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Challenges
to Democracy:
5th lecture in the series on Oct. 19, 2007
By Prof. (Dr.) Ninan Koshy
author
of several books, social critic, political thinker, human rights
consultant and a theologian.
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"Bureaucracy
in the country emerged supreme and unchallengeable over the
people and the State due to the external control over the
formulation of economic policies and further due to the corrupt
political regimes that governed the country one after another
but did not make any qualitative difference from the other.."
- Prof. (Dr.) Ninan Koshy |
Among the many challenges to
democracy, globalization emerges the most threatening and
catastrophic one. The political consequences and cultural after-math
of the democratic onslaught on the national and international arena
must critically be gauged.
A new system was emerging in
early 90s world over and it was called GATT Agreement. Both IMF and
World Bank acquired new controls over independent nations. The
steering of the newly orchestrated New World Order was undoubtedly
in the hands of the World Trade Organization for obvious reasons.
WTO that came in existence as a monitoring mechanism on the economic
zone particularly in developing nations thus confiscated much of the
powers and freedoms of individual nations. They successfully made
use of the good will and high handedness of the UNO among small
nations for the fast implementation of the Americanized WTO
policies. In the normal parlance, the UNO convinces the individual
nations for implementing its policies; whereas in the case of WTO,
they unscrupulously assert their authority and force the nations to
accept what they believe are against their national interests. If
not, they will have to face the consequences in the form of
sanctions. There are nations like Mexico that were compelled to
modify or amend their constitution to accommodate the directives
given by the WTO. Hence decisions that are intended to mould or
define the destiny of the nation are being made either in Washington
or in Brussels.
In short, Democracy was undone or
re-written with the advent of Globalization. It was nothing but
market oriented democracy. The definition of a nation got changed;
even the fundamental principles of human rights were subjected to
change. The scope and capability of a nation for its welfare schemes
had under gone paradigm shifts and was cut short substantially.
Globalization was also successful in doing away with the concept of
a welfare state. Nations were forced to accept a development model
that was devoid of justice and fairness. Globalization is a model –
developmental model where the focus is only on development, and
definitely not on justice. You should appreciate that development
and justice will not go together. The wrong perspective of
development has reduced the nation to market, and the citizen to
consumer. The first casualty of the Globalization is our age old
concept of a well fare state.
Globalization has negatively
influenced or corrupted our parliament, executive and judiciary and
further has weakened all democratic process and structures of the
nation. Many important decisions that directly affect the destiny of
the people and the country are being taken either outside the
parliament or even outside the country. We have seen the
consequences of several international treaties being implemented in
the country without the approval of the parliament. When India
signed the WTO agreement on Agriculture, the then Union Minister for
Agriculture was Shri.Balram Jackar who signed the agreement, but
later confessed that he did not know what the WTO really meant.
The largest and strongest
promoter and campaigner of globalization is our bureaucracy.
Bureaucracy in the country emerged supreme and unchallengeable over
the people and the State due to the external control over the
formulation of economic policies and further due to the corrupt
political regimes that governed the country one after another but
did not make any qualitative difference from the other. Bureaucracy
played a major role in the country in implementing the policies of
Globalization.
The worst of
all, globalization has established its triumphalism over our sense
of jurisprudence. The recent judgments of the apex court in India
and that of the various high courts in the country with respect to
issues of higher education, right of the workers to protest or go on
strike, pollutant multi-national companies, privatization ,
disinvestments etc manifestedly express how deep and catastrophic
are the influences of Globalization over Indian judiciary. |
