Ratnakar Tripathy
Batras [बतरस]
Lokpal Movement: is democracy an automated machine or an organism!
By Ratnakar Tripathy
Despite its many faults, India is indeed a democracy to be proud of. Not all the time. But not too infrequently either! But when this pride turns into hubris [ahankar], you get an interesting paradox. When an Anna Hazare raises his voice to speak, he is told please fight the next election and join the parliament before you open your mouth. Is this a case of democracy bullying the citizen and telling him you don’t matter?
First, let us make an admission that seems too obvious to make. The whole country cannot go and sit in the parliament. Perhaps at the panchayat level, we may be able to have an open assembly and practice direct democracy. Let us also admit that not every citizen is dying to be elected to the parliament even though it seems the quickest way to make money in India these days. Just one term or actually a single deal may be enough to make enough money for a life time and to hell with my voters and my political future, I may say. The citizen voter now needs the assurance that she is the real author of the state and not the professional politician.
This is why we need the kind of Lokpal Bill that Anna Hazare proposes. Aruna Roy too has her own draft of the bill that we need to look at.
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Second, the professional politicians in the country have taken turns at ensuring that the police force, the CBI, the Vigilance Department and many other institutions have no autonomy or brains or muscles of their own, at all. In this we haven’t changed since the British days. The only change is if I am the ruler today and you are in opposition, the cops will beat you up if I order them to do so. Tomorrow, if you are the ruler and I am in opposition, you would do the same. Thankfully, we have an election commission and a judiciary that followed a different path of institutional evolution. That you and I agree to beat up and get beaten depending on our current status is certainly not democracy! Nor will this tangled maze ever lead to a democratic destination.
This is why we need the kind of Lokpal Bill that Anna Hazare proposes.
Third, we all feel envious of the western democracies quite simply because their daily lives are mostly bribe-free. They also seem more transparent. And yet, it’s time we admitted that they can no longer serve us as ultimate inspiration and that democratization cannot be achieved through mimicry. Do we really want our own George Bush, Berlusconi and Tony Blair as our future leaders? Are they the high points of western democracy to be emulated? Do we want to be ruled by the stooges of an arms industry or the pharmaceutical industry? Do we want our own Rupert Murdoch to keep us well-informed about the state of the world? We have been made to mug up and internalize the dogmas of western democracy and find it difficult to think beyond them. The western political procedures apart, is the west ethically inspiring anymore?
This is why we need the kind of Lokpal Bill that Anna Hazare proposes.
Fourth, the fact is, the government at the centre is telling us there are democratic procedures and mechanisms, methods, forms to fill up and queues to join. Once you go through the motions, the slot machine of democracy will deliver justice with a pop! And when it fails, all you got to do is call a mechanic. This is a grand illusion – the finely tuned democratic mechanisms in the west are now decrepit awaiting renewal. The future of democracy belongs to Asia, South America and Africa. And entirely so because we fight ethical battles within our heads and without on a daily basis as a compulsion!
In all humility, one may claim that India is in a unique position – for reasons we have been taught since our childhood – we grow up with notions of justice that must look at castes, religions, class, languages, racial types, gender and what not! But increasingly now for reasons we need to quickly own up – because we are growing up in an India that has its own US, its own Europe, its own Saudi Arabia, its own Somalia, its own sub-Saharan clime and its own Amazonia too! Not to forget Kashmir and the North East! Too many Indias to be automated in brief and more like an organism getting more complex by the day!
This is why we need something like the Lokpal Bill that Anna Hazare proposes.