The South Asian: The Credibility of Indian Democracy

June 05, 2010

The Credibility of Indian Democracy

Through policies that consistently choose to represent economic interests even at the cost of constitutional rights, the democratic Indian State is losing its credibility. Thus, its war against the adivasis has implications for democratic India.

It is quite instructive to note the problems that the Governments of India attempt to tackle, the methods they use to tackle it and the problems they choose to ignore.

Over the last five years, the UPA governments have chosen to consistently act with deliberation and resolve to support the cause of economic powerhouses – whether or Indian origin or not. In many cases these have caused direct conflict with often some of the most vulnerable communities. The government has, in each case, chosen to be oblivious of the constitutional rights of these communities in its policies and their implementation.

The initiative that currently most occupies the UPA-II government (at least in its public pronouncement) has been the war against indigenous people. While ostensibly, it is a war against Naxals, the government knows that this effort does not discriminate and thousands of people from adivasi communities have been killed. Already, hundreds of villages in Chattisgarh are abandoned.

Alongside this killing, the state governments of Orissa and Chattisgarh have - with support from the center - stepped up their efforts to displace even more adivasi communities from their homes and their land so that these lands can be transferred to numerous MNCs who want to begin mining. The war on the adivasis cannot be detached from the continued focus on pushing adivasis out of their land. While the government has publicly recognized that adivasi communities have continued to be oppressed and left out of political and economic processes, there has been little done to change that.

Another policy that has been aggressively implemented over the last decade has been in displacing slum dwellers from their homes. Often the victims of displacement in their rural homes, or of economic collapse, they continue to face the cycle of displacement. In the last few years, displacement processes have become even more violent with police driving demolitions with no prior warning, sometimes even in the presence of stay orders from courts, and increasingly resorting to burning of slums during demolition.

In most large cities, especially Delhi and Mumbai, land is controlled by a very small community of developers and financiers. In each case, the builders have illegally built housing complexes. For example, in Mumbai, The upscale buildings of Hiranandani Gardens were built with blatant violations and illegalities. 300 acres were given to Hiranandani at the rate of 40 paisa per acre. MMRDA had recommended imposition of fine of Rs 2000 crores, which Urban Development headed by the Chief Minister reduced to Rs 200 crores. However, he was happy to say that he will not tolerate illegal construction and they will be demolished – of course he was referring to slums, not to the developments built by Hiranandani and others. Bringing transparency to land dealings within these cities would help with better urban planning as well as thousands of crores in revenue – the government has refused to address this. However, it has the political will to bring thousands of heavily armed personnel into forests to push bow-and-arrow wielding adivasis out of their homes in Kalinganagar.

With increasing pressure for mining and increasing pressure on urban development, the next decade promises more conflicts in both these areas. Given the direction of the UPA (and the past NDA) governments, more violence and oppression of these vulnerable communities is expected.

The UPA government can certainly lay claim to two key initiatives in formulation of the National Right to Employment Guarantee Schemes and to the Right to Information. The NREGS was designed to provide a safety net with a large budgetary outlay to provide economic support to the rural poor. However, the last two years of NREGS experience has shown that the funds have largely been siphoned through corrupt practices and only a small portion of funds continues to reach the target populations.

As for RTI, the government continues to attempt amendment of the Act to provide greater protection to itself from transparency. Those using the process for greater transparency continue to be targetted with increasing number of RTI related deaths. On the other hand, corruption in government agencies continues to include unabated. There seems to be no government interest or effort to control or reign in a culture of corruption.

These are just a few examples that show that while the State has the resources and the will, it is consistently choosing to be the representative of the powerful. In doing so, governments in India continue to lose their credibility – and with that, the credibility of the State as an organizer and protector of constitutional rights of the people of the country. Increasingly, it is a case of the State ensuring that the rights of the powerful are protected and that a stable middle class consumer society is established so that economic processes continue. However, it has lost its credibility even among the middle class.

The Indian democratic State is losing its credibility as a space for share and participative governance. It is losing its credibility in political processes. It is losing its credibility in engagement with dissent. It is losing its credibility in provision of infrastructure that citizens can access – basic infrastructure for water, distribution of food, healthcare, and education. In the cities, the middle class has access to such infrastructure either through private enterprises or through network of contacts. For the lower classes in cities, and for the culturally or socially oppressed (such as dalits or adivasis) outside the cities, such networks do not exist. Hence, they cannot access such infrastructure except in exchange of dignity with upper class middlemen.

The Indian democratic State is losing its credibility in provision of justice. Already, common citizens in India do not believe that they can access justice. Increasing example of corruption among High Court and Supreme Court judges makes it worse. Further, when Supreme Court judges and the PM of India believe that somehow they can be outside the realm of transparency, there is no credibility left with our system of justice.

Within this context, an increasing number of Indians have begun to believe that a more authoritarian state is the answer. For some, the answer lies in a more conservative and fundamentalist interpretation of religion. For many more, the answer lies in the militarization of the State. Both of these are further signs that the State – and the government – is losing its credibility across the country.

As a democratic state loses its credibility, other agencies begin to take on the roles of the state. The rise of other forms of governance are abetted. The precedence has already been established that the rights of citizens are expendable; other forms of governance (feudal, religious or military) become acceptable, even encouraged. All of these are more violent and extremist forms of governance. And we are increasingly seeing the growth of such tendencies among political parties in India.

If for the sake of growth of GDP (not even economic growth) we lose the essence of participative democracy, how different would that be from a colonial period? If not for anything else, the leadership of the government needs to build its policies on civil liberties and rights of people more so than GDP and FDI indicators. If not for anything else, the middle class needs to demand greater value to civil liberties and human rights. If not for anything else, the time now requires the NGO community to focus more on protecting civil liberties. For it is a crisis of democracy.

-Sanat Mohanty

Posted by collective at June 05, 2010 01:39 PM

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