Govnow V1 I1 Lowres PDF's

Cover Photo: Ravi Choudhary
Gautam Adhikari Markand Adhikari Anurag Batra Editor B V Rao Managing Editor Ajay Singh Peoples Editor Anupam Goswami Deputy Editors Prasanna Mohanty, Ashish Mehta, Ashish Sharma, Shyamanga Barooah Special Correspondents Brajesh Kumar, Trithesh Nandan Principal Correspondents Geetanjali Minhas, Danish Raza, Jasleen Kaur Correspondents Shivani Chaturvedi, Neha Sethi, Sarthak Ray, Sonal Matharu Design Parveen Kumar, Noor Mohammad Photographer Ravi Choudhary General Manager Business Development Suparnaa Chadda suparnaa@governancenow.com Sales Sr. Manager Sales Gautam Navin (+91-9818125257) gautam@governancenow.com Marketing Asst. Manager Marketing Shivangi Gupta shivangi@governancenow.com Subscription/Distribution Asst. Manager Distribution Pranay Dixit (+91-9999809095) pranay@governancenow.com Manager IT Santosh Gupta Asst. Manager HR Monika Sharma Design consultants LDI Graphics Pvt. Ltd. Tel: +91 11 45638155, 45638166 www.liquiddesigns.in Printed and published by Markand Adhikari on behalf of Sri Adhikari Brothers Assets Holding Pvt Ltd at 24A, Mindmill Corporate Tower, Sector 16A, Film City, Noida 201301. Tel: 0120-3920555. Printed at Utkarsh Art Press Pvt Ltd, D-9/3, Okhla Industrial Area Phase I, New Delhi, 110020. Tel: 011-41636301 Volume 1 Issue 1 www.governancenow.com feedback@governancenow.com
Founders Team
Letter from the publisher
ood Governance is the new buzzword in the corridors of power. Governments are putting our money where the vote is and the vote is in making governance easily available and development clearly visible. So governments, traditionally the biggest spenders in an economy, are spending bigger. This they are doing by drawing on the private sectors expertise in delivering projects efficiently, thus giving the corporates not just a shot at the billions but also an unprecedented opportunity to participate in nation-building. This confluence of interest of the governments, the corporates and the people has set off an unprecedented rush for change and for better governance. It will be Governance Nows endeavour to track and report this revolution in such a way as to keep all the stakeholders informed of what is working and what needs working. Governments are hungry for information about positive changes and efficiently delivered projects so they can be replicated. Corporates are hungry for information on what the governments are planning and where they will be spending. The citizen is hungry for news on how this public-private partnership is working to their benefit. Governance Now aspires to be the platform where all these stakeholders can talk to each other. We will do this through extensive ground reportage and informed analysis by experts. We will invite participation, provoke debate and accommodate diverse opinion to ensure everybody is involved. Every new project comes with more promises than it has promise in it. We will not make any promises. Just one assurance: whatever we do, we will do while upholding the best traditions of journalism and public interest. Sixty years into the Republic we need some good Governance Now. So lets make it work! Happy Republic Day!
Markand Adhikari
www.GovernanceNow.com 3
Editorial
For a place in my Republic

W
e, the people of Governance Now, are acutely aware that our magazine and web portal are being launched on 26th January. Sharing our birthday with the Indian Republic is a coincidence that creates some compulsions. It underlines the founding premise of our initiative, which is all about the relationships and entitlements that Indians have with diverse institutions and processes in this countrys public life. It also makes us acutely aware of the position and place that Governance Now intends to occupy . There is no missing the distance that this country has come in the six decades it became a republic. We have genuine achievements to be proud of as a nation and as its people. These span social, economic, as well as political spheres. Our biggest success has been with democracy which obviously operates as the fundamental principle in the psyche and functioning of our country. In a truly democratic manner, this country has witnessed the myriad transformations of the way and means by which hundreds of millions of Indians relate and engage with
R AV I CH o U D H A R Y
themselves and the wider world, and see themselves as a growing middle class which is perhaps the largest for any country on the globe. This is a truly historical achievement that has been created largely by the promises and processes that this country gave to itself as part of becoming a republic. Yet, six decades on, there is also no mistaking the sense of alienation, disappointment and even distrust that an equally large number of Indians, maybe more, have towards many of those very promises and processes. As the voices and views presented in our inaugural issue of Governance Now show, these feelings are strongest about the conduct of democratic polity in our country. Large sections of our people, probably constituting the majority of the population, look upon politics and politicians in negative terms. As depicted in popular culture as well as considered opinion, our parliament and legislature have come to connote criminalisation, muscle power, and a rambunctious lack of ethics. Well-meaning Indians as well as harsher critics from other parts of the world are often tempted to portray
democracy as some foreign implant that is ill-suited to our national culture and genius. The sense of national dismay also reaches to the other pillars of state envisaged by the constitution, viz. the executive and the judiciary. These two are perceived to be less noisy than the legislature, but equally slow and inefficient in face of what the nation requires in the current millennium. Of all the ills that are attributed to the three pillars of the countrys constitutional setup, the one which vexes the people of India the most is the malady of corruption. It grew silent and somewhat unseen in the early decades of our republic. In more recent years it has mushroomed across the entire spectrum of public life, hydra-headed with innumerable tentacles. Disenchantment on such counts leads to overall doubts as well. Its a truism that for a country as complex, diverse, and variegated a population such as Indias, independence might have come once in 1947 but emancipation comes at different points of time for
different sections of its people. This has a lot to do with economic growth; but even more with the way the constitutions commitments on equality, liberty, and fraternity reach out and permeate this countrys life over time. In recent years there has been much debate on the extent to which these principles inform and guide public policy, or should continue to do so. These matters are of tremendous importance to Governance Now. We are driven by the values and accountability of public life. In coming issues of our magazine we will show this zeal through our reportage, analyses, and commentary on the way India and its citizens relate, engage, and participate with each other for a shared and common well-being. A review of the performance of the founding principles of our nation seemed a good place to start and that is why this inaugural issue takes a look at how citizens look upon sixty years of our nation. Any debate on the performance of the republic has to necessarily begin and end with
an expression of pride. We at Governance Now are unequivocally proud of its successes. But the constitution is an ideal. Given the acknowledged impossibility of realising an ideal, for then it ceases to be one, it is our duty to constantly endeavour to get as close to the ideal as we can. In 60 years of the republic, have we done that? Have we progressed towards the ideal of government of us, by us and for us or have we built a governance structure that is of, by and for the powerful few? The constitution promised that every citizen is equal but the three pillars the executive, the legislature and the judiciary have wrapped themselves up in layers of privileges. The distance between the state and its people is increasing almost to the point of alienation. And millions upon millions are still not lettered, still not fed, still not housed and still not treated. The words and thoughts of our writers and interviewees may carry some cynicism and criticism. That is only because they want to engage with their republic. Because they want a place in this majestic republic.n
Contents
Rediscovering the Republic

P06
If you want effective democracy and good governance, civil society initiatives might be the only hope.
By Meghnad Desai
Larger state has capacity to generate larger resources

P10
In search of a new Republic

P16
The Indian state can handle subnationalism or splinter aspirations for as long as the economy is large enough, says Irfan Habib.
Democracy, fundamental rights and other myths of the constitution underline the need for a new Republic.
By G.N. Saibaba
Local governance for better governance

P22
No democracy within democracy

P28
BJP doesnt need to reach out to the Muslims

P34
Nursing parliament back to health

P38
Civil society: empowering people and the state

P43
Judging the judges a tough balancing act

P49
Sham secularism must go

P52
The curious case of Hind Swaraj

P56
The righting of the wrongs

P60
True, the common man feels disconnected from politics and governance, but it is time for repair, not despair. Local governance is the way forward.
By Jayaprakash Narayan
Democracy? What democracy? The political parties that come seeking our votes are sticking to the dictatorship of the high command.
By Jagdeep S. Chhokar
I am already popular among Muslims in Maharashtra because I helped them recover Rs 4000 crore of Wakf land from land sharks. We are the way we are, we dont put on an act, says Nitin Gadkari.
The executive has reduced parliament to a law-making body, laws the government wants! Strengthening it is not impossible but requires better imagination and a sustained effort to build consensus.
By C.V. Madhukar and Chakshu Roy
Like the proverbial KGB agent, civil soceity does not know this yet but it is probably turning into yet another organ of the state.
By Pradeep Bhargava
The judiciary, the non-democratic organ of the state, needs to be insulated from the executive while maintaining the moral authority with the support of the public opinion.
By Saurabh Kirpal
Equal respect for all religions has been a concept India has followed for centuries but the tag of secularism in the constitution is nothing short of a political fraud
By Govindacharya
Call it a hundred years of attitude: the tract that is virtually a manifesto for Gandhian revolution has remained ignored even as its relevance is only increasing.
By Tridip Suhrud
Hopefully, we will pass the baton to a generation for which liberty is not the right to do wrong but to right the wrong.
By Bikram Vohra
4 GovernanceNow | January 26, 2010
R E P U B L I C AT 6 0 Leading the Debate
They, the politicians of India...
The democratic legitimisation of even miniscule electoral mandates has made the political class arrogant, corrupt and negligent of all norms of governance.
Meghnad Desai
G
overnance was the buzzword of the 1990s. The Cold War was over and ideology was dead. There was no battle about grand issues. Markets were here to stay as were governments. Governments were to regulate markets. But citizens were to be treated like sovereign consumers. Hence the quality of government had to be improved. As no one wanted to be judgmental about the bewildering variety of governments in power (a decade before WMD and Iraq), the idea of governance took hold. Governance is a bloodless word. It signifies institutions and rules and norms. No actual people are involved in the notion. It asks us whether rules
are being followed, whether transparency and accountability and sustainability etc are followed. This helps foreign funders of NGOs and foreign aid givers for public projects. India is in many ways ideal for such exercises. It has probably the most elaborate structure of rules and norms and requirements and procedures laid down in great detail. There is the constitution and the legal framework inherited from the British with its norms and practices, rules of
civil service engagements and fundamental rights of citizens, with official bodies to hear complaints and promise succour. Yet it does not work. India amazes the world with a most vibrant democracy where elections can be conducted with 700 million voters and governments at centre and states that come and go peacefully. But in the wake of these elections, governments are formed which are grossly negligent of all the norms
Legislators claim privileges and perks, presume immunity with impunity. Those in the executive are even grander in their greed and their arrogance. Murderers and grossly corrupt people continue to occupy office, are even brought back from a temporary lapse from power. This is true of most political parties, secular or not.
Photo: Ravi Choudhary, Model: Sweta Pandey
R E P U B L I C AT 6 0 Leading the Debate
Reprinted with the permission of the Indian Express limited. All rights reserved throughout the world
hundreds of crores if you are in the ATM ministries. No one expects to be caught or punished if caught. The arrogance is passed on to the officials down the line. Police officers behave like feudal lords as the Ruchika Girhotra case shows. They harass and intimidate citizens. Everyone in an official capacity takes bribes (except the prime minister, of course). Transparency International has shown that in India the poor, that is, those below the poverty line (BPL), gave Rs.800 crore of bribes to obtain documents and services they are entitled to. The Ruchika case as well as the aftermath of the 1984 Delhi pogrom against the Sikhs show that one way in which the formal structures of law and order work is to cause immense delay in the delivery of justice Files can be made to move slowly, or even lost. Witnesses can be suborned and even get lost until suddenly found when the party in power changes.
Why is this the case?
My view is that democratic legitimisation in India has given the elected the idea that they have a right to behave as if they are above the law. It was not so during Nehrus or Shastris days. But Indira Gandhi began the doctrine of mandate given that
The malaise that came to grip the Indian polity from the 1970s has been well captured by cartoonists. Here is a selection of some cartoons by Abu Abraham.
of governance, let alone good governance. Legislators claim privileges and perks, presume immunity with impunity. Those in the executive are even grander, in their greed and their arrogance. Murderers and grossly corrupt people have continued to occupy office, even brought back from a temporary lapse from power. This is true of most political parties, secular or not. Incoming governments indulge in regime revenge and reverse the policies of the previous lot, transfer vast numbers of civil servants, police and judicial personnel. The party in power, however recently, passes on its arrogance to its members who go out to extort money from anyone and everyone to whom they have done a favour and failure to shell out the tribute can lead to assault or even murder. Financial corruption has passed all limits. There are ministries in the central government blatantly known as ATM ministries. Madhu Koda, Lalu Yadav, Shibu Soren... one could go on and build a huge wailing wall of the grand corrupt. Civil servants have joined in and the sums are no longer merely in lakhs or even crores but
My view is that democratic legitimisation in India has given the elected the idea that they have a right to behave as if they are above the law. It was not so during Nehrus or Shastris days. But Indira Gandhi began the doctrine of mandate.
even in the days of Congress dominance, about 65 percent of the electorate voted and the winning party got 40 percent of the votes cast, only about a quarter of the electorate had supported the majority party. But on that flimsy basis, the argument was made that the government once elected had the mandate to do anything including subverting the judiciary. Inner party democracy died
in the Congress first and then across the entire political culture. Party leadership became a license, indeed an obligation, to amass vast sums of money. The bureaucracy civil service, police, lower judiciary was used to being above the people in the colonial days. After two decades of good behaviour 1947-67, old habits resumed now with democratic sanction from the masters. Indira Gandhi steadily eliminated all public space which was neutral and outside electoral politics. It served the opposition parties well to go along since they could do the same when in office. Since the oldest and the most respected party inaugurated such behaviour and had at its behest intellectuals and ideologues who would conjure up academically respectable excuses for such legitimate behaviour. India has become a strange combination of a peoples democracy but with multiple party contestation. Any party in power could behave like an authoritarian power legitimated by the electorate. The decline of the Congress hegemony after 1989 made the corrupt fruits of office available to many more political parties. Indeed, having your own party is perhaps the quickest way to amass a vast fortune in India. This is why the Hindu joint family has become a safe way to form the core of the party. Mandalisation helped this process by slicing the electorate in hundreds of jati slices.
If you want to disagree with the party potentate all you can do is secede and start your own party. This is no help for citizens. Hence it can only be civil society organisations, hopefully democratically structured, which must take the place of the missing opposition. It is a thankless task and if you try to finance it through donations you only lay yourself open to harassment by the powers that be. Yet it must be done.
Radhika Krishnan | Doctoral student, JNU
What is to be done?
Democracy is not despite what its detractors say just an infrequent exercise in casting your vote. The right to vote is also the right to demand performance, not just at election time but every day. The citizens in other democracies often can use opposition parties or even the non-legislative parts of their own party when in power to initiate protests and demands for redress. I know this from my own experience in the UK. Every ruling party has an opposition faction which hopes to use the inner party democracy to effect. There are no such inner party structures in India. If you want to disagree with the party potentate all you can do is secede and start your own party. This is no help for citizens. Hence it can only be civil society organisations, hopefully democratically structured, which must take the place of the missing opposition. It is a thankless task
and if you try to finance it through donations you only lay yourself open to harassment by the powers that be. Yet it must be done. The PIL movement has shown that despite many frivolous examples it remains a powerful weapon. The judiciary has so far been almost clean though lately even there we see the spread of financial corruption. There is still a capacity within the judiciary to question the legislature and the executive. But the initiative has to come from the public either via PIL or public protests. I am most hopeful about the media especially the new technology of viewers contributing via their mobiles graphic pictures of political misbehaviour. Police brutality in the backwaters of Bihar can be captured instantly and make headlines. The Ruchika and Jessica Lal cases would never have got far without the oxygen of 24x7 media. Yet the challenge remains. The problem is of improving the quality of governments, of the political personnel. It is of making the democratically elected more aware of their dubious claims of legitimacy. For as long as there are bad governments, there can be no good governance. n Lord Meghnad Desai, a distinguished economist, is the founder of the Centre for the Study of the Global Governance at the London School of Economics where he taught for decades.
The government needs the youth, particularly the upper middle class youth, for legitimacy because a huge chunk of the population would be under 30 and will form the largest electorate by age. It is in the business interest of the Indian Republic to give a sense of belonging to us. But participation is an illusion. One election and the canvassing preceding it where we are told how the youth are the change-makers, does not mean participation. It means an entire term of five years, where we get to be heard and the policies reflect this before and after the election. When you need donkeys to work for you, you have to let them bray as well. So, yes, the system hears our protests, our demands. What it does with it is an entirely different story. The youth are idealistic these problems make them angry. The government thinks that the anger needs to be controlled. So, when it hands out a toffee, its not because of love, its more to do with preempting a tantrum.
R E P U B L I C AT 6 0 Historians Insights
Jagdish Yadav
INTERVIEW
but in India this practice is especially rigid and complex whereby historians are still not allowed access to many official documents and intelligence reports which date before 1947. Moreover, there is also the reality that a very fundamental political transition happened in 1947 and this was carried very substantially forward in 1950. So these years will be permanent reference points in Indian history in any case. And, of course, historians are acutely aware that a very new form of the state was created for this country and its people during 1947 and 1950. For the first time this country had a state that was created for the explicit and stated purpose of development of this country. Unlike the Mughal state, it did not exist primarily to tax the people in order to maintain the ruling class and its official establishment. Unlike the British state, it did not exist to extract tribute from this country and send it to Britain, or to convert this country into a vast market for British goods. The Indian Republic was created for the development and welfare of the people of this country even though one could strongly differ over the path being taken, or the extent to which this objective would be achieved. The fact is that India came into being as a modern nation state during the years 1947 and 1950, and this is the reason why these years will always be crucial points in our history. the Indian Republic. His diagnosis and prognosis had eclectic hues. Characteristically, his icy insight was bracing rather than bleak. Excerpts from the interview: Mainstream history stops its work at the years 1947 and 1950. How is it to engage and relate with the processes of the Indian state over the last six decades? It is generally desirable for the professional historian to be independent of his immediate biases, or at least not to be over-influenced by them. To that extent historians do tend to work with reasonably earlier periods. Another consideration is the availability of materials that are used as historical evidence. All governments around the world restrict the availability of official documents for historiographical scrutiny. In most European nations there is a 25-year limit; been celebrated as the Purna Swaraj day each year since the Lahore Resolution of the Indian National Congress in 1929. So, on 26th January 1950, most young men like me could not help being moved to celebrate the occasion. Like many others, I got hold of the Indian flag and mounted it on my terrace that day. And I will also add that all of us severely underestimated the massive change that was to follow in our country. No matter how one appreciated that moment, none had the comprehension of what was being begun. There was definitely the concept of India as a country from very early times onwards. But a nation is different in the sense it occurs when the people of a country feel themselves to be part of one community and very definitely a political community. Their government comes from within the country, even though it might not be a democracy. This development took place during the national movement and culminated in independence in 1947, and the creation of the republic in 1950. The process was very strongly influenced and motivated by lessons from the experiences of various modern nations.
We had no comprehension of the massive change that was being begun

For the first time this country had a state that was created for the explicit and stated purpose of development of this country. We cant ignore the tremendous affirmative action carried out by the state.
Some contemporary scholars look upon democracy as a wholly imported construct and therefore alien to the historical experience of this countrys people with the state.
n this country and beyond, Irfan Habib is widely recognised as one of the most influential historians in the modern era. His initial and substantive work pertains to what is called the medieval period of Indian history. However, Habib is equally known for his incisive insights into earlier historical processes as well as key themes of recent and contemporary times. Much of his academic work has been conducted from the Department of History at the Aligarh Muslim University where he still works as professor emeritus. There, on a chilly January day, in an austere room, freezing compared with the world outside its single window, he talked to Anupam Goswami about the key trends that have shaped the functioning of
What are your own memories of the first Republic Day?
I was an undergraduate student then, and also a member of the Communist Party that was underground those days. The Communist Party had adopted a very rigid and blinkered denunciation of the constitution and this did influence us to some extent. Of course, the party abandoned this line later on. But even as aware young Indians, many of us felt that the constitution did not reflect all the ideals espoused by the national movement, including the principles enounced by the Indian National Congress in its annual sessions of Lahore in 1929 and Karachi in 1931. We thought that the constitution had key limitations, and some of these continue till today. But then, the date of 26th January already held special appeal for all of us. Even before 1947, this date had
Well, most things that are important in the contemporary public life of most nations are generally import- In the 1950s and the 1960s, our sense ed. Technology is important and is of nationalism was conditioned by usually imported. Entertainment is the fact that it had served as a theoimportant and ofretical and practical ten largely import- What is the logic for framework against ed. Cinema is impora foreign power Telengana when all tant and imported that had subjugatin large quantities. of Andhra Pradesh ed us for 200 years. More important to speaks Telugu? Will It was a liberating our discussion, capiconcept. This realiHyderabad be better talism and concepts sation was a key moof equality and de- off after Telengana tivation for diverse mocracy were spe- is formed? In each groups and sections cific products of a the country such case, people are within specific historical to accept a suborsituation in Europe, clearly missing the dinate status to the and they were im- point that a larger national movement. ported by the UnitOf course, the naed States of America state has the capacity tional movement a couple of hundred to generate larger complemented this years ago; and then resources for larger trait with a very later by various strong agenda for countries of Asia. In- interventions for social and economdeed, the idea of a development. ic emancipation. nation too is a very Thus, most commuimportant and imnities from every ported concept. So part of the country, all through history, as well as dalits and civilizations, countries, and commuothers, were very strong supportnities have transited from one era to ers and participants in the national the next and transformed themselves movement. with the help of ideas and ideologies More recently, it has been used borrowed from others. as an ideology to fight dissent from There can never be any merit in within the country, and it is only fair the argument that our people canto say that some groups might find not work with concepts and practices it a restrictive or oppressive concept that originated elsewhere. these days. However, the key fact is that while some people might find this concept a problem in contemWas even the idea of nation imported to this country? porary India, there is no dominant
What did the term nationalism imply for people in the early years of the Indian Republic? How has the implication of this term evolved over the years?
Prasanna Mohant y
state can ensure reasonable accommodation for most sub-nationalisms. This is has been proven true in the context of the separatist movements in the north-east, as well as in Punjab. I guess it will hold true for others as well. Also, you have to examine the very logic of some of the supposed sub-nationalism in recent times. How has the formation of Jharkhand made life easier for its tribal communities? What is the logic for Telengana when all of Andhra Pradesh speaks Telugu? Will Hyderabad be better off after Telengana is formed? In each such case, people are clearly missing the point that a larger state has the capacity to generate larger resources for larger interventions for development.
affirmative action carried out by the Indian state in this regard. So there is very real need to study the history of caste and class based exploitation and oppression that happened in the past, as well the forms taken by these processes in current times. But this requirement can never be filled by false histories or mythologies that only serve to build up sectional or communal leaderships.
How do you look upon the attempts of these sub-nationalisms to create their own histories?
A girls hostel at Kuakonda in Dantewada destroyed by Maoists.
nationality in this country that might try to impose a particular brand of nationalism on others.
Very true. At the same time emancipation is historically related to some economic resonance. In the early 1950s, this country had no capacity in manufacturing and suffered from a severely limited agricultural base, as well. The 1950s and the 1960s saw a massive public sector effort in the primary and the secondary sectors of the economy, as well as a very significant spread of higher education. These led to processes such as peasants becoming proprietors of land especially in states like Uttar Pradesh and new employment, particularly in government jobs. These processes may not have reached out to all, and their coverage could have been limited. But only when certain groups realized that they were left out in these processes, did they strike out in terms of mobilisation that was based on their excluded identities. This was true for the dalits as well as regional
But is not there the implication that while our country technically became independent in 1947, and then a republic in 1950; emancipation is a continuing project for diverse sections and communities of the Indian people?
movements. Thus, the identity-based movement in Assam actually began after public sector units started taking crude petroleum out of that state and some Assamese groups started agitating for a reciprocal return of public goods and services. Elsewhere, in the 1950s, Kerala received a large share of the countrys foreign exchange earnings from its rubber and coffee. This economic distinction was among the factors for a nascent separatist movement in that state that is totally forgotten today.
Is that not a very mechanistic view of various sub-nationalisms that have come up in various parts of the country over the years?
On the contrary, I am saying that the processes of economic growth created by the modern Indian state create the basis of sub-nationalism and regional aspirations. These are always fed by the sense of being left out, or by-passed. No sub-nationalism questions the basic objective or goal of development. They just want a larger share of the pie than what they are getting. This also creates the opportunity for the Indian state to handle sub-nationalisms or any splinter aspiration; for as long as the economy is large enough, and there is the right handling in adequate amount, the Indian
Of course there should always be constant renewal and refreshment to the scope of our history. But many of the sub-nationalisms and sectional aspirations also lead to the creation of mythologies. You will find that in various parts of India, regional or sectional heroes are venerated to absurd levels, alongside actual suppression of genuine historiography. This is certainly true in Maharashtra. Elsewhere, there is the demand to create false histories. Thus, there is an attempt to show that the national movement was inimical to dalit welfare which is outright stupid. My generation can never forget that dalits were prevented from serving water to the upper castes in the railways and other public spaces; they were usually employed as sweepers who were paid lower wages than attendants belonging to other communities, and many other forms of explicit discriminatory action during the British era. All this changed by decree after independence. The constitution abolished untouchability, not some British ruling. The Indian state established that dalits would get equal wages for equal work, not the British. Of course, much more needs to be done still. There is a great deal of caste-based discrimination that happens in many spheres of our social and economic life, but at least we are able to point out that in violation of the law of the land. In any case, who is to ignore the tremendous
generation to not have been hugely influenced by these two personalities. My grandfather on my mothers side, Abbas Tyabji, was a very close associate of Gandhiji who chose him to lead the Salt Satyagraha after his own arrest in 1930. My father Mohammad Habib was Marxist, but personally influenced by Gandhi. In my family house he was always referred to as Mahatma or Bapu, just as he was in hundreds of thousands of homes. As To what extent has the constitution a political leader he had his failures succeeded in providing a stage for and shortcomings; but these were so efficient participation and negotiation outweighed by his great successes, for these diverse and often competing that his overall influence on Indian sub-nationalisms and regional history is quite majestic. aspirations? Jawaharlal Nehru was very differThere have been moments when var- ent in his orientation and beliefs from ious political aspirations have threat- Gandhi, especially in his espousal of ened to overwhelm our framework of modern industrial development and the nation state; but the central role of I think the constithe state, but he too Mao himself tution has survived had this great facilsome pretty testing ity for capturing the had warned episodes. Of course, popular imagination against a policy the Peoples Repreof the time. The poof indiscriminate sentation Act that litical capacity of provides for regular these leaders is evikilling by once elections, as well as dent in the fact that stating that a the framework for Gandhi was able to separated head federalism and state showcase Nehru as governments have his chosen one, decannot be stitched been key mechaspite the quite disback. Clearly, the nisms in this regard. tinct political orienNaxalites are devoid tation and style that Overall, democracy has worked in this the latter had. of any such self country.
Quotes from the common man
Indrishka Grewal | class IX, Jamnabai Narsee School, Juhu, Mumbai
India has a large population and poverty cannot be removed. In our country you can get away with bribes and rules are flouted. There is lack of concern by the public and the government and everyone takes shortcuts. I dont think the government is doing enough.
restraint today.
On the other hand, there is also the point-of-view that sees the practice of democracy in this country as one which is largely limited to the conduct of elections.
What is their legacy or lesson to subsequent generations of
All democracies are essentially about the conduct of elections. You vote to decide upon the overall direction of your future as a citizen, as well as to elect those who will take decisions about that future. You do not vote for having a day-to-day say in working for that future. Actually, this is true for all institutions. You cannot use the opportunity of democracy to create indiscipline or chaos.
The legacy is extremely rich and multi-hued. But the key element was to coalesce the aspirations of many sections and diverse groups of people into a forward looking vision. This ability came to the fore in the way Gandhi engaged with the dalit aspirations. It was also sharply evident in the way Nehru reached out to the working class and young students, to name just two groups.
Indian leaders?
Aarya Avashia | class VIII, Utpal Sanghvi School, Juhu, Mumbai
How do you look upon leaders like Gandhi and Nehru, in terms of their capacity to provide pan-national leadership to diverse groups and communities?
Surely there was scope for Indian leaders to set more radical national agendas after Gandhi and Nehru. Both the Left and the Right in the political spectrum have shown severe limitations at the national stage.
It is difficult for anybody of my
I think circumstances create the room and space for leaders. Of course they
Our roads should have dustbins everywhere and should be clean. Unless citizens understand their own responsibilities towards their city and country, the government cannot do much. India can do better. It has made so much progress and our culture makes me feel proud.
aicc.org.in
also been stymied by the agrarian reform in various parts of the country as well as the creation of employment opportunities; no matter what the limitations of these processes have been.
How do you assess the Naxalite agenda in this regard?
Jawaharlal Nehru was very different in his orientation and beliefs from Gandhi, especially in his espousal of modern industrial development and the central role of the state. But the political capacity of these leaders is evident in the fact that Gandhi was able to showcase Nehru as his chosen one, despite the quite distinct political orientation and style that the latter had.
We have to acknowledge the absolute deprivation that exists in the regions that are home to the Naxal movement, but their strategy and methods are altogether something else. The Naxalites espouse allegiance to Mao Zedong, but the Chinese communist movement never preached revolution through murder. In that country, the challenge for the communists was to replace archaic rule of warlords and landlords by some form of modern civilized government. However, the Naxalites are simply fighting the Indian state and saying that it would not be allowed to conduct any development. So, in actual practice, they are not fighting any class. Indeed, Mao himself had warned against a policy of indiscriminate killing by once stating that a separated head cannot be stitched back. Clearly, the Naxalites are devoid of any such self restraint today.
own government. It does not matter whether this was couched as a demand for Home Rule or for Self -rule or for Swaraj. Each was a crystallisation of the same political aspiration. Civil society does not show such political purpose. On the other hand, it does crystallise the desire that citizens have for stability and for a sense of security. At one level this is a legitimate longing of key sections of society, while at another it also reveals the political limitations of its genre.
But do civil society movements have the potential to lead national level mobilisation for diverse sections of the population in this country?
Look, the so called civil society mobilisation are largely horizontal in nature; in the sense that these are restricted to similar sets of people. Political mobilisation is vertical in the sense that it has to bring together dissimilar sets of people, as was so brilliantly showcased by the national movement. Moreover, any national level mobilisation has to deal with the question of the state, and has to be explicitly political in nature. In a democracy that can be achieved only by political parties, whatever their nomenclature.
How do you look upon the emergence of civil society initiatives in recent years?
must have instinct and understanding of the available opportunity too. What Nehru tried to do was gigantic he engaged in establishing modern industry in this country, as well as creating public investment that would seed the growth of private enterprise. He also created a social agenda for the Indian state, which included legislation that would protect the interests of workers in the early phase of industrialisation. In comparison, perhaps no such great challenge has been identified as a political project by subsequent leaderships. This is particularly true for the right-wing and left-wing political parties. As a practising Marxist, I would also say that the opportunity for the Left has
Civil society is an omnibus term that means various things to various people, but principally referring to the conduct of public affairs outside the state. Yet most of these people draw upon the state in various ways. For example, the NGO sector is very substantially supported by state funds, either within this country, or from overseas in a big way. So how can it be regarded as a non state player? A person like me is retired and totally dependent on the states pension. There is no way I can see myself as existing outside the state.
Overall, how inclusive, or exclusivist is the idea of the nation-state, and the practice of the constitution, as it has evolved over the 60 years of the Indian Republic?
But are current civil society initiatives in any way similar to the manner in which middle-class nationalist leadership emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries?
The nationalist leadership was engaged in an explicitly political project. They were opposing British rule and seeking to replace it with their
That is clearly the question of all questions today. Clearly, the Indian state has sought to be reasonably inclusive for much of this time, even though it has had moments of severe stress and even points of rupture. However, it is also undergoing fundamental changes in some of its key opening strategies. The socialist premises have clearly given way to those which favour a larger role for private capital, the framework for protecting the working classes and labour is being weakened, and new economic models are being adopted. There is a rationale for all of this provided that we maintain the inclusive ethic. It is very reasonable to assume that if this ethic weakens, the points of tension and stress will deepen, and even proliferate whenever there is crisis in the new economy. n
R E P U B L I C AT 6 0 Radical Left View
People gather outside the Council Chamber where the Constituent Assembly met on August 15, 1947.
average in a year. India also witnesses a large number of bloody internal revolts against the state reflecting the way the democratic governance is structured in the last six decades of its existence. To explore this problem we need to go into the trajectory of the post-colonial Indian state that has been constructed with the paraphernalia of a large constitution, highly proliferated democratic institutions giving a facade of democracy. today the fate of these laws. For instance, till Clauses 2 to 6 of today many states have Article 19 take back not even constituted special courts to try offences every basic right that against dalits and tribals, has been granted to which is required unthe citizens. These der the Scheduled Castes and Tribes (Prevention clauses declare that of Atrocities) Act. Every the fundamental rights year we witness a growas set down in the first ing number of atrocities against scheduled clause shall not affect castes and tribal people the operation of any through the annual reexisting law or affect ports of the commissions on SCs and STs. the enactment of Article 18 abolishes tinew laws which place tles. Then we come to Article 19, one of the most reasonable restrictions important of the fundaon the operation of mental rights. The first these rights in the three clauses under Article 19(1) provide bainterests of public sic rights like freedom of order, security of the speech and expression, state, and friendly the right to assemble and the right to form associarelations with foreign tions or unions to all citistates etc. The fundamental zens of the country. rights or These rights are the bafundamental sic political freedoms. contradictions? They are crucial for the The Indian constitution existence and maintewith much fanfare sets forth the fundamental nance of all the other rights. Yet what the conrights which are said to codify and make lestitution gives, it itself takes away! Clauses 2 gally enforceable the inalienable rights of the to 6 of Article 19 take back every basic right human species. that has been granted to the citizens. These The fundamental rights begin with Article clauses declare that the fundamental rights 14 which states that the state shall not deny as set down in the first clause shall not affect to any person equality before the law or the the operation of any existing law or affect the equal protection of laws within the territory enactment of new laws, which place reasonof India. But we all know in our daily life that able restrictions on the operation of these equality of all before the law is denied in most rights in the interests of public order, securiobnoxious ways. Does the law treat a political ty of the state, and friendly relations with forleader or a bureaucrat in the same way as it eign states etc. treats a tribal person in Bastar or Jharkhand This fundamental contradiction in-built in or an illiterate dalit for the same offence? the constitution made possible for the state Articles 15 and 16 prohibit discrimination machinery to violate the basic rights guaranon the grounds of sex, caste, religion or place teed to the people by legislating a huge numof origin and declare the equality of opportuber of draconian laws. For instance, laws like nity for all. These articles have sub-clauses to TADA or POTA punished people for giving a protect the special provisions of the scheduled speech or writing an essay in which one advocastes and tribes, backward classes, women cated social transformation or the federal reand children. Article 17 abolishes untouchorganisation of India. Sixty years of history is ability. All these articles remained paper decwitness to a huge number of internal security larations in the past 60 years but the decades laws that smashed the very concept of fundaof struggles of the people forced the ruling mental rights. The fact is that these draconielite to frame some laws to enforce these conan laws are perfectly permissible within the stitutional provisions. But everyone knows framework of the constitution. the various written and unwritten constitutions of the world, but it is essentially modelled on the basis of the 1935 Government of India Act which was designed to give limited power-sharing to the native ruling elite under the colonial government. The Indian constitution faithfully retains some of the worst features of the 1935 Act! The colonialist nature of our constitution manifests not only in the process of its framing but also in its structure and in the way it functions. A closer look at various aspects of the constitution reveals how our democracy is modulated through inherent contradictions stemming out of this leviathan constitution.
Who framed the constitution?
My rights? Not in this constitution

G.N. Saibaba
Though the Indian constitution seeks to represent the people, it wasnt framed by them. The Constituent Assembly (CA) that framed our constitution was formed with the permission of the British in 1946. Initially about 70 percent of its members were Congressmen. After 1947, the Congress representation in the CA went up to 84 percent. The Muslim League refused to participate in the CA as Jinnah called for the formation of two constituent assemblies in 1945. The Communists and Socialists had no representation. In 1947, when the Socialists decided to participate in the CA, Nehru refused to accommodate them! Thus the CA was dominated by the oligarchy of prominent Congress leaders comprising princes, big zamindars, some Hindu revivalist leaders and a few representatives of the industrial houses. Only the people were missing.
Colonial origins
It is the state that the constitution empowers. Peoples rights dont figure in it, or figure only to be denied. The rights it gives with one hand it takes away with the other.
ndias self-portrayal imagined and propagated by her ruling elite among the worlds countries is that it is the largest democracy with a fat constitution. India is projected as an emerging superpower that is soon to reach
10 percent growth rate. It also goes that she proved to be a successful democracy while many post-colonial states slipped very often into military rule or anarchic polities. Contrary to this self-representation by Indias ruling oligarchy, the country houses a huge chunk of the worlds poor. A staggering 77 percent of her population lives under most inhuman conditions with an abysmally low income of Rs.20 per day per person on
What is more surprising is that the members of the CA were not elected by the people on the basis of universal adult suffrage. It was elected by an abysmally small percentage of the adult population as per the 1935 Government of India Act of the British colonial regime. Several democratic forces such as the CPI, the Socialists and others called for the reconstitution of the CA on the basis of universal adult suffrage and outside the colonial inheritance. But the Congressmen who already constituted an overwhelming majority in the CA refused to reconstitute it. The CA met with the permission of the British government. Later it was accorded legal status by the Indian Independence Act passed by the British parliament. It had to work under the limitations of the Cabinet Mission Plan. Even Gandhi initially believed that it was not sovereign but later accepted it. The Indian constitution has been described as the cornerstone of our democracy. But the way it was framed by keeping the majority of the people of the country out, it turned out to be a great fraud on the people. No doubt that the Indian constitution borrowed the best of
R E P U B L I C AT 6 0 Radical Left View
Similarly, the right to form associations or any citizen the right to life except by the due unions is restricted by laws both at the state process of law. Thats why the Armed Forces and central levels by which the state can de- (Special Powers) Act can allow armed personclare any organisation unlawful on the flim- nel to open fire indiscriminately and kill peosiest grounds. For instance, the Unlawful Ac- ple without violating the constitution. tivities Prevention Act, In a highly unequal so2008 bans a number of ciety like ours, Articles 14, organisations includ15, 16 and 21 do not mean The nature of those ing some of the most much for the people parwho framed the grassroots movements ticularly when the consticonstitution defined its like those of the tribal tution doesnt provide any people under the leadmechanism to guarantee undemocratic structure. ership of Naxalites or these rights but provides A democratic minded organisations which enough space to restrict represent the aspirathem. person like Babasaheb tions of people for selfThe fundamental rights Ambedkar couldnt determination in Kashsection of the constitubring in democratic mir or the northeast. tion is prefaced by Article The restrictions on Ar13, which lays down that features that he ticle 19 allow the state no law that violates these fought for amid the to make laws on apprerights can remain on the overwhelming majority hension of disorder or statute books. Howevthreat to the security of er, the first amendment of feudal minds in the the state on arbitrary to the constitution modiConstituent Assembly. grounds. fies Article 19 by imposArticle 21 says that ing restrictions on rights. the state will not deny As many as 185 pieces of
colonial legislation, most of them of highly undemocratic type, continue to remain on the statute books. The fundamental rights as enshrined in the constitution supposedly function as the bedrock of our democratic polity. But each of the rights has been accompanied by one or more provisions for restricting it. Sixty years of our constitutional practice clearly establishes that the democratic space provided by our constitution can at best be understood as fragile and in reality a mirage.
How the oligarchic hegemony builds
In a real sense, the Indian constitution prioritises the executive the prime minister, the cabinet of ministers and the bureaucracy over the legislature, though formally we are told that real power rests in the legislature. Thats why the government can take such decisions that could impact the future of the country in irreversible ways without going to parliament. For example, the signing of the WTO agreements or initiation of the globalisation policies or the nuclear agreement with the US was not decided in parliament. This feature of the constitution renders the
Gurmeet Kaur | class 12, Government Girls Senior Secondary School No. 1, Shakti Nagar, New Delhi
Babasaheb Ambedkar and Maulana Hasrat Mohani at a reception hosted by Sardar Patel in 1950 for Constituent Assembly members.
legislature a mere law-passing body. But even what law should be made is decided by the executive. The executive can even make laws outside the legislature in the form of ordinances. The executive can decide everything and can control the legislature through the instrument of whip on the legislators of the ruling party or coalitions. The executive has complete control over crucial expenditures, foreign relations, foreign trade and commerce and foreign loans. The seemingly independent judiciary at higher levels is also appointed by the executive in real terms within the framework of the constitution. The rest of the judiciary functions under the control of the higher judiciary. All policy matters including the crucial ones which may totally change the face of the country the executive need never to decide in parliament. Even the economic policies, the five-year plans or bilateral or multilateral agreements with other countries need not be decided in parliament. Only some debates could be done on the floor of legislative houses when members ask questions about the decisions of the government or the annual ritual of passing the budget and financial bill. Ultimately, parliament is a mere talking shop! By concentrating all powers in the hands of the executive, the constitution turns the representative democracy into a rule of oligarchy. Quite often, even this executive degenerates by leaving the crucial decisions to the high command of the ruling party. state governments and legislatures. The centre can, through Article 356, impose presidents rulein real terms the centres rule. It can legislate on matters including those under the purview of the states. Central legislation prevails over the state legislation if the centre legislates on the same subject. The legislation made by the states has to be sent for the assent of the president who cannot act without the consent of the real executivethe cabinet of ministers. All the natural resources of the states are under the control of the centre. The states can use these only with permission from the centre. Thus, the constitution throws up a unitary state contrary to the projection that Indian polity is constructed on a semi-federal structure. In other words, the constitution forms a highly centralised authoritative structure, not a decentralised democratic one.
Even Mahatma Gandhi initially believed that the constituent assemly was not sovereign because it met with the permission of the British government and had to work under the limitations of the Cabinet Mission Plan.
Jagdish Yadav
Though we have our individual rights and it is said that we are all equal, thats not the reality. But we also dont do our duty. Dogs are not allowed in our colony park, but hardly anyone follows the rule. Similarly, we spit on roads, we break the traffic rules.
A new republic is the answer
Centralised authoritative structure
The nature of those who framed the constitution defined its undemocratic structure. A democratic minded person like Babasaheb Ambedkar couldnt bring in democratic features that he fought for amid the overwhelming majority of feudal minds in the Constituent Assembly. Nothing is more incongruous than characterising India as a democratic, secular and socialist republic. Six decades of travails to set right this home left the struggling masses of people with misery and grief. Its time to build a new republic with a new constitution establishing peoples power in the place of oligarchic rule that passes off for democracy. n Saibaba teaches at the University of Delhi. gnsaibaba@gmail.com
Rishika Taneja | B.Sc. Honours (Computer Science), II year, Kalindi College, New Delhi
The constitution has such provisions that completely restrict the power of
Even though it has been 60 years, the reservation system has stuck to us. Whenever I fill up a form for admission, the first thing I see is the huge number of reserved seats. There should be reservation in DU for students from Delhi since many other states in the country also have this rule.
R E P U B L I C AT 6 0 Voices
Meena Soni, 53 employee of State Bank of India
Disha Soni, 19 2nd year B.Com student
Education in India is not up to the mark. Government schools are in a pathetic condition. No teaching happens there. At the university level, because of the reservations, the meritorious students dont get admission. I was never directly involved in any social or political issue. Its of no use. No one will listen to us.
Daulat Ram Soni, 59 shopkeeper and property dealer
Laxmi Devi Soni, 82 housewife
If you favour one party, the other becomes your enemy. I would rather be neutral. I am just concerned with my work. I do not care what the government is doing. Politicians do whatever they want, they only listen to those who have money and power. We see more politicians and policemen committing crimes.
I never went to school, but wanted good education for my children, so we migrated to India (from Afghanistan). We moved to India for our childrens future. I found life in Kandahar much better but love India because my children have settled well here.
I have not voted even once. All elections are rigged. No one listens to us. I think it is all a waste of time and energy. We have progressed very fast.Luxuries have increased, everything is easily available here. But at the same time, I am ashamed of poverty in India. People who have influence have a say. They are the only ones who are heard.
Sameer Saluja, 27 shop and factory owner
We do have the power of vote but because of corruption, it is no longer a matter of ones choice. The admission criterion for all schools is through donations. They openly ask for money. I will never go to court because I do not want to get stuck in the slow judicial process. I would like to settle issues out of court. To get the work done one needs contacts. Police are very corrupt. They extract money at every point. It is difficult to get away from the situations they create.
Soni Family
Delhi
Jagdish Yadav
R E P U B L I C AT 6 0 Peoples Governments
Ashish Asthana
Bottom-up approach to local self-governance

The model of centre delegating to state and state to local bodies must be reversed. This subtle shift in understanding local, state and central governments will place greater trust in all governments
Jayaprakash Narayan t has indeed become clichd to say that India is a land of paradoxes. However, the contradictions in Indian society and polity continue to baffle many scholars across the world. We are one of the few post-colonial countries that have witnessed successful functioning of democratic institutions over six decades. On the other hand, there are glaring deficiencies in our democracy and we have not experienced substantive democracy. India has handled the recent global recession better than many developed countries. And
criminalisation, money power and deceit. Clearly the past two decades have witnessed heightened political contention and dramatic rise in violence and illegitimate money power in elections. And yet our democracy is resilient. A system of compensatory errors ensures that the malpractices of a candidate are neutralised by his rival! Added to that, the strength of Election Commission, neutrality of public officials, and a tradition of governments not interfering in electoral process have ensured some sanity in our politics. But the fact is politics has become big business. Often individuals and families with abnormal money power, acquired through political patronage or corruption, are unassailable in the electoral arena. In many constituencies these modern fiefdoms hold sway with money power, political contacts, caste mobilisation and criminal links. All major parties are forced to depend on such individuals to enhance their chance of success in the first-past-the-post system. Once such persons are elected, they seek multiple returns on investment through influence-peddling, state patronage and control over public purse. Parliamentary debate, rational public discourse and sensible policies are rendered largely irrelevant. At an individual level we see tremendous asymmetry of power between the citizen and the public servant. In a largely poor country, with vast illiteracy, in a power-centred culture, even the humblest civil servant is more influential and powerful than 80 percent of the citizens. This asymmetry is further accentuated by a maibap government whose patronage is critical for the day-to-day struggle for survival of millions of hapless citizens. This makes accountability difficult and abuse of power easy and profitable. yet, our human development indicators are shamefully low. Our cities are emerging not only as engines of economic growth but also as cultural melting pots indicating the possible emergence of a highly cosmopolitan society. On the other hand, cities such as Mumbai have witnessed violence against migrants from other parts of India. While our security forces have successfully handled many insurgencies, various political actors are struggling to find lasting political solutions to many ethnic demands across the country. Given these contradictions, the question Is this the republic we wanted? will elicit an equally paradoxical answer yes and no. Our democracy is alive and kicking. There is genuine political competition; ruling parties and powerful candidates often lose the elections; there is constant change of players with half the incumbents being unseated in every election; the verdict broadly reflects public opinion; and there is constant political churning. But a closer look at our electoral scene reveals disturbing trends of violence,
The best way forward is by creating accountable and empowered local governments. The quality of a republic should be judged not merely by its international stature and its GDP. Rather, the focus should also be on the relationship that a citizen has with the government.
Politics has become big business. Often individuals and families with abnormal money power, acquired through political patronage or corruption, are unassailable in the electoral arena. In many constituencies these modern fiefdoms hold sway with money power, political contacts, caste mobilisation and criminal links.
Centralised governance system
The 73rd and 74th amendments of the Constitution have been enacted in 1993 with great hopes of decentralisation of power. However, the state governments, legislators and bureaucracy have become the biggest stumbling blocks to local government empowerment. The government in our parliamentary executive system survives with the majority support of legislators. The legislators have by now become disguised executives. Over the past 60 years an unwritten compact has come into operation, making the legislator the de facto ruler of his constituency. In such centralised governance system, even if people wisely use the vote, public good cannot be promoted. As the citizen is distanced from the decision-making process, the administrative machinery has no capacity to deliver public services that are cost-effective and of high quality. Thanks to over-centralisation, most public expenditure goes down the drain. The services and public goods we get do not account
for even a fraction of the total public expenditure. All the basic amenities and services that make life worth living are in a state of disrepair. Look at education, health care, water supply, drainage, roads and myriad other public services. As a rule, if we can afford we choose private alternatives like in education and health care, we opt for them at a high cost. Where private goods are not possible, like roads and drains, we suffer in silence and fume in impotent anger. The link between our taxes paid and services rendered is non-existent. Today, many state governments claim that they have devolved several functions that have been enumerated in the 11th and 12th schedules of the constitution. In reality local governments in many states, with a very few exceptions, are functioning as an extension of the state government. Gram panchayats, anchal samitis and zilla parishads are being treated as minor appendages of the existing state government apparatus. Local governments in many states lack necessary functional domain, financial muscle and infrastructure to perform their duties as true local governments. In this context it is important to empower local governments in terms of functions, funds, and functionaries.
Empowerment of local governments principles
Attempts at empowering local governments should be preceded by clear understanding of the functional domain of local governments. Any task that can be carried at the local social unit beginning with individuals and families should be performed by that smallest unit. It is only when the local social/ political unit cannot perform the task that a larger social/political unit located at a distance should perform that task. Therefore, the local governments should perform functions such as sanitation as they are equipped to perform such functions. Local governments based on the principle of subsidiarity restrain unnecessary state interventions. As per the principle of subsidiarity the delegation of authority will not flow downwards
R E P U B L I C AT 6 0 Peoples Governments
We must empower people by ensuring a single and undivided government representing all sections at the district level one district government, which represents all people in the district (rural or urban). As people perceive an elected government representing all, the idea of the third tier of the government will become real and meaningful.
poor, civil supplies, social welfare and other local issues. Necessary funds will be devolved to local governments. Substantial financial devolution: the state government should guarantee that 50 percent of the states annual planned budget will be transferred to district governments. In addition to the existing funds, every panchayat, town and city in the district should get Rs 1,000 per head per year for development works. In urban areas, to bring governance process closer to people, ward committees should be constituted in each municipality with a population of over 3 lakh (Article 243 S).
union government to appropriate various functions of the state government on the pretext that they are very corrupt. Similarly, it is imprudent for the state governments to appropriate functions of local governments on the pretext that they are very corrupt. Vibrant and responsive governance mandates that we empower local governments and also make them accountable. This can be done through full implementation of the Right to Information Act, accompanied by an overhaul of record-keeping and display, citizens charters with penalty for delay in services, transparent and verifiable processes in public procurement, independent, effective and integrated anti-corruption authority, convergence in delivery of services, independent district ombudsmen to investigate all abuse of authority and punish and innovative mechanisms to incentivise the public to fight corruption - for instance, a law similar to the False Claims Act of the US. Institutionalisation of these measures will go a long way in enforcing accountability, preventing abuse of office, and combating corruption at all levels including in the local government.
Akansha Sinha | class X Somerville School, Greater Noida
In such a centralised governance system, even if people wisely use the vote, public good cannot be promoted. As the citizen is distanced from the decisionmaking process, the administrative machinery has no capacity to deliver public services that are costeffective and of high quality.
from the central government to the state government and from the state government to local governments. Rather the individual gives up those functions that he cannot perform to the community, the community to local governments, local governments to the state and the state governments to the central government. The principle of subsidiarity allows us to think about governments, not in terms hierarchy but in terms of their approachability or accessibility. This subtle shift in understanding the local, state and central governments will not only help us in assigning appropriate functional domain but also in placing greater trust in the local, state and central governments. As a consequence, a large number of functions will be assigned
to local governments as they are closer to people and ensure greater participation of people.
A panchayat meeting in progress at Daula in Meerut district of Uttar Pradesh in 1957.
It is time to repair, not lament
We are one of the most successful democracies. In spite of different ethnicities we have stood together in times of turmoil. Yes, there are loopholes which cannot be overlooked. For example, why is justice delivered to the Jessicas and Ruchikas only after mass agitations?
As one can see, empowerment of local governments is not about complex formulas dealing with devolution of functions and finances. It is a simple process of bringing governance closer to people. We must empower people by ensuring a single and undivided government representing all sections at the district level one district government, which represents all people in the district (rural or urban). As people perceive an elected government representing all, the idea of the third tier of the government will become real and meaningful. Every district should have a district government with all necessary powers: Each district will have a directly elected premier who will head a cabinet of district ministers to administer the district. District collector will act as chief secretary to the district government. District ministers will be in-charges of various portfolios such as school education, health care, agriculture, animal husbandry, basic amenities in villages and cities, employment generation, social security for
District governments
Addressing scepticism institutionalising accountability mechanisms
There is scepticism that local governments are corrupt and empowerment of these institutions will result in more corruption. It is true that locally elected governments are likely to be as decent or corrupt as centralised governments. There is no greater morality in local governments. But as the government is local, and people understand the links between their vote and public good, and taxes and services, they will assert to hold the government to account and improve the quality of our democracy. It is with the intention to improve the quality of democracy that the 73rd and 74th amendments were introduced in the cconstitution. Moreover, we must remember that there is corruption at all levels of governance in India. It would be unwise for the
It is futile to lament the rise of narrow and exclusivist regional feelings. Instead, it is important to recognise that peoples longing for better governance is being channeled through divisive ideologies. Therefore, the best way to combat the menace of many violent ideologies in the coming decades is to empower people. The constitution has provided us with a wide range of institutions, processes and tools to empower people. The best way forward is by creating accountable and empowered local governments. The quality of a republic should be judged not merely by its international stature and GDP. Rather, the focus should also be on the relationship that a citizen has with the government. People in India either fear government or have contempt for it and we need to repair this unhealthy relationship. Empowered local governance is a significant step in repairing the relationship. Educated Indians, middle class and youth must step forward to re-engineer and take part in our governance processes. It is only through sustained civic action that we can strengthen the Indian republic. After all, it is our republic. n Narayan, a former IAS officer, is the founder-president of the Lok Satta party and a member of the Andhra assembly. info@loksattaparty.com
Gagandeep Kaur | class XII, Government Girls Senior Secondary School No. 1, Shakti Nagar, New Delhi
I am proud of my country... People belong to different communities but everybody has the right to practise their religion. There should be a retirement age for political leaders. We dont have the right to blame the government for the wrongs if we dont vote. Our participation is required to make a difference.
Rudrakshi Bhuyan, 29 actor and chorister
Reeta Bhuyan, 63 Housewife
Guwahati
Bhuyan Family
The plight of children bothers me. Destitute children are treated as deviants, criminals, outcasts. The more fortunate ones are subjected to all kinds of demands by their parents because they want to prepare them for their uncertain future.
Sattyakee Dcom Bhuyan, 34 theatre personality and music critic
One of the common problems faced by new as well as established democracies all over the world is political apathy and low levels of participation among the young generation and this is also seen in Assam. I was raised in Shillong and things were different in our days. A lot has changed over the years and its about time people should think on these lines to improve the conditions of the state and the country. It is time for the younger generation to gear up and be more active on these lines and make the country a better place to live in.
Guwahati city is indeed on the edge, with unplanned development and no concern for environment. The city is pushed to the limits of jeopardy. Greenery and water bodies are becoming extinct altering the city horrendously.
R E P U B L I C AT 6 0 The mess in the parties
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister and BSP supremo Mayawati is accused of dictatorial ways.
citizens but how do they become candidates, who makes them candidates? The answer is not hard to find. It is the political parties who authorise candidates to contest elections on their behalf and on their symbols. A standard scenario during pre-election days is the following: There are crowds in front of the offices of all major parties. The media is full of reports that lists of probable candidates have been sent by state units to the so-called high command which makes the final decision in almost all parties. This process shows that the real power in making hopefuls into candidates lies with the political parties. Reports often surface about hopefuls having to pay in cash or in kind to secure the nomination from a particular party and for a particular constituency. It should be evident from the above that the choice that voters have and can exercise is limited or constrained by the choice made by political parties. After getting the nomination from the party, the candidates contest the election, often spending a substantial amount of their own money and sometimes taking help from dubious quarters. The candidates, who get elected, do not have the freedom to vote in the legislative business of the house that they are elected for. The anti-defection
End this hegemony of high command

Just the one step of introducing internal democracy in the functioning of political parties will take care of a lot of ills that plague our democracy today.
Jagdeep S. Chhokar ndia has chosen to be a representative democracy. The citizens/voters choose their representatives through periodic elections which in turn determine who will govern the country till the next elections. While India has often been referred to as a vibrant democracy, and with considerable
In the recently concluded elections in Jharkhand, 59 (out of 81) constituencies had three or more candidates with criminal cases pending against them. One constituency had 11 and another had 10 candidates with criminal cases pending against them. Given this quality of candidates, what choice do voter have one either votes for a candidate with a criminal background or one does not vote at all!
justification, there are also some anomalies such as candidates getting elected with as little as seven to 10 percent of the registered voters voting for them, and as many as 73 percent of the elected MLAs having criminal cases pending against them according to sworn affidavits filed by the MLAs themselves as happened recently in the Jharkhand assembly elections. Voter apathy, more particularly among urban, economically better-off and educated voters, is often cited as a reason for several infirmities of the electoral process including low voter turnout. Why do voters vote the way they do?
is a question not easy to answer but it is worth examining what choice does a voter have. In the recently concluded elections in Jharkhand, 59 (out of 81) constituencies had three or more candidates with criminal cases pending against them. One constituency had 11 and another had 10 candidates with criminal cases pending against them. Given this quality of candidates, what choice do voters have one either votes for a candidate with a criminal background or one does not vote at all! A logical question that arises is: Where do the candidates come from? Yes, they come from society, from among the
law and the institution of the whip ensure that the choice of an elected legislator is controlled by the political party whose nomination the legislator is elected on. The above sequence shows the importance of political parties in our democracy and the electoral process. It is impossible to conceive of a democracy and particularly a parliamentary democracy such as ours without political parties. Even the Supreme Court has said that political parties are integral to the governance of a democratic society. They perform the critical function of mobilising and organising public opinion and function as a link between the public at large and the government, particularly its political wing. While they are a necessary mechanism for the functioning of a democracy, it is paradoxical that a number of them are highly undemocratic in their own internal functioning. We
all know of political parties and leading ones at that both nationally and regionally, in which internal elections are hardly ever held and even if they are held, they appear to be more like manufactured consent. While the recent attempts by the Indian Youth Congress and the Congressaffiliated National Students Union of India (NSUI) are encouraging, it seems a long way for the parent Indian National Congress to have real elections for its office bearers. Doubts, and possibly fears, about internal democracy are already causing flutters in the Congress. It was recently reported (The Indian Express, January 2) that some Congress leaders idea of internal democracy in the party is not to put to vote the issue of Sonia Gandhis leadership but to open the doors for a new set of leaders with mass base at lower and middle rungs in the party hierarchy, from block to district to state
Congress committees. It is these internally undemocratic parties which often claim to be the upholders of the democratic tradition in the country or in their respective states. Internal democracy need not be limited only to the election of top leadership of political parties. Even middle and lower level leaders should be elected democratically rather than nominated. The nomination of candidates for contesting elections also needs to be done democratically rather than candidates being foisted on constituencies by almost parachuting them into the constituency on the basis of crass calculations on caste, community, religion, and other such extraneous basis rather than acceptability to the electorate of the constituency. The practice of central observers going to states to oversee the so-called election of the leader of the state legislature party who is to be the chief minister, and all the legislators invariably unanimously authorising the central leadership of the party to select, nominate or appoint the chief minister which happens in all the parties is nothing short of a travesty of democracy. The lack of democracy in the internal functioning of political parties has other deleterious consequences. One especially harmful is the fragmentation of the polity. Fragmentation of the polity can also be referred to as preventing the divide and rule phenomenon which is popularly associated with the British government in India. What is often not recognised is that we seem to have also inherited this divide and rule policy. Its operation has continued over the last many years to the overall detriment of the nation. Who is using this divide and rule policy? Why? And how? The answer is contained in the question itself. Who can use such a policy except the rulers? And who has been ruling the country for the last 60 years? The answer: The politicians. Why have the politicians been dividing the nation? Simply because it gets them elected. And they have been doing so by continuing to split political parties into smaller and smaller factions, thereby also fragmenting the electorate and the polity at large. Lets begin with the big ones. The Indian National Congress has undergone five major splits since 1969 giving rise to eight different formations in addition to the so-called parent grouping. The greatest achiever in the regard is
R E P U B L I C AT 6 0 The mess in the parties
When you cant question Mulayam, Mayawati or Sonia, wheres the scope for democracy?
e claim to be the largest democracy in the world but we fail to realise that our so-called democracy is restricted to merely holding elections. We have been so taken in by electoral democracy that we have focused almost exclusively on holding good, better, more transparent elections and we have taken great pride in our success. This alone, however, does not and cannot ensure democracy. We need to understand that unless Shahid our political parties become democratic we cannot have deSiddiqui mocracy. And the fact is that our political parties are completely Ex-member, Rajya Sabha undemocratic. In a situation where no party member can question a Mulayam Singh Yadav, or a Mayawati, or a Sonia Gandhi, where is the scope for democracy? These and other such leaders are completely autocratic and feudal in their thinking, in their functioning and in their behaviour. How can such undemocratic leaders and undemocratic parties bring in democracy into the system? Why do we need democracy, in any case? Lets be very clear that we did not adopt democracy just because we love holding elections. We need democracy because we believe only democracy can ensure justice. Thats why the lack of democracy within the political parties is such a serious problem. Why dont people, including the academia and the media, question this lack of democracy? The reason is partly that we the people are also yet to get over our feudal mindsets. With the result that a few families, led by the supposed pillar of our democracy, the Nehru-Gandhi family, are able to rule the entire country. If you question the status quo, many people actually turn around and ask: what is wrong with Rahul Gandhis ascent if he has been democratically elected? We really need to look closer and see the money power and muscle power that propel our leaders to power. Can we even pretend that somebody without such backing would stand any chance against such politicians? Because a few mainstream parties could not have represented the aspirations of the entire country, we have seen the emergence of several regional parties, including the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, the Samajwadi Party and the Akali Dal. Once any such party comes to power, though, it gets to abuse the resources of the state and thus begins the hegemony of a single family within the party. That is how, for example, the Akali Dal, which emerged from a genuine movement of the Sikh peasantry, came to be dominated by the Badal family. Though the constitution did not spell out the role of the political parties, the anti-defection law recognised the political parties and handed over the reins of power to a few satraps. So, how can we address this complex issue? Well, first, we need to restrict the ambit of the anti-defection law to money bills and allow proper parliamentary debates on all other pieces of legislation. Second, and equally important, we need to restrict the use of money power in elections. While the feudal mindset of the society at large will take time to transform, we can make a small but effective beginning through these measures. Siddiqui is a former Rajya Sabha member, Samajwadi Party. He later joined the Bahujan Samaj Party but was expelled for crtiticising Mayawati. He is also the editor of the Urdu daily Nai Duniya.
what was called the Janata Party in 1977. After splitting countless times, the number of formations it has resulted in adds up to something like 24. The regional parties too suffer from such splits. Starting with the DK of Periyar Ramaswamy we now have the DMK, AIADMK, MDMK and the PMK in Tamil Nadu. The irony of parties splitting was captured in a newspaper headline some time ago that said, Further Split in Janata Dal (United). This fragmentation of the polity seems to call for replacement of the phrase unity in diversity with utility of diversity at least for the politicians. The splitting of political parties and the consequent fragmentation of the polity are direct outcomes of lack of internal democracy in political parties. The authoritarian and undemocratic way that all parties function leaves no room for expression of dissent in the proceedings of political parties. If someone has a genuine difference of opinion on a particular issue with the socalled high command of or the dominant coalition in the party, and is not allowed to
While political parties are a necessary mechanism for the functioning of a democracy, it is paradoxical that a number of them are highly undemocratic in their internal functioning.
express it, the only options for her/him are to either keep quiet or to leave the party. This is possibly one of the main reasons for the constant splits in political parties. Jharkhand also provided another lesson after the 2004 election that our political parties seem to have obstinately refused to learn. After the 2004 state assembly election, some of the so-called major political parties had to support a government led by independent MLAs. The functioning and the outcome of that government is an instructive story in itself. The lesson was that unless the political establishment gets its act together, it runs a grave risk of becoming irrelevant, or at least being overtaken by events which may well be beyond its control. Political parties must learn to put their own houses in order without which they cannot perform their legitimate and necessary role of mobilising, consolidating, and leading public opinion. Being democratic in their internal functioning is a necessary prerequisite for that. The whole system of governance in the
country is laid down in the constitution which We, the People of India gave unto ourselves on November 26, 1949. Despite being the longest written constitution in the world, it is silent on the issue of functioning of political parties. Some of us might find it surprising that the Constituent Assembly did not deem it necessary to mention anything about this. In my opinion, this is because the constitution was drafted by a group of principled and high-minded people. In their deliberations on the future of the nation, they were perhaps influenced by their idealism, particularly in the immediate afterglow of independence. I assume they must have thought that people similar to them would lead the country even in the years to come. The Indian genius has certainly evolved over the last 60 years and at least in some ways the socio-political milieu of India has changed almost beyond recognition. Some of the assumptions and expectations of members of the Constituent Assembly are therefore unfortunately not valid today. The changes in the ground situation in the country over 50 years prompted the Law Commission of India to apply its mind to the electoral system in the country. In its 170th report titled Reform of the Electoral Laws submitted in May 1999, the commission observed that if democracy and accountability constitute the core of our constitutional system, the same concepts must also apply to and bind the political parties which are integral to parliamentary democracy. It is the political parties that form the government, man the parliament and run the governance of the country. It is therefore necessary to introduce internal democracy, financial transparency and accountability in the working of the political parties. A political party which does not respect democratic principles in its internal working cannot be expected to respect those principles in the governance of the country. It cannot be dictatorship internally and democratic in its functioning outside (para 3.1.2.1). Based on its analysis, the commission concluded: With a view to introduce and ensure internal democracy in the functioning of political parties, to make their working transparent and open and to ensure that the political parties become effective instruments of achieving the constitutional goals set out in the preamble and parts III and IV of the constitution of India, it is necessary
The one step, of introducing internal democracy in the functioning of political parties, will perhaps take care of a lot of ills that are plaguing our democracy today. But the political establishment is not going to do it of its own free will, possibly because there is comfort in familiarity with the existing systems.
to regulate by law their formation and functioning (emphasis supplied) (Para 3.1.2). To operationalise its recommendation, the commission has given the text of a new part to be added to the Representation of the People Act, 1951, titled Organisation of Political Parties and matters incidental thereto. The suggested text specifies things such as regular holding of elections and transparency in financial affairs. Non-observance of these provisions will attract derecognition as a political party. It will mean that the party will cease to exist legally as a political party and consequently will neither be able to put up candidates for elections nor be entitled to facilities and benefits that would be available to registered political parties. This report was submitted to the law ministry in May 1999. Nothing worthwhile has come of it so far except token references to it from time to time. This one step, of introducing internal democracy in the functioning of political parties, will perhaps take care of a lot of ills that are plaguing our democracy today. But the political establishment is not going to do it of its own free will, possibly because there is comfort in familiarity with the existing systems. The only hope is that persistent and relentless pressure from all quarters the public, the media, whatever will make the political establishment move in the right direction. n Chhokar was dean at IIM, Ahmedabad and is a founder of Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) and National Election Watch (NEW). jchhokar@ gmail.com
Swati Sood | B.Sc. Honours (Computer Science) II year, Kalindi College, New Delhi
We dont really feel part of anything happening in the country. We vote but we dont really think we can change anything. But the scene will be different two years from now. Once we start working, we will be able to bring about a change in the country.
Sarthak Khanna | class XI, Ramjas School, New Delhi
No one will listen to us if we raise our voice. I play football and once went to Ambedkar stadium for training. They only take those with influence. The schemes for the poor are just an eyewash. All of it ends once the media covers it. But our freedom of speech and expression is something I am proud of.
R E P U B L I C AT 6 0 VOICES
Jayashree Kadam, 64 housewife
Jaisingh Sambhaji Kadam, 66 chawl dweller, retired
Jatin Jaisingh Kadam, 37 clerk, Mumbai Port Trust
Har Har Chawl

Lalbaug, Mumbai
We have lived in this 9/10 feet room with our five children since 1967, and there has always been water problem here. Every morning I get up at 4o clock to fill water for the house. It has become a habit to live with basic problems. When my children were small, school fees was less, now it is very high. Everything is very expensive. An honest person cannot survive. People who dont work have beautiful houses but honest and hardworking people struggle all their lives.
Everything is so expensive and the government is not doing anything. Law-makers have become law-breakers. Every five years we choose our representatives. But criminals like Shibu Soren get elected on the basis of money power. Politicians have so much money, where does this come from? Twenty per cent of the time politicians work for the public and eighty per cent of the time they work for themselves, their relatives and friends. The aim is to have power and make money. An honest and good person cannot enter politics as you need money to contest elections. Earlier leaders used to go to jail for national pride, now they go to jail for crime and corruption.
Government cannot look after each and every person. It can provide for the masses. It is us, who are the government as we elect our representatives. It is understood that one has to accept problems and carry on. I participate in community and social issues. Our system is such that the government does not do much for its citizens and you get fed up chasing solutions to everyday problems. People too must have inbuilt civic sense to keep their city clean.
Rohini Jatin Kadam, 30, shipping company employee
Supriya Sudesh Nalawade, 42 housewife Madhavi Shrikant Bhonsale, 34 advertising agency executive
Sudesh Anant Nalawade, 45 police sub-inspector
I feel sad for slum children and wish to do something for them. We are a working couple and travelling in Mumbai is a big problem. I have never seen the government reaching out to the ordinary man.
People have to change their mindset. I do not expect anything from the government. At my mothers house we have always had water problem which has not been solved in many years, but at my husbands house, which is two buildings away, we dont have water problem!
For the common man there has been no progress, but rich are getting empowered. There are many deserving people in deprived-class who are intelligent but they do not progress. It is only the upper-class people who progress. We struggle with everyday problems like water. Rich people have plenty of water though there are very few people in their houses. There are so many new bridges being constructed in Mumbai that will benefit later generation, what about current generation who are struggling with basic needs?
Before independence people didnt have aims for self-enrichment, whereas now everyone enters politics with an aim. Politicians only come for one day before elections to seek votes. Visibly, public good is never a concern. Our housing, water and road problems remain unaddressed. When public asks them to help they have no funds. They tell you to make an application and say they will see what can be done. Nothing is.
R E P U B L I C AT 6 0 Party Stand
RAVI CHoUDHARY
INTERVIEW
Two-party system would be ideal and most suitable for the country
The malaise that has gripped the electoral process needs to be purged to make the government sensitive to peoples problems. Now it is dominated by the 3Cs, cash, caste and criminals.
itin Gadkari, 52, belongs to a new generation of BJP leaders on whom the party has pinned high hopes. When he succeeded Rajnath Singh as the BJP president, there was skepticism all around. Some described him as a rubber stamp of the RSS which is hell-bent on controlling the countrys second largest national political party. In an interview with managing editor Ajay Singh, Gadkari talked about the constitution, its efficacy and shortcomings and his views on its possible review. Excerpts:
constitution, how would you describe the functioning of the Republic? Have we achieved what we set out to achieve 60 years back?
decentralise power and empower panchayats and local bodies. In reality this has not happened.
Sixty years after adopting the

I will not blame the constitution for the present ills. It is an excellent document and there is no reason to change the spirit of the constitution. But there are certain discrepancies which need to be corrected. For instance, irrigation is a state subject. Despite India being an agrarian economy, irrigation was never factored into the economic planning. This is reflected in the fact that there is shortage of drinking water in villagers but there is plenty of liquor. This caused the whole planning to go haywire. Similarly, Rajiv Gandhi made an attempt to
Do you think that the federal system is flawed as it weakens the centre? The BJP has always been in favour of a strong centre.
The constitution has provided enough strength to the centre to let it feel strong. On the other hand, we will favour a strong centre which justifiably devolves its powers and resources to states. There are instances of the BJP-ruled states being discriminated against by the centre. This is wrong. We will continue to resist this trend.
As the BJP president, do you think
Of course, the two-party system would be ideal and most suitable for the country like India. But it cannot be enforced in the given circumstances. In my view, elections are not an end in themselves. The malaise that has gripped the electoral process needs to be purged to make the government sensitive to peoples problems. Now it is dominated by the 3Cs, cash, caste and criminals. The brazen use of cash in the elections is there for all to see in recent elections. It needs to be changed forthwith. There is hardly
that the two-party system would be good for India? Do you believe that the multi-party system given by the constitution is the cause of casteism and regionalism?
Sucheta De | councillor, JNU Students Union
There is no blot on the BJP on (account of) Gujarat riots. In 1993, more serious riots struck Mumbai leading to the removal of the then chief minister. But the media never described that as a blot on the Congress. Does a chief minister go around with a pistol shooting people during a riot? This is the kind of pseudo-secularism practised by the media which the BJP desists. This group has successfully painted the BJP as communal in peoples perception.
any political party which undertakes programme for political education of the masses. Is this not a travesty of governance that there are rural areas worse than Somalia in every respect? There are no schools and drinking water. But these issues are at best ignored by parties and leaders. Similarly, I am really surprised at the stubbornness of the Election Commission in not reviewing the use of electronic voting machines. There are many countries which have outright rejected EVMs. And there are genuine doubts about the amenability of EVMs to manipulation.. chief minister. But the media never described that as a blot on the Congress. Does a chief minister go around with a pistol shooting people during a riot? This is the kind of pseudo-secularism practised by the media which the BJP desists. Tell me which BJP-ruled state is pursuing anti-Muslim policies? The per capita income of Muslims in Gujarat is far higher than any other states. Obviously the Gujarat government does not discriminate between Hindus and Muslims. Yes, we are against terrorists who kill and maim innocents. The BJP stands for strong nationalism, development and believes in putting down terrorism in the strongest possible manner unlike the Congress which is hesitant to execute parliament attack convict Afzal Guru. in Ayodhya. Let there be a mosque in a nearby place. We are not averse to any place of worship.
Nidhi Kamal | Philosophy Honours, III year, Miranda House, New Delhi
Do I think that the republic celebrates participation? No. Only a show of it, where a section of the population is allowed to participate and does so only nominally. This selective, nominal participation is that of the educated, urban upper middle class youth. 80 percent of the population, poor by official definition and cant even buy food, are being expected to buy education with the gradual privatisation of education. This is not what participation means in a true republic. How much does the government spend on education? Around 1.5 percent of the total expenditure in the annual budget last year went to higher education, while 16 percent was allocated to defence. Small wonder then that the Indian Army recruits a lot of college drop-outs. I am proud of peoples movements in the country and am ashamed of the everyday denial of basic human dignity to crores of Indians.
Dont you feel that after Gujarat riots you owe it Muslims to initiate a dialogue and reconciliation to dispel their fears of Muslims about the BJP?
What kind of amendment would you suggest in the constitution? Would you favour a complete restructuring of the constitution?
The basic structure of the constitution remains unalterable. Though there is need for a change, it has to be initiated by the prime minister by forming an all-party forum. Any such reform has to be initiated on the basis of consensus among all political parties. Any such move by one party or an individual would give scope for lot of misgivings and wrong interpretation which will harm the cause.
But there are instances of extrajudicial killings like that of Sohrabuddin?
It is not required. We are what we are. In Nagpur I am very popular among Muslims. As a minister in Maharashtra, I initiated action to recover Rs 4,000 crore worth of assets of the Waqf board usurped by anti-social elements. I do not think that we have to prove our credentials all over again. Is it not a fact that Dr APJ Abdul Kalam was made president during the NDA regime? Was it reflective of the BJPs anti-Muslim mindset? On the other hand the Congress hesitated to make him the president for the second time.
The Gujarat riots stand out as an example to prove that the BJP does not believe in rule of law. Do you propose to initiate a reconciliation with Muslims to wash off this blot?
Let there be an inquiry on the issue. We have nothing to hide. If there is any wrong, the law will take its course. But for Gods sake do not see the BJP from the prism of pseudo-secularists. They blame us for demolition of the Babri Mosque without realising the fact that there was no mosque. It was a disputed structure.
There is a general impression, not without basis, that the RSS is running the BJP. Does this not go against the constitution that a national party is being dictated to by an organisation which is not accountable to the people?
A: There is no blot on the BJP on (account of) Gujarat riots. In 1993, more serious riots struck Mumbai leading to the removal of the then
Dont you feel that the constitution was violated in letter and spirit when the mosque was demolished?
No . There was no existence of the mosque. It was a disputed structure. There is nothing wrong in our desire to build a Ram temple
This is absolutely wrong. From day one I have been hearing this that I am an RSS nominee. The fact is that the RSS has neither the desire nor the ambition to control the BJP. Yes, I come from an RSS background. I go to shakhas in khakis. But that does not mean the RSS controls me. They guide us on certain occasions, deploy good organisation men to the BJP to facilitate the party work. Thats all. n
It is easy for youngsters like us to find flaws with the system, but most of us dont want to do anything to change the system. Half of us would prefer to go and settle abroad instead of changing the governance of our country. The main problem with India is that it needs a shock or an event to make a law or policy or to act upon something. The state is not there to prevent a mishap, but it comes in only for crisis management. Delhi Metro, for example, wasnt built for the convenience of the public but to portray a cool image of the country during the Commonwealth Games. Had they been thinking about the public, the Metro would have come years earlier.
Rhea Khanna | class IX, Utpal Sanghvi School, Juhu, Mumbai
Nebula Castalino | class X, Jamnabai Narsee School, Juhu, Mumbai
The government should keep subjects optional as subjects like Marathi are tough to learn. I dont think the government is involving us in policy making. Our country has rich culture and heritage and I am proud of that but poverty, dirt, corruption and crime in our country makes me feel ashamed.
India is a democratic country and it is good to enjoy your freedom up to a particular limit. The government should address poverty and unemployment. It is not doing enough. People elect their leaders, so the leaders must be responsible towards them and give attention to their problems. Once in a while when the government does reach out to people it becomes breaking news. Later it all cools down and there are no results. What I am proud of? We are the only country that is tolerant of all religions.
R E P U B L I C AT 6 0 Lording Over The Legislature

2005 2006 2007 2008 2009
The 160 structural issues are a mixed bag, some easier 140 to fix than the others. A good place to start the 120 discussion is the power to convene parliament. Article 100 empowers the president 85 to summon parliament. She 80 follows the advice of the council of ministers. So, 60 effectively, the government decides when parliament is 40 going to meet to oversee its (governments) functioning.
20
Parliament needs to find its voice

It is the house of the people, but it cant convene itself. MPs are the voice of the people, but they cant even talk out of party line. This needs immediate fixing. Good news is, its not impossible.
C.V. Madhukar and Chakshu Roy ver the past few years, parliament and MPs have faced continued criticism. There are a number of things that ought to be better with our national law-making body. But before launching into a tirade, it might be useful for us to pause and understand some of the issues and constraints that prevent parliament and MPs from delivering to their fullest potential. The constitution framers created a democratic system wherein the legislature would make laws, the executive
Jagdish Yadav
would implement laws and be accountable to parliament and an independent judiciary would enforce and interpret the laws. They also put in systems of checks and balances among these three organs of the state. However, over the years, these three organs of the state have pushed the boundaries of their relationship with one another. There have been several instances over the last decade when the judiciary was seen as pushing the limits of its relationship with both the executive and the legislature. From ordering the use of CNG and cleaning of rivers to directing the convening of a legislative assembly and deciding its agenda for the day, the judiciary tested the extent of its powers in both the executive and legislative domains. The executive has also not been far behind in testing the equilibrium of its relationship with the judiciary and legislature. The passing of the Delhi sealing laws each year to provide protection from the sealing orders of the apex court is one example. While the passing of laws is a function of the legislature, in the last three decades only laws introduced by the government have been passed.
Another example of the executive pushing its relationship with the legislature is the continuation of the monsoon session from July to December in 2008. It is in this context that it would be useful to look at the effectiveness of parlia16 ment as an institution of governance. The backseat that parliament has taken 12over the years is highlighted by recent statistics across the spectrum of parlia8mentary functioning some examples being the least number of working days and eight bills passed in 17 minutes in 4 2008 and 28 MPs being absent during question hour in 2009. If numbers are 0an indication of the performance of an 2004 2005 2007 2009 institution then2006 on the face 2008 of it, parliament has fallen short in discharging its constitutional duty of effectively scrutinising laws before passing them and
1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009
Time Spent Debating Bills Lok Sabha

60
50
15
40
16 27 8 12 5 14 7 9 16 9 13 15 8 18
30
20
10
2005
2006
2007 20min to 2hr
2008 2hr+
2009
Less than 20min
overseeing the work of the government. MPs have primarily four functions: (i) scrutinise every piece of legislation that is introduced both in the house and in standing committees, (ii) oversee the functioning of the government of India, (iii) debate the budget and demands for grants and (iv) represent the concern of their constituents in parliament. Lets look at the two sets of issues that parliament has to contend with in discharging these duties. The first set of issues is structural in nature or pertains to the capabilities of parliament/MPs. The second set of issues pertains to how parliamentary practice has evolved in the last 60 years. The structural issues are a mixed bag, some easier to fix than the others. A good place to start the discussion on them would be the power to convene parliament. Article 85 of the constitution empowers the president to summon parliament. And the president follows the advice of the council of ministers. So, effectively, the government decides when parliament is going to meet to oversee its functioning. Statistics show a sharp decline in the number of sitting days of parliament. Between 1952 and 1972 the Lok Sabha worked for an average of 120 days in a year. In comparison it worked for an average of 70 working days in the last decade. Parliaments inability to convene itself and a decline in the number of working days of parliament has been a cause for concern for MPs and presiding officers of both houses. In light of the fact that parliament does not have the power to convene itself, a solution that has been attempted is to fix a minimum number of working days for it in a year. The National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution had recommended that a minimum number of working days for Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha should be fixed at 120 and 100 respectively. Vice President Hamid Ansari while inaugurating the Whips Conference in 2008 had suggested an increase in the number of sittings of parliament to 130 days per annum. In 2008, Rajya Sabha MP Mahendra Mohan introduced a private member bill to amend the constitution to specify a minimum of 120 working days. In the winter session of parliament that concluded last month, the government opposed the concept of a minimum number of working days. Some state legislative assemblies have
Sandeep Kumar | class XII, DTEA Senior Secondary School, New Delhi
Voting power is in our hands but I dont think we have a say in the policies that affect us. There is a lot of corruption. Our judicial process is very slow. We need leaders like Mahatma Gandhi.
Abhinav Shankar | class X, The Mothers International School, New Delhi
Quality of governance mainly depends on the participation of common people in the decision making of the government. Although there has been an increase in participation recently, it is largely restricted to the educated and the rich.
R E P U B L I C AT 6 0 Lording over Legislature
Ashish asthana
addressed this problem by specifying a minimum number of working days in their rules of procedure. The Orissa assembly has a mandatory provision specifying the number of days that it would meet and the Uttar Pradesh assembly has a provision which states that best efforts would be made to work for a speci160 fied number of days. Since the constitution empowers parliament to make its own rules 140 for functioning, it can make a rule to the same effect. A 120 second issue parliament faces is that of resources for its 100 members. Critics would point out that parliament has an ample budget at its dispos80 al. The parliament secretariat is staffed with highly skilled and60 professional officers and the library in parliament house is possibly the best in the country. MPs have access40 to a typing pool inside parliament and are given a computer and internet at their homes and a mobile phone with 20 free call facility. They are also given an allowance of Rs 10,000 per month to hire 0 secretarial help and another Rs 20,000 per month as an allowance to maintain
Number of MPs discussing a Bill
Note: This analysis does not include Finance and Appropriation Bills
16
12
0
2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009
their constituency office. Given the role that MPs need to perform the question that needs to be asked is whether they have the resources available to them to effectively discharge their duties. To scrutinise legislation they have to examine bills on a wide range of subjects, technical and nuanced in nature and full of legalese. To debate the general and railway budgets they should be able to understand concepts of macroeconomics, taxation and other financial matters. To represent their constituents
they should have a good understanding law was to combat the evil of political of the needs of lakhs of people spread defections. The anti-defection proviover a large geographical area. In keepsions provide stability to the government ing the government accountable they are by preventing shifts of party allegiance. up against a minister who has the entire These provisions also ensure that candiresources of the government of India at dates elected with party symbols and on her/his disposal. the basis of party manifestos remain loyWithout competent research staff it is al to party policies. impossible for any MP to comprehend Dr Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan, the first the complex policy questions that come chairman of the Rajya Sabha, had obup for debate in parliament. Similarly served that, parliament is not only a without adequate staff in the constituenlegislative but also a deliberative body. cy they cannot understand or respond to The provisions of the anti-defection law the issues faced by their constituents. The have a significant impact on the way MPs press often highare able to exlights the amount Strengthening the institution press their views of money spent on inside parliaof parliament is not an MPs salaries and ment. Their freeallowances. The impossible task it requires dom of speech cost of providing better imagination and a and expression is these resources is curbed because nothing compared sustained effort to build even though they to the benefits that consensus. can voice the conthe country would cerns of their votreap by having laws ers, they cannot and policies which vote according to have been deliberated by informed MPs their conscience in opposition to the ofwho keep the government on its toes by ficial party position. The impact of the asking the ministers tough questions. anti-defection provisions can be seen in Not providing these resources to MPs the fact that in the 14th Lok Sabha there and still expecting them to perform their were only 20 instances when recorded functions effectively is a prescription for voting took place and almost all legislafailure. tive business was conducted by voice A third but perhaps the toughest strucvote. tural issue that is faced by parliament In the UK, parties at times announce is that of the anti-defection law. It was something called a free vote. What it passed in 1985 through the 52nd amendmeans is that for a particular legislative ment, which added the 10th Schedule to agenda MPs are free to vote as they wish the constitution. The main intent of the and are not controlled by whips issued
by parties. Rajya Sabha Chairman Hamid Ansari made a similar suggestion recently. He said, We need to build a political consensus so that the room for political and policy expression in parliament for an individual member is expanded. This could take many forms. For example, the issuance of a whip could be limited to only those bills that could threaten the survival of a government, such as money bills or no-confidence motions. In other legislative and deliberative business of parliament, this would enable members to exercise their judgment and articulate their opinion. Having examined some structural/capacity issues it would now be useful to look at the evolution of parliamentary practices over the last six decades. Let us take the example of the passage of multiple bills while the house witnesses a disruption. In 2008, 16 bills and in 2009, nine bills were passed with less than 20 minutes of debate on each of them. Passage of bills with little or no debate is an area of concern. Parliament watchers attribute this phenomenon to the fact that bills get scrutinised in committees, so debate in the house becomes redundant. The role of the standing committee is to scrutinise the bill carefully and thereafter submit a report which would assist the house in its debate. Examination of a bill by the committee is not a substitute for debate in the house. Laws made by parliament affect the lives of every citizen and such responsibility
Hours spent on Budget discussions in Lok Sabha

160
* includes Interim Budget, General Budget, Railways Budget, Finance bill and Demands for Grants
140
120
100
80
60
40
20
1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009
should not be taken lightly. By letting the held, an MP does not press for his bill to government push through a bill without be taken up for consideration and passdebate MPs are surrendering their own ing by the house. Instead of having the authority as legislators. house decide whether the bill should be A close scrutiny of parliaments func- passed or not, by a voice vote or a recordtioning would show that the first hour in ed vote, the MP withdraws the bill at the both houses is often disrupted. The first request of the minister. The withdrawhour is reserved for MPs to ask ques- al of the bill would have made sense if tions to ministers. the MP did so afThis is one occasion The cost of providing ter extracting an when MPs cutting assurance from resources to MPs is nothing across party lines the minister that can hold the gov- compared to the benefits the government ernment account- that the country would reap would introduce able for its actions. a similar bill. by having laws and policies Question hour also However, when a allows other MPs to that have been deliberated by bill is withdrawn ask supplementary informed MPs who keep the without such an questions to minisassurance, it robs government on its toes. ters. While time lost the house of an due to disruptions opportunity to can be made up by consider a piece working late in the of legislation evening, the time lost in question hour which was debated in the house. Voting cannot be made up. As a result every dis- on every private member bill for conruption of question hour is a lost oppor- sideration and passing would force the tunity for MPs to oversee the function- government to take notice of the legislaing of the government. Similarly, when tive intent of MPs. This is something that Lok Sabha MPs are not present during would only change when MPs start asquestion hour a golden opportunity to serting themselves as legislators. cross-question ministers is lost. The RaParliament currently faces a number jya Sabha has, however, responded to the of issues. However, it has not lost focus situation. It recently amended its rules of of its responsibilities. The institution procedure so that even if the MP asking may be ailing but can be nursed back to the question was absent, the minister health. In 2009, parliament spent more would still have to respond to the ques- time scrutinising the budget than the tion. This would open the door for asking previous couple of years. The year also supplementary questions to the minister. witnessed members cutting across parAnother practice in parliament is that ty lines opposing the introduction of the of the non-passage of private member Judges (Declaration of Assets and Liabilbills. All MPs other than ministers and ities) Bill forcing the minister to not inthe presiding officers are referred to as troduce it. Rajya Sabhas amendment of the private members. Besides the bills its procedure related to questions is also introduced by ministers private mem- a step in the right direction, something bers are also entitled to introduce bills which the Lok Sabha speaker is also in parliament. The second half of every considering. Friday, when parliament is in session, is Strengthening the institution of parreserved for debating private member liament is not an impossible task it rebills and other business raised by pri- quires better imagination and a sustained vate members. Over the years, MPs have effort to build consensus. Research staff introduced numerous private member and adequate office resources to MPs, enbills. However, the last time a private suring that parliament is convened for a member bill was passed was in 1970. Till minimum number of days, giving MPs date only 14 private member bills have the right to vote according to their conbeen passed. science on issues which do not affect the The problem is two fold; the first is that fate of the government can go a long way since only half a day is reserved in a week in ensuring that parliament functions in for private member business a majority a manner that the constitution framers of private member bills do not even get intended it to do. n debated in parliament. This is something that can be easily addressed by changing The authors are with PRS Legislative Rethe rules of procedure of both houses. search (www.prsindia.org). madhukar@ The second is that even after a debate is prsindia.org, chakshu@prsindia.org
1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009
Tariq Ahmad Dar, 28, model
Dar Family
Gazi Gulam Nabi Kashmiri, 56
Delhi
The government exists because of the people, but sadly it is least bothered about us. As a responsible citizen and an author, I feel, the government does not care. According to me, the majority of the population is not empowered. The rising prices are a clear manifestation of an individuals non-participation in governance. The government will do what it wants to do without consulting those who are affected the most. I wish the government made a serious attempt to reach out to the last needy person, but unfortunately it is not happening. The indifference and lethargy of the governments can be largely attributed to lack of new thinking in its setup. Its time the oldies in the government are shunted out and young men and women get a chance to prove their mettle.
I do not think I am part of the government or the progress or change. I would say the government is not bothered. I am not saying this because I have been through an ordeal that lasted three long months. My anguish comes from the fact that there are several others who are languishing in jails for days and months though they are innocent. I have been a victim of states indifference and its ruthlessness in equal measures. I was branded a terrorist and kept in states custody for 90 days. My repeated pleas of innocence went unheard. Therefore, I feel I am not empowered. Also, I dont think anyone including me has any say in any of the government policies. Ideally, the government should have devised a mechanism wherein the opinion of the common populace is taken into account. Sadly that is not the case. If you remember, Mughal Emperor Akbar used to dress up as a commoner and mixed among them to know how his policies affected them. I wonder if our own government could emulate him. As a far as reaching out the last needy citizen is concerned, the government has done a bad job of it. Governments welfare schemes are devised with good intension but sadly they remain only on paper. If only the government took some more responsibility and tracked the money spent on the poor, it would be able to reach out to the majority of its citizen. We need more accountability and more transparency in the governments functioning. All is not gloom and doom though. There are officials who are doing stupendous job. More and more youngsters are coming forward and becoming part of the governance process. Also, a word for Indias secularism I am proud of it. Majority of Indians are peace loving people and they have respect for all religion and communities.
42 GovernanceNow GovernanceNow| |December January 26, 26,2010 2009
R E P U B L I C AT 6 0
As h i s h Ast ha na
Radicalising Democracy
Pradeep Bhargava Janus-faced civil society in India has made important contributions to the state of governance and towards realisation of rights to its citizens. It has worked with people in addressing their concerns and at the same time advocated with the state attempting to reformulate the programme for radical democracy. In Roman mythology, Janus, the god of doorways, gates, and transitions, faces both forwards and backwards. Janus symbolises change and transitions: progression from the past to the future, of one condition to another, of one vision to another, and of one universe to another. He was representative of the middle ground between barbarity and civilisation, rural country and urban cities, and youth and adulthood. Civil society, for example, interacting simultaneously with people and the state has been able to get the Right to Information Act and the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act in place. These are historical achievements in favour of the poor. In these attempts, however, it has failed to a very large extent to radicalise democracy. On the contrary, in its mission, this essay argues, it unintendedly established the hegemony of the state through law. Civil
Civil society feeds the beast it wants to fight
By battling for individual rights rather than collective self-rule, civil society is only perpetuating the strong state.
society are open spaces for debate relatively free from state control, but in its Janus-faced character, it wins in its mission (enactment of Acts) through debates free from state control but then surrenders. Civil society closes the doors upon itself surrendering to the Act it helped to formulate, and the state now defines boundaries of debate. Civil society loses its chance to radicalise democracy. It has this
faith in the law of the land, laws that support and build a strong centralised state. The Encarta dictionary describes the Janus-faced (two faced) as insincere or hypocritical. It is also described as a double-dealing double agent; a double-faced infernal traitor and schemer. This is not at all the case with civil society we shall pursue here. It is the mindsets of change agents that their efforts strengthen the state but they actually fall short of radicalising democracy. This cannot and should not be taken for insincerity or hypocrisy. There are both advantages and limitations of a Janusfaced kind of working simultaneously with the people and the state. At the time of independence, the Indian nation aspired also to develop like its erstwhile masters. The thinkers and destiny makers wanted India to be modern like the developed and the rich world; and perceived of a strong state owning large basic industries. And for this they conceived individual rights as foremost, and to bring equality among people a policy of positive discrimination. And they conceived a centralised welfare state that would deliver services for the welfare of the individuals in the masses. This, they perhaps thought was the best alternative. And also they thought would be useful to bind a country as large
R E P U B L I C AT 6 0 Radicalising Democracy
dainik bh ask ar
and heterogeneous as India, which would then march with other rich and developed countries of the world. The erstwhile masters willed to modernise us which required a set of rules, laws and practices, and to carry forward the mission. We accepted their philosophy of modernisation, social classifications and regimentation to a great extent in the independent state. What changed, and it did make a lot of difference, was that people elected their representatives, who would then enforce the above mentioned regimentation through the modern state. It took a queer logic of corruption that after 72 amendments in the constitution, the 73rd was to reform the service delivery mechanism of the welfare state and also to deepen regimentation through the panchayats, done with the rhetoric of decenRahul Gandhi gives a helping hand at a NREGA project. tralised governance and power to the people. The amendment recognised some collective rights, in this case reformed the state by underlinwhich the regimentation as has been proved ing the virtue of transparency. What could in the last decade, would not allow to be im- have been achieved by an administrative fiat plemented. The provisions remain the best and/or through an aware citizenry was transexamples of rhetoric the rights of people formed into an Act, first drafted none other over the forests. than by the leaders of the movement itself. In this democracy, civil society also emerged, In this manner the movement subjected itsharing some aspirations of the people, mod- self to the mentalities, rationalities and techern in outlook, with concern for the poor, de- niques of the state regimen within which the manding change and aiming to find solutions Act came to be drafted. Now that the Act is in within the spaces of the state. We shall see a place, the movement is struggling to get it imcouple of examples of their intervention in plemented, subjecting the worker to further greater detail. A simple demand for the worker in a relief work to be able to see what has been written against her name in the musteroll inspired a successful movement of civil society leading to the Right to Information Act. This was indeed a historic achievement. But this simple demand of the worker, if she makes one at all, has to be met through a regimented procedure and for whom moving through the regimentation entails high opportunity costs. Perhaps, it is the educated and enlightened modern class, which makes use of the Act more than the worker. With all the rhetoric of decentralised governance and power to the people, neither the Act nor the state could arrive at a simple mechanism to be transparent because that would break the myth of the strong state required to keep itself in place. Of course, the state would not like a simple mechanism, but civil society action
What could have been achieved by an administrative fiat and/or an aware citizenry was transformed into an Act (RTI), first drafted by the leaders of the movement itself. In this manner the movement subjected itself to the mentalities, rationalities and techniques of the state regimen within which the Act came to be drafted. And for the simple worker the Act is as much a monster as the collector.
more regimen. And for the simple worker the Act is as much of a monster as the collector. Some day when she would be literate, aware citizen and organised, then probably she may get some respite through the Act. But it is very likely that at such a stage she may not need the Act in the first place. In our governance methods it is not possible to be simple and straight, even at the local level, as it would break down the entire edifice which no one would risk. Is it possible for a worker to go and ask the block development officer or any such authority to demand work under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme and get an immediate response to report to work 10 days later? Again this is a landmark Act in which work is perceived as a right and it is the duty of the state to provide the work demanded. But this is given as an individual right and not as a collective right to a group of people. In fact, the movement for NREGA never demanded collective right, such has been the power of the state, which makes its citizens think like the state itself. The Constitution provides for fundamentals rights for each citizen, and the state is committed to protect individual rights. Civil society adapts these as its own values, beliefs and attitudes. Such
R E P U B L I C AT 6 0 Radicalising Democracy
Hitaishi Chopra | class XI, Ramjas School, New Delhi
Civil society agitations have been for this or that right and less for self-rule of the people by the people. The agencies tell people to fight for their right. The movement for self-rule or participation in governance at the local level is largely not on the agenda of civil society.
adaptation makes it subservient to the state. The distinctive feature of the NREGA is that work has to be provided on demand as matter of right, but when implementing, the governments have ensured that there be no mechanism to receive the application for work and so work would be provided as and when the government desires. The individual voices against this practice, if any, would be ignored and soon collective voices on this may be termed Naxal. Many NGOs in the country work with what they call the rights-based approach. Again, this is a method of locating identity in the state regimen. This is a tacit approval of a relationship of the citizen and the state or even the ruled and the ruler. Civil society agitations have been for this or that right and less for self-rule of the people by the people. Whether it is the state or the NGO with whom people interact, the question asked is what will these agencies do for them. Agencies tell them to fight for their right. The movement for self-rule or direct participation in governance at the local level is largely not on the agenda of civil society. And those who do ask spaces for local governance of their resources say those demanding self-rule as enshrined in the 73rd amendment, do not find favour with the state. It is in the nature of the state to not let loose its regimentation required for modernisation and development. The vast natural and mineral resources in Jharkhand, Orissa and Chhattisgarh have to be used for nation building and for exports in a global economy. These cannot be subjected to tribal self-rule as enshrined in the constitution. While not violating the constitution, the state has to ensure development by usurping resources and maintain law and order, and if there is demand for self-rule that prevents use of the resources, the state for its survival has to exercise its power to prevent the same. Confrontation is certain as those demanding self-rule are not subjecting
If we have one Rahul Gandhi in politics, we have 100 Mayawatis too. Illiteracy, poverty and unemployment are so rampant. No one listens to us. So many seats are reserved for SC/ST/BC. Where will we go? Such policies serve only to disturb the balance.
Divya Jyoti Dhaliwal | class XI, DTEA Senior Secondary School, New Delhi
I do not have the right to vote yet. But even if I vote, it wont matter. The elections are all rigged. I have no say anywhere. At school the teachers dont listen to us and at home we do what my father says. Rahul Gandhi thinks like us, he is capable of changing the country.
themselves to the mentalities, rationalities and techniques of the state. Those who do and walk a few miles with the state break out to come back again into the regimen with new demands which the state could meet within its regimented spaces. Those who refuse to surrender shall be battered and ripped off their citizenry for the state has to protect individual rights and for the cause of modernisation and free markets. A section of the movement for right to food is pleading for the state to make a list of the poor based on given criteria. The state is expected to select and classify people as poor and nonpoor. The state enjoys this for many reasons. It divides people, state authority is exercised and strengthened, people petition for getting included in the list. The task that ought to be left to peoples panchayat which could decide easily who goes hungry and who does not is, the movement for right to food feels, best left to the state. The state would go wrong and the movement gets an agenda to correct the wrong. The faith of civil society in peoples panchayats and collectives is albeit less because in peoples panchayat civil society agents hardly have a place, and if they do, it is in a very small region where they are active. People get benefited by access to information and access to food and work, they at the same time subject themselves to the control of the state. Civil society helps in creating more knowledge for the state and suggests more sources of exercising power. These movements have helped in strengthening a centralised state. They address correct causes. The worker needs food, work and information. But this comes through a centralised state and is not sought to be done in multiple ways by multiple panchayats which would have diffused power. The means are more important than the ends. The worker participating in the movements fully understood the end result that she gets information and she gets work. She also understood that information empowers. But the historical RTI Act was incomprehensible for her. She used it as told to and also got some information, or rather some NGO did this on her behalf and that too with great effort. And the NGO/worker found that power to withhold information remained greater than power acquired by information. The processes are first to design a regimen and subsequently to struggle in the regime. Sadly, the struggle of the Janus-faced civil society is not for being in control of the regimen itself, or designing a regimen where the worker could be a part of it or be able to control it. n Bhargava is director of the G.B. Pant Social Science Institute, Allahabad. pradeep@gbpssi. org.in
The poor want radical change but cannot afford the luxury of waiting for revolution
By Aruna Roy and Nikhil Dey
he relationship of peoples movements with the state has been a complex one in a country like India where the state represents the power elite, but also claims to fulfill the constitutional mandate of a sovereign secular democratic republic. On the one hand, radical movements are promptly labeled anti-state by the custodians of the law. On the other hand, amongst radical movements, the state is often seen as the adversary. In the era of economic liberalisation this becomes even more complex. The groups that quarrel with and oppose the state on many issues also propagate the need for a powerful state with an obligation to eradicate poverty and protect vulnerable groups. So what happens when radical concepts like the right to information and the right to work begin to take legal shape, against the flow of the tide? Is it an indication of a victory, or the death of an idea? One of the most powerful and assertive slogans of the RTI campaigns has sharpened from Yeh paise hamare aap ke/nahin kisi ke baap ke, to yeh sarkar hamari aap ki/nahin kisi ke baap ki. It is an assertion of the sovereignty of the people in a democratic paradigm. It is this assertion that enabled people to have one of the most radical right-to-information laws in the world passed in a country that has continued with the structure and culture of a colonial bureaucracy. Similarly, it is part of the explanation for the passage of an employment entitlement, in an era of market fundamentalism. It is true that implementation leaves much to be desired in both these laws, and many argue that the laws are quite ineffective. However, both these laws have managed to shake up power structures and mobilise the weak and marginalised, even in places where implementation is poor. It is clear that the positive democratic assertion shows great potential for changing power imbalances. It is eventually the poor who have been not just passive voters, but also the active protectors of democratic rights.
The power battle for the marginalised majority, therefore, lies in continuing to fight even in the details, alternating between advocacy and struggle. The NREGA is an example. The Act came to be through a struggle across the board, with movements and political parties joining hands to counter the various forms of oppression
It is clear that the positive democratic assertion shows great potential for changing power imbalances. It is eventually the poor who have been not just passive voters, but also the active protectors of democratic rights. The power battle for the marginalised majority, therefore, lies in continuing to fight even in the details, alternating between advocacy and struggle.
within the system to keep the poor forever on the fringes. The radicalism of the NREGA lay not only in its enactment, but in the hundreds of power battles that it legitimised in its implementation. There were attempts to dilute it, beginning with the petty bureaucracy, to rules disenfranchising workers rights, corrupting work norms, not conforming to transparency provisions, ignoring the rights and rules at all levels. This also explains the tremendous reaction to every social audit, and the fear that effective social audits have caused in the system. The enforcement of the transparency and accountability structures has forced the system to engage with its own responsibility and its promise to perform. The poor want radical change, but cannot afford the luxury of waiting for the revolution. They have to create their mini revolutions every day even to keep hope and energy flowing to movements for more radical change. The authors are with with the Rajasthan-based Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (www.mkssindia.org). mkssrajasthan@gmail.com
Ashok bhatn agar
R E P U B L I C AT 6 0 Judging the Judges
Oh, for the glory days of the Indian judiciary!

The strength of the judiciary lies in the legitimacy it enjoys in the eyes of the public. While courts must be immune to the vagaries of public opinion, their moral authority can stem only from utmost rectitude and integrity.
Saurabh Kirpal n recent years the love affair of the public with the higher judiciary seems to be coming to an end. From tainted judges to resisting the public declaration of assets, the role of the higher judiciary has come under intense scrutiny. The common perception is that the judges are retreating behind a cloak of secrecy and refusing to abide by the very standards that they set for others. This is quite a fall from the past when the judiciary was seen as the last hope for controlling a corrupt and non-responsive government. Several questions arise. Is the judiciary failing the people of the country? Are the judges justified in putting themselves in a special class? What steps can be taken to remedy the situation? The manner of appointment of judges and the manner of dealing with judges of questionable integrity are the two main features which are often the subject of scrutiny in this context. However, we need to be careful. While ensuring greater openness, we also need to ensure judicial independence. Otherwise the cure might be worse than the affliction. In fact, the true solution to the problem does not lie solely in the regulation of judicial behaviour. An equally important facet is to improve the quality of judges appointed. This task is tougher than it appears and will take a much longer time than the mere passing of a judges enquiry bill. But it is a necessary task if the judiciary is to regain its lost glory. Greater transparency seems an obvious antidote to the problems besetting the judiciary. However, immense caution needs to be exercised in doing so. Judges have a unique place in our democratic framework and their special role needs a response which will address the peculiar situation of the judiciary. There are at least two features of the judiciary that set it apart from the other organs of the state. First is the essential non-democratic nature of the judiciary. The second is the nature of the duties judges perform and the need to insulate them from the executive. Of the three pillars of the state, the relationship of the judiciary with the citizen is perhaps the most complex. The judiciary is the only wing of the state to which the common man has direct access. It forces the executive to obey the law of the land and gives succour to the otherwise disenfranchised. Courts are therefore a vital component in ensuring a just and fair democracy. On the other hand, the judges themselves are not elected by the people and are subject to no real democratic control. Even though the sovereign power is supposed to rest in the people of India, the people have no control over the appointment of the very person who interprets and applies the law framed by their representatives. This takes us to the second feature of the judiciary. Courts are required to defend the rights of a minority against the state. In doing so, they often have to rule contrary to the public opinion which often guides the decision of the executive. Judges are also needed to protect the rights of alleged criminals even if the public is baying for their blood. Everyone is presumed innocent until proven guilty. This is more so given the level of incompetence and corruption among the police. It is therefore obvious that courts of law must be insulated from the court of public opinion if justice is to be done to minorities, undertrials and other excluded citizens. Similarly, courts are not only called upon to decide private
disputes but also to protect the rights of the citizen against unjust or arbitrary state action. In doing so, they may have to hold against the executive. Therefore, one cannot countenance a situation where the judiciary is subservient or answerable to the executive. The question is how the tension between the need for insulation of the judiciary from public opinion and the executive and the need for democratic control is to be reconciled. In our country, this question is all the more vexed given the desire of virtually every government to muzzle courts. One can be reasonably certain that any control over
There are at least two features of the judiciary that set it apart from the other organs of the state. First is the essential non-democratic nature of the judiciary. The second is the nature of the duties judges perform and the need to insulate them from the executive.
the judiciary given to the executive will be misused at some time or the other. This is hardly a recipe for a strong judiciary which is needed precisely to control an overweening executive. In the initial years of our democracy it appeared that a delicate balance was struck between the need for accountability and the need for judicial independence. However, this balance began to tilt in favour of the executive as it tried to encroach upon the functioning of judges. In the 1970s the government of the day superseded judges and called for a committed (read pliable) judiciary. As a result of these onslaughts, the judges mounted a backlash and sought to provide themselves with ever greater insulation from the government. This was primarily done by taking over the manner of the appointment of judges. The law, as laid down by the Supreme Court, is that that judges to the higher judiciary are appointed by a collegium of other senior judges. The executive has virtually no role to play in the appointment of judges. This situation has been subject to much critical analysis. It is said that the judges are completely immune from
R E P U B L I C AT 6 0 Judging the Judges
Vijay Sethi, 65 businessman
Shanti Devi Sethi, 87 Housewife
The country has seen progress only in the last 10 years. Nothing was there in our time. We dont really have enough privileges for the senior citizens in our country.
In a democracy, since we vote we are the government. Everyone is a part of the government. But we are more bothered about the government than the government is bothered about us.
any democratic check. In appointing other judges, charges
Saroj Sethi, 64 retired bank employee
Its a shame that governments cant even ensure the security of their citizens. There have been cases of snatching even right outside peoples houses. We dont feel safe anymore.
Pitampura Delhi
Sethi Family
The question is how the tension between the need for insulation of the judiciary from public opinion and the executive and the need for democratic control is to be reconciled. In our country, this question is all the more vexed given the desire of virtually every government to muzzle courts.
Shikha Sethi, 34 Dentist Amitabh Sethi, 38 chartered accountant
The state hasnt done enough to provide opportunities for all. We had money so I became a doctor. I studied in a paid college. But the ones who didnt have enough money couldnt realize their dreams since there werent enough government colleges. All Indians are supposed to be equal, but someone who doesnt have money or power cant even reach the government. The government doesnt even reach us, who live in the cities and are a part of the glorified middle-class. Then how do you expect it to reach the last needy person?
Just voting doesnt give me a sense of participation. We havent ever felt well connected with the state. There are no forums where we can voice our concerns. The politicians come only when elections approach. The state hasnt done enough to create jobs. We should allow MNCs into insurance, retail, banking, etc. We should open our gates to them.
of favouritism are also common. Judicial commissions for appointment of judges have been mooted rather than judges appointing other judges, a committee consisting of judges and politicians will appoint judges. It is true that the current system of appointment leaves grave misgivings. Senior judges are often superseded for no apparent reason leaving lingering doubts about the criteria of selection of judges. However, giving any substantial power of appointment to the executive is fraught with the same danger which the court had sought to avoid when it designed the collegium system. Politicians even more than other senior judges would like to appoint pliable persons to high judicial posts. High Court judges would be forced to kowtow to ministers to get appointed to the Supreme Court. One solution could be to raise the retirement age of High Court judges to 65 the same as in the Supreme Court. There would then be less of a reason for a High Court judge to listen to the executive. A more complete solution would lie in the nature of the people manning the judicial commission. It must have a preponderance of judges, with the politicians having a significant but not a decisive say in the manner of appointment. Members of the bar and civil society must also have representation on the commission. However, the ultimate say must still remain with the judges as they alone can judge who the best people for the job are. After all, lawyers who are to be appointed by judges regularly appear before them. The judges are best placed to determine the quality and calibre of such lawyers. The role of the other members of the commission would be to eliminate instances of arbitrariness and favouritism and nothing more. Equally, the task of hearing and adjudicating complaints against allegedly dishonest judges could be heard and investigated by such a commission. Under the current system, the only manner in which a judge can be removed is by impeachment for proven misbehaviour. This too is after an investigation by a committee of two judges and a jurist. This system was envisaged for the protection of judges from frivolous allegations. But this system appears to be tilted too far in favour of covering up judicial misdemeanours. A committee of investigation is appointed only after an impeachment motion is admitted. There is no formal scrutiny before such a motion is moved by the members of parliament. Therefore there needs to be a mechanism where complaints against judges could be freely investigated before any action is contemplated against a judge. A judicial commission might provide such a solution. Frivolous allegations could be easily thrown out. Executive overbearance could be eliminated by the presence of a majority of judges. Yet such a commission
would bring in much needed transparency into an otherwise opaque system. We must not forget that investigation against and punishment to judges are merely a cure for an illness. If the institution is to be truly strengthened, the people appointed as judges must be of a high calibre. Since judges are ultimately appointed from a pool of lawyers, the quality and integrity of lawyers must also receive a high level of scrutiny. This must start from training of lawyers. Universities must have the same exacting standards for admission and training of law students as they do for doctors and engineers. Only the best students must be allowed to become lawyers. Similarly, the manner of investigation against corrupt lawyers must be strengthened. The present system of selfregulation appears to be completely ineffective. Dishonest lawyers are in abundance and seem to meet a fate rarely more serious than a slap on the hand. A legal commission must replace the bar council to investigate the alleged misdemeanours of lawyers. At the end of the day, courts appear to be powerful given the constitutional framework of our country. Yet it is important to remember that they are actually quite powerless. The judiciary has no army or police to help it enforce its orders. The strength of the judiciary lies in the legitimacy it enjoys in the eyes of the public. While courts must be immune to the vagaries of public opinion, their moral authority can stem only from utmost rectitude and integrity. n Kirpal is an advocate with the Supreme Court. saurabhkirpal@hotmail.com
Jagdish Yadav
R E P U B L I C AT 6 0 View from the Right

source: columbia.edu
A painting of Mother India from the 1970s
Govindacharya
ecularism as practice and approach has ancient linkages to our glorious past where the concept of sarva dharma sambhav has been enshrined in the sociological fabric of our nation. The term secular was incorporated into our constitution to effectively weave this fabric closer and achieve plurality in our new system which would form the foundation of our governance, with boundaries only set in from the geographical perspective. Self-engineering of this concept however now sadly reflects just a symbolic expression in the constitution. The warmth of this spirit of secularity in Bharatiya background is missing. It doesnt lead our nation of multiple diversity to achieve its place in the new millennium. Society and polity is shattered by a dichotomy of principles suiting individual interests and the definition of secularism has been distorted. The important issues which succumb at the altar of secularism are religion, policies emanating from religious practices and professing faith. It has also divided politics on the basis of majority and minority. The function of the state to maintain its neutrality is compromised when the governance policies midwife the decisions to breach the sanctity of constitutional norms and its secular credentials. Such a distortion in the field of politics influences the policy formation process. This process does not take into account the fact that Bharatiya nation and society a great civilisational past which is embedded in sarva dharma sambhav. The holier than thou attitude of the policy makers looks down upon the matters of faith and religious convictions. The policies tend to push the people to a corner as if practising
Sham secularism just has to go

Equal respect for all religions has been a concept India has followed for centuries but the tag of secularism in the constitution is nothing short of a political fraud.
their own beliefs is anti-secular and it tends to tilt the balance of democracy on the count of majority-minority differences. The tenets of coexistence are solidarity, reciprocity and respect towards and between religious communities. However, when the sole intention of democratic might rests in achieving the capture of policy formation,
the power to rule and effect, it ruptures this togetherness of the system. Resultantly the grave aspect of divisive polices is carried under the umbrella of secularity and in being seen as and called secular. This being the issue, matters of faith are compromised in favour of one section of society and derive a dubious connotation with regard to fairness
of the policies. This is when special temporary status accorded to Jammu and Kashmir, based on ethnicity, linguistics and demography as a result of political browbeating by a section of society, is atrocious when it is justified in the name of secularism. The secular identity as a cap has been worn so many times by various political parties that it now has lost its shape as has happened with the egalitarian concept of socialism. And it has been carried as a fruitless appendage all these years of our nations existence. The socialism propounded by Nehru and according temporary status to the state of Jammu & Kashmir under Article 370 have had their own momentum. Even until last week we had the war outcry of providing autonomy to the state. Left to bleed, an entire population separated on religious basis. Though dubbed as majority in the country, the Hindu Kashmiris trying to find their own place under the sovereignty of the constitution have been forced to demand the homeland for themselves within their own country. This philosophy carried by the largest tenure rule of the Congress-led government has inflicted wounds on the basis of discrimination, appeasement and policies favouring one over the other. The irony is that such discriminatory politics has the sanction of the secular stamping though this smacks of sharply divisive methodology. The governments led by other political parties with an eye on minority votes have followed the suit. This has generated a psychology of statelessness in the majority community. Anything which supposedly hurts the sentiments of the minority community has been pushed aside, looked away and ignored, even if the constitutional obligation is being compromised. The state is willing to take back the bravery medals awarded to the
security personnel who defended the terrorist attack on parliament, yet is not willing to hang Afzal Guru who has been strictured by the Supreme Court under a death sentence. The ruling coalition thinks that by moving ahead with Afzals execution, it might lose the minority votes. In the other monumental case of the Mumbai 26/11, some Rs 35 crore of of taxpayers largesse has been spent in the name of protecting the single evidence of Pakistans role in this terrorist attack and is well looked after, whereas Sadhvi Pragya Thakur had to conduct a fast unto death to allow her to practise her religion and maintain her dignity. She was offered omlette for breakfast and was refused food without onion and garlic. This type of secularity has come to breed contempt for the basic fundamental laws of the constitution and just tends to override on shallow assumptions. So much so that a uniform civil code is not acceptable; since it tends to interfere in the religious practice and is superseded by the supreme law, with its own independent interpretation and boundaries. The Supreme Court had to intervene and advise the coalition government bringing to its attention parallel Sharia courts which are running in Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. The government under the pressure of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board has not even responded to these observations buckling again as was the case when the the Supreme Court had passed judgment in the Shah Bano Case. Religious tolerance is implied only if you could shed your aspect of religious chauvinism and surrender or abjure your belief for the good of the other but reciprocity of that, or even demanding the similar response in return is being dubbed as communal. On such a sensitive issue like Shri Ram Janmabhoomi/Babri structure, the truth has been sacrificed at the altar of distorted secularism. Even the union governments, and archaeological surveys have proved that there was indeed a temple beneath the Babri structure. But despite such a concrete evidence, this issue is being used to exploit the secular/
At one time the melting pot theory was promoted as a way out for social integration of African-American, Hispanic and Asian communities with the Anglo-Saxon majority in the US. This theory did not pay results and the American establishment has now formulated a salad bowl theory for social integration. In this theory the different sections are expected to retain their separate identities but share a common vision of America which would be essentially Anglo-Saxon.
communal sensitivities. If the archaeological evidence is the basic requirement for solving this issue then in Kashi (Varanasi) anybody can see the evidence on the walls of Gyanvapi Masjid today which speaks volumes of destruction of Kashi Vishwanath Mandir in the Mughal period. The nandi of Kashi Vishwanath Mandir is facing garbh griha of Gyanvapi Masjid. Had the intention of the political class been honest on the issue of sarva dharma sambhav or secularism, the Kashi Vishwanath issue could have been solved just after independence, like Somnath. Even in the matter of the Shri Ram Setu, the government shamelessly had to beat a hasty, embarrassing retreat in front of the Supreme Court after filing an affidavit mentioning Shri Ram as a mythological character. This same government came to the rescue of Muslim sentiments when the Danish cartoon fiasco erupted in the country. This follows scores of such instances in the recent past including those relating to Taslima Nasrin, banning Salman Rushdies book and preferential treatment to M.F. Hussain in the defence of secularism. The fact that there are more than two crores of Bangladeshi infiltrators enjoying the rights of citizenship in Bharat and an ever continuing change in the demographic profile of the border states has been addressed by the political class in a way that reminds of an ostrich-like stance ignoring the impending danger to sovereignty of the country. Governments have feigned ignorance about huge amount of money being spent in proselytisation. The demands for a special status and powers are constantly changing the paradigm of the country. The secular constitution was supposed to essentially protect the rights of the citizen and their equality and respect without any discrimination based either on religious, linguistic, regional or caste-creed basis. The nation and its citizens have come closer to being concerned about the nefarious game played to suit perverted interests of this formation. The nations youth especially today believes in finding its own ground and temperament
which resonate with the ecology, temperament of the nation and its nationalism. It today implies to have its moorings in the glorious past of our cultural social diversity yet keeping itself high with blend of true secularity of absorbing other faiths and practices and to be called as its own. This means ethos which does not suit the tenets of our governance, policies or socio-political themes would necessary need to be changed. It has come to the fore that all political parties do not have the will to effect these socio-economical-cultural changes. A new breed of volunteers needs to come forward. The problem of national integration and social cohesiveness has been universal and has led to tensions in many parts of the world. The democratic setup of the US has its own share of problems. So does France. Germany is no exception where infiltrators from Turkey are playing havoc with social harmony. At one time the melting pot theory was promoted as a way out for social integration of African-American, Hispanic and Asian communities with the Anglo-Saxon majority in the US. This theory did not pay results and the American establishment has now formulated a salad bowl theory for social integration. In this theory the different sections are expected to retain their separate identities but share a common vision of America which would be essentially Anglo-Saxon. In Bharat the responsibility of youth is to forge a society in which thousands of years of historical past, pains and pleasures are shared by the entirety of the population. A common aspiration of strengthening the Bharatiya brand of secularism is the challenge before the youth in which history doesnt stop in the past of 2,000 years but pierces deep into the civilisational shared heritage of more than 10,000 years. The common bond of identity with the past transcending the mode of worship is the desired direction for a stable, cohesive, integrated Bharatiya society. n Govindacharya is a leading ideologue of the Hindu right.
Moinuddin Ghouse, 42 Businessman
For me Republic Day is something that brings India together. Even though, in the past few years that spirit has dampened it still holds a special place. At our home it is like a festival. Like Independence Day, this day also reminds us what struggle and sacrifices our leaders have made and finally put together the country into a republic.
Sadat Begum, 60 Housewife
Mohammad Ghouse, 65 Retired idpl employee
Hyderabad
Ghouse Family
We all used to dress up in our best clothes, I used to take Moinuddin along with me to the flag hoisting in the factory. Republic Day, like Independence Day, cuts across festivals related to a citizens caste or religion. Republic Day is for every citizen. These days people wish each other either through a text message or email..but even today we wear it on our sleeve, even today,
The representation of the community in governament services and the mainstream should have improved by now. The government is doing its bit but it is difinitely not enough.
Abbas Ghouse, 12 student
For me it is still a day to salute the national flag and grab lots of chocolates and sweets at school. I used to confuse Independence Day with Republic Day but now I know that as a Republic we celebrate our rights, constitution, freedom to live where we chose to live.
R E P U B L I C AT 6 0 Relevance of Gandhi
The artworks accompanying this essay are by Haku Shah, an Ahmedabad-based Gandhian artist, who says there have been many portraits of Gandhi but nothing on his work. He used materials like handmade paper, threads, clay, neem twigs and dry leaves. They first featured in an exhibition that traveled to Delhi, Mumbai and South Africa.
The Curious Case of Hind Swaraj

Call it a hundred years of attitude: the tract that is virtually a manifesto for Gandhian revolution has remained ignored even as its relevance is only increasing by the day.
Tridip Suhrud
he year was 1909. Forty-year-old Mohandas Gandhi wrote incessantly for ten days on board the steamer Kildonan Castle, like the mythical Savyasaachi, using both hands. He wrote because he could no longer restrain himself. At the end of this restless period he made a claim, utterly unlike him, I have written an original
book in Gujarati. This book was Hind Swaraj (or Hind Swarajya, as it was originally titled), and was published in his journal Indian Opinion. In the last lines of Hind Swaraj Gandhi made a claim, very much like him, My conscience testifies that my life henceforth is dedicated to its attainment. The book was deemed a very dangerous thought by the colonial government in India, not
because it advocated revolt or use of physical force but for its open advocacy of satyagraha to challenge and overthrow British supremacy. It was swiftly banned. Gandhi rendered his book into English and published it as Indian Home Rule. This beguilingly simple book baffled its readers and continues to do so even today. Gandhi thought that it was so simple that it could be placed in the hands of a child. And yet, it continues to elude its readers. What was that it that he dedicated himself to? And what fate awaited the text? Gandhis dedication was to the core of Hind Swaraj. This core is neither ahimsa nor it is satyagraha. It is the idea of civilisation. Civilisation for Gandhi is that mode of conduct that points out to us the path
of duty, where the performance of duty is the same as observance of morality. Gandhi says that a real civilisation creates the possibility for us as humans to know ourselves. Herein lays Swaraj for Gandhi. Swaraj is not selfrule but rule over oneself. Anything that precludes this possibility is the reverse of civilisation, Kudharo in Gujarati and Black Age or Satanic Civilisation in its English rendering. Modern Civilisation, which looms large on Hind Swaraj, is that Satanic Civilisation, as it shifts the locus of human worth and the ground of judgment about human societies from us as human beings to things. It is that order of things where machines become the measure of man. Gandhis Hind Swaraj advocates the active shunning of this modern
civilisation and its emblems. Gandhi is so utterly convinced of this formulation that he makes bold to say that this civilisation is certain to be destroyed. It is this critic of modernity and belief that it was not a universal fact but a passing, almost a temporary aberration that baffled its readers. Gokhale, otherwise a sympathetic elder to Gandhi, was perturbed by this pamphlet. He felt that it was crude and hastily conceived and he declared that Gandhi was certain to destroy it after spending a year in India. Not strangely, Gandhis faith in the vision of Hind Swaraj deepened as he came to inhabit India and become one with the weaver and the farmer. By 1919 he became a leader of the national movement, the printing and sale of Hind Swaraj became the symbol of defiance during the noncooperation movement. And yet, curiously there was no serious discussion on the text itself, not in English and not in his mother tongue Gujarati either. The Congress completely ignored this document, prompting Gandhi to declare in 1921 that he was the only one to follow the ideals of Hind Swaraj, while the rest of the country had accepted only non-violence, that too as a strategy and not as an ideal. Even this slender hope of non-violence was shattered for him with the violence in Chauri Chaura. It is curious that the grand debate on the nature and meaning of Swaraj that Gandhi and Tagore engaged in with great philosophical sensitivity and exquisite courtesy did not invoke Hind Swaraj. Both chose not to mention this text, although the debate shared the same philosophical ground as Hind Swaraj. India seemed to have forgotten Hind Swaraj, Gandhi kept reminding his interlocutors and critics to read the text in order to understand him and his actions better. The only group sensitive and alive to the
possibilities of Hind Swaraj were the Theosophists. It was the philosophical quarterly of the Theosophical Society, The Aryan Path, which opened up the debate on Hind Swaraj in the lengthening shadow of Nazi Europe in September of 1938. Its editor Sophia Wadia invited comments on the text. None of the persons invited to respond to the text had anything to do with British politics or the national movement in India. Significantly, not one Indian was invited to respond to the text. This is a clear indication of the marginal space that Hind Swaraj had come to occupy in the Indian political and intellectual imagination. It was Gandhi again who took the initiative to open the debate on the future of India and the
Hind Swaraj as also the place of politics and governance as envisaged in it. He asserted that in fact his confirmation in the truth of his belief had only grown since the time he wrote Hind Swaraj. Gandhi knew that he was alone in this belief and hence wrote; Therefore if I am left alone in it I shall not mind, for I can only bear witness to the truth as I see it. Gandhi knew that Nehru and the millions of Indians who held him in great reverence reposed very little faith in the basic argument of Hind Swaraj. Nehrus response to Gandhis letter was of impatient dismissal. He conceded that he had a somewhat dim recollection of Hind Swaraj from a reading more than twenty years earlier. Even at that point it had seemed to Nehru completely unreal. But Nehru was certain that Nehrus response was of its argument sigimpatient dismissal. He conceded nified not much that he had a somewhat dim more than the romantic myrecollection of Hind Swaraj from thology of backa reading more than twenty years wardness. He earlier. Even at that point it had felt perplexed by Gandhis invocaseemed to Nehru completely tion of village as a unreal. But Nehru was certain metaphor of posthat its argument signified not sibilities. To Nehru village signimuch more than the romantic fied constricted mythology of backwardness. frozen space and sensibility that had to be recast by modern develplace of Hind Swaraj in that. The opment. Nehru reminded Ganwar in Europe had ended and Indhi that the Congress had never dian independence seemed imconsidered much less adopted minent. It was at this crucial the picture of India envisaged juncture that Gandhi opened the in Hind Swaraj. He told Gandhi debate with his chosen political that it was not given to the Conheir, Pandit Nehru, and through gress as a political body to conhim with the people of the counsider fundamental questions, intry. In October 1945 Gandhi volving varying philosophies of wrote a long letter to Nehru in life. Gandhi knew that it was his Hindustani. He wrote it in Hindulot to bear witness to India burn stani because what he wished to itself like the proverbial moth in convey to Nehru could only have the flame of modern civilisation been said in Hindustani. Gandhi around which it danced more affirmed his faith in the ideals of and more furiously.
R E P U B L I C AT 6 0 Relevance of Gandhi
The Gandhi few bother to know

Hind Swaraj in nutshell
What is Swaraj? In effect it means this: that we want English rule without the Englishman. You want the tigers nature, but not the tiger; that is to say, you would make India English. And when it becomes English, it will be called not Hindustan but Englistan. This is not the Swaraj that I want. The Condition of British Parliament Reader: Then from your statement I deduce that the Government of England is not desirable, and not worth copying by us. Editor: Your deduction is justified. The condition of England at present is pitiable. I pray to God that India may never be in that plight. That which you consider to be the Mother of Parliaments is like a sterile woman and a prostitute. Both these are harsh terms but exactly fit the case. That Parliament has not yet, of its own accord, done a single good thing. Hence I have compared it to a sterile woman. The natural condition of that Parliament is such that, without outside pressure, it can do nothing. It is like a prostitute because it as under the control of ministers who change from time to time. Today it is under Mr. Asquith tomorrow it may be under Mr. Balfour.
The best men are supposed to be elected by the people. The members serve without pay and therefore, it must be assumed, only for the public weal. The electors are considered to be educated and therefore we should assume that they would not generally make mistakes in their choice. Such a Parliament should not need the spur of petitions or any other pressure. Its work should be so smooth that its effects would be more apparent day by day. But, as a matter of fact, it is generally acknowledged that the members are hypocritical and selfish. Each thinks of his own little interest. It is fear that is the guiding motive. What is done today may be undone tomorrow. It is not possible to recall a single instance in which finality can be predicted for its work. When the greatest questions are debated, its members have been seen to stretch themselves and to doze. Sometimes the members talk away until the listeners are disgusted. Carlyle has called it the talking shop of the world. Members vote for their party without a thought. Their so-called discipline binds them to it. If any member, by way of exception,
gives an independent vote, he is considered a renegade. Parliament is simply a costly toy of the nation. The Prime Minister is more concerned about his power than about the welfare of Parliament. His energy is concentrated upon securing the success of his party. His care is not always that Parliament shall do right. In order to gain their ends, they certainly bribe people with honours. I do not hesitate to say that they have neither real honesty nor a living conscience. To the English voters their newspaper is their Bible. The same fact is differently interpreted by different newspapers, according to the party in whose interests they are edited. Swaraj For Everyone I believe that you want the millions of India to be happy, not that you want the reins of government in your hands. If that be so, we have to consider only one thing: how can the millions obtain self-rule? Civilisation Formerly, men were made slaves under physical compulsion. Now they are enslaved by temptation of money and of the luxuries that money can
Repeating...
I will take the liberty of repeating: 1.Real homerule is self-rule or self-control. 2.The way to it is passive resistance: that is soul-force or love force. 3.In order to exert this force, Swadeshi in every sense is necessary. 4.What we want to do should be done, not because we object to the English or because we want to retaliate but because it is our duty to do so.
buy. There are now diseases of which people never dreamt before, and an army of doctors is engaged in finding out their cures, and so hospitals have increased. This is a test of civilisation. This civilisation takes note neither of morality nor of religion. Civilisation seeks to increase bodily comforts, and it fails miserably even in doing so. Civilisation is not an incurable disease, but it should never be forgotten that the English people are at present afflicted by it. Civilisation is like a mouse gnawing while it is soothing us. Patriotism My patriotism does not teach me that I am to allow people to be crushed under the heel of Indian princes if only the English retire. By patriotism I mean the welfare of the whole people, and if I could secure it at the hands of the English, I should bow down my head to them. It would be folly to assume that an Indian Rockefeller would be better than the American Rockefeller. Impoverished India can become free, but it will be hard for any India made rich through immorality to regain its freedom.
Nehru advanced a similar argument in a meeting that took place at Sewagram, Wardha, soon after Gandhis assassination. In March of 1948 Nehru made an impassioned plea for the political role of the Congress. In post-independent India, perhaps the only political leader to engage fundamentally with Hind Swaraj was Ram Manohar Lohia. His essay, Economics After Marx, is the only serious engagement with Hind Swaraj from that period. There was a new interest in the possibilities of Hind Swaraj in the country in the aftermath of the Emergency. This interest
Civilisation for Gandhi is that mode of conduct that points out to us the path of duty, where the performance of duty is the same as observance of morality. Gandhi says that a real civilisation creates the possibility for us as humans to know ourselves. Swaraj is not self-rule but rule over oneself.
was guided by the search for what came to be called alternatives. In this search Hind Swaraj became a metaphor. As a metaphor one could re-invent it as a post-modern text, as a text that pre-figured the ecological crises. It began to be read almost as a post-colonial text. It provided a ground from which a new critique of science, of state and the modern project could emerge. This effervescence was shortlived. Liberalisation and urbanisation produced new forms of violence and marginality. It also produced a new, aggressive, confident, aspirational middle-class
for which Gandhi was a burden it would rather shed. As the tired and petrified bearers of official legacy of Gandhi receded, the swadeshi came to be increasingly associated with the RSS and its affiliates. The new swadeshi was inward looking without the luminous possibilities of self-search. This swadeshi was without the swaraj that Gandhi dreamt of. Then the inevitable happened. Last year we decided to celebrate the centenary of Hind Swaraj. But, it was not clear as to what the celebration was about. Was it about the text? Was it about the possibilities of Hind Swaraj
in our times? This uncertainty was not unexpected. We continue to remain deeply ambiguous about Hind Swaraj with its critique of modernity, especially at a time when there has emerged a large consensus on the desirability of nuclear energy. This ambiguity is about Gandhi as well. He has come to occupy an increasingly fractured and narrow space in our imagination. We think of him when the country erupts in violence of the communal kind. But when violence takes the form of terror we want a hard state, the kind of state that Hind Swaraj wanted undone. As we speak the language of law and order the possibilities of Hind Swaraj become more elusive. It is not only the state apparatus that is ambivalent about Gandhi and his vision for India. The various social movements as well
show deep ambivalence towards him. The Dalit politics has for long been deeply disappointed to the point of disillusionment with Gandhis inability and unwillingness to seek annihilation of caste. Instead of considering the transformative potential of a jugalbandhi of Ambedkar and Gandhi we have cast them as adversaries in our political discourse. The movements for tribal identity and assertion have found themselves at odds against Gandhi. This has been attributed to Gandhis own limited understanding and engagement with the tribal question. But the larger framework of Hind Swaraj with its deep empathy and advocacy for forms of life and production that lie outside the rubric of modernity could have resonated with the tribal movement, which has not been the case. These are
cases of dual failure of imagination. The institutions that Gandhi founded or those who seek to represent the Gandhian imagination appear as unwilling and unable to deal with the new challenges that state, civil society and the movements from the periphery pose to Gandhis worldview. A celebration of Hind Swaraj would require us to not only engage with the historicity of the text, but in some measure seek to go beyond it. It would require us to re-imagine our modes of self-rule and our rubric of swadeshi, satyagraha and swaraj in order to cast our own moral politics. And it was this that one missed in the centenary year of Hind Swaraj. n Suhrud, a social scientist, lives in Ahmedabad. tridip.suhrud@gmail.com
R E P U B L I C AT 6 0 In Black and White

RAVI CHoUDHARY
Edged out of the Republic
Pass the baton to a new generation for whom liberty doesnt mean the right to do wrong.
Bikram Vohra
braham Lincoln had the right idea but he wasnt able to offer the complete recipe for the magic potion called democracy in creating a government for the people, by the people, of the people. Just the fond hope that somewhere, like the fleece and the grail, it existed. So, all these many years down the road in the worlds largest democracy you get the distinct feeling that it is more valid to paraphrase the Winston Churchill sentiment of never have so few got so much from so many for so damn little than see our adventure as a celebration of freedom. For the most part, the pleasures of that liberty guaranteed by the constitution have not percolated to the average Indian. In fact, they have bypassed most of us and made us marginal spectators to the democratic process. The pillars of the privileged have captured the essence for themselves and work on the principle of an elitist pyramid with their exalted positioning making up the summit. The bureaucracy, the politicians, the celebrities, the judiciary, the rich and the famous, even the mandarins of the media, all have their memberships in what is a genially reciprocal network of exclusive clubs that run the country and keep the great unwashed marooned at the gates. Every now and then, in a collective surge of pious drama these good folks make captive one of their own a delicate sacrifice freighted with the instinct of survival some well-known person, an errant top cop, a corrupt politician, a scandal ridden socialite, an inebriated scion, some embezzling captain of industry, a high profile star caught poaching in a forest, and much is made of bringing these
people to book. Even Kasab the killer is given the benefit of our sparkling system. But not little Raju down the road who got picked up in a police round up and cannot call his family these past five days. Gee, we have it down pat. Then, in a swirl of self congratulations, democracy is patted on the head and put to bed with a warm cup of half cocoa and half sanctimony, see, what an equal nation we are, our system works for all. Till next time when there is need for a little bloodlust to be slaked. And as these infrequent episodes in orchestrated cleansing play out for the public, the millions who form the silent Indian spectator wonder what it must be like to actually enjoy living in those bastions of free India where rights are actually coveted and exercised, cared for and protected. Because, to be true, what has changed for them since Nehru spoke of this nations tryst with destiny and awoke midnights children to the dream? Sometimes, you wonder if the Indian per se has just been colonised again, his master replaced not rejected, his liberty still chained. What rights can actually count where people are rounded up and languish in jails for years without due process. On a whim. Where cases take years to serve out freezing cold justice that is bereft of meaning. Where the caste system
rears its ugly head and is actually perpetuated through denial. Every minute of every day. What price the casual rape of women, the indifference to their education and the sexism that thrives, the absence of decent medical care, the wall of contempt that rises when the poor and the helpless seek the shelter of social justice, where religion is once again sharpened into a weapon, where even love is measured by dowry and the rights of these men, women and children lie crushed in the dirt with none to do them reverence? What is the democratic tenet for making human life so cheap and tawdry, for taking hope and deforming it into despair, what is it exactly that we celebrate on January 26 in a lopsided sovereignty when we have shut the door on most of us? Since those of us who tango in delight at these anniversaries have had absolutely no role whatsoever in becoming a republic and have forgotten if we ever did learn what 200 years of servitude meant, I find it not only incongruous but mildly wasteful. To my more dubious set of values Id rather recall with much more sobriety the reasons or flaws in the national character that allowed the foreign yoke to take over in the first place. That way we can
You wonder if the Indian per se has just been colonised again, his master replaced not rejected, his liberty still chained. What rights can actually count where people are rounded up and languish in jails for years without due process? Where cases take years to serve out freezing cold justice that is bereft of meaning? What is it exactly that we celebrate on January 26 in a lopsided sovereignty when we have shut the door on most of us?
ensure how to lock the door so it wont happen again. All too often celebrations by proxy are gratuitous and serve as cosmetic surgery on the harsh realities that confront our tomorrows. We seek the knowledge of the past but we cannot keep living in it. Perhaps my impatience has an intemperate side to it, one fed by the hypocrisy of it all. The ones who make the most noise and patronise the public with exhortations and shrill hurrahs are the very people who have corrupted the power and the glory, robbed the national till, torn the values that were handed down from generation to generation, soiled our togetherness, created divisiveness through religion and caste and creed, exploited the land and brought us to a pass far short of where we should have been. I also cry for my beloved country and I also feel the warmth and affection of her earth, sense the power of her flowing rivers, the majesty of her mountains, the glory and the greatness that goes with being Indian. Is it time that we put the past on hold and grasped the present so we can point it to a better future and settle down and channel our energies into repairing the damages caused by our collective neglect. If Nero fiddled while Rome burned we might be wreaking our own discordant havoc by living in blinkers. We moved from 357 million people to over a billion in sixty odd years. Our public services and their servants became greedier and created an irreconcilable difference between the promise and the performance. As our social values drooped we had a wonderful, incandescent upside. There were victories of survival against all odds, of showing a great resilience and of coming up tops, of individuals who wove the fabric of freedom and created a vibrant, diverse and dramatic pattern, of a country that did what the world said couldnt be done, of sixty years in which the Indian per se showed his mettle and created his own infrastructures, his industry, his self reliance. The global diaspora where Indians stepped out and established enviable bona fides is a saga in itself. The arts, the sciences, literature, the armed forces, the awesome minds of our scientific fraternity, the power and the glory of the Indian survivor, the pride in our family unit, the sense of honour and duty and grace and dignity that may not only be Indian prerogatives but were forged in a powerful crucible and mark us for what we are. Our faith, our innate secularism, the meaning we gave to being neighbours when the mob was upon us, our music, our sport, our creativity and that across-the-land spirit of never say die. And never shall. That I will celebrate. All of it. Every day. For it is the core of the legacy given to us by the true freedom fighters and it is what we have with which to create a new will and testament for our children. But as the troops march down Rajpath and the music warms the soul on a cold and frosty morning, as the buntings splash colour and the aircraft rise in salute I will pray that the baton is passed to a new generation of Indians, a generation for whom freedom and liberty are not the right to do wrong but an opportunity to right those wrongs. n Vohra is Editorial Advisor, Khaleej Times, Dubai. bix@emirates.net.ae
Y O U
T E L L
U S
WE, THE PEOPLE OF INDIA,

WE: After having created the nation state, do WE matter any more?
having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a SOVEREIGN SOCIALIST SECULAR DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC and to secure to all its citizens: JUSTICE, social, economic and political; LIBERTY of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship; EQUALITY of status and of
DEMOCRATIC: How can we make our democracy better?
SECULAR: Are we really so?
JUSTICE: Have we delivered social, economic and political justice for all?
EQUALITY: Is there equality of status and opportunity?
opportunity; and to promote among them all fraternity assuring the dignity of the individual and the unity and integrity of the Nation; IN OUR CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY this twenty-sixth day of November, 1949, do HERE BY ADOPT, ENACT AND GIVE TO OURSELVES THIS CONSTITUTION.
Give to ourselves this constitution: Should the constitution be a given for ever? Do we need a new constitution? DIGNITY: Does the nation state really care about the dignity of the individual?
Experts have debated the constitution. Now it is your turn. Our guest columnists and common people have celebrated the progress of the republic and expressed their impatience at injustice and inequities that still prevail. Do you agree with them? We know you are proud of the republic, but do you feel lost in it? With the preamble as the basis, we have highlighted points of debate here and invite you, dear reader, to respond. Best writings will be published in Governance Now. Send in your responses to feedback@governancenow.com

Govnow V1 I1 Lowres PDF&#39;s

Enviado por

Dados do documento

Direitos autorais

Formatos disponíveis

Compartilhar este documento

Compartilhar ou incorporar documento

Opções de compartilhamento

Você considera este documento útil?

Este conteúdo é inapropriado?

Direitos autorais:

Formatos disponíveis

Govnow V1 I1 Lowres PDF&#39;s

Enviado por

Direitos autorais:

Formatos disponíveis

Cover Photo: Ravi Choudhary

Letter from the publisher

For a place in my Republic

Rediscovering the Republic

Larger state has capacity to generate larger resources

In search of a new Republic

Local governance for better governance

No democracy within democracy

BJP doesnt need to reach out to the Muslims

Nursing parliament back to health

Civil society: empowering people and the state

Judging the judges a tough balancing act

Sham secularism must go

The curious case of Hind Swaraj

The righting of the wrongs

4 GovernanceNow | January 26, 2010

R E P U B L I C AT 6 0 Leading the Debate

They, the politicians of India...

Photo: Ravi Choudhary, Model: Sweta Pandey

R E P U B L I C AT 6 0 Leading the Debate

Why is this the case?

Radhika Krishnan | Doctoral student, JNU

8 GovernanceNow | January 26, 2010

We had no comprehension of the massive change that was being begun

What are your own memories of the first Republic Day?

10 GovernanceNow | January 26, 2010

A girls hostel at Kuakonda in Dantewada destroyed by Maoists.

Quotes from the common man

Indrishka Grewal | class IX, Jamnabai Narsee School, Juhu, Mumbai

What is their legacy or lesson to subsequent generations of

Aarya Avashia | class VIII, Utpal Sanghvi School, Juhu, Mumbai

It is difficult for anybody of my

12 GovernanceNow | January 26, 2010

How do you assess the Naxalite agenda in this regard?

14 GovernanceNow | January 26, 2010

R E P U B L I C AT 6 0 Radical Left View

Who framed the constitution?

My rights? Not in this constitution

16 GovernanceNow | January 26, 2010

R E P U B L I C AT 6 0 Radical Left View

How the oligarchic hegemony builds

A new republic is the answer

Centralised authoritative structure

18 GovernanceNow | January 26, 2010

Meena Soni, 53 employee of State Bank of India

Disha Soni, 19 2nd year B.Com student

Daulat Ram Soni, 59 shopkeeper and property dealer

Laxmi Devi Soni, 82 housewife

Sameer Saluja, 27 shop and factory owner

Bottom-up approach to local self-governance

Centralised governance system

Empowerment of local governments principles

22 GovernanceNow | January 26, 2010

Akansha Sinha | class X Somerville School, Greater Noida

A panchayat meeting in progress at Daula in Meerut district of Uttar Pradesh in 1957.

It is time to repair, not lament

Addressing scepticism institutionalising accountability mechanisms

24 GovernanceNow | January 26, 2010

Rudrakshi Bhuyan, 29 actor and chorister

Reeta Bhuyan, 63 Housewife

R E P U B L I C AT 6 0 The mess in the parties

End this hegemony of high command

28 GovernanceNow | January 26, 2010

R E P U B L I C AT 6 0 The mess in the parties

Govnow V1 I1 Lowres PDF's

Govnow V1 I1 Lowres PDF's