concerted effort to establish
long-term partnerships with our people. These include farmers, the
corporates, the growing Indian middle class, the intelligentsia,
women, non-governmental organisations, youth, artists and artisans,
the small scale sector, the media, the deprived and labourers. The
purpose of partnership lies in the growth of an India that can
successfully meet the challenges of the 21st century. This should
be our overwhelming concern: all else is secondary.
The Indian voter dearly needs an enlightened vision embedded in
unity and growth over division and discord. The voter has a right
to know where the country is heading and affirm his right to
participate in the accomplishment of those objectives that he deems
them worthy of fulfilment. A political regime that either fails to
acknowledge this reality or ignores it altogether forfeits its
right to represent the electorate.
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