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Democracy is currently been
celebrated the world over. The Nepali royalty and feudalism that
lasted for 240 years and had cost more than 24000 lives has ended.
The king has gone, and so will those who constituted the court. A
new Constitution is to be written, and while it is likely to provide
for multi-party democracy, it will almost certainly declare that
Nepal is a republic.
Nepal is the most recent
laboratory of democracy.
However, we in India have a
travesty of democracy with Prime Ministers who have never sought the
mandate of the people during last fifteen years. Democracy has
brutally been hi-jacked in India bypassing a verdict by the people.
It was I.K.Gujaral who resigned from Rajya Sabha and faced election
to Lok Sabha and thus qualified himself to be the Prime Minister of
the Nation.
And today we have a Prime
Minister without the mandate of the people, and so he is more loyal
to the Brittan wood institutions than the people of this land. He is
rather a vendor of globalization with self imposed servitude to his
“masters”. There are 24 members in Manmohan Singh ministry from
Rajya Sabha including Mr.A.K.Antony and obviously they have no
sanction of the people of this land to rule over them. Surprisingly,
they handle the most important departments in the Government.
Democracy cannot further be
de-moralized than leaving the fate of the nation to the fallacies of
the bureaucracy. Even in the bilateral discussions and negotiations
on subjects like Indo-US Nuclear Deal and the 123 Agreements, the
ministers are replaced by bureaucrats who are not accountable to the
people. India is governed not by the people, but by bureaucrats.
It is heartening to note; while
at one part of the subcontinent even extremists give up their
violent practices and come to the main stream of multi-party
democracy, in India after sixty years of democracy, the anti-people
elements or un-people strategies take hold of the helm of affairs.
It is in this context the latest
book by Rajani Kothari, the ‘Re-Defining Democracy’, calls
for our attention. The author raises a question, how India has
survived sixty years of democracy? We the people of India had two
major losses during this period. The first being the State has
surrendered its constitutional powers to other forces; the second
being the State has made retreats from its constitutional
responsibilities towards the people. The State has lost its control
over its resources. As the real villain, the market, made its solemn
entry, the State withdrew itself from many fields. As a result, the
free access of the market to several areas was made easy and
un-opposed.
The State, as in the past, keeps
pontificating on social justice; but all the same, it keeps
glorifying the merits and advantages of globalization. The worst of
its examples could be seen in Nandigram, in West Bengal. The State
has deplorably and miserably yielded to corporate markets and
Western Imperialism. Sadly, the product of democracy for more than
half a century is the urban middle class who are yet to learn the
primary lessons of democratic governance.
When people lose their control
over or access to their resources, they start grumbling and end up
in agitation. What is significant is that the erstwhile modes of
agitations and popular revolts have become redundant and unable to
address the new concerns and challenges. They are not even prepared
for an interface with the contemporary problems and issues. Hence
Mr. Kothari throws it before us, ‘how is it possible in the given
situations the restructuring and re-building of democracy to
adequately address new concerns of the milieu?
We see, before us, those who
could not avail the benefits or advantages of the developments and
progress made in last sixty years. They are the small peasants, the
farm labourers, the tribals, the dalits, the women, the
marginalized, the unorganized minorities and the victims of
political anarchy. Rather they had to pay very heavily for what the
mighty and rich have been enjoying all along. Why should the rural
poor and working class pay so much for something they never had
access to?
The cities and metros, no matter
where they are, obviously create huge quantum of waste, solid and
liquid as well. They invariably pollute the soil, water and air.
But, why should the weak and the vulnerable only are grilled for
what is the ‘boom’ for the rich and affluent? Of course, we need
Special Economic Zones, Special Tourist Zones and so on. Who are the
beneficiaries there of? And who are the sufferers there to?
The agitations and the organized
protests in Kerala at the present are propelled and orchestrated for
the advantages of the self-deceived bourgeoisie. The land struggle
(excess land) was the last vintage of people’s agitation by the left
parties in Kerala. What has been called ‘vimochana samaram’
(liberation struggle) was the last of its kind organized by the
right wing parties in the state.
The struggles of the last half a
century were not organized by any of the parties of the political
main stream. They all were organized, conducted and managed by the
victims of last sixty years, those who were deprived of the benefits
of the progress or achievements made on all fronts in the state. We
have many examples – the people’s struggle against use of endosulfan
in Kasargode, land struggles by tribals in Wayanad, Idukki and other
places, struggle against Grasim Industries at Mavoor, struggles
against municipal and industrial waste at different places,
struggles for protection of agricultural land, the struggle at
Chengara – and there are umpteen number of cases to point out. All
these struggles had a common concern – to whom do the resources
belong to?
The Chengara struggle is quite
poignant. More than 7000 families are in agitation for more than
eights months. They are not ready to yield to the threats of the
bourgeoisie who wield power and wealth in the state. Chengara
struggle has demythified two things: (i) The land reform law and the
struggle for land did not do good to the landless. The landless
remained landless, but the middle class bagged the full advantage of
it. The martyrs of Kerala Land Reform struggle are now seen in
Chengara. (ii) There is no land in Kerala. In the name of tsunami
the poor fisher communities are
 lifted
from the coastal areas and they were forcibly re-settled elsewhere.
Where as the land they had occupied for many generations on the
coastal areas were assigned to multi-national hotel industries and
giant private tourism entrepreneurs.
Therefore, Rajani Kothari tries
to impress us telling that the erstwhile democratic values have
under gone drastic changes. There has been paradigm shift of
emphasis from people to profit. We need to discover new forces. Only
the victims of developments in sixty years are able to redeem
democracy. They only have the authenticity and strength to redeem
and re-instate human rights, social justice, eco-system and basic
sense of dignity of human beings.
Twenty five years ago, no body
was heard of talking about cultural identity. Time has come for
small segments of society to gather themselves on the basis of their
identity. It has been an accepted norm and practice that any product
could be priced based on the cost of its production. Why then, the
farmer who cultivates his land and produces rice is not permitted to
fix the prices of his product? Believe me, the average monthly
income of a farmer is not more than one third of the monthly income
of a peon of a village co-operative society.
The democracy in India is
constantly been guarded by the people in the villages, not in the
cities or towns. The cities and towns in India welcomed emergency.
So did Kerala as a whole. The same is the case with the urban
bourgeoisie and the so called intellectuals. We badly need new
ideologies; the old ideologies have become defunct. They are the
beneficiaries of globalization.
In response to the concerns
raised by the participants, the speaker observed: Our hope for
sustenance based on agriculture and industry has come to
disappointing end. What remains is the IT. This is the reason a
person who owns 17 acres of farm land commits suicide. The only
option before the farming community is ‘corporate farming’.
Agriculture can no more be taken as a source of income for
sustenance. Hence forth, a farmer means only a labourer in the
corporate farm sector. So is the case of industry. Industry as a
value plus does not exist any more. The new challenge before us is –
how can we effectively and sensibly respond to the new challenges
without being a slave to the IT sector.
Therefore, the State stands to be
re-defined. The biggest enemy of democracy as we see today is the
urbanized intellectuals who are the primary beneficiaries of
globalization. We need a new dialectics with women, farmers, dalits,
tribals, and all those who are marginalized and have been victims of
all mega projects and developmental programmes.
We need to address how we have
lost our natural resources and how the State has surrendered its
immense powers to private entrepreneurs.
Democracy can not exist without
equations and consensus. The Maoists in Nepal have found its worth
and importance. No struggle in Kerala today has the presence or
involvement of Naxalites. At the very entrance of Chengara
‘occupation’, you will see a board with writing as “No entry for
Naxalites”. It means no struggle in future will exist without giving
heed to the groans of the soil.
Even the language of ‘dialectics’
is masculine. We need a dialectics that is feminine in letter and
spirit. |
