We the people...

The discourse on the challenges of democratic empowerment and development leads us to the ambiguous terrain of competing visions of ‘development’ and ‘empowerment’. The vision of democratic development and its assumed normative preoccupation with the poor, marginalized and exploited is under scrutiny today. The role of democratic empowerment of the poor and marginalized, long considered as the means to alleviate inequality of access to power, to resources, to a human existence – in short, inequality in emancipation needs to be analyzed.

The Promise of political empowerment

The discourse on political empowerment as an instrument of radical social transformation is rooted in the contradiction between a hierarchical social order and a democratic political system. In the 1930s, under the British rule, Jawaharlal Nehru described India's situation as: "A servile state, with its splendid strength caged up, hardly daring to breathe freely, governed by strangers from afar; her people poor beyond compare; short-lived and incapable of resisting disease and epidemic; illiteracy rampant; vast areas devoid of all sanitary or medical provision; unemployment on a prodigious scale, both among the middle classes and the masses."

An overwhelming concern for poverty and human deprivations, the focus on freedoms, expansion and equal distribution of opportunities are fundamental to development. In building the edifice of the new India, our constitution makers relied on time-tested principles of democratic governance and statecraft. However, India’s antiquated and ponderous social hierarchy is markedly at odds with its present political system. Democracy, according to the classic formula, is government of the people, by the people, for the people. The experience of Indian democracy in the last 50 years has brought into sharp relief a feature of modern democracies everywhere: the gap between formal political participation and effective political control. Universal adult franchise came as a revolutionary turn in the country’s history. The ordinary people of India – rich and poor, rural and urban, Brahmins and harijans, Hindus and Muslims, men and women – have by now voted governments into power, and voted them out of power.

Empowerment has three basic elements: civil, political and social. The civil element is composed of the rights necessary for individual freedom; the political element consists of the right to participate in politics through representative institutions; and the social element comprises of certain basic rights to economic welfare and social security. The constitution of India attempted to address all these by instituting fundamental rights, directive principles of state policy and democracy as the building blocks of the new republic.

The preamble of the Indian constitution evinces India as a sovereign, socialist, secular, democratic republic aiming to secure to all its citizens social, economic and political justice; liberty of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship; equality of status and of opportunity; and to promote among them all fraternity assuring the dignity of the individual and the unity and integrity of the nation. Barring some ambiguities on issues like reservations, uniform civil code etc where community sentiments are accorded more legitimacy than the spirit of the constitution, the Indian constitution is a stellar enterprise in modern nation building, exceeding its predecessors in terms of constitutional guarantees of citizen’s fundamental rights, universal adult franchise and egalitarian development. The constitution-makers attempted to reconcile individual liberty with the state's interventionist role in transforming society. The doctrine of reasonable restrictions and the provision for judicial review effectively protected citizens from the traditional tyranny and depredations of the Indian state. At the same time, the Directive Principles of State Policy were enunciated and they were declared to be fundamental in the governance of the country and a duty was cast upon the state to apply these principles in making laws. The Directive Principles attempted to give expression to the aspirations of the people and to the ideals of the freedom struggle through control, regulation and reform of the Indian Society.

Moving beyond the constitution, all institutions of the state and every major policy and plan document have expressed such a perspective and concern. The First Five Year Plan (1951-56) stated, "The central objective of planning in India is to raise the standard of living of the people and to open them opportunities for a richer and more varied life." Successive five-year plans continued to emphasize poverty eradication and the attainment of economic equality and social justice as key objectives. Given such a strong concern for human development and a promise to eliminate the worst forms of human deprivations, what has been India's performance on these fronts?

Indian democracy – need to introspect?

Compared with other post-colonial political systems India’s achievement is not insignificant. This cannot disguise serious shortcomings with regard to the quality of representative democracy, the accountability of the institutions of the state to elected representatives or the protection of civil liberties in India.

The caustic experience of delivering the nascent nation from the throes of partition has led to a quasi-federal democracy where the federal dialogue with the states is often predicated by the Union Government's administrative and policy-level decisions. Article 356, Imposition of emergency, arbitrary central discretion in devolution of funds and flagging Panchayati Raj implementations by successive state governments only point to this deeply feudal polity. Democracies should continue to democratize; else given the elite bias of virtually all newly formed democracies they will become majoritarian. India’s political process is laboring towards the ideal of not only being able to conduct free and fair elections, but also continuously democratizing the political sphere with competitive mobilizations. This process is unfolding largely at the regional level, and may well have been strengthened by the recent electoral outcome.

Over the past fifteen years, groups of low status in the traditional social order have increased their political role substantially, forming parties based upon lower-caste identity that in some regions capture large portions of the popular vote and form governments at the state level. Some, though not all, of these parties have now found a place at the apex of Indian politics as partners in the United Progressive Alliance government that has assumed power in New Delhi under the leadership of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The new class of leaders who have come up as a result of the churn of electoral politics have emerged from the grassroots, perfected the art of governance out-witting and outmaneuvering the sophisticated class of urban leaders.

Consider Mr. Laloo Prasad Yadav, RJD President, union minister for Railways. He has not only graduated in politics but has also virtually outfoxed the upper caste leaders in the power game in Bihar and now at the centre. As Lord Acton observed so wisely, power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. He was very much involved in the fodder scam and all other malpractices, characteristic of politicians in the country. Take the case of former UP Chief Minister Mayawati, a Harijan leader. She symbolizes the new hope of the Scheduled Castes, the Scheduled Tribes and other backward classes. Her deification is a political paradox that thrives on contradictions and sharp variations in socio-economic gaps of the poor and the rich and the haves and the have-nots. Current chief minister of Uttar Pradesh and former defense minister, Samajwadi Party (SP) leader, Mulayam Singh is from the non-elite Yadav caste. In the late 1970s, Jagjivan Ram, who hailed from a caste even lower in the traditional status hierarchy than the Yadavs, held the office of the prime ministers. But Jagjivan Ram had spent almost his entire career within the Congress Party - a powerful leader, to be sure, but still largely a token, subjected to the discipline and constraints of a party dominated by upper-caste bosses and an ideology hostile to lower-caste militancy. The crucial difference between then and now is that Mulayam Singh Yadav, heads a party explicitly devoted to furthering the interests of what in Indian political (and juridical) parlance are known as the “other backward castes” (OBCs), groups not quite as oppressed as the ex-untouchable, or Dalit, castes, but underprivileged nonetheless. The SP and other parties of its ilk do not want mere representation. They want power and the spoils of office. Possessed of impressive grassroots organizations - and in some regions as much “muscle”, if not money, as the main national players - they are not only willing but also able to withdraw support to any coalition partner that fails to deliver on its promises. They are placing additional demands on a political system, and an economy, already seen as suffering from “demand-overload”. Indeed, the riddle of democracy, in India as elsewhere, is not simply whether democracy can generate continued democratization, but whether democracy itself can survive democratization.

Noted economist and former US Ambassador to India, Prof John Kenneth Galbraith, once dubbed India as a functioning anarchy. Discipline is the antithesis of what is rightly known as the world's largest democracy. All the same, Indian democracy moves on merrily. India’s third “hung parliament” in a row signifies more than a political realignment taking place in party politics. Not of India as a unified political entity or apparatus of administration, but of the social bases of Indian politics. Democracy has taken deep roots as people begin to assert themselves. The symbolic assertion is evident in the dynamic realignment of social-political equations in each general election.

Changes have also taken place in the social sphere - with affirmative action for disadvantaged communities, with the weakening of untouchability and caste discrimination, and with women enjoying by and large more freedoms than ever before. Between 1951 and 1996, per capita income more than doubled, food grain production increased fourfold, and the index of industrial production went up 15 times. Still some 36% of the country's population lives below the poverty line - defined as access to minimum calories needed for healthy living. The country has achieved self-sufficiency in food grain production, it has built up a good safety stock of food grains, and famines have been virtually eliminated. Life expectancy nearly doubled to 61 years and infant mortality was halved to 74 deaths per 1,000 live births during 1951-95. Despite the narrowing of gender gaps along several fronts, India is one of the few countries where there are fewer women than men - 927 females per 1000 males - a reflection of systematic deprivation and strong anti-female bias that pervades society. India today remains a country of stark contrasts and striking disparities. Some states and districts of India report levels of social advancement similar to leading industrialized countries. Other parts of India report achievement levels that are worse than the average of the poorest countries in the world. While only 24 countries had a higher rate of infant mortality than Orissa. Less than 15% of adult women are illiterate in Kerala, 75% or more women are illiterate in Bihar, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. The total fertility rate is 2 or less in Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Goa. It is however 4 or more in Bihar, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh. If all of India was to have Kerala's birth and child death rates, there would be 10 million fewer births and 1.5 million fewer infant deaths in the country every year - and a dramatic reduction in population growth with 13 million fewer births. A computation of the Gender-related Development Index (GDI) for Indian states reveals not only the low levels of human development and the extent of gender inequalities within India, but more importantly, it provides a measure of how badly Indian states are doing vis-à-vis other nations of the world.

At the top of the list of Indian states is Kerala with a GDI value of 0.597. There are only 13 countries in the world with lower GDI values than Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. Twice as many people live in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar (combined population of 225 million in 1991) in such abysmal conditions of human deprivation than in the 13 countries that had lower GDI values. Similarly, disparities exist between and within communities in India. For instance, communities classified as belonging to Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes have significantly lower literacy and higher child mortality rates than the rest of the population.

Besides income poverty various other forms of human deprivation are loud and visible - child labor, illiteracy, damaged environments. Others are largely silent but visible - caste discrimination, discrimination against women and girls, and child prostitution. Different degrees of power are sustained and perpetuated through social divisions such as gender, age, caste, class, ethnicity, and race and through institutions such as the family, religion, education, media, the law, etc. The economic, political, legal and judicial institutions and structures set up and mediated by the state tend to reinforce the dominant ideology and the power of the dominant groups within it, even though their stated objectives and policies may be superficially egalitarian.

Perhaps the most serious fault of parliamentary democracy, from the point of view of democracy itself, is its inherent tendency toward centralism. The local bodies that may exist have (a) little self-government powers, and (b) no direct or indirect influence on the nation state. A natural outcome of centralization of power and administration is bureaucracy. Collusion between those who are responsible for performance and those who are charged with their oversight, arbitrary political control and asymmetry of information, prevalence of corruption are among the factors that have made bureaucracy the albatross around the neck. Governance has been a major casualty in this process. Indian bureaucracy has notoriously resisted or blunted such public accountability measures as the right to information act.

We are often confronted with another serious defect of parliamentary democracy – demagoguery. Hardly any issue of public policy is presented to the people in its true light; partisan demagoguery distorts everything. The ever-rising expectations on account of irresponsible rhetoric and competitive populism, satellite television, breakdown of rule of law and public order, rising political and social conflicts on account of rapid and uneven growth of population, and the death of ideology and conversion of political parties into cynical instruments of power game with no other higher goals - all these mandate a fundamental change in our governance.

The Challenge

A balance is needed between economic growth and an expansion of social opportunities. A balance is needed between the assurance of economic rights and political rights. A balance is needed between expansion of physical infrastructure and basic social infrastructure.

The priority has to shift to basic education, to preventive and preemptive health care, to assuring basic economic security and livelihoods. The state in India often achieves what it sets out to do. For example, the state has shown dynamism in reducing controls, liberalizing the economy, and opening up the economy. The recent Constitutional amendment to ensure women's participation in local governments displays an extremely progressive and proactive face. On the other hand, the state's effort at abolishing child labor, preventing child prostitution, and until recently, addressing the problem of AIDS reveals shocking recalcitrance. Similarly, its unwillingness to make primary education compulsory, despite the affirmation in the Constitution of India, reveals inexplicable reluctance.

Opportunities must be created and expanded for women to participate more fully in economic and political decision-making. The human development experience from Kerala and Manipur suggest that society's well being improves when women enjoy greater freedoms - economic, social and political. The overall gains to society increase many times when men and women contribute equally. However, to achieve this, changes are required in the way people think and behave, in the way society perceives the role and contribution of women.

Economic growth has to be participatory. First, the official stated policies for poverty eradication reflect human development priorities. Opening up democratic participation is. This is not just through local governments but also through people's organizations, and in particular women's groups that are frequently organized around credit, economic activities and social empowerment. The pressure to pursue state minimalism is leading to an abdication of state responsibilities - as the pressure to privatize is beginning to affect people's access to basic health and education.

Mahatma Gandhi had remarked in Confessions of Faith: "India's salvation consists in unlearning what she has learned during the past fifty years”. Dramatic changes are now required in thinking, in living, and in cultivating a genuine public spirit. While the state can not abdicate its role in the name of participation, excessive reliance on the state has not worked so far. India needs sustained public action like the "Janaagraha", involving civic groups in Bangalore to create rudimentary public works budgets for their areas by putting pressure on the elected representatives, to reaffirm its human development priorities.