COMPILATION OF ARTICLES WRITTEN BY VIJAY PRATAP
COMPILATION OF ARTICLES
WRITTEN BY
VIJAY PRATAP
ENGLISH
Printed on 13 December 2017
1 Printed on 13 December 2017 COMPILATION OF ARTICLES WRITTEN BY VIJAY PRATAP
CONTENT LIST
ARTICLES Page No.
1. Elections in India and their Impact on Weaker Sections 1-7
2 Danger of the Emergence of Inferiority Complex Pessimism 8-10 too
3 Changing Contours of Dalit Politics 11-14
4 Bahujan Wants Active Participation 15-17
5 Independent Dalit role not feasible in Bihar 18-20
6 The Context of the State Assembly Elections: Some Reflections 21-25
7 Lest We Lose the War 26-29
8 Excerpts from a letter to a friend on the future of Vasudhaiva 30-34 Kutumbakam
9 A Forum of Dialogues on Global Responsibility Towards 35-39 Democracy
10 The ‘Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam’ Initiative 40-42
11 A Brief Note on “India - Central Asia Dialogue” 43-45
12 Notes on Voluntarism 46-48
13 Samvaad: A Personal of Journey of Discovering Dialogue as a 49-53 New Tool for Intervention
14 Victim, Perpetrator and Innocent Spectator: Introspecting 54-56 about Terrorism
15 Politics of Right to Information 57-60
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16 A Dialogue on Democracy 61-67
17 Poverty in India – An Overview 68-78
18 States and Democracy in South Asia 79-80
19 Ten Dialogues on "Policy Interventions for Consolidation of 81-82 Democracy"
20 Conversations on Democracy - Anil Bhattarai and Vijay 83-86 Pratap
21 Corruption and Communalism: Anti-Democratic Elements of 87-92 Indian Politics- Vijay Pratap
22 Towards North-South Solidarity : Some Challenges for 93-95 Building North-South Solidarity - Vijay Pratap
23 The Urgency of Dialogues on Democracy - Anil Bhattarai and 96-97 Vijay Pratap
24 Minorities and Democracy 98-99
25 Some Reflections on Funding and Voluntarism- Vijay Pratap; 100-103 Assisted by G. Narendranath
26 From Democracy to Swaraaj - Vijay pratap & Ritu Priya 104-113
27 Our Social Milieu and Politics of Transformation-I 113-115 Conversation On Community, Individual And Democracy (Aug. 2010)
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1. ELECTIONS IN INDIA AND THEIR IMPACT ON WEAKER SECTIONS ~ Vijay Pratap
In this article, the author looks at the issue of the empowerment of the weaker sections through the electoral and other political processes. He gives concrete examples and figures to support his argument. Though the major portion of the article focusses on the electoral process and its complexities, he ends by observing that non-electoral process are as, or probably more, important for the actual empowerment of these people.
Elections have been an important vehicle for the empowerment of Indian people. Our national leadership, especially those who worked under Mr. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, popularly known as Mahatma Gandhi, understood the importance of adult franchise for social transformation. It is no surprise that the national consensus to adopt universal adult franchise was so easily reached that the first election held after independence in 1947, was one in which all adults - irrespective of gender, caste, race and creed distinctions could participate. Even in several European countries, commoners, especially women, had to wage long struggles before they got universal voting rights.
Mahatma Gandhi had serious reservations about the Westminster model of democracy. But when India got independence, probably this was the best course available to us. Mahatma Gandhi had his eye fixed on the well being of the ‘last’ person. Anything he did or suggested had in-built mechanisms of ensuring space for this — socially most disadvantaged — person. Gandhi had once suggested that only those who earn their bread through physical labour should be given the right to vote. By implication it would have meant that those elites of the middle classes who desired to vote or to contest elections would have worked with the commoners to earn their bread. The operationalisation of this suggestion would have meant that the poor would continue to have a key role in the affairs of the nation. This would have been akin to the Marxist notion of ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ without the evil dimension of dictatorship. Marxists rejected this democracy as diversionary tactics by the ruling class. Till recently, for Marxists, especially where Marxist revolutions had taken place, open and genuine adult franchise was unacceptable. They feared that through open elections ruling classes would insidiously acquire control over the system in such a way that the revolution would become redundant. Paradoxically enough, in Communist states, revolution became redundant because of lack of democracy. Interestingly enough, in Communist countries the means to overthrow the ruling coterie generally either preceded or followed adult franchise.
The reverse dimensions of this paradox can also be observed in India. The oppressed people, who did not have a central role in the political system of India, have come to acquire considerable space in Indian politics. In the Indian context, marginal groups (except tribals and members of other minorities) can be better identified through their community identity. This community identity is known as the caste system. The entire population was classified into three broad sections—the upper, the middle castes and the ‘casteless’ or untouchables’. Each of these
4 Printed on 13 December 2017 COMPILATION OF ARTICLES WRITTEN BY VIJAY PRATAP groups is further divided into sub-castes. The upper castes overwhelmingly function as system managers.
Various artisanal groups are classified as a fourth category—the ‘sudras’. But another fifteen percent of our population, known as ‘dalits’ is separately listed in our constitution, so they are called ‘scheduled castes’. In traditional society the ‘dalits’ have suffered many levels of exploitation and oppression. Their condition has been of immense concern to social reformers since the late 19th century. It was Mahatma Gandhi who most effectively drew the nation’s attention to their oppression. He declared that this model of treating them sub-humanly was against the spirit of all religions including Hinduism. If any scripture sanctioned these evils forms of discrimination. He was keen to renounce those scriptures. Gandhi made abolition of untouchability and empowerment of these ‘Untouchables,’ one of most important issues of his politics. What now, in this age of democracy, appears to be quite natural for a humanistic philosopher was not so easy or natural at that time. On 23-24 March, 1918 the first convention of ex-untouchable castes was held in Bombay. Important nationalist leaders from the Indian National Congress participated. The position of privilege was so deeply embedded that many prominent people like Bal Gangadhar Tilak refused to sign a resolution against ‘Untouchability’.
Gandhi’s agenda was to make Hindus sensitive to the plight of ex-untouchables and to fight the evil of untouchability. In 1931, Gandhi founded the Untouchability Eradication Federation. The depth of internationalisation of one’s place in the caste-system can be estimated from the fact that many of the obnoxious practices of discrimination still continue in the rural areas of the country. Even today, in many areas, the entry of ‘untouchables’ in temples is not permitted. They have separate graveyards and cremation grounds. Segregation can be so total that in road- side restaurants they are served tea in separately kept cups or in throw-away earthen pots.
This kind of segregation led to a demand among the lowest caste group that they should have separate electorates. Among these castes the other powerful trend has been the desire to integrate with the rest of society. Gandhi facilitated this process of integration through ‘revolutionising’ the consciousness of the upper castes. In 1935, there was an agreement between these two currents represented by an ex-untouchable leader Baba Saheb Ambedkar and Mahatma Gandhi, that there will not be separate electorates for dalits, but seats will be reserved for them in provincial and national legislatures — a process of affirmative action. Since that time, there are roughly 15% reservations for dalit castes and 8.5% reservations for tribal people.
However, the number of scheduled caste MPs (Member of Parliament) is no indicator that dalit power has increased. In fact, in a mixed electorate, it can give a very misleading impression. For example, in the 1996 elections, the predominantly upper caste Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) bagged more scheduled caste seats than most of the other political parties. Now, does this mean that the BJP has a large support base among dalits? On the contrary, it represents the interests of upper castes. Dalits have voted BJP 13% below the average vote percentage of the party. Then, why this paradox? In a mixed electorate, where elections take place on caste/community lines, the upper castes rally behind ‘their’ party, i.e., the BJP. In most constituencies the upper castes are in a minority, but when they rally around a particular
5 Printed on 13 December 2017 COMPILATION OF ARTICLES WRITTEN BY VIJAY PRATAP scheduled caste/dalit candidate, then the chances of a ‘co-optable’ lower caste candidate winning the elections becomes stronger. A look at the 1996 voting behaviour of scheduled castes according to a survey done by a prestigious research institute, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi, shows that despite a small percentage of support among the scheduled castes, the BJP is able to find co-optable ‘leaders’ from among these castes. The BJP leader, Mr. Atal Bihari Vajpayee, just before resigning from Prime Ministership in June 1996 because of an inability to demonstrate a simple majority in Parliament, tried to mislead the House regarding the support of dalit castes to his party. He thought everyone will forget that in a reserved constituency it is only a scheduled caste person who can become an electoral candidate. And if some rightist/regressive force is able to mobilise the overwhelming upper caste with them, then it is easy to manipulate the mandate against those parties who strive to represent the interest of the dalits.
Let us have a look at the estimated percentage of votes according to various social segments.
Social Congress BJP NF / LF BSPRegional Other segments Upper Castes 29 33 17 1 10 10 Sudra Caste 25 23 25 2 18 7 (OBC) Scheduled castes 1 11 21 16 14 7 or dalits or ex-untouchables Scheduled tribes47 17 15 2 7 12
In the post-election scene, barring the BJP and the Congress, both of whom represent different groups of the right, all other parties have joined hands to form the United Front. A close examination makes it clear that in terms of social segments, the BJP has the largest social base among the upper castes, immediately followed by the Congress.
Similarly, if we look at the percentage of votes cast by upper caste graduates and urban voters, the BJP is again ahead of other political parties, and the Congress a close second in urban areas.
BJP Congress NF LF Regional Others Upper Caste 52 25 12 — 11 graduates Urban 32 24 21 12 10
The only historically subjugated groups in which Congress and BJP continue to have a stronghold is the tribal population of this country.
Specific Impact of 1996 elections on the Weaker Sections
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We have already noted that due to the polarisation of upper caste urban and literate votes, the BJP is able to win a significant number of seats from constituencies reserved for scheduled caste groups. A similar phenomenon is repeated among tribal people. In fact in Bihar, an important state of eastern India, the BJP has almost swept all the tribal seats, primarily because upper castes voted for them and this was bolstered by tribal support owing to long-standing work that the party has done among a section of their communities. A side-comment on the identity polities of tribals is relevant here. There is a significant and articulate section of Christian tribals. Historically other tribal sections rarely asserted their identity either in the caste continuum of Hindus or as tribals. In response to Christian proselytisation however, the BJP’s sister organisations did some successful work towards the “Hinduisation” of tribals. This playing up of ‘Hindu’ identity has tremendous pragmatic advantages for ruling sections of the society. Since a large section of the upper caste have rallied around the BJP, they control the social establishment of the society. Through that establishment the BJP and its allies are trying to graft ‘aggressive’ Hindu identity among the tribals.
This helps them circumvent and evade the critical survival and dignity issues of tribal people. With so many tribal members of parliament in the BJP, the party does not seem to reflect any concern for sustainability and rights of tribal communities to natural resources. Let us take as an example a movement that is known globally—the struggle against dams on the Narmada River notably the Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP). Three of the four states concerned with the Narmada river, notably the Sadar Sarovar Project (SSP). Three of the four states concerned with the Narmada Projects are controlled by BJP Governments. Significant tribal population will be displaced, important archaeological sites and medieval temples will be submerged. Even then, all these governments oppose even a compromise solution of lowering the height of the SSP.
Ironically, the Congress Government in Madhya Pradesh, the fourth state, supports the demand for the lowering of the heights. However all this does not mean that the tribal population has an independent political role in elections. Elections do generate as well as catalyse processes, which result in new awakening. But this new awakening among oppressed sections does not automatically get transformed into institutional changes which provide them with greater space. As far as well being of tribals is concerned, unless there is a ‘greening’ of politics in general, their lot cannot improve. The leaders of other oppressed sections like Sudra castes and dalit/scheduled castes do not so far realise the need to question the dominant model of development.
It has been evident for many decades now that an awakening through populist campaigns with tall promises during elections does not create a broad social alliance of the exploited/marginal sections. Any substantive impact through an electoral verdict can only be achieved if the poor are organised behind a political movement with a clearly stated concrete programme with which they collectively identify.
Given the subjective limitations of scheduled caste/tribal/women/minorities leadership, it will almost be a pipedream that they will be able to realise the goals which they have set for themselves. The present ruling coalition’s vote percentage in terms of oppressed and marginal
7 Printed on 13 December 2017 COMPILATION OF ARTICLES WRITTEN BY VIJAY PRATAP sections voting for them is very high. But these sections have voted for United Front partners, because they had no other choice.
Most backward and Sudra castes as well as scheduled castes and minorities, wherever they see the possibility of a viable alternative, have voted for non-Congress and non-BJP parties. Let us take a look at the figures vis-à-vis the Congress party in the following five states where people have voted against both parties of the right. Andhra West Karnataka Bihar UP Pradesh Bengal
Congress 35 25 22 27 5 Non-Congress52 (TDP) 63 (LF) 65 (JD) 59 63
If we look at how educated sections voted, it will give us a further idea of the class dimension of voting behaviour.
Level of Congress BJP NF LF BSP Regional Others Education Parties
Illiterate 32 17 24 6 13 7 Middle 29 22 21 4 16 8 High School 27 0 18 2 13 10 Graduates 25 36 16 3 10 10
The higher the voter’s level of education, the greater their propensity to vote for the BJP. What is evident from the overall assessment of the results is a polarisation of the BJP away from the Congress, primarily owing to an erosion of the popular appeal. Since the BJP emerged as the largest single party after the recent elections, it was invited to form a government, which lasted for only 13 days. It is noteworthy that even for 13 days the upper caste leadership was not willing to share power with lower castes, especially the OBC/Sudra castes, which constitute 52% of India’s total population. Because of their social and educational backwardness, the Constitution-makers had promised affirmative action for them. But this promise was fulfilled only on 7th August 1990 when Mr. V.P. Singh, a prominent socialist leader who was Prime Minister for a brief period in 1991, announced reservation for government jobs for Other Backward Castes (OBC). The act of exclusion till 1990 is very significant in the light of two facts. Firstly, their awakening has been a gradual process. Secondly and more significantly, since 1952, OBCs have doubled their strength in the Parliament from 10.2% in 1952 to 23.3% in 1996. This increase in their share of political power has been achieved through sustained mobilisation and campaigns by the leaders of backward castes. In mainstream politics the democratic socialist leader, Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia led a political movement (from 1955-67) which stood for affirmative action in favour of these sections. After his death, the former Chief Minister of Bihar, Mr. Karpoori Thakur and former Prime Minister, Chaudhary Charan Singh carried on with this mobilisation. It was the pervasive desire for justice and equality generated
8 Printed on 13 December 2017 COMPILATION OF ARTICLES WRITTEN BY VIJAY PRATAP during the freedom struggle, which provided a context and basis for marginal groups to assert themselves. The primary instrument of empowerment has been the electoral process. Because these castes constitute over half the population, eventually all political parties had to make commitments to the leaders of OBC to retain their popular support. At the present juncture, these castes constitute the core of popular support for the United Front.
It needs to be stressed that the linkage between elections and marginal populations cannot be understood only through election results. Most so-called democratic parties have no structures through which individuals or communities can work towards consolidating their base and articulating their issues. The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) is the most important political party of the lower castes. Yet, even this party does not have delegate sessions. It has no policy statement nor does it have any mechanism to secure participation in various decision making bodies. The party President, Mr. Kanshi Ram is the last word in all matters. Similarly, the Janata Dal (Peoples Party), a fulcrum party of the present ruling coalition, is run more through informal consultation then through organised, regular consultation. Another party of the OBCs and Muslims is the Samajwadi (Socialist) Party. Here also the same patterns are evident. The structures of India’s political parties are not made in a way that marginal groups and their idealist leadership regularly articulate their concerns. Most of the Marxist left is, culturally speaking, at quite a distance from people’s mode of doing and thinking. They don’t understand the complete play of identity politics. So despite their radical and pro-poor stance on economic issues, they do not represent the upswing in mood and assertions of those who were insofar at the margins of mainstream politics. The BJP does need the votes of dalits and OBCs, but it does not want these castes as equal partners. As mentioned earlier, the short-lived B.J.P. government at the centre excluded OBC sections. There was a large contingent from the priestly upper castes, who are only about 4% of our population. BJP. is aggressively manipulating the identity anxieties of Indians, and grafting an aggressive Hindu identity —projecting the Hindus as a ‘persecuted’ majority. According to them, the secular leadership of the country is indifferent to the aspirations of the ‘majority’ Hindus. The painful irony of the situation is that when they talk about majority Hindus, they mean only the interests of the upper castes. The B.J.P. has the backing of a very large cadre organisation called Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh (RSS— roughly translated as National Volunteer Federation). A major task of this organisation is to spread distrust and hatred against Muslims, which is the second largest religious community of India. This has created a situation where many of the political parties, of the left and of the centre, who would not have touched the Congress with a bargepole in the past, are either supporting it or are part of the ruling coalition at the centre, which is critically supported by the Congress. This reality makes it clear that assertion of the OBC and scheduled caste identity in the recent elections has found a retaliatory response from the ruling sections of society. Another crucial lesson is that during elections, parties act with almost the sole objective of managing and using anxiety-ridden identities in politics. But identity politics is increasingly becoming devoid of any ideological content, issues or programmes. What we witness is an unfortunate divorce between identity and interests. This is true of marginal and oppressed identity leaders as well. The fact that BJP’s Hindu politics is not in the best interests of Hindus also has a counter fact that it legitimises the continuation of upper caste politics. Kanshi Ram and his party, the BSP, which claims to represent scheduled caste interests, does not actually fight for their economic, social and cultural empowerment. Unfortunately, they mirror the dynamic of the upper caste
9 Printed on 13 December 2017 COMPILATION OF ARTICLES WRITTEN BY VIJAY PRATAP parties where the goal is power for the favoured coterie. We have reached a sad juncture where the entire electoral process has been hijacked and co-opted. The only way for restoring the democratic and just potential of elections can be through a cultural movement which links all the marginal social formations of backwards (OBC Sudra), Scheduled Castes (Dalits), tribals, minorities and women into a common identity of the oppressed. Only a cultural movement of the oppressed social formations can prevent the fragmentation of Indian politics. Once this unity is achieved, the true meaning of elections will radically change and become a genuine vehicle to bring new hopes in their lives. Charkha Features
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2. DANGER OF THE EMERGENCE OF INFERIORITY COMPLEX PESSIMISM ~ Vijay Pratap
Humble coordination between different social dynamisms is intrinsic to Democratic Politics. It is implied that in the process of ‘humble coordination’ there will be a conflict between different classes, interest groups and worldviews. In a democratic set-up, this conflict should persist between action groups and parties organised on the basis of well-defined ideologies and moral visions on the political plane. If the organisational basis of these parties is healthy, and clarity in perceptions along with democratic practices are prevailing, then they will definitely have a bright public identity. If the common people are equipped with a scientific parameter to measure it, then the inevitable ideological churning in their midst will lead to the emergence of a meaningful internal dialogue. No extra effort will be needed for a dialogue. In a democratic country like India, it sounds a little strange that any forum or organisation is being set up just for the sake of ‘dialogues’.
The capacity of our ideologies to create a situation of natural dialogue and provide it with the required dynamism by ideological attacks on each other is being sufficiently marginalised. Congress, the representative party of Gandhi-Nehru substream of National Movement, is more or less bereft of moral political gravity. Its doyen considers his victory in continuing in power with the help of crooked silence and criminal inactivity. Democratic socialistic thought of Gandhi-JP, Lohia substream is scattered here and there in the society. However, among all those parties who are claimants of their heritage, the dearth of taking risk of narrating the whole truth for democratic socialism is quite apparent. (The top leadership of these parties are fighting tooth and nail to protect Sarvodaya ‘movement’ from becoming merely the mechanism of voluntary organisations.) Unless the whole truth is narrated, there can neither be any possibility of ideological churning nor can any authentic dialogue emanate from that.
Even the top leadership of the left parties seem incapable of initiating a national debate and dialogue. They are in a state of mind of selfless ness. Authenticity is the precondition of dialogue. Different streams of thought of Marxism in India are failing in their historical task. They are neither indulging in new thinking with self-confidence nor are they willing to take the risk of expressing it.
This is quite anomalous, in the sense that owing to the all pervasiveness of scheduled caste - OBC’s struggle for their respective identities, the democratic parties organised under the leadership of the middle class and particularly the forward castes, have been thoroughly destroyed.
Regional parties, which are the by-product of jumbling of casteist and cultural identities on the regional level, are bereft of a leadership which can appreciate neither the core of democracy nor socialism.
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At the grassroot level, there is no one who has got the political commitment to understand the explosion of this democratic energy and institutionalise it. Hence, a status-quoist and anti- democratic leadership is at the helm of this energy. Today, no democratic political party is in a position to directly charge regional parties on an ideological plane. All parties are concerned about carving a compromise with them. A dialogue with independent people power may be useful for establishing a positive role of regional parties in decentralisation and federalism.
Even Ambedkarite groups are not being able to organise emergence of new social forces. Indeed, the impact of Babasaheb in the wider social context was limited to Maharashtra only. In northern India, especially in west and Uttar Pradesh, in the 1960s a ground was prepared for Ambedkar’s thought because of B.P. Maurya’s brightness and Lohia’s caste-breaking movement. But the inheritors of Maurya or Dr. Lohia lacked that patience which was needed to lead the socio- political revolution to its logical end. Now pro-change militant minded vote of Bahujan Samaj is divided between Kanshi Ram and Mulayam Singh. Owing to the lack of unity among them, it seems that forces of ‘Hindutva’ are all set to make good use of the inheritance of Ambedkar as well. An active dialogue between the representatives of independent people force and the united force of Ambedkarites working for the unity with other substreams of socialistic democracy, will be a desirable welcome step. Dialogue will give expression to desire and restlessness, which has affected the common masses and common worker of every political party for ‘equality’ and ‘democracy’.
If a national system of dialogue gets into practice amongst the people having a selfless approach towards power and a commitment to nation-building, using the equalitarianistic perspective, then the left force of this country will get the opportunity of playing a historical role of shaping this country according to time and situation. This is high time when Gandhians, Marxists, Lohiates, Ambedkarites, and even original Nehruvians, should also get rid of this foolish game of proving other substreams as inferior to their own. Rather, they should work for the establishment of a common identity of assured participation of common masses on the issue of nation-building. They will have to sit together and work out how in the following decade they are going to mend the scar on the body of the nation caused by Dalit, women, and minority persecution, how they are going to provide employment to each and every individual of the country & C.
In the process of this dialogue there could have been an important role, creation of a bridge, of non-Marxist left, especially Lohiaite socialists. The fallacy is when different parts of the thought of Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia are getting more and more accepted in the different ideological circles of the society, and there is no Lohiate organisation available to lead the mission to its logical end.
Today, among Lohiates, as it is obvious, there is no ability left to perceive that how far the reflections of Lohiaite socialism are being reflected in a party like CPI(ML). It should not be construed that Lohiaites should merge with the Vinod Mishra party. I simply mean that in this age of great churning, a dialogue, which is not untouchable to anyone, is an instrument which can establish the broader unity of democratic stream.
Even in the prime instrument of national freedom, Congress had subsumed several ideological substreams. Like that, the establishment of equitable nation needs a new national forum.
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Common people are in a state of mental readiness for this cause. Enlightened ‘people’ and ‘leaders’ are neither able to find out the unifying cord in their past, present and future’s dream, nor are being able to coordinate them properly.
This phase is quite interesting, in which common masses have come out of their stupor, fully loaded with the new vision of history very much willing to wash out decaying parts of the old system, clearing the part and establishing future’s dream on the solid plane of present, but where is the leadership for it?
Think tanks, ideologues are trapped in a dilemma. Common masses are not being taken into confidence by the forces of change on the issue of the agenda of the re-organisation of the society and the nation according to the wishes of common people. Middle rank and file are busy throwing stones at each other. Raghu Thakur, Sharad Yadav, Mayavati, Ram Vilas Paswan, Atul Anjan and Sitaram Yechuri are busy in chalking out a power-sharing plan but how to live in harmony despite petty differences. They are neither taught this theory and culture nor they themselves have ever evolved it.
The knock that the common populace makes to forge history cannot be heard in the noise of different ideological substreams. Nor can this pain of procreation of a new chapter be understood with the help of old slogans, however useful they might have been at some point of time in the course of history. One will have to maintain a silence. Attempts should be made to listen and understand what others, especially the common masses, have to say. Honest attempts should be made to catch hold of the ‘fraction of truth’ in contrariety. This is what we term as “dialogue”.
However short be the discussion on dialogue, whether we shall continue a dialogue with RSS after December 6, 1992 or not, without clarifying this issue, the theme will be incomplete. Engaging in dialogue and having a share in political power are two different things. So long as RSS, Vishva Hindu Parishad, Durga Vahini, Bajrang Dal and their collaborating party Shiv Sena do not publicly apologise for their nation-breaking, society-breaking activities, no discussion is possible on the issue of sharing political power with them. Whoever begins their discussion, or owing to his own defeat in democratic stream’s power struggle, tries to forge an electoral compromise with the political front of Sangh family, strikes hard at democracy, secular values and processes of nation-building.
A revolutionary democratic party is very much needed - a party, which does not limit itself upto being an electoral machine only, rather it goes beyond that end to provide a wider forum of social forces engaged in nation-building. Hence, we should expect the same from a dialogue which is logically conclusive, otherwise there is a great danger of the emergence of inferiority complex and sense of pessimism out of the endeavours of dialogue.
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3. CHANGING CONTOURS OF DALIT POLITICS ~ Vijay Pratap
Since 1993 itself, I observed a sea-change in the attitude of Dalits towards upper castes, including Rajputs. Till 1993 Assembly Elections in Uttar Pradesh (UP), scheduled castes sat on the ground when they came to our houses. Now they wait for a minute, pull a separate bench and sit on that. If I forget my own caste background, then this makes me very happy. “A revolution has already taken place”, says Prof. V.B. Singh, of Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, the most talked about institution for its election studies. Prof. Singh himself is a Rajput and hails from Azamgarh district of UP.
Dalits, i.e., ex-untouchable castes of India, now listed in the Constitution of India as Scheduled Castes for a variety of affirmative actions including job reservation in the government sector, have come a long way in terms of their participation in the political power structure of Indian society. Scheduled castes, who were referred to as Harijans by Gandhiji, are now referred to as Dalits. Their representation in the national and provincial legislatures is no indicator of their share of power in the political structure, as a certain fixed number has to be elected since there are constituencies which have been specifically reserved for Dalits. So, one has to look for other indicators to judge if Dalits have any effective share of power.
Congress of the post-independence era, led by Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru, had become the agent of social conservatism. Unlike during Gandhi’s leadership, it gave up its struggle for social equality and encouragement to social revolution. Instead, it compromised with the upper caste-upper class social status-quoism. Although in order to prevent other radical democratic forces to take over, it adopted in 1954 the radical rhetoric of democratic socialism. There is no denying of the fact that momentum of national struggle and legacy of Gandhi, and pressure of communists and socialists on the one hand, and Ambedkarites on the other hand, pushed for some socially progressive policies at the grassroot level, as opposed to the reactionary forces of communalism. But the evidence of adopting a status-quoist role at the national level is incontrovertible.
To understand the socially conservative role of Congress, the large number of Dalit members of parliament cannot be counted (as mentioned earlier they have seat reservation). Since, backward castes, now known as Mandal castes, have no reservation for them in the national or state legislatures, therefore, it is the number of these oppressed castes whose Members of Parliament have to be counted to assess the social radicalism of any political formation. Persons from these castes in the first place are not made candidates by the dominant parties for the winning seats unless these castes have acquired some independent strength of their own. The backward castes are further sub-divided into backward castes and most-backward castes. For Dalits to effectively challenge the hegemony of upper castes, they have to forge an alliance with backward castes and
1. Lokayan Editorial 2. South Asian Dialogue For Ecological Democracy | June 17, 2008 http://southasianecology.blogspot.in/2008/06/changing-contours-of-dalit-politics-by.html
14 Printed on 13 December 2017 COMPILATION OF ARTICLES WRITTEN BY VIJAY PRATAP minorities. Thanks to the aggressive communalist policies of Bharatiya Janata Party, the progressive upper rung of Muslim leadership is willing to lead the poor and backward Muslims into this larger alliance of Dalits, backwards and minorities. In the present elections, Janata Dal of V.P. Singh and Laloo Prasad, Left Front and Samajvadi Party (Socialist Party) of Mulayam Singh, represent this broad progressive alliance. In this alliance, the most important Dalit leader is Mr. Ram Vilas Paswan. Mr. Paswan, whatever his personal limitations, does symbolise the most strategic space in the progressive politics of a nation-building agenda. He has launched an important forum called ‘Dalit Sena’ (Scheduled Caste Army).
For Dalits, the most important issues relate to the idea of identity and dignity, and share in power. On the issues of identity and dignity, Dalit sena has done quite well. It has taken up issues of Dalit atrocities quite persistently. To acquire a dignified space in the socio-political economic institutions in the society, Dalits need to train themselves on issues related to the poor and the socially oppressed in general, and not only related to the issues of scheduled castes. The fact that Dalits do respond to the issues of larger alliance of the oppressed is evident from the solid support they have extended to Janata Dal in Bihar. Most of the newspaper reports and pre- election surveys are unanimous that in Bihar, Janata Dal and its Left Front partners will get around 40 parliament seats of the 54 seats in all.
In Bihar it is not the backwards or Dalits or minorities which have on their own challenged the hegemony of upper castes. It is this broad social alliance along with progressive policy framework and progressive elements from upper castes that the oppressed castes have found their way at the centre stage. In the first general elections, 13% or 14% upper castes won 30 out of 54 seats, which came down to 10 in 1991 elections. The number of upper caste MPs is not going to be any different this time. And many of the elected upper caste Members of Parliament will be part of the progressive and broad social alliance of JD and Left parties, rather than BJP- Samata alliance of upper castes.
The nature of the alliance of oppressed will be more evident when we compare Bihar with a state where this alliance has not struck roots. Let us take the example of Madhya Pradesh, however the story will be the same in Rajasthan also.
Madhya Pradesh, because of its caste-demographic profile, makes it amply evident that BJP and Congress both represent forces of upper caste domination. It has 14.5% Dalits (scheduled castes), 23.3% scheduled tribes, and 47.6% backward classes. Besides these three major social groupings, upper castes and others constitute only 14.6%. Despite such a favourable social balance, the oppressed castes have not been able to form a broad-based progressive social alliance, have not thrown up any significant Dalit, backward or tribal leader at the state level. Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party are the main contenders. But Dalits and other oppressed have to play second fiddle to Brahmins, Rajputs and trader castes of Congress and BJP. This status-quo will not last long. Congress and BJP, to a varying degree, are a divided house in MP, but due to a series of splits in Congress, BJP is likely to gain in terms of the number of seats in parliament. But BJP will not be able to enhance its credibility among Dalits and among the other oppressed castes. It will gain primarily because of lack of independent minded leadership from among these classes and splitting of the Congress vote.
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Nobody can deny the grassroot awakening among Dalits in most parts of Madhya Pradesh, due to sheer logic of competitive political-party system with adult-franchise based elections at frequent intervals for state assemblies and national parliament. In the neighbouring areas of Uttar Pradesh, a large chunk of Dalits in Madhya Pradesh will vote for Bahujan Samaj Party, a Dalit dominated party led by Mr. Kanshi Ram and Ms. Mayavati; both are Dalits from Punjab and UP, respectively. This new awakening among the oppressed sections in MP may eventually give rise to a third force challenging the status-quoist and communalist hegemony of the Congress and BJP. Socio-political energies at the grassroot need to be garnered and consolidated by forward- looking political leadership.
No discussion on Dalit politics is complete without understanding the main contours of Dalit politics in Uttar Pradesh. In this largest state of the country, which sends 85 members to parliament, the overwhelming proportion of Dalit vote will be taken away by Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). That the BSP is an up-coming vibrant party is beyond doubt.
The CSDS (Centre for the Study of Developing Societies - as mentioned earlier) National Election Study pre-campaign survey shows that there will be a significant rise in the BSP vote. Two very important features of its vote are : (i) 23.5% of its vote will be primarily snatched from Congress and BJP, which means that these many voters do not want the leaders of the Dalit and oppressed castes to play second fiddle to the upper caste leadership of Congress or BJP, and (ii) the fact that 58% of BSP’s voters will either be those who have been non-voters so far, or have recently acquired the voting rights due to age. Only 18.5% will be its own, old voters. If these estimates come true, then BSP is likely to get more than 14% of the polled votes in UP.
There is an important shift in BSP’s anti-upper caste ‘idiom’, particularly in UP. As long as Dalit castes and other allied oppressed castes were not awakened and mobilised, only the exclusivist Dalit/Bahujan identity was asserted. Occasionally, anti-Muslim remarks were also made by the BSP leadership to ‘represent’ the conditioning of certain sections of Dalits. But once the BSP leadership is confident of the social alliance it has struck, it has toned down its exclusivist ‘idiom’. Earlier, the BSP spoke only for the oppressed majority. The term Bahujan itself means ‘majority of the people’. But now recently, its leadership has started speaking in terms of ‘Sarvajan’, which means representing ‘all’ and not only the oppressed majority. BSP for the first time has given tickets to candidates with such a wide social base, including those belonging to the upper castes. According to BSP General Secretary, Ms. Mayavati, out of 85 candidates fielded from UP, 23 each belong to the scheduled castes and minority community; 30 belong to other backward castes - of these about 20 belong to the most backward who incidentally, although are among touchable castes, their socio-economic conditions are very similar to Dalits. For the first time BSP has given nine tickets to caste Hindus.
This Dalit led alliance of UP, unfortunately is at logger-heads with Janata Dal - Samajvadi Party of Mulayam Singh. We cannot go into the reasons of this split in the alliance of the oppressed people and who is to be blamed for it.
But in this context, it is necessary to note that any awakening of the Dalits, backwards and minorities, by itself will not lead to a progressive social alliance or positive results for democracy and socialism. Dalits and backwards along with progressive high castes, minorities, women and
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Adivasis (tribals), have to learn to share and wield power for egalitarian social transformation. Otherwise, the inevitable splitting and fragmentation of the alliance of the oppressed will lead to the strengthening of the status-quoist and communalist forces. Well-wishers of what now is known as ‘third force’ want the runty of non-Congress and non-BJP forces in a progressive policy framework. The catalytic energy for this will not suffice from only the Marxist and non- Marxist Gandhian Left parties. Ambedkarite political groups and various movement organisations need to contribute their mite in this. The coming together of Republican groups (Ambedkarites) and joining the third front is a welcome development. But the non-election movement groups are yet to make up their mind to support the ‘third force’ actively.
Left parties, who are likely to get 5.5% higher scheduled caste votes than their average votes, can play a catalytic-cohering role. Their weakness of responding to issues of caste indignity and oppression only in class terms can become their strength in this era of blind identity polarisations. They can act as a catalyst for launching a cohesive, larger formation which can genuinely represent the caste and class aspirations of India’s oppressed masses.
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4. BAHUJAN WANTS ACTIVE PARTICIPATION ~ Vijay Pratap
Recently, a retired person of Philosophy Dept. of St. Stephen’s College, Delhi University, asked me, this time people like us should vote for whom. Hitherto, we selected our prospective candidate by the parameter of less wicked. This time even this parameter does not seem to be working. It has become difficult to decide who is less wicked. Between 1977 to 1989, middle class, liberal Indian had no such dilemma. However, the Bahujan Samaj Party of the country considers election as a tool of participation in political power. This is a mere guess that while making voters’ identity card, different groups of Bahujan Samaj were acting rather enthusiastically. It implies that the upper caste mindset and Bahujan Samaj, which is desperately trying to get rid of an on-going immoral and unequitable system, both are looking at electoral processes differently. Alert and sensitive middle class voters, seeing the degradation of politics, are seemingly drifting away from politics altogether. Secondly, such Dalit youth, who as a strategy of countering local injustice of upper castes used to do wrestling in akharas, mingling with apolitical youths or getting involved in nightlong worship of Mother Goddess and used to start for shila-worship, today are desperately looking for a berth in either of the political parties which talk in favour of Bahujan Samaj.
Nearly three-fourths of all parties in this country are keeping silent on the issue of voting rights of Dalits. However, the party like CPI(ML) - Vinod Mishra’s group, which considers election merely the compulsion of strategy instead of an instrument of revolution, even goes so far as to endanger the life of their cadres for the cause of Dalits’ rights, to safeguard their self-esteem. It is a great anomaly that middle class and upper castes, which consider democracy and democratic elections as a symbol of civilisation and sign of development, are drifting away from elections and electoral parties. On the other hand, ML groups, which consider election as second or third ranking instruments of change, are sacrificing their lives for voting rights. What is the reason behind this anomalous situation? The reason is obvious that CPI(ML), because of its faith in the theory of revolution under the leadership of the proletariat, while mobilizing Dalits discovers that there is specific importance to vote raj (rule of vote) for Dalits.
A study done on tribals and Dalits of Jodhpur by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Research Scholar, Arun Kumar, indicates a very interesting fact. This faction of Bahujan Samaj has no doubt that during feudal rule their mode and manner of eating and drinking was much better than what it is today. Still they confidently mention that the prestige of vote raj is far more preferable than the bread and butter of feudal rule like this, a study conducted on the Bairva Community (SC) in the district of Tonk by Ritu Priya of Community Health and Social Medicine (Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi) discovered that the entire Bairva Community believes that for the last three generations our freedom (freedom means opportunities of development embodying prestige) is continuously increasing. The initial conclusion of this research also indicates that there too the mode of eating and drinking has deteriorated and people who exhibit contentment over the growth of freedom are aware of this
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A study of series of events three decades prior to 1967 makes it clear that there is a continuity in the en masse support of ‘garibi hatao’ of 1971, and then the J.P. Movement of 1974, Mr. Clean in 1984, and anti-Bofors slogan of V.P. Singh in 1989. The kind of mindset the people in general had exhibited against inequality and in favour of economic development through ‘garibi hatao’ in 1971 is still persisting. The support, which non-Congress parties are getting today, is an indicator of change-oriented temperament of Dalits, backwards, minority, tribals and Indian women.
A sizeable portion of the above mentioned castes votes for WF-LF, CPI (ML-Vinod Mishra) and BSP. Whether it is a party or extra-party change group, both are having a common problem. There is a specific role of middle class in shaping any movement or group. Because the middle class, meaning thereby a specific income group, having different cultural background can represent the entire society effectively. However, because of the given caste structure of this country, 90% of the middle class and Bhadralok comprise of upper castes. Hence, this 10% change oriented revolutionary minded people of the middle class cannot forge a normal relationship with Dalits, backwards, tribals and backward caste Muslims.
They can neither comprehend the dreams and ambitions of this class nor do they understand the limitations of their constraints. When this class is in all readiness to give a pragmatic shape to their dreams because of the efforts of Phule-Ambedkar stream of social liberation, Lohia’s effort of leading jointly Gandhi’s social political aspects and practice of democratic constitution of the country.
A decisive time of the emergence of these groups (Aug. 7, 1990 when the Mandal Commission’s reports were introduced) was unfortunately such when doyens of organisations having faith in liberal ideologies of Ambedkar, Gandhi and Lohia, had retired. It was the Indira Congress instead of the Gandhi motivated Congress. Equitable organisations like Republican Party and Sanyukta Socialist Party were absent from the political scene. Leaders who were one-time members of Sanjay Gandhi’s intimate and even being on the verge of deserting Congress, who had proclaimed Rajeev Gandhi as their leader, were holding central political power. In socialist politics as well, there were a majority of leaders on the political scene who during the lifetime of Lohia were not in favour of his politics of reservation. George Fernandes, despite being a supporter of special opportunity and reservation, had started considering the Mandal issue as an instrument of power struggle instead of social revolution. It was a half-truth that Madhu Limaye had taken leave from active politics. Whatever honesty all statesmen, including V.P. Singh might be having, they failed to utilise properly the political capital which the Gandhi-Lohia stream had earned on the issue of Mandal Commission. Rather, in the process of the sole claim on the implementation of Mandal Commission, it sharpened the infighting for political power amongst Mandal supporters. Today, Ram Vilas Paswan, Laloo Prasad Yadav, Mulayam Singh Yadav and Sharad Yadav are not unified like rock, George Fernandes forging alliance with BJP in Bihar, the contribution of V.P. style was enormous in all these happenings.
During the lifetime of Lohia, Hinduites were apprehensive of fragmentation of Hindu unity because of this. The fallacy is, the contemporary publication reports of Jan Sangh claimed that it
19 Printed on 13 December 2017 COMPILATION OF ARTICLES WRITTEN BY VIJAY PRATAP will proliferate casteism and we are against it. If one buys it for the time being that Sangh family’s training is so miraculous that their cadre is totally cleansed of all germs of castiest diseases prevailing in Indian society, this logic still is over simplistic. Whatever big may be the organisation, it is childish to presume that cadres of that organisation are ignorant of each other’s castes and vest their faith in the organisation instead of caste and they are unaware of the inequality decay and persecution born out of caste system of Indian society. We do not like cancer, simply this cannot be the remedy of cancer.
Lohia considered caste system as the biggest ailment of Indian social organisation and thought. On the issue of elimination of caste systems, there was no fundamental difference in the mental plane in the vision of Lohia and Ambedkar. But because of their differences in their caste and personal lives, their politics differed from each other. After independence, just before the demise of Babasaheb, Lohia had initiated to forge a common political party with Babasaheb. But the idea did not see the light of day.
August 7, 1990 just before the announcement of the implementation of the Mandal Commission’s recommendations, many social organisations of Bahujan Samaj were mobilising for the reservation of the backwards. In this mobilisation process majority of the leaders present on the political scene were having socialistic background. If while implementing the Mandal recommendations, Gandhi, Lohia and Ambedkar’s holistic vision would have been utilised instead of V.P. style, the Sangh family would not have been in a position to unleash Hinduite militancy amongst upper castes. Nor the opponents of Mandal would have succeeded in inciting so many youths of this country for self-immolation. Both of the bases of Mandal Commission support struggle for the rights of the backwards and the necessary step for nation-building has to be put forward before the masses. The political leadership of backwards should give priority to the most backwards, women, Dalits and most backward caste Muslims, in the forefront of leadership to prove their commitment on other fronts. At the time of ticket distribution, it will become crystal clear as to how much committed the leadership of the third power is for the magnification of democracy.
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5. INDEPENDENT DALIT ROLE NOT FEASIBLE IN BIHAR LOKAYAN BULLETIN ~ Vijay Pratap
The general elections are less than a year away. Any discussion on the dynamics of Dalits alliance with OBCs must involve an understanding of their voting behaviour. In Bihar, how have Dalits voted in the recent Assembly Elections? Who are their allies? How are they likely to vote in the next elections? More importantly, can they assert themselves independent of their present allies? In other words, can there be any significant shift in their voting behaviour and alliance pattern in the next Lok Sabha elections?
A survey conducted by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) on the 1995 Bihar Assembly Elections can be a good source to find out whether Dalit OBC alliance has any relevance in the state.
It clearly shows that the alliance led by Janata Dal had secured overwhelming support from Dalits. In the 48 polling stations of sixteen assembly constituencies, Janata Dal polled 88% of votes.
However, support of Dalits of JD was 8.4% more than the average, i.e., 46.4%. It is significant that all other parties were far behind Janata Dal in getting Dalit votes. In fact, they got negative support of Dalits - their share among Dalit votes was less than their average performance. Only Samata Party got marginally higher percent of votes among Dalits than its average.
There are no ‘official’ figures available for an analysis of the caste factor in the elections. However, predictions based on the election survey conducted by Prof. V.B. Singh and Yogendra Yadav at the CSDS were very close to the actual election results.
It can safely be said that their findings on caste behaviour will also hold good for the future. According to their survey, OBCs and Muslims voted 15.4% and 19.3% more than the average votes secured by Janata Dal.
Similarly, if the class dimension is taken note of, then illiterates, landless and agricultural workers voted 9.3%, 5.8% and 7.7% more, respectively. Upper castes rejected Laloo Prasad Yadav and his allies, and voted 18.7% less than the average. But, interestingly, Adivasis too joined upper castes and gave 15.3% less votes to Janata Dal. This survey reinforces the already known fact that Laloo was able to forge a winning coalition of Dalits, Muslims and OBCs.
How long will this coalition last? Will all or most of the partners vote in the same fashion in the next Lok Sabha election? And, going back to the central question, do Dalits have any independent role outside this coalition?
Where does an effective challenge to this OBC-led coalition come from? The survey proves that BJP can never break this alliance, as it could only receive negative votes from Dalits (8.3%) as well as Muslims (11.3%).
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BJP polled marginally (0.4%) more votes from OBCs. Therefore, it is clear that the party cannot improve its influence among Dalits, OBCs and Muslims. A repeat of the UP feat is also unlikely, given the present nature of leadership and social equations in Bihar.
Two important Dalit leaders of Bihar, Ram Sunder Dass and Ramai Ram, have tried to challenge the leadership of Laloo Yadav. But both have failed miserably. In the near future, at least till the next Lok Sabha elections, these two are unlikely to pose any further challenge.
The only other Dalit leader, with probably the largest all-India mass following among JD leaders, is Ram Vilas Paswan. But at present, he is neither capable of nor interested in challenging Laloo Yadav and disturbing this social alliance. This is not out of any love for Laloo.
It is because of the peculiar socio-political situation in Bihar that the possibility of independent Dalit assertion has been minimised. Any challenge to Laloo Yadav will come only from a progressive social alliance of Dalits, OBCs, Muslims and Adivasis. No one segment can sustain any substantive challenge of Laloo Yadav. It does not matter which of the four segments, or which particular person belonging to one of these segments, can lead this alliance.
The Adivasis were the only ones in this potentially radical social alliance, who were not part of the JDs allies. According to the CSDS survey, Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) secured 43.9% more votes from Adivasis, whereas JD and its allies got 15.3% negative vote.
After Laloo’s victory and the formation of the Jharkhand Autonomous Council with Shiboo Soren and Suraj Mandal as its Chairman and Vice-Chairman respectively, JD has effectively entered into an alliance with Adivasis.
This new alliance can effectively neutralise BJP’s gains among Adivasis.
In Bihar, there is no challenge to JD’s hold over Muslims. The minority community categorically rejected all other parties in the last elections. All non-JD parties have failed to communicate their seriousness about the issues like Muslim identity and anxieties of security and safety.
True, an extensive interaction with Muslims clearly showed their perception that Laloo had not done anything substantial for them. But no other party offered a viable alternative, which could provide security as well as ensure substantive development and empowerment of Muslims. Therefore, they took no risks and voted for Laloo.
In two constituencies, where Muslims are in a dominant position, they voted Mulayam Singh’s candidates to victory.
Hence, the argument is that except Adivasis in South Bihar and Muslims in a couple of constituencies in North Bihar, none of the constituent segments of JD’s support base can vote independent of each other. This alliance is further reinforced by several factors. One important factor being the re-entry of Adivasis into this alliance through JMM.
The most important factor for the coalescing of the oppressed social segments almost on class lines is that social Segregation or Untouchability is not the major reason for polarisation. It is the power or the share in power structure of the village, district or state assembly, or the share in the economy, or the share in the high modern culture of the middle classes, that is the source of social polarisation. In this social polarisation OBCs, Dalits, Adivasis, Muslims and poor or progressive high castes are natural allies.
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The easiest attack by BJP Congress and Bihar People’s Party of Anand Mohan Singh did not differentiate between these segments and failed to win over their votes. The only contender in this alliance was Samata Party. It was the only party to receive more than the average votes.
The need of the hour in Bihar is not to look for independent role for Dalits, but to help devise political correctives and pressures on Laloo Yadav’s populism, corruption and authoritarian ways without damaging the broad alliance of the oppressed.
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6. THE CONTEXT OF THE STATE ASSEMBLY ELECTIONS: SOME REFLECTIONS
~ Vijay Pratap ~ Shiv Visvanathan ~ Smitu Kothari
The Assembly Elections in November 1993 might prove to be an important watershed in India’s recent political history. Even before election results are out, it offers many important clues to various Indian mindsets. The first and foremost indication it gives is that communalist forces have still not come out of their ‘umbilical-cord loyalty’ to imperialist forces. All their actions, some directly and others indirectly, support the imperialist forces, in this case the US and West European market interests. Pro-imperialist behaviour is demonstrated not only by Hindu communalists but also by Muslim communalists.
Because of demographic and historical factors, Muslim communalists could capture the Pakistani State. Fortunately, however, Hindu communalists could neither influence the national cultural- social psyche of the Indian people nor the Indian state. This has changed since the beginning of the 1980s. Not only Hindu communalism, but also various other sectional and narrowly defined fanatical tendencies are surfacing. In this comment, we are not going into the details of ‘why’ communalism is becoming stronger, since we believe that in the South-Asian case, communalism can only be a transitional phenomenon. Even in Pakistan, where the State had been captured by the communalists in league with the western-bloc elite, the electorate has recently rejected those who are communal.
This is not to say that the communal character of the Pakistani State is being questioned. Even the liberal mind in Pakistan erroneously equates the questioning of the communal character, with a questioning of the Pakistani State itself. In fact, in India, we believe that Indian secularists have also contributed in the building of a fear psychosis. Firstly, Nehru and Patel could not demonstrate as much commitment to secular South-Asia as the Frontier Gandhi (Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan), who spent a lifetime in jail in independent Pakistan.
Secondly, most leaders were apathetic to the indigenous idiom through which, while recognising the plurality of nation states, the unity of South-Asian people could have been expressed. In fact, the more authentic the commitment to secularism, the more difficult it was to accept the reality of partition. Only Gandhi had the confidence, probably derived out of his rootedness, that he could treat Pakistan also as a ‘darling’, a part of his own being. That is why he was planning to go to Pakistan just before his assassination by Hindu communalists. In fact, Nathuram Godse’s indictment of Gandhi included his ‘pro-Pakistani’ policies. Paradoxically enough, the South-
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Asian people’s unity is amply demonstrated in the behaviour pattern of communalists across the border.
Communalism in South-Asia is a non-religious political phenomenon. Just like Jinnah, Advani and many of his colleagues do not hide their agnostic or atheistic position vis-a-vis religion. But the power of these ‘secularised’ communalists has been negligible in the sub-continent. They seek to forge an alliance with religious orthodoxy against the social reformist, liberal, progressive and culturally-rooted people’s manifestations (lok-dharma) of their own religions. Not only by implication, but actively, communalists have combined with the vested interests of religious orthodoxy and fanaticism.
Many of the secularists make tactical mistakes by treating the challenge of communalism and religious fanaticism as one cultural aberration. Communalism can be fought only with political will, which to an extent was demonstrated by V.P. Singh, Mulayam Singh and Laloo Prasad Yadav in October-November 1990, however imperfect their styles may have been or other limitations that they may have had.
Inspite of that spark of political will, Mulayam Singh Yadav has been objectively helping the Hindu communalists, first by splitting the Janata Dal in 1990 and now aligning with Mr. Kanshi Ram.
Let us return to the issue of communalist strategy and how to fight it. The religious orthodox component of communalists cannot be fought through political struggle alone. In fact, often the over-politicisation of anti-communal movements proves counter-productive. Firstly, those practising religious orthodoxy are not as alienated as the communalists. The primary source of the motivation and sustenance of the latter is their self-definition in terms of protectors of the political self-interests of their respective communities. And it is political calculations which govern their behaviour. Witness the behaviour of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the past few years. In the Palampur convention in 1987, when the BJP wanted to take advantage of the anti- corruption wave led by V.P. Singh, they passed a resolution saying that the Ram temple was the issue of the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) and that the BJP as a party had nothing to do with it. However, as soon as reservation for backward classes was announced, high-caste Hindu orthodoxy reacted violently. Although the BJP was party to the appointment of the Mandal Commission, it helped not only in mobilising support against its implementation, but also organised Advani’s Ambani-financed Ram-Rath Yatra.
Since Advani’s riding the Ram-Rath, Hindu communalists have taken a stand which is significantly at variance from their previous stand. Talking to any BJP activist makes it amply clear that riding the so-called Ram-Rath was purely a political reaction of losing power to the formations which were trying to respect and accommodate the democratic urges of backward classes.
Another indication of political consideration being paramount, is evident in the manner in which the BJP reneged on its commitment to the Supreme Court to protect the Babri Masjid. Again, on 6th December, most of the important leaders of the BJP and the RSS condemned the demolition of the mosque. Not just that, but Sundar Singh Bhandari, the RSS man in the BJP, gave the
25 Printed on 13 December 2017 COMPILATION OF ARTICLES WRITTEN BY VIJAY PRATAP statement that all those involved in ‘damaging’ the mosque should be punished, irrespective of party affiliations! But a weak-willed central government and tactical differences among secularists encouraged the Hindu-communalists to change their stand from expressing regret to not only defending but even glorifying the demolition of the mosque. The fascination of the communalists for political power is pathological. Does not the top leadership of the BJP and the RSS know that survival of the entity called India is in their self-interest also? Yet they are doing everything to disturb its delicate and complex social fabric.
Even the so-called moderates among them are gripped by power-mania. The election speeches of Atal Bihari Vajpayee defy humanist behaviour and a sane human-mind. Were his emotional outbursts (many in public) against the act of demolition, a farce? It is interesting to note that whether they were put on acts or not, RSS cadres genuinely believe that they do not have to take sides in the demolition debate; they accept the various stands of the leadership even if they are contradictory. This is a typical tendency of a closed organisation which has been created for the protection of a community supposedly under seige.
We have talked about South-Asian unity even without the backdrop of the communal behaviour of our two major communities. In this regard, we must also mention the points of difference. Hindu communalists through their collaboration with Hindu feudal elements and British imperialists, had acquired additional organisational strength. Their organisation was a hybridisation of Hitler’s notions of community and some Indian categories like shraddha (faith) in the leadership. These have been sanitised and removed from their original cultural mooring and relocated in the context of an organisation which has the two-fold political aim of spreading distrust and hatred against Muslims and of organising Hindus. In this game, British imperialists helped in all possible ways. But due to Gandhi’s exceptional command of an indigenous idiom which was able to simultaneously address religious and temporal issues, his compassion for ‘Harijans’ could not split ‘Hindus’ to the extent the British imperialists and the communalists wanted. During his time, communalists among Hindus remained a marginal force.
Muslim communalists could not create an organisation on their own. However, while Abdul Ghaffar Khan and Abdul Kalam Azad did have command over the religious idiom, their impact on the Muslim masses as social reformers was not felt as much as that of Gandhi on Hindus. This led to a greater proximity of Muslim communalists and orthodox fanatics during our Independence struggle. In fact, those who were not fanatics and were devoid of hatred or distrust for Hindus, but were only orthodox, found themselves in the company of nationalists.
In the post-Independence era, we could broadly say that among Muslims, we had more orthodox Muslims than communal ones. Most of the senior communal leadership migrated to Pakistan. This partially explains why the Pakistani State was so significantly influenced by the communalist ideology. Even today, when this ideology is said to be on the decline, minorities, including Qadiyani Muslims, have no right to vote in general constituencies. Minorities have a negligible representation with only a few constituencies reserved for them and these are thinly spread over the whole country.
Not so paradoxically, Hindu communalists in India emulate the Pakistani State. They would prefer not to have Muslims in the assemblies and in Parliament. They are interested only in those
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Muslims who are willing to accept a second-class status in society. What other explanation can the BJP offer for putting up a lone Muslim candidate in Uttar Pradesh in a house of 425 members and that too, one who had openly advocated the demolition of the Babri mosque?
The other important similarity between the Pakistani State and Indian Hindu communalists is their pro-US stand. They have always shied away from favouring an authentic non-aligned movement and have acted as a tool of the US/Western block nexus in international power- politics.
Hindu communalists try to explain their pro-US, pro-Israel stand in terms of national interests. But if we examine their economic policies, we find that communalists are not even concerned about the power of Hindus. Otherwise, in a Hindu majority country, how could communalists support MNCs which will render millions of people unemployed, destroy our biodiversity, agricultural self-reliance, natural resource base and possibilities of evolving a model of sustainable economic development? It should he interesting to analyse the content of the speeches of BJP leaders as well as the rationalisation of the almost total mortgaging of the Pakistani economy to MNCs. Till recently, the BJP support to MNCs was attributed only to Mr. Advani’s ‘pragmatic’ skillfulness. But now there is a consistency in the stand taken by all the important leaders of BJP, whether it be at Bonn (Mr. Advani), or at Singapore (Mr. Vajpayee), or at New Delhi (Mr. Jaswant Singh). The statement of Mr. Jaswant Singh is particularly significant, because it was made before polling had taken place in Rajasthan, M.P., U.P. and Mizoram. The Times of India report of his speech states that Mr. Jaswant Singh announced that if his party came to power, it would openly invite US multinationals to invest in the consumer goods sector. He gave the assurance that his party would not review or reverse any economic decisions by the present government especially when they had an international dimension. However, knowing the disastrous implications of these decisions on the Indian economy, he goes on to add as a possible corrective that changes would be made in the Company Law to ensure that Indian companies are not victims of this process.
It is clear that the BJP is not bothered about self-reliance in science and technology and the economy. At best, it can broker collaboration with western imperialists for the exploitative Indian and unpatriotic business elite, which itself is unmindful of its long-term self-interests.
We have talked about an alliance of power-oriented communalists and religious fanatics, but in India, fortunately, the challenge to Hindu orthodox elements is tremendous. We have the glorious tradition of lok-dharma, which cannot be communally comprehended, defined or captured. Lok-dharma subsumes the great Buddhist, Jain, Sikh and Bhakti traditions which make people dharmi (religious and pious) but not communal or orthodox. Our so-called secular leadership is showing signs of panic because it is alienated from this tradition. In the recent past, there have been some commendable efforts by secularists to rediscover their roots in the tradition of lok-dharma. In October 1993, the National Book Trust brought out a beautiful collection on Hinduism edited and compiled by an eminent historian, Prof. Ravindra Kumar. SAHMAT, an organisation which, besides having many leading and independent progressive artists associated with it, has leading C.RM. ideologues within its core, has made various elements of lok-dharma, Sufi tradition and Jataka stories the subject matter of its poetry sessions and exhibitions. India does not lack cultural richness to fight Hindu communalism as well as orthodoxy. It is also well
27 Printed on 13 December 2017 COMPILATION OF ARTICLES WRITTEN BY VIJAY PRATAP equipped to fight the Muslim religious orthodoxy through its tradition of lok-dharma, the customary Hinduism/Islam. But it has to muster special energies to fight Muslim communalism for the following reasons:
(i) India had a greater share of Muslim orthodoxy, than of communalism after Independence.
(ii) After Gandhi, Badshah Khan and Abdul Kalam Azad, our culturally alienated leadership could not promote lok-dharma and carry on the process of social-reform.
(iii) The Pakistani State, Hindu communalists in the RSS, the BJP, and the Shiv Sena in particular and power-oriented politicians in general, are objectively pursuing the sole agenda of communalising the Muslims of Asia, more particularly Indian Muslims.
(iv) Anti-India forces and forces which are ignorant of the South-Asian cultural traditions (lok- dharma) are helping Pakistan and Hindu ceremonialists.
(v) For fighting orthodoxy, people have their lok-dharma and the tradition of religious protest movements such as the Bhakti movement. But for fighting communalism nationally and regionally, we need a healthy democratic polity. Unfortunately, the Indian political leadership is not responding adequately to the positive signals from the masses. In fact, many a time, genuine democratic aspirations and cultural assertions of the Indian people are being manipulated by the communalists to their advantage. But if India and South-Asia have to survive with their glorious cultural tradition, then communalists and orthodox elements will have to be fought effectively by all concerned people in the region. October 1993 * *******
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7. LEST WE LOSE THE WAR
~ VIJAY PRATAP ~ SMITU KOTHARI
India in the recent past has lost two important political battles. One was on December 6, 1992 when a political, ‘religious’ and ‘cultural’ conglomeration of fanatic Hindus under the leadership of the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) demolished a ‘disputed mosque’ in Ayodhya. The second battle was lost on December 15, 1993 when the Indian Government agreed to sign the Dunkel Draft and became a party in formalising the hierarchical system in the international trade order. Losing battles, however, is not the end of the world and is understandable. Sometimes such defeats help trigger off the positive energies in the system, which may turn defeat in a battle into eventual victory in the war.
However, those responsible for the defeat of December 6, 1992 either project others as responsible for this betrayal of the Constitution, or even glorify this as a victory of Hindu assertion. Similarly, those responsible for mortgaging India’s economic sovereignty on December 15, 1993 also tend to glorify this act as a ‘necessary evil’ in the ultimate ‘modernisation’ of our society. In such a situation, where the actors responsible for the defeat paint it as victory, one does not know how many more defeats our people are going to be subjected to in the near future.
The situation today is marked by a wide variety of people’s assertions; a common feature of these is the developmentalist-consumerist urge of various communities. Satellite television and other such propaganda mechanisms are reinforcing these consumerist aspirations. No political system can ever fulfil them. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the Berlin Wall could at least be partly attributed to such pressures. The sudden and pervasive collapse of India’s economic borders is also due to the fact that the Indian ruling classes and their Euro-American collabora- tors have been successful in selling the consumerist dream to our people. This is why many people may not be fully convinced that signing the Dunkel Draft or opening the doors to MNCs is really mortgaging the sovereignty of the country.
The majority of our readers, or for that matter most concerned and enlightened citizens, share the view that signing the Dunkel Draft will mark a watershed in the negative sense. The Indian people will pay an incalculable price for doing this. The goal of global market-oriented growth has already diluted the national goal of eliminating poverty and unemployment. A comprehensive cultural invasion will be inevitable - dress, food, reading and writing habits, communication and entertainment - everything is likely to undergo a qualitative transformation, which will create a turmoil in our lives. Ecological destruction will lead to pervasive disem- powerment of communities vis-a-vis their natural resources like land, water and forests and make sheer survival an even grimmer prospect. In addition, export oriented agricultural policies
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(relying upon capital intensive agriculture and agro-industries) and loss of employment by unskilled and semiskilled populations who form the major chunk of India’s working classes, will lead to further accentuation in the malnutrition levels of the poor.
Such widespread disempowerment is bound to lead to accentuation in the survival anxieties of all the communities already inflicted by the rat-race syndrome of consumerist-developmentalist competition. It is this kind of socio-economic situation that provides a good breeding ground for all kinds of sectarianism and fundamentalism. These are some of the inevitable fallouts of the liberalisation policies of our government.
Why is the Indian government becoming party to an agreement with such far-reaching negative consequences? This points to something seriously wrong with our polity, social organisation and/or our worldview. We cannot go into a detailed analysis of the health of our system in this small editorial note. However, we do want to make a case for a thorough and urgent introspection by all of us; otherwise, signing the Dunkel Draft (almost on the dotted line) will not be the last of our defeats.
Such an introspective exercise cannot he undertaken in a discourse where each section of opinion or social segment is trying to place blame on the other. This is a very interesting juncture in our political history when all the major ‘national’ political parties are ruling in at least one major state of the country. But none of the parties is willing to take any risk of losing or sacrificing their power to decisively make the point that this is a ‘do or die’ question as far as Indian sovereignty is concerned. In fact, until the BJP lost the November 1993 state assembly polls in three of four states it was earlier ruling, its leadership not only supported the new economic policies of the Congress government, but did not even allow any incoming opposition to the Dunkel Draft by their sister organisations.
We are of the view that any sectarian worldview - be it of Hindus, Muslims, Dalits or indigenous people, cannot by itself defeat this Euro-American aggression since the struggle against Dunkel has to be all encompassing. The Indian ruling classes and upper castes too need to contribute to this struggle through their professional competence, skills and understanding of the modern western world, unless they are satisfied in becoming permanent junior partners in the global pecking order. People of all castes have to stand united to provide power and legitimacy to such a struggle. Unfortunately, most upper caste Hindus, by their 'self-immolations' and all out opposition to the Mandal recommendations, have shaken the faith and hopes of millions of backwards and Dalits.
In January 1992, soon after an all-India meeting of socialists (Khadagvasla, Maharashtra) decided to actively coordinate the opposition against economic liberalisation, one of us approached a group of professionals and intellectuals sympathetic to the BSP, a Dalit dominated party, to actively participate in this movement. Their argument for refusing to join this movement was an eye opener. It ran somewhat like this: “The Public Sector and our economic policies based on a mixed economy are collapsing because they are managed by high-castes who have become corrupt to the core. These ‘high-castes’ are committed to the values of merit in competition; that is why so many young persons committed self-immolation. Now why should they fear competition from the global economic community?” This is a reflection of Dalit
30 Printed on 13 December 2017 COMPILATION OF ARTICLES WRITTEN BY VIJAY PRATAP casteism or fundamentalism in the reverse. But such tendencies cannot be fought without countering the high-caste sectarian and prejudiced view about Dalit’s backward aspirations for participation and a dignified place in society.
Similarly, fanatic Hindu organisations like the VHP and the Shiv Sena only contribute to the anxieties of Muslims who are important bearers of our indigenous traditions of crafts and technology. Cultural self-confidence and revitalisation of our indigenous traditions of science and technology is necessary, if we have to effectively oppose blind globalism. But how can we display this cultural self-confidence if we are unable to involve the Dalits, backwards and Muslims in the task of nation-building; unless every citizen feels that he or she has a stake in the well-being and future of the society? Unfortunately, we seem to be trapped in a situation in which entrenched social forces are not willing to give up their politics of dividing Hindus and Muslims, or undermining the autonomous leadership of Dalits and backwards. Although parties representing these forces claim to be patriotic, in reality they have weakened India’s capacity to face the anti-poor, anti-people pressures of global market forces.
A large number of secular ‘progressives’ either do not have live contact with the Dalits, tribals or artisans of India, or are ideologically so conditioned that they do not appreciate the intensity of the feelings of these groups; their assertion of identity, the urge for dignity, their need and desire for a dignified place within the system. For this reason a large number of NGOs and movement groups who are ideologically in favour of the oppressed sections do not inspire confidence among Dalits and backwards. Therefore, they are unable to attract these sections of people in their campaigns against the Dunkel Draft. As Dalit ideologue Dr. Vimal Kirti from Nagpur puts it, ‘‘There are thousands of Dalit organisations at the grassroots who involve themselves in local issues and day-to-day struggles. These organizations, however, do not understand the complex mechanisms of exploitation operating at the national and international levels. Most activists and intellectuals, given their upper class, upper caste background, do not bother to associate with these groups.’’ It is only the activists who work at the interface of Dalit groups and Left groups who emphasize the need to bring out explicitly the connection between the new economic policies and further marginalisation of the oppressed castes.
We need to appreciate the organic unit of these issues. No effective opposition to Dunkel is possible without being secular and without aligning with the oppressed castes in their struggle for dignity in society. These three issues together constitute one single whole of a pro-people movement. The sooner the high-caste, anti-Muslim or anti-Dalit sections realise this, the better it would be for closing ranks and preparing for the next round of battle in the power struggle for a ‘‘new world-order’’. Along with this basic ideological clarity, we need a leadership with credibility, which can inspire confidence among our masses.
Also, media persons, NGOs and movement groups who are mobilising people against the government’s decision to sign on the dotted line, have to remember their marginality in the overall political process. It is only this recognition of their political limits that may enable them to act as catalysts in the overall political process. Above all, it is the role of our state, viz., the bureaucracy, the defence forces, the judiciary and legislatures, which will determine our future battles. Thus, any mobilisational strategy must aim at the concrete goal of making our state structures responsive and pro-people. In a democracy for state structures to be responsive and
31 Printed on 13 December 2017 COMPILATION OF ARTICLES WRITTEN BY VIJAY PRATAP accountable, we need healthy political parties, which are not in existence today. Thus, NGOs and movement groups cannot be effective without concerning themselves with these larger political issues. The fact that these groups have not been able to work with left-centrist parties in their battle against Dunkel, points to a major inadequacy.
If we are able to understand the organic unity of the key issues facing us - bringing about a self- reliant and pro-people economic system; giving a dignified place in society to long oppressed castes; and communal harmony - and to work with the realization of our limits in the overall political process, then, notwithstanding our defeats in some battles, we may yet win the war.
February 1994
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8. EXCERPTS FROM A LETTER TO A FRIEND ON THE FUTURE OF VASUDHAIVA KUTUMBAKAM
Vijay Pratap & Others
The notion of political intervention has become so individualistic all over the world that if one is engaged in one's own reading, writing and speaking even within a small group, we think that we are intervening in the larger debate. For intervening at a macro plane, whether through the politics of discourse and debates or through mass mobilization, you require large teams. All of us have larger concerns and are trying to respond to them as individuals but not as a modest- conscious part of a collectivity. If we ever are part of a collectivity, we become part of only those collectivities in which our arrogance is not questioned and we are central to it. Probably the democracy at the individual plane has been defined in a manner that full flowering of the individual freedom is possible only when intervention is defined non-socially if not anti-socially. How can an intervention into a collective/social situation be non-social? Philosophers like you must have engaged with this issue because democracy is supposed to be the principle value of social political organisation of our times. Objectively, so far in non-European societies, individuals are an organic part of the communities and the personal self of each one of us is defined by the larger definition of the self by the collectivity and its communitarian principles and not by the individual self. It is only the last 200 years of democracy in western societies which has expanded the space and salience of the individual self. This expansion of the individual space has led to many beautiful achievements of human civilization.
One has to examine that, but for this input could Gandhi have evolved the notion of personal conscience and then fought the religious orthodoxy of Muslims and Hindus, and the issue of untouchability. But this achievement of individual space is to be distinguished from the pathological individualism, which has its sources in the meaning system of modernity where morality, values and human empathy have been replaced by amorality, success and total callousness. Professionalism and professional success are defined in a totally de-contextualised manner. The notion of professional ethics and various forms of humanism and liberalism are unable to prevent the atomization of communities and societies. This has paved the way for pervasive anxiety syndrome of losing the mad-race. This anxiety syndrome has much fallout on the plane of social consciousness. The end result of all the fallouts is that rightist and fascist tendencies are strengthened. In case of powerful individuals, the first fallout is giving up the
Vijay Pratap 58, Dakshinapuram, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) New Delhi-110067, India. Tel: ++91-11-2674-2102 (Res) E-mail: “Vijay Pratap”
33 Printed on 13 December 2017 COMPILATION OF ARTICLES WRITTEN BY VIJAY PRATAP norms, they 'transcend' any system of collective restraints or constraints, and become pre- eminent and indispensable to their collectivities. Such individuals are also free of their voice of conscience. The reason for freeing oneself from the voice of conscience is that they are following the duties of apad dharma (religion/duties of the emergency situation where they cannot follow the normal norms of the normal times). In India, many of the political groups are now being controlled by such people; some of whom quite remarkably resemble the Mafias in their style of functioning.
The second social impact of the mad-race anxiety syndrome is that lesser individuals become part of the primordial groups, and communalism and casteism become the norm rather than the exception. People like us have to urgently work out a new relationship between individual self and the self-defined by the collectivity, the notion of collective restraints and a notion of comprehensive democracy from grassroot to global level. It is a very challenging task in which the local meaning systems, nuances, languages and culture have to be preserved still evolving a globally comprehensible language. Likes of us who have been socialised in a 'universalistic' 'internationalist mindset' have this option of trying to become bilingual by contributing to a global discourse on democracy and becoming part of grassroot empowering struggles on the terms of the people who are more rooted in their cultural geographical locations. Unfortunately, such decisions at this stage will be individual decisions but we have to work hard to evolve a notion of global organicity of the global democratic community. I feel that we should not name our forum Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam; instead, we should use this concept and propagate it as much as possible because it looks a bit paradoxical that few individuals create an organization or a club of friends calling itself Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam.
The related problematic part is that in this frame of individual intervention the capacities and qualities of an average actor are irrelevant to those actors who control various initiatives and institutions of intervention. The net result of this is that all institutions and organisations do not plan and nurture the growth of ordinary mortals. They may join the organisation or may leave it. It is only one charismatic individual at the head of an institution or an alliance of charismatic leaders who determines the nature and fate of the organisation. It is because of this notion of intervention that in India the Congress Party has lost all threads for its moral and political coherence. That is why it is so miserably dependent on the dynastic principle. Unfortunately, it has reached a situation where all its important members, whether they are part of its formal high command (Congress Working Committee) or not, are essentially individual actors seeking individual alliances and coalitions of individuals.
The other cohering and binding force used to be dreams, values and ideologies. But all the ideological formulations crystallized in the beginning of the last century have exhausted their course. They need to be renewed. But renewal of ideologies is also a political/organizational project. It involves an organic unity of experience and reflection with diverse reality, as encompassing as possible. Since the parties are dependent on some form of real or putative charismatic single individual, they are not able to reflect the Indian class reality of the oppressed people, social, regional, cultural and geographical diversities. Added to this, is the fact of individual notion of intervention we have talked about. So there is very little input of critical mass of requisite ideas and experiences, which will go into the making of a 'new democratic dream'. So the fragmentation of our party system into smaller regional groups of castes, or
34 Printed on 13 December 2017 COMPILATION OF ARTICLES WRITTEN BY VIJAY PRATAP coalition of individual parties, or the parties around one charismatic individual, are unable to make inputs into the making of new democratic ideology.
In our part of the world, the elite and the middle class through their own act of omission and commission, distanced themselves from our sources of cultural and spiritual renewal. We are not only ignorant of our socio-cultural context and categories of cognition, but have actively undermined our own knowledge systems, technologies, social capital and all such tangible and intangible resources which go into the making of a democratic society. Hence, the re-discovery of roots while retaining the context of global democracy is a very important task. Issues of Ecological Democracy are an important entry point for understanding the traditional knowledge systems and working out the ways of democratizing North-South partnership and contributing to the evolution of a perspective on Global Democracy.
The idea of Dhirubhai Sheth (of Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi) of Nordic societies getting tired of social democracy is a great challenge which all of you face. In India, the attempts to close the democratic system are not only gaining momentum, but there is a pervasive silence on shrinkage of democratic space. It is for the first time after independence that no person from the second largest community of India (Muslims) is represented in the supreme decision- making body of our government (the Council of Cabinet Ministers). Smaller communities like Christians are being physically attacked on the behest of RSS. There are "draft constitutions" circulating, which seek to disenfranchise the overwhelming majority of Indian people and are trying to restrict democracy to only a few millions - primarily upper caste-upper class people. This constitution is supposedly being circulated by RSS. The RSS chief has been publicly demanding the replacement of the Constitution by an 'indigenous' constitution, which means paving the way for their dictatorship. It does not seem probable that they will be able to impose their dictatorship but the attempts to do that can do incalculable damage to our democratic institutions. For political democracy, the conceptual span ofcourse has to be global, but the minimalist canvas has to be South-Asian.
In Nepal, only in 10 years of democracy, the middle class and elite, like in India, have started advancing cynical and anti-democratic arguments. The added challenge is that the oppressed communities are yet to be organised by the democratic forces. Interestingly, Maoists are organizing a national federation of ethnic communities without adequately raising the class issues. One of their top leaders has publicly said that he will align with the king to fight the 'Indian Imperialism'. This kind of formulation is very similar to the communist formulation in 1940s of the last century when they supported the Muslim League on the idea of dividing India on religious lines. The Nepal-India network on democracy is also an urgent agenda, which must be pursued. I do not know who will take the lead for the group on political democracy. Yogendra Yadav has the professional competence, but whether he regards this framework as an appropriate framework or not, I do not know.
Nepal and India have particular commonalities on the issues of Dalits and Adivasis. The Hindi journal of Shri Kishan Patnaik is planning a special issue to evaluate 10 years of Mandal politics. My view is that our group on social democracy in this part should at least have Nepali counterparts; otherwise, the politics will slip into anti-democratic hands, and not to leftist
35 Printed on 13 December 2017 COMPILATION OF ARTICLES WRITTEN BY VIJAY PRATAP totalitarians but to rightist forces. Unfortunately, the important mainstream political parties are oblivious of the emergent Dalit Adivasi aspirations.
The global and the national pathologies are working in a manner that they are contributing to the Huntington design of inevitable clash of civilizations. The way Hindus (Tamils) and Buddhists (Sinhals) have polarised in Sri Lanka, the way Hindus are being mobilized on the planks of hatred and distrust for Muslims in India by RSS, is a case in point. The Indians in Europe and America who have a sense of identity loss in the northern societies are constructing around themselves jingoistic identity prison houses with strong and sharply defined boundaries without points of ambivalence where they can converge and relate to other identities, thus causing polarization of identities. The South-Asians abroad are actively becoming very un-South-Asian and becoming true examples of case studies of Huntington's understanding on identities. The situation in the neighbouring states of India is replete with negative examples. The situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan is well-known in our circles, but the history seems to be moving in the same direction in Central Asian Republics as well. Dr. Shrivastav has been nominated as the national spokesperson and one of the general secretaries of Samata Party, therefore he will have less time for this issue despite the fact that he has contacts in Central Asia. Suresh Sharma, Dhirubhai Sheth, Prabhash Joshi and Arun Kumar have a good understanding on the issues of culture and identity. But it requires a Marko Ulvila or a Vijay Pratap to weld them into a political team. Unfortunately, no one has the time. In about two years time, the situation in Bangladesh, India and Nepal can go out of control and we will become more like Pakistan and I hope some day the reverse trend would start and we will not become like Afghanistan. The close confidants of our Prime Minister claim that he is aware of these dangers and he is trying to fight them all.
The sum total of this crying is that we suspend our individual intellectual projects of perfection and get down to setting up global networks on issues of democracy, including cultural, as urgently as possible. The situation is grim as well as pregnant with immense possibilities.
Personally, Atal Bihari Vajpayee may not share the Huntington and the RSS view on identities and democracy, but the record of this government on all dimensions of democracy, including political democracy, is terrible. Congress had never accommodated the criminals and mafias in the strategic positions of power, making them ministers in the provincial cabinets. After all, not having a Muslim in the Union Cabinet is the Prime Minister's decision and prerogative, and not of the RSS chief.
This government is very actively pursuing the Clinton and Company Raj agenda on globalization, which is again accentuating and reinforcing the old disparities and creating new poverties. And global interventions, especially from North, even from the radical democratic groups, are not able to make the desirable inputs, because they are so distant from the complexities of ground level situation and the activists from North interact only with the colonies and elite minds of the South, who largely act as agents of Clinton and Huntington, and not as forces of democratization.
The instrument of state is increasingly becoming reflective of the dominant designs, aspirations and conspiracies of the Company Rajwala’s (MNC) mindset. The earlier notion of representing the will and aspirations of sovereign people is becoming less and less valid. The citizen groups
36 Printed on 13 December 2017 COMPILATION OF ARTICLES WRITTEN BY VIJAY PRATAP who may decide to act in the realm of civil society for practical limitations of their individual or collective selves have no option of ignoring the agenda or of reclaiming the democratic states as representative and embodiment of the sovereignty of the people. Your ex-President in Finland, or Mr. Kissinger in the US, becoming consultants of the multi-national corporations are an example of declining power of the institution called state. The transnational institutions like WTO have been created by multi-nationals directly. The earlier transnational institutions like UN are losing their cloud and presence. Unless NATO, which has no objective rational whatsoever, dissolved itself of any talk on global democracy, democratizing UN and its security council is going to remain hollow. So the movement groups have to redefine their attitude to the instrument called 'nation-state' and political parties which deal with the power of the state on behalf of the peoples in various nation-states. The debate on global democracy should also focus on the fate of smaller nations (specially in South) in the context of hegemonic designs of the powerful nation-states or transnational institutions like UN in case of sanctions against Iraq and IMF, WB and WTO, in the context of economic democracy in South.
The problem for any interventionist strategy is that the chemistry of mobilising people below poverty line involves a different lifestyle and political skills, such as combining the ability to handle the symbols of identity mobilisation along with professional inputs in respect of democracy. In the NGO sector, the interventionist strategy requires higher degree of action research inputs which does not allow any space for mass mobilisational strategies. Regional and global networking so far have remained apolitical to the issues of state power; except recent examples of PGA and actions at Seattle, the output has been confined to the columns of the newspapers. The right kind of knowledge generation is an important task for which professional intellectuals need to play a critical role. But when they operate independent of the power struggles in the society, they have only limited utility.
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9. A FORUM OF DIALOGUES ON GLOBAL RESPONSIBILITY TOWARDS DEMOCRACY
~ Risto Isomaki & Vijay Pratap
People of our region of the globe have long cherished values which, in modern times, are best expressed under the rubric of ‘universalism’ and various dimensions of ‘democracy’. Before the colonial interventions of the West, even where there were rulers of foreign origin, the participatory mode of governance from the grassroots to the top, devolution of political power at all levels and cultural plurality were hallmarks of our socio-political system. We had our own failings such as the obnoxious practice of untouchability or the fact that communitarian principles manifested through the caste system degenerated into hierarchical fundamentalism. But despite all kinds of failings, the sense of “Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam” (a Sanskrit concept meaning, “The World is a Family”) has been part of our cultural sensibility all along since time immemorial. That is why our socio-cultural diversity is a source of strength and in fact primary defining force behind our unbroken civilisational identity. There have of course, been brief phases of ideological or identity polarisations. But soon, the pluralist perspective prevails. No sect, religion, ideological group, class, socio-political formation, the state or ‘church’ can claim a monopoly of the truth. All truths have to start with the small letter‘t’ and depending on the vantage point, are able to capture only some aspects of the Truth and not the Truth as a whole.
Contemporary industry, economic organization or, for that matter any form of modern organisation (given its class configuration and now present forms of globalisation) many a times is at loggerheads with our age-old wisdom, identity and indigenous knowledge-systems. However, our traditional universalistic sensibility tells us that the present form of globalisation is creating social ruptures and pathologies of atomisation, aggression and violence all over the world, including at the places of origin of modern forms of social-organisational visions of globalisation. Many a critics of this form of globalisation have a parochial vision and they think that it will have an adverse impact only on us or the erstwhile third world countries.
The fact of the matter is that it is fuelling a kind of ‘anxiety syndrome’ even in the USA & EU countries. That is why the parties, which openly praise Hitler, are slowly gaining strength in some of the European countries. Social Democrats who rule many countries in Europe are not able to face the onslaught of globalism effectively. (We find in Austria, already a Nazi apologist party is part of the ruling coalition. This party has started building up a campaign against women NGOs.) The present form of globalism has already had a profound negative impact on the people all over the globe including that of G-8 countries. If it does not fuel the jingoistic egos of Indians, then we would like to put on record that our civil society has yet not lost all what is necessary for a beautiful, esthetic, prosperous, egalitarian and happy civilisation. In modern times, one of the tallest men of history - Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi strengthened the civil-society in South- Asia in a manner that it has benefited not only the last person but also created a living example of a vital, robust civil-society in our region. In fact, due to the success of the Gandhian
38 Printed on 13 December 2017 COMPILATION OF ARTICLES WRITTEN BY VIJAY PRATAP methodology of broad-basing the Congress Party, many of the political parties influenced by him behaved more like movement organisations rather than like an electoral machine. However, now the scene has become much more complex with many new entrants, especially the peasant and Dalit leaders acquiring their own independent play and the rest of the society still not willing and happy to share power with them.
South-Asian politics has seen many political upheavals since the region acquired liberation from the colonial masters. Undoubtedly, these upheavals have left many scars and cracks on our civil society and polity. Globally an elusive ‘Consumer Paradise’ is being promised through the electronic media and now through the internet financed by interested stake-holders without any consideration for issues of economic equity, ecological sensitivity, cultural plurality or dignity of the oppressed. All over the globe, one finds a kind of mad rush for this consumerist paradise. Values of austerity, larger good, rights of future generations over our natural and other resources and keeping the interests and perspectives of oppressed communities in mind, while (rightly) asserting individual autonomy, are considered obsolete. This is resulting in break-ups, fragmentation, fission and polarisation of human collectivities. Extreme individuation and atomisation is resulting in a backlash of identity assertion. This backlash is to be clearly distinguished from the genuine assertions of autonomy of cultural self-definition, issues of ethnic identity or social dignity. So far, the most important political framework for negotiating a society incorporating universalistic-humanistic values is political democracy.
Socio-political forces whose worldviews and dreams are anchored in a doctored view of history (such as Huntington’s view on “Clash of Civilisations”) are becoming victims of the prevailing social pathology of a ‘mad-race syndrome’. These forces, whose social base normally is of the sections/formations who believe that they are engaged in a survival struggle, have the perception of a crisis in which normal normative principles are considered as impediments, a distinction between conservatism and orthodoxy is lost, moderation is not seen as a democratic trait. These ‘victim’ forces and organisations objectively end up as most amoral and undemocratic forces. They also damage their societies in a very deep and decisive way. The ability of such organisations to learn from negative historical experiences of one’s own society or from societies elsewhere declines considerably. Globally, the most important challenge of our times is to respond to this threat of fundamentalism of various kinds. As mentioned earlier, expansion and deepening of democracy with a comprehensive view of democracy, is the only antidote against all kinds of fundamentalism.
For the last two centuries or more, human civilisation has striven to expand the scope of individual freedom as well as freedom of the nation-states. This expansion of freedom has ruptured many of the traditional collectivities, empowered hitherto oppressed communities, and given rise to new forms of social behaviour. This journey of democratic assertions is yet not complete. The fundamentalist onslaught is partly to be attributed to the fear of losing power by the privileged few. With the collapse of Soviet-Union, these assertions are sought to be manipulated by vested interests to suit the needs of a unipolar world. In a phase of phenomenal upsurge of democratic aspirations, new norms have to be agreed upon globally as well as at various levels of human collectivities including the nation-state, through a process of
39 Printed on 13 December 2017 COMPILATION OF ARTICLES WRITTEN BY VIJAY PRATAP participatory dialogues even with the adversary (let us say, two neighbouring nation-states who are at logger-heads with each other or two ideological adversaries in a single nation-state). In this transitional phase, one has to consciously avoid being judgmental regarding other’s viewpoints. The critical evaluation of other’s viewpoints has to be in an idiom, which encourages moderation. As analysed by Azfar Aziz in the Daily Star (from Dhaka dated Wednesday 9 Feb. 2000) : “ It is high time for the idealists to realise that it is all right for them to speculate about the nature of truth as long as they don’t impose their beliefs on others. That what exists is real and reality is the lonely truth; all philosophies and ideologies are mere interpretations of it and no single interpretation is good forever. That it is absolutely lunatic to try to distort reality into the scope of a certain ideal, for reality is infinite and ideals are finite. That there are as many interpretations of reality as many individual beings. So it would be better for them to adopt an inductive process in decision making rather than their previous deductive one. That they have to look for and find our common grounds and agreements with their fellow citizens and make them the basis of their strategies and action plans.” In this era of redefinition of our identities and moralities, we need to evolve quasi-permanent structures of dialogue in South-Asia on all the principal dimensions of democracy––Economic Democracy, Cultural Democracy, Social Democracy, Ecological Democracy and Political Democracy. We have been discussing/dialoguing with our friends in various parts of the globe on these dimensions of democracy. There is an emerging concensus that civil society in general and grassroot groups and NGOs in particular need some institutional arrangement to clarify their ideas and evolve their perspective on democracy. For this a global dialogue forum is needed. In discussions that have taken place in various national and international fora, people have started to develop ideas about building a global network of individuals and organizations sharing similar values and goals. Such an initiative could also be seen as an effort to engage the international civil society in organizing global or regional dialogue processes about a number of issues that are, at this juncture, of crucial importance. [Lokayan, together with a number of other organizations, has organized, in India, more than one thousand such dialogues about a large spectrum of important issues. Lokayan’s approach is culture specific. It has very deep roots in the South-Asian civilization and it can only be properly understood if it is seen in this cultural context; it should not be seen as a mere “technique” or a method that can be transferred as such to other parts of the world. Some aspects of the approach, however, are universally applicable and could be used to catalyze political and social processes in other parts of the world.] By saying this, we do not intend to claim that we have rediscovered the wheel; we are fully aware that thousands, if not millions, of people are already actively doing this kind of work. Still, all the forces that have tried to oppose the present hegemonic position of the economistic right have had great difficulties in developing a new holistic discourse strong enough to produce a shift from economism to a new moral awakening in politics and culture. We think that the dialogues proposed in this paper might have a real chance in catalyzing such a process. The Issues and Goals
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Five basic issues, which could form the basis for an international network and also be the goals of such an initiative, can be stated in the following manner:
I. Empowerment of the Daridranarayan, the ‘Last Person’ (Economic Democracy) All the greatest teachers of mankind including Gandhi, Mohammed, the Buddha and Christ, have emphasized the importance of empowerment of the weakest and the poorest of society. What this means in each society during each historical period will differ - because poverty and deprivation will be created and regenerated over and over again through widely varied means - but the issue or goal, is clear and remains the same. One of the main problems is how to relate to the needs and concerns of the Daridranarayan in a way that is empowering and not patronizing.
II. Ecological Regeneration and People’s Control Over Natural Resources (Ecological Democracy) Environmental degradation - pollution of air, water and soil, loss of species and bio-diversity, destruction of the ozone layer, destabilization of the climate, loss of tree and vegetative cover, soil erosion and desertification - is one of the most serious issues of our times. It should be a high priority for the movement. However, the discourse used in the West and among the westernized organizations in the South is often very alienating for the majority of the (rural) people, and may result in programmes and measures not understood nor backed up by them. In the long run, such programmes can backfire. A better approach is to concentrate on people’s control over natural resources, and integrate the various environmental and conservational concerns in such an approach.
III. Human Dignity (Social Democracy) There is no doubt that the neo-liberal economic policies and other measures pursued by the New Right will be causing extreme poverty on a scale that could be unsurpassed in prior human history. In many cases, the problems should be seen in the framework of empowering the Daridranaryan and as issues of acute economic survival. However, in most instances, issues like unemployment or underemployment, temporary employment, workers’ rights and the meaning and nature of the available working opportunities are, across the globe, issues of human dignity. Even in cases where the crumbs falling from the table of the neo-liberals are more than enough to satisfy the basic material needs of the people, human dignity is sacrificed in a most detrimental way. The hegemonic status of neo-liberal policies and global institutions creates identities of greed. It promotes consumerism and materialism at the cost of more spiritual layers of being. Neo-liberal policies prevent people from making good moral choices, and from pursuing their spirituality; it sacrifices human dignity for profit.
IV. Plural Co-existence (Cultural Democracy) The issue of plural coexistence - and of the prevention of communal violence - will have a profound significance for every part of the world at the beginning of this millennium. When the world’s economic and cultural crises deepen, the threat of communal violence increases. In areas suffering from acute environmental deterioration, the undermining of the natural resource base can aggravate such problems. In South-Asia, the prevention of Hindu-Muslim violence will
41 Printed on 13 December 2017 COMPILATION OF ARTICLES WRITTEN BY VIJAY PRATAP become perhaps the most crucial political issue during the coming decades. In Europe, the denomination of the Muslims is being projected as fundamentalist or non-pluralist segment of the society. Probably because Islamic Resurgence has, from the very beginning, been largely directed against the spiritual hollowness and extreme materialism of Western societies. The increasing polarisation between the Islamic countries and the West (the European Union and the United States of America) has been deepened by instances like the Gulf War in 1990, which created anti-West reactions throughout the Islamic world. The European integration - all the old colonial powers being fused to one new super-power - is worsening the situation because it is considered as the potential and powerful adversarial supra-state by the Islamic states. The conflict will be further aggravated if the European Union becomes a real Federal State and if it develops a joint defense policy and a joint army, in which case all the EU member states, including the Nordic countries, will become integral parts of a major military super-power with a large arsenal of nuclear weapons. Plural coexistence, however, should not only be viewed from a negative viewpoint or through the scenarios that need to be prevented; it should also be seen as richness, where new things are being created and recreated continuously through the interaction of differences.
V. Nurturing and Deepening Democracy (Political Democracy) Political Democracy, if not constantly cared for and defended, will wither away. All the possible checks that can be built in order to prevent the un-democratizing of social systems can only be effective if they are actively guarded by the people. Democracy - defined in terms like participation, representation, rule of law, protection of cultural, linguistic, religious, political minorities and transparency of political decision-making - is to be nurtured and deepened. However, at present only one model of democracy - the western liberal or market democracy whose specificities have evolved in a small cultural-historical zone of the globe - is being adopted by all the countries with different cultures, institutions and traditions. The big wave of indigenization and anti-westernization - to which belong, among other things, the Islamic Resurgence, the growth of the Hindutva movements and the economic and cultural rise of China – cannot be wished away lightly. If issues like democracy, human rights or women’s rights can be labelled as “western values” by various oppressive forces in the South, there is a real chance that they will be seriously undermined during the first century of the new millennium. We propose that leading members of Indian public life set up a forum which responds to the democratic urges of the grassroots. The scope and vision of this forum has to be universalistic and democratic. Initially, an organising committee can be set up to convene a South-Asian conference on strengthening grassroot democracy. In this conference, grassroot activists from all over South-Asia and may be some observers from movement groups from other parts of the Globe who are engaged in struggles for democratising the WTO, etc., activist oriented media persons, intellectuals, professionals and some mainstream politicians should meet and formulate some plan of building an institutional structure of dialogues on the five aspects of democracy. In the initial phase of two or three years it may aim at setting up Citizen Groups in civil society for dialogues on nurturing, deepening, and radicalizing democracy all over South-Asia. Given the present political situation in the region, the South-Asian headquarter should be outside India, although the first conference should be held in India. It goes without saying that the conference should be organised in a non-sectarian manner with a genuine sense of commitment to public deliberation to strengthen the processes of nation-building in South-Asia.
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10. A BRIEF INTRODUCTION: THE 'VASUDHAIVA KUTUMBAKAM' INITIATIVE1
VIJAY PRATAP
‘Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam’ (The Earth is a Family), a Coalition for Comprehensive Democracy, is about furthering, strengthening and deepening ‘democracy’ simultaneously in economic, social, political, cultural, gender and ecological dimensions of life, from local to global levels.
Pursuing the Democratic Dream Modern day dominant science, social and economic processes, and polity tend to fragment life, issues and people’s ways of looking at them. Democracy has come to mean merely ‘representative’ political structures. Despite this dominant thrust of institutionalisation over the past 200-500 years, which has culminated in the present processes of monopolistic, hegemonic, and humanly disempowering globalisation, there is another perspective of democracy which is still widely espoused intellectually and intuitively. It is an idea about relationships being based on equality, mutuality and respect – in individual interaction between family members, between communities, between human beings and the rest of nature, in the market, between genders, and the nation-state, and between peoples across the nations. The challenge for all of us is to build politics around this perspective to channelize all institutions towards ever expanding and deepening democratisation.
People in South-Asia have long cherished values which, in modern times, are best expressed under the rubric of ‘universalism’ and various dimensions of ‘democracy’. Before the colonial interventions of the West, even when there were rulers of foreign origin, the participatory mode of governance from the grassroots to the top, devolution of political power at all levels, and cultural plurality were hallmarks of our socio-political system. We had our own failings, such as the obnoxious practice of untouchability. The communitarian principles manifested through the caste system degenerated into hierarchical fundamentalism. However, despite all kinds of failings, the sense of ‘Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam’ (The Earth is a Family) has been part of our
1 Democratising South-North Relations | Pub. KEPA Service Centre for Development Cooperation, Finland | Aug. 2006
Vijay Pratap 147-A, Uttarakhand, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) New Delhi-110067, India. Tel: ++91-11-2674-2102 (Res) E-mail: “Vijay Pratap”[email protected] [email protected]
43 Printed on 13 December 2017 COMPILATION OF ARTICLES WRITTEN BY VIJAY PRATAP cultural sensibility since time immemorial. That is why our socio-cultural diversity is a source of strength and, in fact, the primary defining force behind our unbroken identity. There have, of course, been brief phases of ideological or identity polarizations. But soon, the pluralist perspective prevails again. The basic premise of this worldview is that no sect, religion, ideological group, class, socio-political formation, the state, or ‘church’ can claim a monopoly over TRUTH. Each one’s ‘truth’ is able to capture only some aspects of the TRUTH, depending upon the vantage point, and not 'the TRUTH' as a whole. Other dimensions are contained in the ‘truth’ possessed by our enemy, and our allies.
Threats to Democracy All epochal transformative moments in history are pregnant with two opposing possibilities – a new dawn or an era of darkness. What are the forces of darkness at this juncture?
Globally, an elusive 'Consumer Paradise' is being promised through the mass media and the market. There is a mad rush for this kind of globalism. Socio-political forces, whose worldviews and dreams are anchored in a doctored view of history (such as Huntington’s view on “Clash of Civilisations”), are becoming victims of the prevailing social pathology of a ‘mad-race syndrome’. Social identities are getting hardened and becoming more and more competitive. These forces believe that they are engaged in a survival struggle, in which moderation finds little place as a democratic trait.
The Democratic Agenda No one organization can aspire to fulfil the need of all types of interventions required to realize democratic values in all walks of life. Hence, by definition, there cannot be any one Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam. It is a way of relating to each other, not a structure for unifying or homogenising the diverse. It is an attempt to ‘own’ each other and nurture each other’s democratic interventions despite differences. Therefore, it can be more or less a space for enabling ideas on concerns about democracy and a platform for diverse interventions. It can be a forum where people from diverse backgrounds sharing this broad search, come and share their work and create new coalitions without necessarily merging their respective institutional/organisational identities.
Such an initiative could also be seen as an effort to engage the civil society in dialogues on a number of crucial issues at various levels – local, regional and international. The dimensions can be articulated as: Empowerment of the daridranarayan, the ‘last person’ (Economic Democracy) Ecological regeneration and people’s control over natural resources (Ecological Democracy) Ensuring human dignity (Social Democracy) Strengthening plural co-existence (Cultural Democracy) Deepening of democratic structures and institutions (Political Democracy) Evolving gender relations based on mutuality, equality and respect (Gender Democracy)
Our Faith Our shared view is that selfishness and greed are only one part of the human journey and not the defining characteristics of human life. Wants can be fulfilled, and even indulged in, without being glorified.
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The task of building true democracy today is inextricably linked to the global struggle to reform or transform capitalism without a readymade version of any ism. It is a project based on the perennial values of non-violence, compassion, justice, equality, freedom and truth.
Many radical movements think that their responsibility is only towards a fundamental transfer of power in favour of the oppressed and marginalized. They feel no responsibility towards the larger whole while pursuing the cherished ideals. Moral renewal of individuals and institutions in society, with a sense of the larger whole, is the responsibility of all.
Our Hope In a phase of phenomenal upsurge of democratic aspirations, new norms have to be agreed upon through a process of participatory dialogue even with the adversary, at various levels of human collectivities. One has to recognize the complementarity of each other’s ‘truth’ and consciously avoid being judgmental regarding the other’s viewpoint. The critical evaluation of other’s viewpoints has to be in an idiom which encourages moderation and introspective engagement on all sides. Such processes are unfolding and can consciously and actively be pursued today.
Our Method We espouse a three-fold method for democratisation. One is ‘dialogue’, basically to recognise the contours and the calling of our times. Dialogues at all levels, including with the adversary, are possible only if we believe in the willingness of the human spirit for struggle and self- sacrifice against injustice, instead of believing in the conspiracy theory. The dialogue must consciously be across hierarchical structures at each level, incorporating the idiom and aspirations of the most marginalised. Constructive action to strengthen and promote modes of production and ways of life consonant with the various dimensions of democracy is the second aspect, which must be based on a participatory process at each level and across levels. Simultaneously, we have to fight the injustice. For this, multiple forms of non-violent political action are the only answer. One is conscientious civil disobedience, to use Gandhi's word, 'Satyagraha'.
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11. A BRIEF NOTE ON “INDIA - CENTRAL ASIA DIALOGUE”
~Vijay Pratap ~ Dr. Shambhu Shrivastwa (For Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam)
India and Central Asia share a relationship dating back to very ancient times. The famous silk route, linking China with Europe and India, passed through Central Asia. In fact, during the Kushan period, North-West India and Central Asia were part of a common state system. The social, cultural and trade relations between India and Central Asia constantly grew through the medieval period to modern times. The significant aspect of the relationship is that cultural, and to some extent trade, relationships persisted even while the political relationship was far from good, as in the period of colonial rivalry in Central Asia between Czarist Russia and the British Empire. Direct contacts between the two great civilisations have left their imprint on many aspects of their lives. The relationship was never uni-directional. Even the political instabilities and uncertainties cast their shadow on each other.
The birth of five independent Republics of Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, as a result of disintegration of former USSR, has brought about the re-emergence of Central Asia on the world political scene. Apart from the geographical location of Central Asia, providing an interface between Europe and Asia, the region is attracting wide attention of big powers, including the USA and China, due to its high reserves of oil and gas. There are attempts to take advantage of the difficult situation in Central Asia and gain more territorial influence, with unstable Afghanistan working as the springboard.
India and Central Asia have a common stake in maintaining geopolitical balance in Central Asia and not allowing it to be disturbed by big powers, since that will have serious repercussions, for not only Central Asia, but also strategic balance in West Asia and South Asia. Central Asia retains strong economic linkages with Russia. There is a significant minority Russian population in all the republics. It is, therefore, imperative that Central Asia develops friendly and balanced ties with its neighbours, both in the north and the south, including India and Pakistan, as well as with all the major powers in Europe, America and the Pacific, on the basis of equality.
Central Asia, in some ways, is at cross-roads. Given the choice and respite, these republics would like to consolidate their newly acquired political independence without outside interference. Alternatively, they have the potential to enter the vicious circle of conflict, which due to its geographical location, can extend from Europe to South Asia, and from West to East Asia.
The people and leadership of India and Central Asian Republics have a common stake in strengthening the independence and sovereignty of their respective countries. The danger to their unity and integrity comes not only from politics of domination and interference by cynical outside powers, but also from fundamentalists and anti-democratic elements who tend to strike at
46 Printed on 13 December 2017 COMPILATION OF ARTICLES WRITTEN BY VIJAY PRATAP the very root of modern nation-state system by giving divisive and separatist slogans. The economic difficulties being faced by India, and more so by newly independent republics of Central Asia, are exploited by these forces for sowing divisions in the society. The situation in India affects Central Asia and vice versa. A case in point is financing of terrorism and fundamentalism in Tajikistan, Kashmir and Punjab through the drug money as a result of rapid expansion of cultivation of opium in Afghanistan and parts of Central Asia. Similarly, divisive voices in India provide fertile ground for fundamentalist propaganda in Central Asia.
On account of the rise of fundamentalism in Central Asian Republics, the status of women in this region is likely to be affected. Unlike their neighbours, such as Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan, the women in this region are largely literate and have come out of the clutches of the medieval value systems. It will be tragic if the current status of women in society is undermined and they are denied their rightful share in social, family and personal life. It is, therefore, the responsibility of democratic forces in Asia as well as Europe to ensure that gender equity is not threatened by the rise of regressive forces in this region.
The socio-economic development of Central Asia during the Soviet period moved at a greater pace than its neighbours like Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan. The Soviet period with all its drawbacks, set into motion the dismantling of age-old backwardness and to quite an extent elimination of socio-economic inequality. Significant investments were made in agriculture and industry. Millions of hectares of desert and semi-desert land were brought under cultivation. Powerful irrigation and hydel power complexes were built.
However, Central Asia today finds itself as a largely agricultural economy facing a substantial problem of rural unemployment. This is mainly due to the centralized and command system of economic management practised during the Soviet period. One important example is that of cotton. While huge quantities of cotton are produced in Central Asia and the region was and is the main supplier of cotton in the territory of former USSR, a very negligible portion of it is processed locally. More than 90 percent of it is exported to other Republics of CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) for use in their textile industry. On the other hand, the region has a shortage of food production. In the absence of proper industrial base and in the context of collapse of the Soviet Union, they are now in need of not only consumer goods and technological equipment but also budgetary resources.
Central Asian Republics (CARs) are, therefore, busy working for not only a common Central Asian market, but also reaching out for outside markets for their rich oil, gas, mineral and other reserves. They are also looking for ways to build solid industrial infrastructure for processing agricultural and mineral resources. They also need to develop appropriate economic and financial institutions and mechanisms to cater to the new situation and build a permanent edifice of development.
India and Central Asia can be effective partners in economic development on the basis of mutual complementarities. The co-operation between India and Central Asia can be a viable proposition if dynamic initiatives are taken and they are not limited to intents of declarations and signing of agreements, as has been the case so far. Lot of valuable time has been lost due to sluggish pace of co-operation; the Indian establishment is largely to be blamed for this situation. If this co-
47 Printed on 13 December 2017 COMPILATION OF ARTICLES WRITTEN BY VIJAY PRATAP operation does not take off the ground immediately, CARs will be forced to look into directions which in the long run may create conditions of perpetual instability in the region with a spillover effect on India.
The important point to note here is that India in its post-independence period retained its trade, economic and cultural links with CARs even during the Soviet period when the rest of the world was not so interested in that region. The people and leaderships of CARs, therefore, retained a goodwill towards India, which should augur well for the future cooperation.
It is urgent and imperative, therefore, that a Dialogue is initiated between India and Central Asian Republics for identifying areas of :
(i ) Strategic co-operation (ii) Economic co-operation (iii) Cultural co-operation (iv) Ecological co-operation (v) Fight against fundamentalism and terrorism (vi) Consolidation of independence and protection of unity, integrity and sovereignty
The forum to be called INDIA-CENTRAL ASIA DIALOGUE should consist of about 40 participants from India and CARs drawn from the academic, trade, industry, diplomatic, professional, cultural and political arena. The forum should work as a catalyst for speedy development of India and Central Asia co-operation, and should alternatively meet at least once a year in India or Central Asia.
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12. NOTES ON VOLUNTARISM ~ Vijay Pratap There was immense interest in Nepal about a book written on the Bodh Gaya struggle [a peasant movement initiated in 1978 in Gaya district of Bihar – caste-factionalised marginally poor state – fighting for independent land rights for women] by Shri Prabhat Kumar, one of its leading activists. Probably because of its successful non-violent methods and because of the Maoist threat to nascent democracy, many people in Nepal want it to be translated into Nepalese. My friends who move in the South-Asian circuit tell me that, given the fundamentalist ethnic and religious trends, it will be worthwhile to translate the book in many South-Asian vernaculars such as Nepali, Tamil, Sinhal, Urdu and Bengali. Incidentally, sympathisers of Maoists in Nepal claim that their influence on Indian Nepalis, who are in a very significant number all over North- India, has been spreading very rapidly. Similarly, in Bangladesh, Muslim fundamentalists are out to destabilize the secular party in power.
Bangladesh has the most developed voluntary sector in South-Asia. There is a group called Community Development Library with 25 centres in different parts of the country. Also, there is another institution - Dhaka Ahsania Mission, with a big reputation for Bangla and Urdu books. Recently, the Mission has published a book on voluntarism in English with contributions from India, Nepal, Finland and some other countries.
Many a friend of mine has coaxed me to write this letter to you to ask for your suggestions on how to go about it? You have been a well-wisher of mine. What are your views on our strivings to expand the network of non-funded (non-state power oriented) civil society to South-Asia. My friends tell me that the book on Bodh Gaya struggle can be a good pretext for this kind of effort. Friends are also of the view that I must devote more to writing work on the movement issues, and how we can engage with problems of the poor in a democratic framework. Even the Bodh Gaya book in Hindi should be printed. If I have to do it, then I would like to organise a couple of workshops of the friends of the Bodh Gaya struggle. As it has not been extensively published in the first edition, I would like to process and incorporate their contributions (oral or written) in the second edition. This would require another six months’ work in terms of organising meetings and then transcribing the tapes and incorporating the comments. Organising the dialogues is a must, because majority of activists use the oral and not written word as the medium of expression.
In our country, there is a pressure from the top for reserving thirty-three percent seats for the women. However, not very many political parties and groups are training women on the grassroots for performing larger societal roles. However, Panchayat Raj (village-level local self- government) institutions have reservation for women. And women are learning democracy on the job all over the country except Bihar. Bihar has been particularly unlucky that Panchayat elections have not taken place. It seems anti-democratic forces have gone to courts and procured a stay order under one or the other pretext.
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Bodh Gaya struggle, I shall venture to say, was perhaps the only struggle (struggle for India’s independence under Gandhi is not comparable with any single issue or other movement) which was highly gender sensitive. Chhatra Yuva Sangharsh Vahini, an organisation which led the Bodh Gaya struggle, believed in the motto “AURAT KE SAHBHAG BINA HAR BADLAO ADHOORA HAI”. Rough translation of this will be “All Changes are Incomplete without the Participation of Women”.
We, in the movement for comprehensive democracy (what J.P. called Total Revolution), have always believed in the primacy of idealism and ideas rather than the coercive force of the legal regimes or of the so-called revolutionary groups. That is why we are not very enthused regarding the legal provision for reservation for women. It will have its own depoliticising side effects as well. These side effects can be countered by strengthening the women leadership at the grassroots.
The feminist debates well understand the negative features of patriarchy, but they ignore the life- situation of even ordinary middle class women, what to talk of women below the poverty line. If we take the word ‘democracy’ seriously, then we need to strengthen the women leadership at the grassroots. Without sounding patronising, those of us who believe in the oneness of humankind and are active in the non-state power oriented civil action, need to share our experiences of the democratic movement with our women folk. Sheer functioning of democracy preceded by a non- violent struggle for national independence with high degree of women participation has contributed to high degree of diffused consciousness on the issues of democracy.
Our sharing of experiences, such as of Bodh Gaya struggle, will give them a sense of new identity. They shall find on their own the ways and priorities for themselves. If we recall, the women in Andhra Pradesh were organized for literacy and not against alcoholism. But, they launched a successful campaign against alcoholism, shared the delusion of consumerist paradigm, patriarchy and urban oriented elitism that alcoholism could not be sustained. In any case, in our understanding, only legal sanctions against liquor will not curb alcoholism among our poorer sections be they in urban pockets of the poor or in the rural areas. Problems of alcoholism have acquired an alarming proportion in the last decade and a half. At the cultural plane, the women’s movement will be the greatest bull-work or antidote of rampant alcoholism.
Due to a peculiar combination of political and social factors, corruption has become rampant at all levels in our society. This again cannot be curbed only through legal sanctions.
Although mobilising women for new laws like Access to Information will make a qualitative change in our polity at the grassroot level, informed observers tell us that women, under the leadership of Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (led by Ms. Aruna Roy), have been empowered to challenge the corrupt leadership of local-self government and mobilise opinion for the Right to Information Campaign.
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Our democratic struggle has rightly created conditions where men and women from oppressed economic and social background have come to acquire prominent positions of political power in the mainstream party-politics. But there has not been any institutional arrangement for economic compensation of those people from the taxpayer’s money. All kinds of informal mechanisms of mobilising money for the ordinary party-political workers at the grassroots have contributed in sanctioning the corruption at all levels. In comparative terms, Indian politicians have been the least corrupt in the entire globe. Corruption in the communist world was exposed when the Soviet Union collapsed. Similarly, most of the western democracies have made excellent arrangements for looking after their activists both in the party-politics and in the civil society.
Western democracy has also institutionalised many of its quasi-corrupt roles by rechristening them into a new nomenclature like liaison work, public relations and advocacy. Many of the social functions pertain to counseling, and personnel management is generally not conceived in purely professional and monetary terms in our society. But in a rapidly changing society these are very crucial roles. The leaders of civil society need to consciously reflect on the role of women in: 1. combating corruption 2. providing human counseling and emotional support to new and upcoming women activists through Panchayat Raj institutions and other stirrings in the civil society 3. identifying and mobilising senior men activists of the civil society who have worked on various issues of democracy with a gender perspective 4. sharing their experience on all issues and dimensions of democracy, so that women can lead the entire society, and 5. just women and women issues.
In this regard, in the most recent history of post-independence India, Chhatra Yuva Sangharsh Vahini has been the most gender-sensitive organisation. There are many a men and women who were part of this organisation till they attained the age of thirty years. J.P. had stipulated that the age of thirty years is long enough to socialise the citizen in the ideology of comprehensive democracy, what he preferred to call Total Revolution. And he has been vindicated in his expectations; one comes across middle aged and ‘young’ seniors in all sectors of public life with an intense sense of idealism, pro-people bias and a life-long commitment to issues of democracy in the arena of civil society interventions.
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13. SAMVAAD: A PERSONAL JOURNEY OF DISCOVERING DIALOGUE AS A NEW TOOL FOR INTERVENTION
~ Vijay Pratap
Soon after my release from emergency detention on 22nd February 1977, I came in close contact with Shri Suresh Sharma, a young historian working on the comparative study of Indian and Chinese nationalism. Suresh Sharma seemed to know all about my activities in socialist movement. Slowly I discovered his intellectual and human qualities, and his commitment to democratic institutions. I also discovered that he had been very active, in his own way, against the constitutional dictatorship of Mrs. Indira Gandhi. Through Shri Suresh Sharma I also came in contact with eminent personalities, for example, Shri J. Swaminathan (the famous painter who once upon a time had been a whole-time member of the Socialist Party); Shri Nirmal Verma (a well-known Hindi literary luminary, who was close to the Marxists, but parted company when Russian communists attacked Prague); and Shri Ramchandra Gandhi (eminent philosopher and grandson of Mahatma Gandhi). All these people were quite active during the state of emergency (from 25th June 1975 to 23rd March 1977). There were many other individuals who were part of this group of friends, such as Shri P.S. Dwivedi (senior history teacher in St. Stephen’s College); Prof. Jeet Pal Singh Uberoi (my teacher in the Department of Sociology at Delhi School of Economics). Prof. Uberoi came to meet me during my jail detention more than once. In those days of pervasive fear, even meeting one’s friends or students who were detained, was regarded as a dangerous act of political solidarity.
The sheer fact of my being a JP movement activist, despite being President of the youth wing of the ruling party - the Yuva-Janata, my continued interest and concern for the nurturing and constellation of democratic processes and issues ensured tremendous affection for me in this group. Retrospectively, I feel it was a mix of my childish naïveté and iconoclastic Lohiaite training that I always felt as an equal in this company of towering intellectuals. I recognize their greatness and also their desire to nurture a young Socialist who, despite being a party functionary, was interested in learning and doing work for the larger issues of democracy.
There were many concerns and perceptions at that particular historical moment, rather than any sectarian goal including that of socialism, that bound these intellectuals together; for example, none of them wanted a re-enactment of the emergency drama on the Indian political stage. This explained their identification with anti-Indira-Sanjay politico-intellectual activism, be it the Shah Commission of Inquiry on the arrest of Mrs Indira Gandhi, or survival of the Janata Party as a platform for consolidation of democracy. All these intellectuals were clearly against a splitting of the Janata Party on the issue of dual membership (Janata Party and RSS) although not one of them was pro-RSS (as a non-democratic and communalist organization), but none of them agreed with the veteran socialist leader Madhu Limaye’s strategy of isolating RSS by splitting the Janata Party. Most of the middle class supporters of the Janata Party, including the kind of intellectuals I have described above, wanted the Janata Party to develop into a movement for the deepening of democracy, which in the Indian context, inevitably meant radicalizing of
52 Printed on 13 December 2017 COMPILATION OF ARTICLES WRITTEN BY VIJAY PRATAP democracy. However, I must clarify that these were not ivory tower romantic aspirations of expectations of poets, painters, and philosophers. A large number of dedicated JP movement workers, Sarvodaya workers, non-party civil liberty activists, and many dedicated senior socialist activists like Sachidanand Sinha, Kishen Patnaik and Keshava Jadhava, also wanted that the Janata Party did not reduce itself to an electoral machine but emerge as a movement platform. Many such persons, whose primary concern was deepening and radicalizing of democracy, did not formally become part of the Janata Party, but always looked at it, co-operated with it, and criticized it with the expectation that it function as a broad platform, somewhat similar to what the Indian National Congress was during the freedom struggle.
This expectation from the Janata Party to behave as a broad platform of action and reflection on issues of nation-building, with democracy as the defining framework, had a very widespread legitimacy. Many in the Congress shared this hope. Leaders like Sheikh Abdullah in Kashmir, who had nothing to do with Janata Party except the fact that elections under Janata rule were most fair, were greatly upset when it became obvious that this instrument for democratising our polity and society will no longer be available. Although some opportunist upstarts and megalomaniac journalists did contribute in the accentuation of the factional power struggle in the Janata Party, a large number of them were part of that wider community or fraternity of concerned citizens who wanted this instrument to grow and stabilise into a broad democratic platform. The period between 25th June 1975 to 23rd March 1977 will always be remembered as a watershed in the history of democratic striving of the country. All sections of society learnt their lessons and till date these do impinge upon the actions of various ideological streams in the country. Broadly, the Marxist left, in a relative sense, became more open to the issues of democracy - although their understanding and commitment to democratic institutions, if scrutinised closely, reveals many blind spots and contradictions, such as the CPM’s continued adherence to the dictatorship of the proletariat as its ultimate goal in its Constitution last amended in April 1989. The CPI left the Congress bandwagon and gradually joined non- Congress polities. Many of the Naxalite groups came over ground, started participating in electoral battles, and many others became active in various civil liberties organizations. Several organizations were formed; however JP, like People’s Union for Civil Liberties, and Citizens for Democracy, did not remain confined to JP admirers, but was owned by larger sections of concerned middle class intelligentsia. Even liberal sections among middle classes started taking up issues of the poor with greater vigour. The political right, led by the Jan Sangh and Swatantra Party during pre-emergency days, became quite marginalized in terms of political discourse. Janata party’s manifesto had no Marxist clichés in it, but it had an imprint of JP’s Gandhian- socialist personality. This impact was quite powerful, so much so that when the RSS camp parted ways and formed its separate party - the Bharatiya Janata Party, it had to declare its adherence to Gandhian socialism. Although later events show us that this was only a tactical position and not an honest statement of intent (otherwise, its seniormost leaders would not have organised a sustained campaign against the minorities and eventually demolished the Babari Mosque, against the popular opinion of even the majority of Hindus). But even such tactical statements by BJP at the time of its foundation conference, show the legitimacy and power of Gandhi and socialism (the non-Marxist socialism at that point of time).
Struggle for an equitous social order and for an open pluralistic society with indigenous categories of thought and culturally rooted tools were perhaps the most powerful urges of the
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1970s. Perhaps the former ‘urge’ was the single most pervasive urge across diverse ideological streams. This urge was to express itself differently in various organizations and ideologies. None of us is a clean slate: each one’s actions are shaped by our past experiences and ideological baggage. India, in any case, is such a diverse society, and its principles of social organistion (caste community) are under tremendous pressure - ever since Bhakti Kaal (Devotional period – 16th century). In modern times, besides the National Movement, individuals like Gandhi, Jyotiba Phule, Ambedkar and many socio-political thinkers, contributed to the urge for social equality. In the post-independence period, the socialist movement under the leadership of Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia pursued the goal of equity with great vigour. (This is no way to deny the contribution by other socialist stalwarts.) The stirrings towards equity in various sub-streams of Indian polity got phenomenally catalyzed as a result of various chain reactions triggered off by the emergency and its aftermath. Many such processes may appear to be flowing directly from the ‘emergency’, but a closer examination shows that there is significant overlap between differences in stirrings on the one hand, and the processes engendered by the emergency, on the other hand.
The clamping down of emergency, and then the defeat of the emergency regime by Janata Party, were not the slow and steady culmination of a process, but dramatic events which, despite the element of continuity, had several absolutely new elements. That is why they are defined as a watershed. We have mentioned above how there was a spurt in the Human Rights movement groups, opening up of Marxist ossification, and radicalization of liberal democrats. Similarly, assertion of peasant communities, and of middle classes and castes, mostly OBCs, may be mentioned as another by-product of emergency and the ‘successful’ struggle against it.
In 1967, non-Congress governments were formed in nine states. But despite pervasive restlessness among a section of the masses, the opposition parties had reached a dead-end. Before emergency, they were not able to expand this support base and displace the Congress from the centre-stage. The socialist movement tried to establish that Indian National Congress was not striving for fulfilment of the promised visions and dreams of the national movement. But this did not click with the overwhelming majority of Indian people, especially various elements of Bahujan Samaj, i.e., peasants, minorities, Dalits and women. The reason was simple. Socialist allies in the era of non-Congressism included the CPI, which was so totally alienated from indigenous categories of thought and action, that for them to become an alternative to the INC built by Gandhiji was like a joke. The Jan Sangh and Swatantra Parties were full of feudal and collaborationist elements. The socialists were a very small force considering the vastness of the country and a section of them was soft towards the Congress. In addition, the most important factor was that the momentum generated by the national movement was such that the system had to continuously pretend to ‘serve’ the ‘humble’ and the ‘poor’. In an iniquitous society such as ours, whatever little was delivered by the system was a source of some satisfaction and of sustaining some hope. But emergency for the first time created a situation in which a large section from these oppressed Bahujans of India, the peasants, Dalits and minorities, started moving away from the Congress. Disgruntled Congressmen (such as Charan Singh and Jagjivan Ram) emerged as new symbols of peasant and Dalit communities, respectively. In Delhi and in many parts of North India, the Muslims in particular, were direct targets of coercive family planning.
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This dramatic shift at the grassroots without an appropriate ideological framework, steadily evolved political equilibrium and a political idiom was a source of great upheaval, churning and resultant instability. This basic source of instability continues till date. We have not been able to evolve a new consensus where leaders from various sections of Bahujan Samaj are themselves principal players. We have to concretely redefine our political mobility because without moral anchors no civilised democratic polity can sustain itself. We also have to evolve the complex modes of communication and intervention where various sources of inequity are fought by the people themselves, not as an abstract category of proletarian class or ‘people’, but as people belonging to a plurality of castes and communities without steamrollering over their sense of dignity and identity.
Evolving a new consensus, new ways of willing and thinking, or crystallization of new ideologies, cannot be achieved through a sharply defined framework of social action, be it a political party as an NGO, or a movement organization. This can also not be evolved by confining oneself to any one or the other ideological tradition because that may not capture the entirety of the unfolding drama of polity and society, due to the ideological blinkers of each one. But since it is a political and an intellectual task simultaneously, it has to evolve through the hybridisation of political activism as well as cerebral activism. A continuous interaction and intermingling of various kinds of activist groups and constant reflection on these various forms of activism and interventions is called for.
Again, recalling the stirring in the late 1970s, one could say that some of the sensitive and concerned intellectuals and activists had understood the nature of this challenge, otherwise how could a group composed of a writer (Nirmal Verma), a painter (J. Swaminathan), a sociologist (J.P.S. Uberoi), a philosopher (Ramu Gandhi), a historian turned activist (Suresh Sharma), and a political worker call itself “30 January Samvaad Samiti”. Its noteworthy features were: Inspiration from martyrs of the freedom struggle, especially the father of the nation. Not to lay out any programme of action, but to have dialogues. Humility to speak to others, and desire as well as confidence to speak to others regarding even self-doubt. A desire to serve the daridranarayan (in other words, struggle equity and justice for the last person). Unequivocal commitment to democratic institutions.
This group was mainly co-ordinated by Suresh Sharma. It evoked a good response both from activists as well as intellectuals. However, the group could not sustain itself for long. It may be a good learning exercise to examine the failure of this particular group. But the point one is trying to make is that by the late 1970s, the limitations of what we did and thought had been brought out and a large number of activists-intellectuals were trying to respond to that. The declared intention of such groups was that they wanted to explore and formulate the right kind of questions, grasp the nature and reasons for the dead-end, and do all this through dialogues among various concerned people including activists, intellectuals and policy planners.
It is not incidental that a project proposal on development democracy and decentralization drafted by Prof. D.L. Sheth and Prof. Ramashray Roy had only dialogues as its substantive programme. When the project took off, it involved a large number of leading intellectuals and
55 Printed on 13 December 2017 COMPILATION OF ARTICLES WRITTEN BY VIJAY PRATAP activists of that time. Prof. Rajni Kothari, along with Prof. D.L. Sheth, became the founder co- directors; Vijay Pratap - co-ordinator, in the founder team along with Prof. Ramashray Roy, Prof. Ashish Nandy, Prof. Giri Deshingkar and Suresh Sharma, as constant sounding board advisors actively contributing in the conceptualization of Lokayan. Claude Alvares and Norma Alvares were the founder-editors of Lokayan (English). Vandana Shiva, Smitu Kothari, Jayant Bandopadhyay, Arun Kumar, G. Narendranath, Manoharan and Achyut Yagnik, were all involved as co-ordinators of various chapters and activities within one year of the launching of Lokayan.
Lokayan held around 100 major dialogues on a wide variety of issues and created an impact. Probably, it was for this reason that in December 1985 Lokayan received the Right Livelihood Award (often referred to as the ‘Alternative Nobel Prize’). The founder-directors and advisory team in Delhi decided that Prof. Rajni Kothari and Vijay Pratap represent the group at Stockholm to receive the Right Livelihood Award. This was my first exposure to an international audience. And to my pleasant surprise, I discovered that the kind of dead-end restlessness and churning which we experience here was to be found there as well as. This method of dialogue for exploring newer ways of willing and thinking had its relevance there as well. After 1985, twice I had the opportunity to share my Lokayan experience with friends in Finland and I always came back with an accentuated feeling that there is a need to reflect in greater detail and with more vigour, on this new tool of intervention called Dialogue.
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14. VICTIM, PERPETRATOR AND INNOCENT SPECTATOR: INTROSPECTING ABOUT TERRORISM
~ Vijay Pratap ~ Ritu Priya
The ‘Terrible Tuesday’ symbolises multiple dimensions of an immense human tragedy. The ghastly trauma of the thousands of innocent civilians trapped in the building of the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, and of their relatives and friends, has been terrible both in form and magnitude. But that it has not led to any voices of introspection, of reflection on the human situation today, is symbolic of an even greater tragedy. This time the US is the ‘attacked’, and those who have used this form of expression for their anger/hatred against the hegemonic policies of the US establishment are the perpetrators of violence. However, it has to be acknowledged that the distinction between the victim and the perpetrator is blurred. The victim in this case must be blind if he is unable to see his own reflection in the act of violence. Its self- righteous warnings to Pakistan ignore the fact of its own connivance over the previous decades in nurturing the terrorists there.
We, the distant spectators, and those who have lost their innocent loved ones too, have to acknowledge our complicity by not voicing our concern about the structural violence of poverty, deprivation and humiliation compounded by the current dominant global hegemonic order. We take a narrow, short-term view of our own interests and are silent while we witness the injustice around us. If the ‘North’ does not want to give up its “way of life”, we too do not want to give up our dreams and aspirations for attaining the same. For the ‘South’, delinking with the dream of ‘Americanisation’ is a prerequisite for any effective battle against terrorism. Lessons from History: 1857, 1941 and 2001 We have heard parallels being drawn of the present attack on the World Trade Centre and Pentagon with the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. But no one talks of the aftermath – the dropping of the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945; 2,000 US servicemen were
Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam – India A Coalition for Comprehensive Democracy 147-A, Uttarakhand, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) New Delhi-110067, India. Tel: ++91-11-2674-2102 (Res) E-mail: “Vijay Pratap”[email protected] [email protected]
57 Printed on 13 December 2017 COMPILATION OF ARTICLES WRITTEN BY VIJAY PRATAP killed in Pearl Harbor; 200,000 died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki; besides the thousands injured and the long-term effects of irradiation suffered by several subsequent generations. Does all of Europe and North America condone such a ‘revenge’? Was it not the beginning of the nuclear arms race, which threatens the very existence of our earth today?
Another parallel from history, which interchanges the role of victim and perpetrator, is of the Rebellion of 1857 by Indian soldiers and peasants against the East India Company. What followed was inhuman retaliation by the British, where hundreds of thousands of ‘natives’ were butchered. But then the struggle for freedom over the next ninety years culminated in India’s independence in 1947. And this was the beginning of the setting of the sun on the British Empire. The brutal ‘revenge’ could not save it. The US must dwell on lessons of history to read the present, and then decide upon its course of action.
In respect of the Pearl Harbor attack, it is pertinent to recall that “The local commanders Admiral Kimmel and Lt-Gen. Short were relieved of their posts and held responsible for the fact that the base was totally unprepared at the time of the attack, but recent information indicates that warnings of the attack given to the USA (by British intelligence and others) were withheld from Kimmel and Short by President Roosevelt. US public opinion was very much against entering the war, and Roosevelt wanted an excuse to change popular sentiments and take the USA into the war.” (The Wordsworth Encyclopedia [1995], Helicon Pub. Ltd.)
Protecting the Future
The ‘innocent’ and ‘spectators’ must seize the present to shape the future. The rebels espousing violent means to seize ‘justice’ must recognise the cost that humanity pays for their ‘heroism’. Their violent acts cannot be justified or condoned on any grounds. The most frightening question we all must confront is that the victim, the perpetrator and the innocent spectators are all interchangeable and inextricably linked. Only if we see this and respond to the present tragedy can the civilizational tragedy be averted or minimised. We look towards the pacifist, Gandhian, Green and progressive democratic leadership across the world to lead this exercise of introspection and convert this human loss into an opportunity of new vistas for humankind. It is evident that nuclear stockpiles are not effective deterrents against terrorism. The US must demonstrate its sincerity for world peace by drastic reduction in its nuclear and other arsenal. The WTO meeting at Doha can be another testing ground to see if the global elite is engaging in any introspection and demonstrating a truly global concern for democracy and freedom.
For India, if we think that the terrorism in our neighbourhood can be dealt with by calling in the world’s biggest bully state on to the sub-continent, we need to remember the not too distant past. The track record of the US on shouldering the responsibility of shared global concerns, such as paying its dues to the UN organisations, ensuring their democratic functioning, bringing down carbon emissions and other forms of ecological degradation which involve changing the American consumption patterns, has been a cause of deep discomfort and worry for world democratic opinion. The kind of distortions the US consumer fundamentalism is known to have created in the neighbourhood of Vietnam and Thailand should not be forgotten. It would be naïve to believe that, once in the region, the US will remain restricted to combating Afghani and Pakistani terrorists. It will prove an aggressive force against our ways of willing and thinking, 58 Printed on 13 December 2017 COMPILATION OF ARTICLES WRITTEN BY VIJAY PRATAP our efforts to improve the life conditions of our people through our own alternative ways of life, our economic and political sovereignty. It must be realised how the military-industrial-political centralisation creates conditions conducive to terrorism. We have to muster all our moral and political strength to contribute to democratic processes from the local to national, regional and global level. We have to deal with our internal sources of extremism. Justice, along with a substantive democracy, is the surest antidote against terrorism. The Vajpayee government must recognize that extremism of all kinds feed on each other. Engaging with, and not vanquishing ‘the other’, is a less costly and more effective strategy. Therefore, striving for greater democracy and pluralism at all levels is a more effective assurance against terrorism than inviting in a bully state onto the soil of the sub-continent.
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15. POLITICS OF RIGHT TO INFORMATION - Vijay Pratap BJP was defeated in November 1998. After the defeat in Delhi and Rajasthan Assembly Elections, the Chief Minister of Rajasthan gave the credit of his defeat to Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS) in Rajasthan. The MKSS has spear-headed a campaign for Right to Information for the last 4-5 (?) years. It was a widely shared perception that this campaign contributed immensely in delegitimising the Rajasthan government. The new government in Rajasthan is seeking active co-operation for formulating and hopefully enacting new laws which will make the access to information a bit easier than at present.
The response to MKSS has catalysed a chain reaction of sorts. A large number of public spirited citizens, journalists, human rights and other NGO activists and advocates in many parts of the country have joined to form networks, organisations and platforms to campaign for repealing the Official Secrets Act, 1923 enacting new laws which will enjoin upon the bureaucrats to make public all the information to which a member of parliament is entitled. The success, to the extent this could be called success, has activated administrative academies, staff colleges, movement intellectuals and statutory bodies like Press Council of India, in formulating various drafts for enacting a law on ‘Access to Right to Information’. The Madhya Pradesh government, India’s largest state in terms of geographical area and third largest (?) in terms of population, has been very active in projecting that it is serious regarding sharing its information with the people.
Lokayan has been a consistent supporter of this movement - one of the core team members has been invited to be on the National Campaign Committee for Right to Information. That member has also been active in a Delhi-based group called forum for People’s Right to Information led by important activists of the democratic rights movement, i.e., Nirmala Sharma, D.K. Chatterjee, Pushpa Pandeya, Kuldeep Arora and Santosh Sharma. But this involvement is marked by a degree of apprehension on several counts and it will be dishonest not to share those dilemmas, doubts and assessments with the wider network of Lokayan family.
In the first instance, this unease is regarding the equations between the source of credibility and the issue of the Right to Information.
After the ‘success’ of MKSS in Rajasthan, I became more possessed with this project. I began looking for various politico-social interlinkages around this issue. I found that many a human rights organisations working against false encounters in Punjab were raising this issue for quite long; this is perhaps because concealing of information on arrests of “terrorists” was necessary to fabricate false encounters. But, as we all know, unfortunately, the political discourse was such that even a simple human rights issue was successfully portrayed as a sectional issue of the fringe and a large number of ordinary people believed in that project. Hence, this issue could not acquire the larger popular legitimacy and national attention. Similarly, many a sub-alteran demographers believe that a proportion of poor and technocide of our traditional skills by so- called modernisation. Such demographers and social scientists have supported, or at least have sympathies, for a campaign on Right to Information. Scientists and policy planners in various
60 Printed on 13 December 2017 COMPILATION OF ARTICLES WRITTEN BY VIJAY PRATAP fields, who believe in the participative mode of nation-building, regard not only surveys, compilation and monitoring of information as important, but also regard its sharing with wider public as an integral part of this process.
We may or may not want to recognise the fact that all models of nation-building liberal, democratic socialist, Marxist-socialist or from the new emerging alternative visions of participation are based on some sort of centralised planning. Secondly, all these visions have a given political discourse, which is highly fragmented, based on highly polarized social entities. There is no organicity between various segments of our (hierarchised but aspiring for equality) modern societies. In such a socio-cultural context, moving towards some kind of oneness or organacity, we need easy flow of information among various sections of our societies.
Modern development model, irrespective of ideologies, had the nation-state and centralised planning at its core as a tool for achieving its goals. This was backed by centralised control over the flow of capital. In the Soviet Union it was backed by strong organs of the state and in other G-8 countries unequal terms of trade, World Bank, IMF and such other national and transnational institutions controlled the capital and thus shaped the market. The consequences of this kind of development model have yet to unfold in their full intensity. Just to look at its impact on human collectivities, we look at the other side of the ‘most powerful nation on earth’. [In appendix we can reprint Dr. Arun Singh’s article published in Pioneer from the book “The Other side of America”.]
Its political impact is too obvious to merit any detailed comment. The American society in mid- to-late 19th century was a model for many who were striving for equality and democracy and that democracy has degenerated into plutocracy.
The instruments of manipulation of information, censoring and controlling the flow of certain kinds of information and no check on certain other kinds of misinformation has been achieved at several levels - sophisticated as well as not so sophisticated. Noam Chomsky has discussed this and other related issues in his book Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass India (Edward S. Herman & Noam Chomsky, Published by Vintage 1994 46810975 ISBN 0099533111).
In a recent paperback by Oxford University Press, it is interesting to learn how and what kind of information our leading news agencies spread or conceal (reference Anwar Jamal Sahajo’s husband).
The destructive and monstrous impact of this model of development is being sustained by a small group of elite through manipulation of information. The legitimacy of this model of development is being sustained by creating unsustainable aspirations among ordinary people.
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Some of these people with grafted or manufactured aspirations do become part of the system, i.e., they become co-opted and turn out to be a source of hope and legitimacy among millions to sustain their unrealisable aspiration. The simple point one is trying to make is: i) The dominant legitimate model of development is centralized. ii) Any centralised model requires massive machinery to collect and disseminate information to be able to perform according to the claims which were put forward as a rationale for building a centralised system. iii) The process of creating a centralised system itself creates structures, perspectives and interest groups (better read as parasitic-exploitative groups) which ‘classify’ only certain kinds of knowledge as information. iv) The centralised societies also cultivate a particular attitude towards ‘ordinary’ human beings, their innate abilities, their local collectivities, communities, their knowledge systems, and above all, towards attitude to nature. v) All this means that Right to Information, unless understood in its entire complexity, will remain merely a slogan, and it cannot be treated as a potent tool for combating corruption or a magic formula of empowering people, because, corruption is also a device for acquiring more power. vi) None of us, including those who participate actively in the Right to Information Campaign, are a product of these historical processes, so none of us can make an absolutist claim that our attitude to information, how we define and share it is free from these historical processes.
Any activist agenda has never-ending tasks associated with it. Pressures on pro-people, anti- dominant system activisms are such that there is very little time and resource left to work out linkages with other activist groups working on different dimensions of people’s empowerment. But, paradoxically the human mind cannot produce knowledge with association and a sense of identification. Hence, if I am working from the view-point of empowering people with access to information vis-à-vis the development agencies or the agencies of the state, I also need to relate to save the Freedom Campaign (Azadi Bachao Andolan) to keep myself apprised of how MNCs are hindering development and sucking all the capital and talent in the service of global elite, particularly based in the west.
Those who happen to be in the leadership positions have to be extra careful in treating facts as sacrosanct. Perceptions of the ‘adversary’ and ideologically opposed perspectives are to be treated as the other face of the reality. And the other face of reality (‘information’) has to be treated with respect. It goes without saying that taking oneself and the adversary seriously goes hand-in-hand. Taking oneself and the other seriously should not be compromised because of the peer pressure of those who are supposedly on our side.
Lastly, Lokayan’s editorial collective is not making this point to anyone else. The statements and criticisms are more of an exercise of reiteration of our collective beliefs as well as a modest attempt at self-introspection as a marginal/small part of the various movements of self-assertion.
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Post-Script The activists criteria for choosing any issue is that how many inter-linkages it unfolds. The Right to Information is such an issue which leads us to explicate and attend to the many-layered complexity of our social reality. Activists working on issues of human rights, health for all, ecological regeneration, people’s control over natural resources like land, water, pollution generated diseases, mode of development such as how to irrigate one’s agricultural fields or supply water to people, and economic issues like just prices of commodities by MNCs, will all feel more empowered if there is easy access to information.
The intellectuals working on issues of comparative knowledge systems, domain of civil society vis-à-vis all encompassing state, unethical business practices, issues of professional ethics, morality of our times, moral and normative choices and their impact on practical life or notions of security of the people as opposed to the narrow vision of nation-state security systems all need to relate to the issue of Right to Information.
Media persons will feel greatly handicapped in a society where access to information is difficult. To be able to inform the public about various intricacies of the systems, media persons themselves need to have an easy and legitimate access to information. They need not be required to almost conspire, intrigue and hobnob with the power that be to get the required information.
The citizens wearing the various hats mentioned above have to evolve a comprehensive strategy for structural transformation where the structures of knowledge generation and information dissemination become democratic, only then the social critic people like Noam Chomsky and the work of leaders like Aruna Roy will have a lasting impact on the society.
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16. A DIALOGUE ON DEMOCRACY Vijay Pratap
We are traversing through a phase of socio-political change where every ideology is undergoing an internal crisis. This crisis also provides us an opportunity to reconstitute and redefine our ideology. Here we are not attempting to redefine the basic thoughts of democracy or its formal skeleton. We will rather delve on socially relevant issues like thoughts on the three components of a democratic state, viz., judiciary, bureaucracy and legislature. However, the role of media, and similarly, the role of the movement groups, NGOs and academicians, meaning of democracy for Dalits, backward classes and women, in the country will also have to be reviewed. Yet, the canvas of democracy is so extensive that it would be a Herculean task to incorporate all the issues in a single essay.
These thoughts are mainly focused on the socialist organisations and colleagues active therein who still believe in the relevance of the Socialist ideology. We reiterate that any dialogue on democracy is just not possible within a set academic framework. The ground reality that the thoughts on democracy have become more complex and diverse, cannot be neglected. In the multi-layered and multi-dimensional cultural and political diversity of our country, political needs of every region contain separate dreams and separate aspirations of each section of society. This can be referred to as a disintegration of the democratic dream as well as an unprecedented phase of introspection.
It is our effort to reach out to the socio-political activists having a common dream. These dreams may not necessarily be the mirror image replica, but the extent to which we identify the logic and dreams of each other in a holistic manner, we will be able to correspondingly forge our common identity. This becomes more pertinent as all of us are engaged in various works in our separate spheres in different geographical regions. In contemporary times when questions are being raised on the quality of polity in society, and indigenous market, international powers, communal and fascist forces are attacking both politics and democracy, then the democratic groups must make a powerful and effective intervention at the national level for a common dream. Therefore, I will appeal to our activists specially to comment liberally on this issue.
Activists play an important role in the dialogue on democracy. Today, the social basis of activists is highly diverse. From the point of view of social revolution, considering voter a single unit, this is the Golden Era of the Indian democracy, in some aspects. Never had the Dalits, the backward classes and downtrodden dreamed on such a large scale to become partners in the functioning of the nation, to be partners in power, as they have done today. Today anyone from the masses of this country can think of becoming a Chairman of the District Board, Chief Minister of the State, or even President of the country. The largest party of the ruling coalition of the nation has to appoint a Dalit as its President. This very fact in itself is extremely thrilling that Brahminism, though in compulsion, has to accept a Dalit as its leader. This too is a contribution from the social democrats. Till very recently, even the presence of backward castes was not recognised in the societies they lived in. A village was known to be as a ‘village of Brahmins’ or a ‘village of
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Thakurs’ despite their numerical strength in the village being feeble. On being asked whose village it is, the prominent caste will claim it to be theirs. But now this is not possible; at least in the matter of casting their votes in the ballot box, the Dalits, the backward classes and the minorities are in a position to take their own decisions. Unlike earlier times, they are no more under pressure. Though the matter that Dalits take their own decisions is also not so simple – various forces that continue to exert pressure on their minds cannot be denied. The status-quoist propaganda creates such an illusory sense of identity that it dilutes any discussion on Dalit interests as a whole, and inculcates a hollow, solitary Dalit-identity in the name of which different groups of Dalits club themselves with various political parties, on the basis of being Dalits, backward class, minority, upper caste, poor, etc. In this era of identism, a storm of blind identism is blowing. The decision that appears to be taken by the Dalits is actually taken by the mentality generated by this storm. Hence in its totality, this decision is not democratic. In one sense, it is an illusion of democracy; yet in another sense, it raises a possibility of Dalits becoming self-reliant in the matter of leadership. When we scrutinise this situation strictly in terms of ‘idealism’, then it becomes difficult to escape the conclusion that the real problems of the common people have been silenced in this policy-less, blind-identism era of democracy. However, the extent and magnitude of Dalit participation in power in current times, as compared to the past, is no less than a major revolution, and that too, without any bloodshed. Marxists, defining revolution strictly on the basis of class-based struggle, neglecting caste considerations of our society, have not been able to make a precise assessment of this revolution. But it will indeed be a paradox if activist followers of the socialist legacy too neglect this revolution.
Before proceeding further on this dialogue on democracy, one point needs to be clarified. At present, the social basis of our intellectual community is constituted mostly by upper castes, especially the middle-class Brahmins. This social revolution has demolished, or is demolishing, the monopoly of these classes in many walks of life, especially in intellectual activities. Owing to this democratic revolution, many of the postulations and hypotheses are being challenged. It has to be kept in mind that in this dialogue on democracy, activists - especially those hitherto suppressed, have a pivotal role to play. They shall have to refine their experiences, thoughts and dreams in intellectual debates and dialogues. In this new context, their expressions alone will redefine democracy and socialism. It is essential to clarify here that the Indian Socialist Movement has always believed that democracy and socialism, and democracy and equity, are two faces of the same coin. It implies that democracy and equity are inseparable. In an era of holistic democracy, all kinds of equity have to be taken into account and newer institutions shall have to be established for their implementation. A thorough analysis and understanding of the older institutions, like the erosion of the caste system, have to be incorporated in constituting a new visible, participatory democracy comprising elements of equity, individual freedom and collective swadharm (self-discipline). The socialist movement has such a yearning.
Here we are not evaluating the socialist movement, but the direction of thoughts or the philosophy of socialist movement shall not suffer from any omission or inferiority complex. During the freedom struggle, other than the Congress, socialist movement alone attempted to make democracy multi-dimensional and multi-stratified through the participation of the common man by utilising indigenous thoughts and indigenous language. In a huge country like India with maximum religious diversity, this cannot be left alone for intellectuals. They are concerned about the intellectual fashions of Europe-USA, too. For understanding democracy in its holistic
65 Printed on 13 December 2017 COMPILATION OF ARTICLES WRITTEN BY VIJAY PRATAP manner, Political Science is an incomplete science because of its social background and academic limitations. Therefore, a holistic thinking on democracy cannot be evolved by the contribution of political scientists and academicians alone. It is generally true that the common activists constitute the philosophical framework of a revolution. Democracy is no less than a revolution in itself. For refining its philosophy, the training of the academicians must be utilised, help must be taken, and dialogues initiated with them. But due to our system of compartmentalisation, the specific limits of Political Science must be kept in mind. A word of caution is necessary. Perhaps we cannot unravel the facet of reality which academicians can. Most of the academicians keep a very good account of all actions-reactions pertaining to thoughts, like an honest accountant or a munshi, meticulous to the last detail. They neither generate thoughts nor create any new ground realities through their acts. But an activist dreams about the society he works in, and is inspired more by his dream. A political activist extrapolates the possibility of realising his dream from every event and issue. Thus, the facet of reality caught by us, is many times inspired more by our own dreams. In any dialogue on democracy, people committed to an ideology have a specific role and also specific limitations. Hence, even if we consider academicians as mere accountants of thoughts, the skill and competence with which they are carrying out their tasks is commendable. We cannot do that. Therefore, a holistic understanding of democracy is possible through a dialogue.
Another irony affecting dialogue on democracy deserves a comment here. The end of the 19th century and beginning of 20th century saw the emergence of many ideologies – Liberalism, Marxist socialism, or in the Indian context an indigenous agenda of peoples’ empowerment initiated by Gandhiji through Hind Swaraj, which has carried its journey forward through different routes. The paradox is that the people committed to these ideologies or its followers are totally absent at the central stage of politics, whereas at no point of time in history has the nation dreamt of becoming a Prime Minister or President on such a large scale, as today. It is not that people from these segments, called Dalits and backward classes today, have not ruled before. But the irony is that whenever they ruled, other castes and segments of society dissociated themselves from the functioning of the state. Today, merely being a citizen, grants one the right to rule, and casting one’s vote is the first step towards this. However, the leaders and political thinkers of these struggles, who have fought for the last 150 years on the grounds of and for these dreams and ideologies, today sense a doubt, neutrality and neglect towards them.
Yet another dimension of democratic revolution is the breaking up of inertia among people. The central theme of the speeches delivered by Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia was to break up inertia of Indian society. He gave the slogans like, “Living communities do not wait for five years”, etc. These slogans gained currency again in the JP Movement. Lohiaji’s ‘will to power’ taught us to be committed towards rule. The commonly discussed topics among Lohiaites used to be, “In seven years we will change the rulers of India”, etc. Today, the rulers of the nation are being changed every two-three years and the breaking up of the inertia of Indian politics in this manner, is an achievement of democracy in itself. Ousting Congress from the power is the second main achievement. And socialists have played an important role in all these achievements. Paradoxically, the socialists failed to contain the flood of democratic revolution and explosion of aspiration for power in the Dalits within the socialist stream, owing to tiredness in leadership and ideology, internal rifts, etc. Today, the situation is akin to the flood where one sees water everywhere but hardly a drop to drink; everywhere there is an explosion of
66 Printed on 13 December 2017 COMPILATION OF ARTICLES WRITTEN BY VIJAY PRATAP democracy, as if the dam blocking the democratic aspirations has been demolished. Everyone wants to say something, each class has some worry, some anxiety, wants to do something, tries to find some way out, as the earlier ways, established ideologies, institutions, all seem to be incomplete. Socialists claim that the present day's positive achievements include their decisive contribution. Yet, today there is no single socialist organisation in the whole country, which is in a position to influence any matter decisively or raise any issue effectively. This paradox must be taken into consideration in any dialogue on democracy. On the one hand, there is a flood of democracy; while on the other hand, there is no institute, party, ideology to tap this flood of democracy effectively for welfare of the common man. There is an urgent need to initiate a serious thought-provoking dialogue on this major lacuna existing in our democracy.
Such dialogues should finally evolve in well-thought, holistic, universally acceptable criteria and parameters defining democracy. By ‘universally acceptable’, we mean acceptable to the whole fraternity of socialists. In a true democracy it will never be possible that one set of criteria, one definition will be acceptable to all. Socialists themselves never accepted the definition given by liberals. The liberal definition exhibits only one concern; how governance should be carried out. For example, the manner in which its institutions should work, everyone should have a formal right of participation, right to cast vote, party should work according to its ideology, elections should be held timely, rule of law should be followed, human rights should be protected, minorities shall have the right to realise their socio-cultural rights, state shall be accountable to the common man, etc. In order to strengthen this accountability, right to information, right to call back elected representatives, electoral reforms, etc., have been devised. If it is such a simplistic matter, then this definition is sufficient for India and the rest of the world too, but it will only be a superficial definition and it will continue to pave way for elitism. The social scientists, political scientists and philosophers have written reams and reams on the topic of how the elitism can be run in the veneer of democracy. Noam Chomsky, a critic and commentator on North American society, has extensively written on how the social base of the American elite has shrunk to a small section.
Our academicians pay attention to socio-cultural aspects of democracy not because political science is primarily liberalism-induced, but also due to the fact that its character is largely higher caste, middle class. Politicians engaged in political dialogue too belong mostly to higher castes and overlook Babasaheb Ambedkar's remark on Gandhi, Ranade and Jinnah, "A democratic government presumes that the society is also democratic. The formal skeleton of the democratic government does not have any meaning and will remain ineffective till there is no democracy in society”. But Babasaheb left this world soon after, and the next big Dalit leader Jagjivan Ram was only active in maintaining his power in the Congress Party. He never attacked casteism and caste system, in order to enable the community to become an autonomous power base. Neither did he keep any contacts with Antodaya (scheme for the poorest of the poor who have no means of income) and Satyagraha (thruth-force: philosophy and practice of non-violent resistance) after independence. But after 1955, Ram Manohar Lohia very aggressively raised the issue of caste to provide a distinct identity to socialists. He extended the ‘principle of special occasion’ to other backward castes like dastkars (artisans), farmers, etc. The characteristic of his principle was that it identified how the caste and man-woman discrimination strengthen each other; these talk of reservation for women along with reservation for minorities, dastkars, etc. He postulated a social revolution through a united revolution of Dalits, backward classes, Muslims, Adivasis and
67 Printed on 13 December 2017 COMPILATION OF ARTICLES WRITTEN BY VIJAY PRATAP women. Finally, on August 7, 1990, Vishwanath Pratap Singh was compelled to accept the recommendations of the Mandal Commission, due to the active role of the socialists. Sadly, the political leadership of that time made the Mandal Commission a tool of personal power struggle and blind identity rather than an instrument for destroying the caste system. It was not the effort of Mandalite Dalits and backward classes which established the united leadership of Dalits and backward classes. Moreover, all the important backward class leaders failed to reach a common understanding to share power with Dalits. Though the upper caste did not lose power to a substantial extent, they were, however, gripped more by fear. In reaction to this fear, a major chunk of the upper caste fell into the clutches of the Hindu identity. Various international forces whose vested interests did not allow any change in the system and radical transformation in social skeleton also abetted this concept of 'Hindu identity'. In contemporary times, social revolution is a much talked about concept, but the element of the revolution is altogether missing. The capability to bring people together in the name of caste, community or sect has a greater disadvantage as it has now become very difficult to raise the issue of corruption and morality in the Indian politics. The Brahminical forces have taken maximum advantage of this situation. A mythical atmosphere has been created that the leadership of Dalits and backward classes is corrupt. A successful weaving of this myth allows the present RJD government to demonstrate shamelessly the inclusion of corrupt congressmen like Sukh Ram.
A section of Dalits and backward classes has also entered in collusion with Brahminism, in the mad lust for power. Consequently, the elites and middle class of the nation lack a determination to fight the corruption in politics. If the system remains corrupt and there is no rule of law, then obviously the worst affected will be the poor, oppressed and downtrodden sections of the society.
We believe it is essential to have a common understanding on the splintering of socialist movement and its reasons. A total failure on the organisational front, for the revolution envisaged by the socialists is both a riddle and a tragedy, which must be necessarily discussed in any dialogue on democracy. The socialist awareness or social activism for the social issues may be found, but a complete political tool based on a holistic socialist ideology does not exist in the society. There used to be the Socialist Party which believed in democracy even in the extreme of democracy. But as a response to Stalinism, incorporation of almost anarchic ideological trends, perhaps led to a stage that no socialist organisation exists today. Paucity of space does not allow elaboration on this point, but a comment of Lohiaji is relevant here, “Leadership in future will not be of national level. Now our society will bring forth leaders from the villages, from the districts”. It seems that the prophecy has come true.
Those having national perspective and concerns, have to develop their organisational vision and organisational science in a manner involving Indian genius. I would like to clarify this by the manner in which we use two specific words. The word ‘caste’ is used in two ways in the Indian language. First, a bit larger than the family, the next sphere of Gotra; and second, a wider meaning - like Brahmin is a caste too, human being is a caste too, our nationality, that is being Indian, is a caste too. The same word is used in various contexts at different levels. We can view the nationality in the same way. We have not tied nation, nationality patriotism with geography. This contains a different kind of flexibility. All of us have heard of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam or ‘the whole world is a family’. This is not the only meaning of this. It also means that family too inherently reflects all principles and laws of organisation present on the globe. It implies that the
68 Printed on 13 December 2017 COMPILATION OF ARTICLES WRITTEN BY VIJAY PRATAP family is a mirror image of the globe and hence there is no dichotomy between localism and internationalism. Charkha (spinning wheel) was a local, rural article; but it became a symbol of the national freedom struggle, as did the use of the word 'country'. But today, a conspiracy of blind identity is being hatched against the developing countries. An environment is being created in which rural leadership emerging from village and district levels has been pushed into a struggle of identism rather than struggling over the issues. The American sociologist Samuel Hamilton calls the clash of Hindu and Muslim identity inevitable, in his book Clash of Civilization.
As discussed earlier, there is a flood of democracy at every level and it will definitely churn out some leaders, i.e., active workers, who would like to improve their environs. But such persons cannot do organisational work for a better society. An organised system is needed that provides such persons an opportunity to express themselves; a system which speakers of English call open-ended. Right from the beginning, it should have a total clarity regarding humane, democratic, equity and peoples’ participatory values. A newer institute is needed to constitute such a system. This new institute cannot be erected alone from liberal ideologies, experiments and experiences of the West. Such an institute has to be erected in congruence with Indian experiences and socio-cultural needs and for this, a struggle has to be launched against the colonisation of awareness.
Many a times we become the slaves of established thoughts to such an extent that we even stop thinking independently. The historical procedural reasons for the pathetic state of our political parties are often not debated. Can a political party in itself work as a machine for constructive work and as a tool of struggle simultaneously? Alternatively, is there a need to rethink on organisation for political intervention? If it happens, then movement groups will have to be united and will have to state unpopular things too. The movement groups seem to be lacking in such determination, creativity and imagination. Paradoxically, all democratic organisations/parties lack internal democracy. Most of the parties belonging to Third Front have become a coalition of some caste-based groups. Congress wants to resurrect itself on the basis of Nehru’s dynastic glory, not on the issues or struggles. BJP is standing on the foundation of Sangh workers and is decisively controlled by the Sangh. BJP is behaving in exactly the opposite matter on all the issues raised by it, be it honesty, transparency, corruption or free and fair society. They gave slogans of Swadeshi (of one's own country) but are actually promoting policies detrimental to the interests of the nation. Despite this dichotomy, there is no political force to encompass the wider national resentment.
Any dialogue on democracy shall have to explore into reasons of this. Today, political parties formed on the same keel like CPI, CPM, CPI(ML), all believe in democratic centralism. On the other hand, the BJP looks like an organised party though the internal rivalry, strife and groupism in it are more than the Congress. But most of the leaders of BJP also believe in the principle of ‘a single leader’. I had spent a considerable length of time in jail with many of the BJP leaders holding important positions and I found that they did not consider the imposition of the State of Emergency as a very wrong move. Many of them candidly admitted that had they been in power and faced a situation where the ‘Police and Army were given a call not to obey the wrong orders’, then perhaps they too would have followed the same course. It is also a paradox that the most active post-independence movement, i.e., the socialist movement or different socialist
69 Printed on 13 December 2017 COMPILATION OF ARTICLES WRITTEN BY VIJAY PRATAP parties in its name, is altogether missing from the political canvas of the country. Those who do not believe in democracy despite their non-democratic principles are standing on the principles of identity. At the organisational level, the crisis in socialism and crisis in democracy are identical. If we are unable to constitute democratic political parties, then how do we expect to save democracy?
In any dialogue on politics and political parties, only piecemeal discussion is adopted by taking up issues like individualism, casteism, dynasticism, criminalisation of politics, corruption of leaders, etc., but the inter-linkages and inter-relationships between the different issues is often not debated. It is very important that the activists engaged in the struggle over the issues of democracy have a wider clarity in their minds. If we succeed in identifying major points of agreements and disagreements among activists engaged in the struggle over the issues of democracy, then a national system for an honest dialogue on democracy will be formed. Concomitantly, parallel to it, yet another sensitive system will also emerge which will feel the national concerns and pain. Social forces will come out from these systems, the stratum of societies, which will be able to constitute themselves in a political form. These will have the idealism of democracy, a strong ideological base and a dream of liberating the country from the clutches of poverty, hunger and misrule. The true meaning of democracy implies that populism should not be encouraged and spread in the name of democracy. Instead, people should be empowered and their sovereignty returned.
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17. POVERTY IN INDIA - AN OVERVIEW
~ Vijay Pratap ~ Arun Kumar Singh
Only after the last tree has been cut down, Only after the last river has been poisoned, Only after the last fish has been caught, Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten. ~ A Cree Prophesy
Introduction
The word 'poverty' and 'poor' both express a lack of things perceived to be necessary and valuable. As per the dictionary, the meaning of the word 'poor' has among its definitions, "inferior; contemptible or despicable; deserving of pity; unlucky". The emergence of poverty on a global scale is a post-renaissance phenomenon. The indigenous communities in Africa, Asia and Latin America were a closed, self-sufficient, vibrant society, where by and large, poverty was not prevalent. The scientific advancements in the field of transportation made it possible to travel to far off places, on the one hand, and the ever-increasing industrialization ensured this to happen in search of more and more raw materials needed for this, on the other. Thus, the European powers conquered the resource-rich areas of the world, dispossessing the indigenous communities, always by barbaric means, which was the beginning of the spread of poverty on a global scale.
Since then, the gulf between the rich and poor nations has been increasing in leaps and bounds. On an average, in developed nations 20 percent population enjoys 80 percent of the global resources, whereas the 80 percent population of the developing nations is struggling to survive in the remaining 20 percent resources. Obviously, the western developmental model is inherently flawed and is the root-cause of failure of all the poverty alleviation programmes, as the developing nations have blindly followed this model of development. Honestly speaking, the current development paradigm is simply not sustainable, and in practice every constituent of it adds and defines poverty.
The International Organizations
The United Nations undertook many of the tasks required for alleviation of poverty at a global level. For this purpose, it created its Development Programme, Economic and Social Wing, the Health Organization and many other allied bodies. However, with the emergence of the newer international organizations, gradually but steadily its role started to shrink and now the UN has reached a stage where it no longer plays any role as a welfare body, and is reduced to act as a
71 Printed on 13 December 2017 COMPILATION OF ARTICLES WRITTEN BY VIJAY PRATAP stage where only political maneuvering is done. Sadly, for all practical purposes, the UN has lost the sheen, lustre and position, it once held.
The role of the international organizations has to be scrutinized in this backdrop. Let us first look at the Bretton Woods sisters - the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund - formed in 1944. The basic aim of these organizations was to facilitate the reconstruction of war-ravaged European nations. It is indeed interesting to note that the task was completed just within a decade in Europe. However, it is distressing to note that despite full four decades of operation in the nations in other parts of the world, the task still remains far from being complete, but which in fact has been compounded. The terms and conditions of lending by the World Bank in Europe, and subsequently to the rest of the world, are diametrically opposite. As a result, today the developing nations are crushed under debts, which can never be paid back. This extremely skewed arrangement can be understood from one basic fact that since 1984 reverse cash flow to the World Bank started, i.e., the total sum of interests by developing countries to World Bank and International Monetary Fund exceeded the total loan taken.
Yet another example is the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) of the World Bank. Under the SAP, funds are provided to a nation for inducing certain financial changes in its national fiscal structure. These include: devaluation of the currency, curtailment of the government expenditure, monetary liquidity, eliminating subsidies, removing price control, liberalization of trade, elimination of protective trade barriers, privatization of financial institutions and public enterprises, streamlining the state sector, rationalizing the tax system, etc. The advantage of this loan is that it is not project specific and the receiving nation can use this for any purpose. After the completion of 30 years of implementation of SAP in 110 countries, the World Bank carried out an internal assessment of the SAP, by its own economists. The report concluded that in 95 countries the results have been negative; in 5 countries the situation remained the same; and in 5 countries only it made a positive impact. The report further notes that in the 5 countries where it
72 Printed on 13 December 2017 COMPILATION OF ARTICLES WRITTEN BY VIJAY PRATAP made a positive impact, the internal policies of the nations were more responsible for its success. Yet the World Bank is still enforcing SAP on the borrowing nations.
Thus, in a nutshell, the policies of the WB-IMF have been the most important single factor in spreading poverty across the globe and it has acquired draconian proportion with the emergence of World Trade Organization (WTO). The WTO, created on 1 January 1995 with 134 nations as its members, has emerged as the most important factor to increase poverty many-fold in the times to come. Because unlike any other global institution, the WTO has both the legislative and judicial authority to challenge laws, policies and programmes of member countries if they do not conform to WTO rules and it has the power to strike down these national rules if they can be shown to be “trade restrictive”. It implies that nations are no more in a position to protect the interests of their own citizens from the onslaught of the trade in a liberalized market. The WTO enshrines the mandatory import quotas for the market of each nation. As a result, throughout the world the farmers, the workers, the indigenous communities, the weaker sections, and women have started raising their voices against the WTO.
The provisions of the WTO are a death knell for South-Asia specifically. South-Asia (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bhutan and Maldives) is host to almost one-fourth of the world population on less than 2 percent of landmass. 40 percent of the world's poor (515 million people) live in South-Asia, and hence poverty alleviation in South-Asia is the most challenging task for the region as a whole. The inclusion of agriculture in WTO has disastrous consequences for South-Asia, which is predominantly an agrarian society where 80 percent of the land-holdings are less than two acres and these farmers are engaged in sustenance farming. The WTO provision for slashing the subsidies to farmers by 15 percent will end their own source of livelihood as nowhere in South-Asia the subsidy exceeds 10 percent. In contrast, developing nations, which provide subsidies to their farmers from 30 to 50 percent, despite the slashing, will continue to provide the subsidy to their farmers. This clause alone will create several crores of new poor people in South-Asia in the next five years when the WTO provision becomes fully operational after the expiry of the ten-year transition period.
Another associated feature of this is the handing over of the entire agriculture sector in the hands of multinationals, with the patenting of plants, modified genetic strands and seeds. This will put the whole population of the developing world at the mercy of the MNCs and TNCs. In this light, it is clear that the WTO itself is to function as a "court of ultimate resort", a court for corporations that feel that their rights to trade freely have been hampered by the governments.
The role of MNCs/TNCs too needs to be complimented here as it has given rise to globalization of finance. Private capital flows now dominate the total financial flows to developing nations. Out of US $ 285 billion of total financial flows in 1996, private flows accounted for US $ 244 billion, over 80 percent of the total flows. This is a five-fold increase since 1990. The emergence of the MNCs/TNCs was made easier by the growing debt of developing countries. Net flows to developing countries from commercial banks reached their peak by the late 1970s. Thus, foreign debts of these countries increased six-fold, from US $ 100 billion in 1973 to US $ 600 billion in 1979. Therefore, the commercial bank lending began to decline from the 1980s onwards as many developing countries were under heavy debt burdens. Consequently, the developing countries started to look for other options and the MNCs/TNCs dominated this arena. The worst part is that
73 Printed on 13 December 2017 COMPILATION OF ARTICLES WRITTEN BY VIJAY PRATAP there is no control over the capital of MNCs/TNCs and at the slightest sign of any plausible financial problem in the country they operate, they can just flee the country triggering an economic crisis. That is the precise reason for the ongoing economic crisis of the Southeast- Asian nations since 1997.
The nature, extent and magnitude of wealth accumulated in a few private hands can be understood from some available figures. The combined wealth of the top three richest men (which incidentally also include an Indian) of the world, exceeds the combined wealth of 50 least developed countries. The total wealth of the top 50 MNCs/TNCs exceeds US $ 1,500 billion. Hence, the sudden capital flow from any country by these MNCs/TNCs can lead to the collapse of the economy of any developing country. These MNCs/TNCs do not owe any accountability, either to the government or to the people of the nation they operate in, and neither is there any legal binding on their sudden capital flow.
There are several lessons South-Asia can learn from the Southeast-Asian crisis, like:
Financial liberalization should only be undertaken cautiously and after proper sequencing.
If 'hot flows' of capital are to be allowed, they should be monitored carefully and managed properly. As demonstrated by the Southeast-Asian experiences, rapidly expanding short-term debt financed by 'hot flows' can harm domestic economies.
The exchange rate system followed, whether fixed or flexible, should reflect the economic fundamentals of the country.
Transparency, absence of politicization and prudential regulation must exist in the financial sector.
Proper data reporting is a must - if only to accurately assess the financial state of the economy.
Industrialization should be diversified, decentralized and rural oriented, not urban concentrated.
An active and free domestic media is a necessity. A more realistic picture of an economy can only be of benefit to all parties - whether domestic or foreign. If the media highlights the deficiencies in a national economy, it should be viewed not as a threat, but as an opportunity to correct mistakes and weaknesses.
In the light of the hidden agenda of WB-IMF-WTO, it is clear that poverty will never be eradicated from the globe as the responsibility of poverty alleviation has been vested in the hands of the very institutions (the WB-IMF, etc.), whose policies have proliferated poverty. The real issues, barring a few cosmetic treatments here and there, such as global meetings recently organized by the WB on poverty alleviation with the heads of important religions of the world, are never addressed. In this context, when we look towards the forthcoming Johannesburg 2002 conference, the future portrays a very dismal and bleak picture.
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Poverty in South-Asia It will be relevant here to quote the views of leading contemporary political-sociologist Prof. D.L. Sheth on the South-Asian poverty situation. The South-Asian poverty situation is integrally linked to its social structure and ideology (e.g., caste/clan/elitism) that legitimizes the structure. Its nature is not terribly different between one South-Asian country and another, including as between India and Pakistan. The nature of social structure and the colonial past are two important factors for understanding South-Asian poverty. It articulates links in a very different, South-Asian way, to issues of gender, rights, ethnicity and social justice. It seems that the nature of South-Asian poverty is, for example, different from, Mexican or African poverty. Enough thought has not been given to it, probably because we see poverty primarily in economic, rather than in political or cultural terms.
South-Asians are one people divided by languages, divided by religions and of course by states and in many other ways. What is that one-peopleness that everyone instinctively feels but finds difficult to put one's finger on? At least one thing is clear - we in South-Asia share some common problems and pathologies. However, today we are facing a different kind of discourse at the global level. For example, poverty is now considered as poor peoples' own failure to create wealth. It is no longer seen as a moral problem. Hence, the poverty, like many other issues, is being redefined and relocated, thereby necessitating the need to understand this paradigm shift if we have to find a solution to the problem of South-Asian poverty.
The Indian Scenario A telling example of the stark truth in 1947, is that India ranked seventh in the world in its rate of development, and it has a foreign loan of US $ 52 million from UK. In 2000, India ranked 138 in human development index, with a debt of US $ 180 on every head of one billion people. In a nutshell, this is the gist of 'development' in our five decades of independence. Since 60 percent of the population of India lives in the rural areas, the rural poverty assumes a much greater significance.
Over the last five decades, a whole range of programmes aimed towards rural development have been launched, like:
1. The integrated Rural Development Programme (IRDP)
2. Training of Rural Youth for Self-Employment (TRYSEM)
3. Development of Women and Children in Rural Areas (DWCRA)
4. Jawahar Rozgar Yojana (JRY)
5. Ganga Kalyan Yojana (GKY)
6. Million Wells Scheme (MWS)
7. Supply of Improved Toolkits to Rural Artisans (SITRA)
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8. Swarnjayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana (SGSY)
9. Rural Public Works Programmes (RPWPs)
Undoubtedly, these programmes have provided unprecedented access to the rural poor to institutional credit and these loans remain virtually the only form of formal credit locally available. However, the benefits of these programmes in terms of success in extending sustained assistance to poor families to break out of the poverty cycle, is not encouraging. The most significant factor uniformly present in the failures of all such schemes is the massive corruption. Late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi's admission in 1985 that only 15 percent of the benefits of government programmes actually reach the poor, may not have had the precise backing of empirical research, but the mere fact that it is so widely quoted suggests that it confirms observed reality. Lack of transparency and right to information, and no accountability, are the reasons giving birth to corruption. Another factor contributing to this failure is mismanagement of the schemes as the development bureaucracy totally lacks commitment and specific skills which are required for the success of these programmes.
Despite massive industrialization, the agricultural sector is still the mainstay of the Indian economy where a staggering 60 crore persons are engaged in agriculture and allied activities. The declining share of agriculture to the national economy, from 44.5 percent in 1970-71 to 24.4 percent in 1998, is a direct and clear evidence of the massive increase in the numbers of rural poor.
But the Government has adopted a new strategy to demonstrate that the number of the poor people has decreased - it has changed the very definition of the poor. The 'poverty line' in India is defined with respect to nutritional adequate norms. In 1973-74, it identified expenditure on food adequate for a per capita per diem intake of 2,400 k calories in rural areas and 2,100 k calories in urban areas. Thus, in 1973-74, the rural poverty line was Rs. 49 per month and urban poverty line was Rs. 56.6 per capita per month. The population earning below this was considered as poor. However, in 1993-94, for no apparent reason, the government changed this calorie intake to 1,968 k calories and 1,890 k calories for rural and urban areas respectively, which came to Rs. 205.84 per capita per month for rural areas, and Rs. 281.35 per capita per month for urban areas. On the basis of these changes, the government came out with the figure that the poverty ratio has come down from 36 percent to 29 percent.
The poor masses are not a uniform category in itself; it is divided into four strata: 1. Nearly 2 percent of the poor households (having no earning members) live in destitution; 2. 14 percent are paupers; 3. 38 percent are very poor; and 4. 46 percent are the worst off. And not all those who are treated as living above the poverty line are rich. About 40 percent of these are just hovering at or around the poverty line and in any adverse situation are likely to fall below the poverty line. To sum up, 36 percent of the population is poor, 40 percent is just marginally above the poverty line, and only the remaining 24 percent can be placed in the two categories of 'well-to-do' and 'rich'.
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However, no rationale was provided for the very change in the definition of 'poverty' and this became such a controversial issue that subsequently the government was forced to modify its own conclusion and it is now established that the poverty has remained almost at the same level. But if we apply the criterion of 1973-74 for determination of poor, for the year 1993-94, then poverty ratio for the rural areas is 75 percent, and for the urban areas 54.4 percent.
Yet another evidence exhibiting the increase in the number of poor is rural indebtedness and access to credit. The 1991 debt survey has reported a steep increase in the proportion of rural households reporting debt in all states. The following trends have been observed:
Indebtedness of marginal farmers and landless labourers is on account of consumption and social credit not catered to by institutional sources.
Informal debt market continues to constitute 70 to 80 percent in a number of areas.
61 percent loans in Punjab come from commission agents who charge 25 to 30 percent interest rates.
In Rajasthan, even if all the assets of debtors are sold, the debt burden cannot be cleared.
Debt redemption and land restoration is making little progress in tribal areas.
The debt burden led suicides by farmers throughout the nation is increasing. According to the US National Centre for Injury Prevention and Control, at least one lakh people commit suicide in India. According to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), the total number of suicides in India shot up from 54,357 in 1986 to 88,241 in 1996 - an increase of 62.34 percent. In Kerala alone 24 people commit suicide every day. The states of West Bengal, Maharashtra, Tamilnadu, Karnataka and Kerala account for 58 percent of all suicides in the country. The NCRB cites the reasons for suicides as bankruptcy, poverty, unemployment and sudden change in economic status.
The total failure of poverty alleviation programmes is the single factor for the increase in the number of poor. Special programmes for helping the rural poor were started in the late 1960s but those for helping households below a certain poverty line were started in the late 1970s and early 1980s. These programmes aimed at attacking poverty directly, though they were considered supplementary in nature. They were integrated, disintegrated and componented. Approaches were philosophised as coordinated/holistic. Even the schemes christened as rural development were pressed into service for alleviation of poverty. How much poverty was alleviated through such programmes, can be discussed with some reliability.
Under the Integrated Rural Development Programme (IRDP) alone, between 1980-81 and November 1998, Rs. 45,000 crores with a subsidy component of Rs. 12,000 crores were disbursed to families below the poverty line in rural areas. While academic studies show that not more than 20 percent of those who were given assistance could rise above the poverty line, government documents emphasize that their incomes have gone up even if they continue to
77 Printed on 13 December 2017 COMPILATION OF ARTICLES WRITTEN BY VIJAY PRATAP remain below the poverty line. Whether an income below poverty line is sustainable, is a question none wants to answer.
A staggering number of 5.35 crore families were given assistance under the programme. Some of them were given assistance more than once, which shows a fault in the design. Deleting such numbers, at the minimum five crore poor families in rural areas were given assistance. Using 5.5 as the family size (which was actually 5.495), the number of people given help goes up to 27.5 crores. The number of rural poor in 1975-78 were 26.4 crores. Today, even by conservative estimates, they are around 30 crores. Hence, the equation works out to 26.4 crores-27.5 crores = 30 crores!
This addition-subtraction arithmetic cannot solve the sum. Multiplication of people and division of households, as well as the movement between rural and urban areas and reclassifications of habitations, should all be taken into account. Given the fact that the flow of the people is from rural to urban areas, is an inescapable conclusion that creation of poverty was a much more powerful force than the efforts at poverty reduction in rural areas. A recent change in the mode of release of subsidy from 'front-end' to 'back-end' speaks volumes about fault in the design of the scheme.
On the one hand, production of the food grains is in surplus, while at least officially the 36 percent of the population do not get two square meals a day. The storage of this surplus food grains has become a Herculean task. In 2000, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Agriculture officially recommended to the Government to throw away at least 50 million tons of food grains in the Indian Ocean, due to inadequate knowledge and expertise on storage technology.
Let us also look at the urban employment too where the latest Economic Survey discloses some shocking information on this front. In 1997-98, the latest year for which data is available, employment in the organized sector (private plus public) has actually declined! And this, despite a more than anticipated rate of GDP growth at 6.8 percent. The implication of this is that the Ninth Plan's rosy prediction of a gradual decline in the level and rate of unemployment is unlikely to come true. On the contrary, the trend towards casualisation of labour will increase.
As compared to an average of Rs. 154.46 crores spent during the four years (1995-1999), the expenditure on poverty alleviation and urban employment programmes in 1999-2000 was just Rs. 126.32 crores. In December 1997, all such schemes, in the name of rationalization, have been abolished and only one main scheme Swarna Jayanti Shahari Rozgar Yojana (SJSRY) is in operation. Another scheme operating since 1993 is the Prime Minister's Rozgar Yojana (PMRY). This scheme has reached a dead-end. Though the target was fixed at 4.4 lakh micro-enterprise cases per year, the target from 1994 onwards has remained static at 2.2 lakhs. In 1998-99, the actual achievement was just 1.5 lakhs and in 1999-2000, in the first seven months only 30,000 cases have been disbursed. More importantly, all of a sudden, without any explanation, and after the expiry of the relevant financial years, the targets for the previous years (1997-99) have been pulled down to 3.3 lakhs.
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With the dismal background of dwindling employment opportunities in the organized sector and a huge 10 million per year addition to the labour force, such neglect of the programmes for poverty alleviation and employment generation will eventually lead to the collapse of the social fabric, leading to massive chaos and civil unrest in the next decade.
This is but an illustration of official policies and schemes. All schemes put together must have spent more than Rs. 1 lakh crore over the past two decades or so. The sum is inadequate and the designs of the schemes are faulty. They are incapable of even trimming rural poverty.
The undying myth of development, that it will remove all poverty forever from all corners of the world, now lies shattered and the evidence comes from the heaven of the developed world – the USA. Despite the last five decades of hyper-prosperity in the USA, 18 percent of its population has more or less consistently stayed in poverty throughout this entire period. In New York, the current capital of the world capitalism, 25 percent of all children and 50 percent of Afro- American children live in families with incomes below the official poverty line. 40,000 homeless adults in New York live on the streets, subways, under bridges and train tunnels of the city.
The preliminary trend on the impact of WTO policies in India depicts a horrifying picture. For example, lifting the ban on the import of certain threads for manufacture of clothes has resulted in the end of livelihood of one crore handloom workers in India. The import of cheaper decorative electric light systems, firework articles and toys from China has led to joblessness of more than one crore families, as per the official figures. The entry of MNCs and TNCs into the areas hitherto protected by the official policies and reserved for cottage industries have made millions of people lose their jobs. The import of cheap butter oil has led to the closure of desi ghee producing units in Punjab, as they could not withstand the prices (butter oil Rs. 50 per kg as compared to desi ghee at Rs. +100 per kg). The list is virtually endless as in every sphere of trade the multinationals have entered in a big way wiping out the small and cottage indigenous industries, thereby swelling the number of unemployed work force. Practically from every country, the literature is replete on the adverse impacts of WTO. Paucity of time does not permit me to deal with this issue in its entirety and the issue has been extensively covered in writings.
The most important single domestic factor adding to poverty is the state policy. The mammoth industrialization, urbanization and development projects have uprooted at least 50 million people from their natural habitats, almost all of them being tribals, forest dwellers and rural people. Yet there is no rehabilitation policy at all despite 50 years of independence. The absolute monopoly of the state over the life support systems, i.e., water, forests and land, gives the right to the state to annex this resource base at any point of time, as and when it needs. Therefore, the populations dependent on this resource base, though considered poor in a monetised economy yet self- sufficient in their own system, overnight find themselves dispossessed and deprived of their livelihood.
Bangladesh's Micro-credit Programme has often been cited as a success story in the context of potential and capacity of poverty alleviation. Bangladesh's early success in reducing poverty has reversed since the mid-1980s. Bangladesh's Household Expenditure Survey data shows that by 1991, poverty incidence both in rural as well as in urban areas, had risen compared to 1985. Though poverty rates have since improved, they were still higher in 1995 than those of a decade
79 Printed on 13 December 2017 COMPILATION OF ARTICLES WRITTEN BY VIJAY PRATAP earlier. The absolute number of poor rose by 1.2 percent annually during this period - faster than any historically observed rate. The depth and severity of poverty also increased, demonstrating the worsening conditions of the poor. For a more detailed treatment on this issue, kindly see the additional literature given in the references.
In the end, it can be safely concluded that the new emerging global order, comprising the supra- state WTO, policies of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, and unprecedented power of MNCs/TNCs, have drastically undermined the sovereignty of the nations. The lack of political will in the developing countries, unprecedented level of corruption in administrative structure of the developing nations and inherently ill-conceived programmes with faulty designs, have further compounded the situation on the poverty front. In this set-up, it is an inescapable conclusion that the magnitude of poverty will increase many-fold in the decades to come.
References
1. Indrajit Khanna (1998). Revised Strategy and Reconstruction of IRDP in the Seventh Plan, Workshop Paper. Ministry of Rural Development, New Delhi.
2. Ghanshyam Shah (2000). Poverty Alleviation Programmes in India. In: Contemporary India. Editor: Peter Ronald deSouza. Sage Publications, New Delhi.
3. Harsh Mander (2000). Rural Poverty and State Interventions in India. Unpublished mimeograph. Action Aid, India.
4. S. Mahendra Dev and Ajit Ranade (1997). Persisting Poverty and Social Insecurity - A Selective Assessment. In: India Development Report. Editor: K.S. Parikh. Oxford University Press, New Delhi.
5. Workshop Papers (2001). Workshop on "Poverty and Human Development Monitoring Systems". Planning Department, Government of Karnataka and Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bangalore.
6. Robert Chambers, N.C. Saxena and Tushar Shah (1990). To The Hands of Poor. Oxford and IBH Publishing Company Private Limited, New Delhi.
7. P.K. Chaubey (2000). Poverty. In: Alternate Economic Survey 1998-2000. Alternate Survey Group. Rainbow Publishers, New Delhi.
8. Kamla Prasad (2000). Rural Economy. In: Alternate Economic Survey 1998-2000. Alternate Survey Group. Rainbow Publishers, New Delhi.
9. T.M. Thomas (2000). Urban Economy. In: Alternate Economic Survey 1998-2000. Alternate Survey Group. Rainbow Publishers, New Delhi.
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10. Safia Sircar (2000). Poverty and Suicides: Is there a Link? Humanscape, November 2000.
11. Ashish Nandy (2000). Why Development and Prosperity Will Not Remove Poverty. Humanscape, November 2000.
12. P.O. George (2000). Trouble in Paradise: Family Suicides in Kerala. Humanscape, November 2000.
13. Arun Kumar Singh (1992). Developing Countries in the Clutches of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (in Hindi). Jansatta 19 August 1992.
14. Arun Kumar Singh (1995). The Draconian Face of WTO. International Workshop on Implications of WTO. National Working Group on Patents, New Delhi.
15. Arun Kumar Singh (1999). WTO and Indian Agriculture. Peoples' Voice, No. 68, Calcutta.
16. Kavaljit Singh (1998). A Citizen's Guide to the Globalization of the Finance. Madhyam Books, New Delhi.
17. Frances Moore Lappe, Joseph Collins and Peter Rosset (1998). World Hunger: Twelve Myths. Grove Press, New York.
18. Mahbub Ul Haq Human Development Centre, Islamabad, Pakistan (1999). Human Development in South Asia: The Crisis of Governance. Oxford University Press, 1999.
19. Amera Saeed (2000). Poverty in South Asia - Predicament and Prospects. Regional Studies. Vol. XVIII, No. 4. Journal of the Institute of Regional Studies, Islamabad, Pakistan.
20. Rehman Sobhan (1982). The Crisis of External Dependence - The Political Economy of Foreign Aid to Bangladesh. University Press Limited, Dhaka, Bangladesh.
21. Richard Holloway (1998). Supporting Citizen's Initiatives - Bangladesh's NGOs and Society. University Press Limited, Dhaka, Bangladesh.
22. Catherine H. Lovell (1992). Breaking the Cycle of Poverty. University Press Limited, Dhaka, Bangladesh.
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18. STATE OF DEMOCRACY IN SOUTH-ASIA Vijay Pratap Hegemonic globalisation is moving at a pace more like a storm. The political actors find themselves defensively fighting the negative consequences of the hegemonic globalisation.
The radical political elements in South have rarely owned responsibility of nurturing the nascent post-colonial states unless they are in power themselves. They also have not been able to develop a mechanism, a language to oppose a specific regime or a set of specific policies followed by a particular regime and yet shouldering the responsibility of defending the interests of the nation- state in the comity of nations. To articulate, fears, anxieties and aspirations of citizens regarding the dignified survival and flowering of their respective nation-states are seen as a regressive political activity.
In India, many anti-democratic forces have singled out one of India's greatest nation builders Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru for all kinds of ideological attacks. The act of undermining the modern day state builders has also drawn its strength from over enthusiasm of anti-Congressism and a variety of Gandhian/Socialism, fundamentalism in the name of redefining the development model or 'decolonising' our consciousness.
A large number of NGOs in South-Asia (not because they are agents of some imperial power), use a language which appears to undermine the legitimacy of the state of their own countries; these NGOs appear to almost exonerate the hegemonic powers, especially in bringing such specificities it complicates their simplistic and many times naive and disastrous prescriptions for revolution. Many times one notices that minor players and secondary actors get more attention, and central players who are contributing to the sustenance of status-quo or even messing up the situation get away without attracting any informed criticism.
Some of us in research institutions, academia, NGOs and movement groups feel that contributing in the discourse of 'nation-building' is at least as important as contributing in clarifying the issues as 'fundamental' for the transformation of our societies into vibrant-democratic societies. I shall go further and say that dignified survival of our respective nation-states and health of their governance is a pre-requisite to the idea of radical transformations of our societies. One extreme example here will not be out of place. The degree to which untouchability has been wiped out from the face of India, would not have been possible without the concomitant idea of a Modern India. Whether it is last or the richest, both need the idea of modern democratic India for their respective dignity, no matter where they go and live on this planet. There have been attacks on the caste system and untouchability in the history of the Hindustan region. But the pace and depth at which decoupling of the occupation ascriptive status due to the birth is taking place, is
National Dialogue on Democracy and Human Security (Hyderabad) 18th & 19th September, 2004 State of Democracy in South-Asia
82 Printed on 13 December 2017 COMPILATION OF ARTICLES WRITTEN BY VIJAY PRATAP unprecedented in our history. Besides secular egalitarian ideologies, the idea of building a modern nation-state has motivated thousands of upper caste youth to fight against caste and untouchability.
During the freedom struggle, ordinary people actively participated in the process of defining, internalising and passing on to the succeeding generations the dream of a democratic, caring, pluralist, socialist, federal, decentralised but strong nation-state. Our organised polity may or may not clearly and loudly articulate all these elements at all times. However, it has been established time and again through electoral verdicts and through other means, that these are fairly all-pervading aspirations of our people.
In this age of globalisation and rapid communications, the politics of debates, which raised the issues and which defines the agenda, is very crucial. In the politics of discourse, it is not only political workers at various levels who participate; many a non-state actor like different sections of intelligentsia, upper rungs of market forces, NGOs and think tanks in the North (because they can financially afford these think tanks easily) keep influencing the debates in politics in South- Asia.
We, at CSDS, seek to discern the various contours of the debate on these issues. In the politics of discourse, the act or attempt of understanding itself contributes to the making and unmaking of the frameworks of the debate. We reiterate our commitment to the nation-building processes in India and shall participate truthfully and with a sense of justice in the debate on the above issues.
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19. TEN DIALOGUES ON ‘POLICY INTERVENTIONS FOR CONSOLIDATION OF DEMOCRACY’ Vijay Pratap Indian democracy can be consolidated only if the people of this country feel that they have a stake in such a system and that they are cared for. In fact, the results of 1996 Lok Sabha elections and post-election behaviour of our existing political parties show that competitive populism inherent in a democracy has brought about a kind of national consensus on major policy issues, the speech of the 'Thirteen Day' Prime Minister Sh. Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and the Common Minimum Programme of the United Front do not seem to be fundamentally different from each other. What may be different is the politics and motivations behind these programmes on which one cannot pronounce any final judgement, but can initiate a debate on that. After all, it is not insignificant that the first speech of Sh. Vajpayee as Prime Minister was far more moderate and reasonable than the aggressive postures of BJP and its non-election fronts; even Sh. Vajpayee’s own speech when it became evident that except for the support of Samata Party, Shiv Sena and Akali Dal, the BJP was totally isolated, not only in the parliament, who were their electoral allies in 1996 elections, in any case debate and experimentation in the voluntary sector. In this context, Lokayan has decided to initiate a series of dialogues to discuss the various possible policy initiatives by the managers of the system, irrespective of the party in power.
Voluntary groups have studied and experimented on a wide range of issues. Water has been the most important felt need of the people. A large number of groups have worked on these issues from technical to cultural aspects of the problem. Similarly, issues of environment, health care, clean administration, right to information, access to drinking water, housing, education and need and limitations of anti-poverty programmes, are some of the areas of vital concern of the ordinary people on which the voluntary sector has worked.
Lokayan, in the last sixteen years, has built extensive contacts with these networks. We would like to initiate a series of ten dialogues on some of the major policy issues with 20 to 30 participants in each dialogue. We shall prepare the reports of these dialogues in Hindi and English for wider circulation.
Irrespective of the resources available, Lokayan would like to organize these meetings on a shoestring budget of Rs. 80,000/- for all the ten meetings. However, for some of the issues, e.g., power, or may be health, or campaign for right to information, we will need to invite resource persons from outside Delhi. For this, a sum of Rs. 150,000/- may be provided for all the meetings. A sum of Rs. 40,000/- be provided (Rs. 4,000 x 10 meetings = Rs. 40,000) for the honorarium of the co-coordinators for these meetings, who will help in the preparation and follow-up of these meetings.
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Hence, our total requirement for these ten meetings, including travel grant for resource persons, is only Rs. 270,000/-. Nevertheless, I am sure this will go a long way in generating a popular debate in the country on issues of public policy, and will also provide a forum to the voluntary sector to share their respective experiences with the larger society.
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20. CONVERSATIONS ON DEMOCRACY -Anil Bhattarai and Vijay Pratap
This book is an outcome of a two-day conference entitled “The Consolidation of Grassroot Democracy in South Asia” organized in Delhi on 19-20 March, 2001 by Heinrich Böll Foundation (HBF) in association with Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) and Service Centre for Development Cooperation (KEPA). The participants came from Nepal, India, Pakistan, Germany and Finland. This conference provided them opportunities for conversations with each other on the issue of democracy in South Asia. They discussed the limitations of the current representative form of democracy; emerging threats to democratic spaces; participatory democratic elements in our traditions; and future possibilities of solidarity actions for deepening and consolidation of democracy in the region. The experiences of the participants were diverse and so were their visions of the future. They have been working in political parties, NGOs, academic institutions and as social activists. What connected these diverse experiences and visions was their commitment to a democratic and peaceful South Asia. The people of South Asia have remained linked together historically and culturally. The region is diverse in many ways and it is this diversity which has been the connecting link among the societies here. The cultural diversity, the diversity in climate, flora and fauna, religious diversity and diversity of institutions provide an excellent backdrop for learning from each other in this region.
This region has a rich and long history of democratic traditions. This history predates the modern nation-state model of democracy that was adopted here since the second half of the twentieth century. Though not without contestation, the decentralized and local institutions for the conduct and management of the social and community life evolved in South Asia some thousand years ago. These institutions have gone through ups and downs over a long period of time. Some of them have eroded. Others have been transformed into newer ones. Some have even become part of history books. There have also been new experiences of democracy (and lack of it) in the last five decades. Some countries in South Asia embarked on what many called a new era of modernization in the aftermath of the Second World War. A new state system came into being and in some countries democracy began to be understood in the new sense of politics — elections, parliament and assemblies, formation of elected governments along with new institutional structures of judiciary and an executive accountable to the elected representatives. The experiences have not been uniform everywhere all over the region. In fact, except for India and Sri Lanka, most of the other countries in the region have had dismal experience as far as modern democratic experiments are concerned. The near absolute monarchy in Nepal, military takeover of power in Pakistan and later also in Bangladesh, and the still continuing monarchy without any semblance of parliamentary democracy in Bhutan speak volumes about modern democracy, which eludes the people in the sub-continent.
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In the nineties, in some of these countries, situations began to change. In the early nineties, Nepal emerged out of absolute rule of monarchy and started a path of constitutional monarchy with a new constitution which provided for the fundamental human rights, elected parliament, executive accountable to the parliament, and independent judiciary, among many other things. This opened up possibilities for organized attempts in these countries to transform the society and polity democratically. Similar events occurred in Pakistan and Bangladesh. These events coincided with new waves of change that occurred on a large scale all over the world - the dramatic dissolution of some of the single-party dictatorships in Eastern Germany and former Soviet block, the right wing dictatorships in Latin America and in some other countries. Though, at the end of the nineties, some reversals have occurred, for example, the military take over of power in Pakistan, yet there have been subtle transformations in other countries as well. In the last decade, there has been a new realization about the limitation of this model of democracy. In some countries, this realization was older. For example, a large number of people’s movements and diverse initiatives in India had enlarged the limits of representative character of the polity and had called for more decentralized democratic structure and processes. In other regions like Nepal where the representative experience began, in the real sense, only in the nineties, its people also began to see its limitations in the light of experiences of the last decade. There have been dramatic experiences on a global scale as well. The increasing integration of economies of the poorer countries into the corporatized economy of the Northern section of the globe have marginalized more and more people in the South. The deprivation is increasing, and the decisions that have impact on the lives and livelihood of large sections of people are increasingly taking place in distant centres. More importantly, this process is being facilitated through a new institutional mechanism of World Trade Organization. There has also been a sharp rise of fundamentalism in different parts of the region during this period. The rise of religious fundamentalism is posing threat to a vision of democracy that respects diversity but also does not ignore the universal values of equality and freedom. Religious fundamentalism is not a new experience. But since the nineties, there has been intensification of fundamentalist upsurge in the region. The ruptures are occurring at many levels of our society. At the individual level, there is a crisis of identity and livelihood for the majority of the people. The situation of poverty is appalling and all the indications point out that it is getting worse. The disparity between rich and poor has widened. There has been increasing concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few “Bigs” in the society - both in the region and within individual countries. This is in tune with the global trend which is showing that the concentration of wealth and power is intensifying all over. At the community level the rise of fundamentalism has undermined the aspirations for democratic participation of the large sections of society. This is happening in most of the countries in the region. There has been increasing subversion of institutions meant for participation of people. The increasing commodification of social life is leading to atomization of social relations in the community. More and more people are relating to each other through the exchange in the market place. There have been ruptures in symbiotic relationships, which in the past, used to exist among diverse communities and groups of people.
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The nation-state is also going through a process of intensive restructuring. The increasing dominance of transnational actors has given rise to a situation where the power of any nation- state, to assert its autonomous role, is increasingly becoming limited. The gradual undermining of transnational institutions, like the United Nations, has gone hand in hand with the rise of power of the transnational corporations and increasing military dominance of a few advanced countries. This is further undermining the possible avenues of democratization of our societies and polities. The corruption in high places has entered the political sphere on a large scale. This has given rise to delegitimacy of the political system itself and its political actors. This, again, is undermining the health of democratic institutions in the region. Moreover, the political institutions have turned merely into puppets in the hands of international powers and agencies. This is more so in the case of smaller countries which are highly dependent on ‘foreign aid’ for their own survival. These changes are further complicated by historical experiences in our region. The existence of caste system, especially the practice of untouchability and segregation in public life, the subjugation and marginalization of women both in the households and in society at large, the relationship of suspicion and fear between nation-states and notions of nationalism based on ‘demonization of the other’, are realities that pose fundamental challenges and threats for the democratization of South Asian societies. However, the story is not all that bad. Along with all these ills and anomalies, there have emerged new assertions at multiple levels of our polities and societies. There has been a process of reflections and introspection on the democratic experiences of the last five decades. The assertions by women and Dalits, Adivasis and Janajatis, poor and landless have revealed the inherent elitism and limitations of the existing institutions. There have been some experiences of more participatory and inclusive institutional processes. All this demands a process of sustained dialogue among different actors in South Asia who are working on democratization of our societies in the region. This also demands a reflection on many parts of our history - not only to think through where we have gone wrong and where we have gone right, but also to look for sources of hope for a different future based on the principle of equity, justice and sustainability. Some of the presentations in this conference tried to do that by looking at the traditions in South Asia which are rich repository of democratic institutions and processes. At a time when we are realizing the limitations of representative form of democracy, these traditions would provide some historical source for imagination and innovations of participatory mode of democracy. We can build on them, as Prof. Iqbal Ansari argues in his presentation. But this is not mere reviving of traditions as some fundamentalist forces are trying to do in the country. Imtiaz Ahmad points out that the revival can happen only within the context of democratic participation. D.L. Sheth’s presentation further elaborates on the necessity of reflecting on our traditions of democracy not as a revival of past but as sources of imagination of new forms of participatory democracy. The threat to democracy in the region was the next subject of discussion in the meeting. Corruption in the political institutions was elaborated by V.B. Gupta, who has been involved in investigating corruption at high places in India for many years. Hari Roka, a left political activist from Nepal, shared experiences of corruption in Nepal and raised some fundamental questions regarding how it is threatening the very fabric of democratic institutions there.
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On the second day, the politics of identity was discussed intensively. Dr. Purusottam Aggarwal provided an overview of challenges to the left politics in India in taking up the issues of culture and identity. He discussed the need, especially on the part of the left in India, of introspecting about their positions as far as the issues of culture and identity are concerned. D. Raja, a political ideologue from left in India, responded to that. He admitted that there have been some limitations in the way left has taken up issues of culture and identity. At the same time, he argued that given the complexities of life in India, left is trying to do its best. In fact, left has been at the centre stage of struggle against imperialist globalisation taking place, he said. Deepti Priya raised some fundamental questions about the nature of our social life which defines and creates separate spaces for women and men in society. This separation of spaces has had deeper implications for the participation in our polity, hence the need of transforming the current situation towards more sharing and caring relationships - at home, in society and within the state. Kamal Nayan Kabra discussed in detail the connection between polity and economy by bringing in the issue of black money in India and how it is posing threats to democracy. The last session of the second day focused on building North-South solidarity. Risto Isomaki from Finland shared experiences of eroding welfare state in Nordic countries and the need for building solidarities among political actors both in the North and the South. Roshan Dhunjibhoy argued for people-to-people solidarity in South Asia. Vijay Pratap identified some challenges in building solidarities across the North-South spectrum. When any attempt is made by some activists of the South to build linkages with the activists of the North, it gets no sense of enthusiasm and support from other political actors in the South, he said. Finally, a few words of thanks to those who made the organizing of the conference possible. We would like to thank all the participants for sparing the time for this meeting from their busy schedule. We deeply thank His Excellency Dr. Bhesh Bahadur Thapa, Ambassador of Nepal to India, who accepted our invitation at such a short notice and also agreed to chair a session despite his busy schedule. We thank our colleagues at CSDS and Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam (VK). We particularly thank Suraj Deo Singh and Kusum Lata for their untiring efforts in arranging a lot of material and doing secretarial work for the meeting. The CSDS was kind enough to provide its conference hall. The telephone expenses, which were quite substantial for organizing an international meeting at short notice, were provided by KEPA’s institutional support to CSDS. The original plan was to prepare a four-language report of the meeting. However, we have decided to restrict it to English and Nepali only, due to cost overruns. We would like to thank Heinrich Böll Foundation, South Asia Office for providing the financial support. (They accepted our proposal instantly which made it possible to organize the conference at such short notice.)
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21. Corruption and Communalism: ANTI-DEMOCRATIC ELEMENTS OF INDIAN POLITICS -Vijay Pratap
Developments in Indian politics since the ‘70s reveal the convergence of corruption and communalism/social identity-anxieties as counter-forces to the processes of democratisation. For the last 22 years, since the time of the J.P. Movement in 1974, people have time and again expressed their opposition to this dominant ‘fact’ of life, i.e., corruption. People are as yet not willing to accept this as a norm. This is not an ideological statement by an activist trained in the Gandhian democratic socialist tradition. There are repeated and ample evidences to show that people are looking for instruments to fight corruption, so that they can lead a life of ‘Maryada’ and ‘Swadharma’ (leading life with a notion of moderation/limits and following the living ethical traditions as understood and practiced in a customary fashion).
People appear to be disowning their involvement because corruption and corrupt structures have not been adopted by them out of choice, but have been grafted onto them. The elite are increasingly indulging in corruption because of its cultural-psychological ‘compulsion’ to ape the mad consumerism of Western industrialism. The poor majority are then forced to do so for sheer survival. The multiple failures and fracturing of the politics of the oppressed contribute to the perception of corruption as a pervading fact.
When the 1996 national elections were held, leaders from most of the large political parties were under the cloud of the Hawala Scam. Those of the Left Parties, the Samajvadi Party of Mulayam Singh and the Bahujan Samaj Party of Kanshi Ram were, however, not involved. The Janata Dal had only two of its leaders with small amounts against their names in the hawala diary. Congress, a party with marked downward slide of its moral fibre, naturally had many of its leaders involved in this scam. This party has virtually ruled this country at the centre since independence, except for brief interruptions in 1977 and 1989. The opposition parties had to almost suspend their respective agendas and come together under the plank of ‘non- Congressism’. Their strategy of non-Congressism had succeeded only in an impure form in the major states of U.P., Bihar and Madhya Pradesh, where they had to seek support from ‘defectors’ from Congress in order to form the provincial governments. This experiment was short lived.
In 1977, the opposition got an opportunity to rule India because the India electorate reacted against the arbitrary rule of Mrs. Indira Gandhi and her son. But this experiment did not last long
90 Printed on 13 December 2017 COMPILATION OF ARTICLES WRITTEN BY VIJAY PRATAP because the Hindu rightist segment of the Janata Party was indulging in Machiavallian tactics of using one faction/individual against the other; and the socialists, the other ideologically motivated group, failed miserably in resisting the temptation of becoming pawns in the power struggle. The ‘77 electoral verdict and their courageous/vanguardist role during the J.P. Movement in 1974 and during Emergency rule in ‘75-77 had offered them an opportunity to shape India’s destiny. But they failed.
Here, let us reiterate a historical fact that the ‘77 election saw people’s participation in an unprecedented manner. All sections of people, especially in north India where the experience of authoritarian rule was more direct, adopted Janata Party candidates as their own candidates; they mobilised money on their own and every conscious citizen became a Janata Party volunteer.
Congress becoming prisoner of a corrupt system is comprehensible to many objective observers. The BJP’s corruption is, however, less widely recognised. The right-wing, casteist, hatred- spreading party, had one of its chief ministers in Delhi, an ex-chief minister in Madhya Pradesh, and its national president, Mr. L.K. Advani in the hawala scam. Even a casual observer knows that now BJP is able to mobilise ‘unclean’ money for elections, generally leaving even the Congress far behind, despite not controlling the seal of political power in Delhi. People might not have forgotten that after the national executive meeting of BJP in Pune on the eve of ‘96 elections, Mr. Pramod Mahajan had ‘admitted’ or perhaps ‘boasted’ of his inability to collect ‘clean funds’. Even before the elections, they had made public that they will use seven aircrafts during the election campaign. The rationale given for mobilising money from wherever it was mobilised was that the high cost of elections has compelled us to raise funds from the “moneyed people”.
We know from the experience of 1977 that if people genuinely own you as their candidate, want to give you a mandate to rule the country, then you don’t need money to win the elections.
Any ordinary observer of the Indian political scene knows which are the business houses close to BJP and particularly Mr. Pramod Mahajan. People such as the latter have a vested interest in spreading an impression that everyone is corrupt or corruptible. They want to establish that corruption is not only a dominant fact but also a dominant norm. But realising that people have yet not accepted it as a norm, they also take a posture against corruption.
Look at the degree of corrupt practices indulged in by BJP governments in Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra and Delhi. In Rajasthan, the Chief Secretary M.L. Mehta, has been nick-named ‘Mineral Liquor’ Mehta. The Chief Minister is not willing to appoint an ombudsman in Rajasthan. In Maharashtra, where one has been appointed, it is completely toothless as shown by J.B. D’Souza and V.W. Prachan (ex-civil servants and members of Lok Hit writing in Humanscape, April 1996 issue).
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There is absolute agreement with Ratnakar Tripathi’s analysis that “over the decades as our political processes and social life got increasingly democratised, corruption as a phenomenon has grown in scale… But the fact is that corruption is essentially a retaliatory strategy against the process of democratisation. Corruption carries on with increasing democratisation, lives off it, and mars its liveliness.”
This understanding clearly makes it imperative to examine how the democratic assertions and urges are tamed by the ruling establishment of the society. There is a remarkable degree of similarity in the strategy of both the dominant parties of ruling sections, i.e., Congress and BJP. First of all both the parties, understanding the psyche of Indian people who have not yet reconciled to corruption as the norm, take a posture against corruption. In their 1996 election manifestos, both the parties took a position against corruption. Mr. Advani, President of BJP, had the temerity of taking out a chariot campaigning for ‘shuchita’ (purity). Would the BJP chief ministers dare to appoint supreme court judges of their choice in telling the countrymen - (1) the sources of personal assets acquired by BHP ministers and ex-ministers in various states of the country, (2) sources of money acquired for ‘91 and ‘96 Lok Sabha elections, and (3) rough estimates of amounts of money spent by BJP on these elections and on routine expenditure of the party leadership?
Only after such acts would they have a moral right to talk about ‘shuchita’. In fact, after the elections, when they assumed power for a brief period, they did not do anything to weed out corruption. If they could clear the multinational Enron power project with great hurry and secretiveness, they could have come out with a consensus formula for institutional arrangements to weed out corruption from our body-politic. But, how can BJP do it! The entrenched social classes which form the support base of BJP cannot retain their dominant exploitative position if corruption is not a dominant fact of life. Corruption is one of the most potent weapons of the ruling sections against processes of democratisation.
Combined with financial corruption, both the parties of the ruling classes have used other tactics. Let us examine how the other dominant party of the ruling classes, i.e., Congress, responded to the democratic assertion of 1977. When people defeated Indira Gandhi who had promulgated a constitutional dictatorship using some of the loop-holes of our constitution, she whipped up three kinds of ‘identity-anxieties’ of Indian people. First and the most important was the identity of a citizen of a new state called ‘India’. She successfully led a disinformation campaign saying that the Janata Party cannot govern.
The pluralistic and open-ended democratic character of the Janata Party was portrayed as a sign of weakness. Her main slogan in 1980 parliamentary elections was ‘Vote for those who can govern’. A large number of Indian masses were duped by this slogan, because they rightly thought that they had a stake in the survival of the Indian state. They were made to believe that a pluralistic party like Janata Party could not ensure its survival.
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Janata Party could not counter this propaganda effectively for a whole lot of complex reasons, including the fact that its then Information and Broadcasting Minister himself came from a political organisation where an elaborate structure and ideology of authoritarianism had been worked out and practiced. Indian readers know that I am referring to the RSS which is the parent or controlling organisation of the BJP (which was known as Bharatiya Jan Sangh before it merged with the Janata Party in 1977).
In my discussions during Emergency jail detention (from 4th July 1975 – 22nd February 1977), I found many RSS workers almost defending the promulgation of Emergency rule on the ground that JP had given a ‘call’ to the armed forces not to obey unconstitutional anti-people orders of the regime at that time. The Congress and BJP both believe in different forms of non-democratic functioning. Any example of pluralistic, open-ended work culture is used by them to contribute to the anxieties of ordinary Indian citizens regarding the survival and security issues of the Indian State. Nowadays, BJP knows no limits in calling the prominent ministers in the United Front government as ISI or Pakistani agents, especially if they belong to the backward classes or a minority community. They forget that it is not Mulayam Singh, President of Samajvadi Party, but Mr. L.K. Advani, President of BJP, who has been accused of receiving funds from the same network which has worked for ISI and the Kashmir terrorists. The BJP leadership also forgets that one of their members of parliament (now an ex-M.P.) is still in jail for harbouring terrorists. But unless the BJP keeps on whipping up this anxiety and makes Indians of a seized mentality, it cannot stop the march of democratic assertions.
Indira Gandhi, when she regained power in 1980, propped up Bhindrawala, an extremist demagogue, against the patriotic and democratic Sikhs of Punjab. Congress and BJP worked in unison in painting Akalis (an important political party representing Sikhs of Punjab, which had offered a heroic resistance against the Emergency rule of Indira Gandhi) as anti-national. Their democratic demand for more power to the states was dubbed as anti-national. During ‘77-80 also, Mrs. Gandhi had quietly whipped up the caste anxieties of various communities. With the ‘77 election, peasant castes for the first time had a say in the power echelons of Delhi on their own.
Indira Gandhi, to a large extent successfully, painted this regime as anti-Dalit. She did not restrict herself to the populist tactics of riding an elephant in Bihar to protest against an incident of atrocity against Dalits. Her party-men instigated Jats and Dalits to fight against each other on the issue of allotment of small plots of land to Dalits from the village commons. There was prolonged agitation on this issue with Kanjhawala, a village in the Union Territory of Delhi, as the head-quarter of this agitation.
The long and short of this story is that institutionalising corruption is not the only retaliatory strategy of the ruling sections to blunt the democratic assertions of the people. Congress and BJP had both whipped up identity-anxieties, both the identity as an Indian as well as various caste and community identities. This had to be resorted to because Mrs. Gandhi had realised that
93 Printed on 13 December 2017 COMPILATION OF ARTICLES WRITTEN BY VIJAY PRATAP redefining corruption as she had done, by amending the laws retrospectively when judgments were delivered against Congressmen, was not enough to ensure continuance of her corrupt rule. Incidentally, one of the cases was her own in which Justice Sinha of Allahabad High Court on 12th June 1975 declared her election as null and void. She clamped Emergency rule late on the night of 25th June 1975 to meet the dissent within and outside. But people taught her a lesson in ‘77.
Indira Gandhi was wiser after ‘77 and she did not restrict herself only to corruption as the retaliatory strategy. She also used blind identity politics as a retaliatory strategy. Even before BJP, Indira Gandhi whipped up Hindu anxieties openly in an election campaign in Jammu and Kashmir. BJP used to do this clandestinely through an organised whisper campaign against minorities using the gigantic RSS machinery.
Her son Rajiv Gandhi, who came to power in December 1984, continued with the same policy of using corruption and whipping up of blind identity-anxieties as a strategy against democratisation. During his tenure as Prime Minister, the disputed portion of the mosque in Ayodhya was opened for the public. This was projected as a concession to Hindus by the internal security minister at that time, Mr. Arun Nehru who later came close to the Vishwa Hindu Parishad. BJP/RSS and Muslim communalists obliged Rajiv Gandhi in contributing to the identity-anxieties of both the communities. But even with all this, Rajiv Gandhi and the ruling establishment did not feel secure.
Rajiv Gandhi then sold the dream of consumerism of the twenty-first century. This accentuated the consumerist aspirations of all sections of our society. Middle classes became more part of the consumerist mad-race syndrome. Success as a consumer of modern/western/MNC products became the supreme societal goal. India started borrowing from global financial institutions unthinkingly.
This led to erosion in our economic sovereignty and the eventual ‘crunch’ in 1991 when Mr. Narasimha Rao removed all barriers for national and international capital to defeat the market of 90% to 95% of Indian people. This resulted in a two-fold gain for the ruling sections. One, identity and secondly it opened up the space for more corruption by attempting to legitimise the making of the easy buck. This is how the era of Narasimha Rao has been described by Prof. Kamal Nayan Kabra - as an ‘Era of Scams’.
The accentuated identity-anxiety was sought to be transformed into an anxiety of Hindu identity by the BJP. The success of BJP, though limited, is precisely because it has been able to manipulate these identity-anxieties for its electoral gains, indulge in high corruption but still take a posture against corruption. For an anxious Hindu, corruption has become a secondary issue. Thus, whipping up communal feelings is the most important tool of BJP to keep its corrupt ranks together. 94 Printed on 13 December 2017 COMPILATION OF ARTICLES WRITTEN BY VIJAY PRATAP
The corollary of this phenomenon is that those of us who were committed to the issues of secularism, equity and social justice, avoided criticising constituents of the broadly defined ‘third force’ in the face of the onslaught of communal forces, because we were also anxious about preserving our identity of an Indian democrat, or a pluralistic Hindu, or a patriotic Muslim. For criticism to be effective and constructive in promoting democratic governance, it has to come from groups like the CPI(ML), independent Dalit and Muslim youth groups, concerned intelligentsia and formations like the National Alliance of People’s Movements. The alternative movements have to put their act together urgently. Unfortunately, there is a long way to go before these formations show the confidence of ruling this country on behalf of the majority of its people.
In the Indian case, the ruling classes and their two most important political parties have intertwined the two issues of corruption and communalism so much that if we do not target both the issues simultaneously, there will be no opening up of the political space.
The source of uncertainty about the continuance of Congress support to the United Front is precisely because, since independence Congress has been gradually losing its moral fervour and becoming more and more like the present day BJP, which is behaving absolutely cynically as far as the lust for power is concerned.
Fighting communal forces and creating structures of accountability are two faces of the same coin. Mr. P.S. Appu, the activist-bureaucrat has talked about reforming political parties including practice of inner party democracy. This is a very important issue if we want to create enduring structures of accountability. But to be able to execute reform of our political parties, we have to take into account the anti-political attitude of our middle classes and lack of a strong tradition of philanthropy for routine political tasks of organisation building. This problem has to be tackled ideologically by launching campaigns for mobilisation of funds for political activity. We also have to arrange for core state grants to political parties based on some formula evolved by taking into account the percentage of votes polled by a political party and membership of the party.
We must take up the challenge of getting rid of corruption as a dominant fact of life, recognising the merging of identity-anxieties - communalism and corruption as a potent phenomenon countering democratic processes. There is an urgency to win the battle lest corruption should convert itself from ‘dominant fact’ to ‘dominant norm’ in our lives.
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22. TOWARDS NORTH-SOUTH SOLIDARITY Some Challenges for Building North-South Solidarity - Vijay Pratap
Whenever we talk about what we formerly called the ‘Third World Countries’, we have to remember the modern context of international solidarity. It is no more a joke, and has been documented that in the early fifties, when the Communist Party of India changed its Telengana line, a very powerful delegation had gone to Soviet Union to consult on the global situation of the Communist movement and what should be done in India. They wanted to get an answer from the leaders in the Soviet Union as to whether they should align with national bourgeoisie or not. This meeting was arranged by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. The desired result was that they would join the national bourgeoisie to fight the feudal society and feudal forces.
Those minutes have been published after the collapse of the Soviet Union and now we find double entries on the same dates. Due to World War II, there were two Stalins - the original and the duplicate. The duplicate would do the less important work. The Indian Communist Party leadership apparently met the duplicate one and not the real Stalin. Even this could be a CIA joke, but since the Soviet Union does not exist any longer, we have to remember that in the name of international solidarity, our communist parties have behaved in more or less the same way.
This is in no way a comment on the sacrifices made by the communist parties, or their sincerity, or their genuineness to internationalism, or nationalism. I believe more Muslims (I am taking them because RSS stereotypes them as not part of the mainstream) have participated in the freedom struggle with the communist banner than all the RSSwallahs put together. It is neither to question their patriotism, nor commitment, nor sincerity and ability to make sacrifices. It is only the ideological blinkers of internationalism and how it has affected us, the way the Marxist- Leninist principles have been used by Europeans against us, that, I think, has to be made clear now whenever we talk about new solidarities.
The entire social democratic movement is now almost a neo-liberal movement in Europe. Even the Greens when they join the government, behave like a neo-liberal state. From the outside, I cannot make a distinction between a social democrat and a neo-liberal. After all, in Finland the Greens are in alliance with neo-liberals running the Finish state. The same is true in Germany too.
As a Gandhian Socialist, I want to align with the Greens, but I am at a loss. There is not a single powerful movement discussing the American Security Doctrine, which paints the entire world as a rogue. It is the only country on the earth that dropped the bomb. The only country which first started proliferating the nuclear bombs and they call others a rogue. Even now, if you look at their nuclear security doctrine, they say there is no question of rolling back. There is no question 96 Printed on 13 December 2017 COMPILATION OF ARTICLES WRITTEN BY VIJAY PRATAP of staying even at the level at which they are now, despite the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Green Party minister in Germany, who also happened to be the foreign minister, gave a very mild statement saying that NATO should now have a no-first-attack policy. The Chancellor had to go and almost explain the foreign minister’s conduct to the power-that-be in the US. That is the kind of international power politics we have to take into account.
I don’t see any peace movements, whether the People’s SAARC movement or others which talk about the American Security Doctrine. In the last meeting, all our anti-nuclear ideologues were there in Colombo. I did not hear a single voice against the American Security Doctrine. All the anti-nuclear people were there, and all that they were talking about were the toys that there are in South Asia which are supposed to be toys, as compared to the arsenals in US.
No international solidarity through NGOs can be worked out because when NGOs get together, they undermine the national sovereignty and they have no understanding of the national political process, and, if they have any understanding, it is an anti-political moralist view, where all the politicians are, by definition, thieves, and all politics is bad. They are talking about the transnational global governance at a time, when the world’s biggest democracy the USA, has not even paid its due to the United Nations.
It wants to destroy all the softer institutions of UN like the UNESCO, WHO, ILO, and UNCTAD, where we used to discuss trade issues on a more egalitarian basis, or health issues in a broader sense. So, whenever we discuss the global solidarity, the historical experience of solidarity, so far, has to be kept in mind
Since 1989, I have been discussing with my Finnish friends about the ways of innovative partnership, non-monetary, political partnership. We would like to discuss the visions and non- time tabled, non time-bound programmes. I am not underrating or overrating anyone here, but I think that there are different styles of understanding solidarity. The best of our European friends, sometimes, and most of the time subconsciously, tend to think that in international solidarity, money is the central issue.
Money is very important. Money is almost a prerequisite for any work. But money can always be organised. It is the vision and a kind of critical mass of the determined people who share a vision and are willing to form a democratic team, participatory team, which not only functions in a participatory manner, but also allows others to join in and to relate to – this is the kind of partnership which we have not been able to work out. They have a minimalistic gestation period through our informal process.
In the eyes of more radical circle, there is a kind of illegitimacy of any of the South Asian or global networking I do, or any one of us does. Half of the radical circles were used to hawala
97 Printed on 13 December 2017 COMPILATION OF ARTICLES WRITTEN BY VIJAY PRATAP money, but now there is no hawala money available after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Now they almost feel guilty about having FCRA or accepting international funds, because they are not from the holy land. Conspiracy is always attributed, wherever some funding is involved. It is not only the communists who have this kind of unhealthy attitude, but among socialists, it prevails too. They say that there is a definite conspiracy wherever international funding is involved.
In this context of illegitimacy, we cannot rush ahead with this partnership. We have to keep it transparent. It will have its ups and downs. It has to be political because democracy means politics. It means challenging the existing power equations at all levels, from family to the globe. It will have its own birth pain and it will take its own time from conception to delivery.
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23. THE URGENCY OF DIALOGUES ON DEMOCRACY -Anil Bhattarai and Vijay Pratap
This conference was organized in March 2001 and this report is coming out after almost one year. During this time, many things have happened in South Asia, and in the world, which would have long-term implications for the democratization process in the region. The September 11 attack on the United States of America and its aftermath in Afghanistan; the Doha round of the World Trade Organization (WTO) are perhaps two major events which are changing the political dynamics in South Asian countries. Besides, many other events have also occurred.
After a four-month long ceasefire, Nepal has again gone back to violence. Bangladesh has seen one of the worst instances of religious violence during the election in November 2001. While preparing this final postscript, attack on the Indian Parliament on December 13, 2001 has led to further tension between India and Pakistan. On a day-to-day level, the violence against women continues to intensify; farmers in India are committing suicide; the cases of malnourishment continue to increase all across the region; military budgets continue to rise; and communal tensions continue to simmer.
We are definitely living through difficult times. There are many factors behind the ills and tragedies we are going through today. The international order increasingly based on the imperatives of military might and corporate profit; the increasing withdrawal of the nation-states from the areas of social interventions which are crucial for the life of majority of the people; the continuing plunder of ecology; increasing dehumanization of human relationship as disparities increase between haves and have-nots - these are some of them.
We are definitely living through desperate times. But as Gramsci would remind us, this would also be a time that requires revolutionary optimism. The tragedies unfolding before us have also prompted many to respond in myriad ways at multiple levels. Issues which used to be considered as the domain of social works are increasingly seen as foremost political ones. Most importantly, there has been gradual coming together of diverse forces in a platform of resistance. These are happening both within each individual country as well as across the region.
In this context, the South Asian vision for deepening of democracy has become more than urgent today. This cannot be left to the civil society alone and has to be taken to political levels in each of the countries. Moreover, there is no shortcut to this. It can be built up only through a sustained and regular process of dialogues among different political actors across all the countries in the region.
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Besides dialogues at the South Asian level, a larger framework of North-South dialogue is also necessary now. It was necessary in the past also, but it has become more urgent now. If one is to borrow the same cliched concept of ‘global village’, we cannot escape the fact that the diverse places and peoples in the world have been increasingly integrated. However, the terms of this integration have been one-way. The motives have been narrow and the outcomes have been rather distressing.
The global North - both in the geographical as well as political sense - have set the agenda of integration. South had to follow. The South has increasingly become either a market place for products, a repository of resources or a sink for the by-products of the production process. The outcomes have been further marginalization of increasingly large sections of people in the South. But the distress signals are beginning to blink in the North also. The process is increasingly proving to be a rather losing track for the majority of the people in the world.
A north-south dialogue in this context is of crucial importance. Democracy can provide a foundational framework for that dialogue because of the fact that it embodies some of the most universalistic as well as humane values for relations between humans and between humans and non-human nature. The dialogues between civilizations can be possible only within this framework.
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24. MINORITIES AND DEMOCRACY ~ Vijay Pratap
Many segments of Indian polity including the electorate were hoodwinked by BJP that communalism was not the dominant characteristic of BJP/RSS family. At least by a section of secular opinion, especially those who had followed the tactics of non-congressism, probably might have believed that “BJP just as Congress is using the communal card opportunistically. Once their isolation is broken and they are in power, their seized mentality will be moderated”. However agonising it might be for the BJP apologists, yet it is clear that except the ideology of aggressive communalism, every other issue for them is a posture.
BJP was projected as a full-fledged party of good governance (suraj), transparency (pardarshi), non-corruptability (shichita), non-factionalism (anushashan), and commitment.
BJP does not need a ‘certification’ from its adversaries, because its ‘performance’ on all counts is all too obvious. Picking an example of any one ministry would be unfair to that particular minister, because then by definition the others would be regarded as a shade better than the chosen example. Whereas, the competition is regarding who is a greater failure. Let us take some of the best examples.
Sh. L.K. Advani carried the self-image of Sardar Patel; but look at his grand performance, he is not able to discipline even the Shiv Sainiks and Keshu Bhai Patel’s zealots in Gujarat. Even the theological oriented communal states perform better than what our home minister is able to ensure for minorities. For BJP, clinging to power is more important than curbing the Shiv Sainiks from vandalism all around.
Mr. Yashwant Sinha was supposed to bean experienced man, knew the ways of bureaucracy, having been a bureaucrat. He had also worked with late Karpoori Thakur and Chandra Shekhar. But, economic slide down is so rapid that to meet the routine budgetary deficit we are selling the assets accrued in terms of huge public sector undertakings. These public sector undertakings were built by the patriotic idealism of Nehruvian socialism, which was kept in place (under the right kind of pressure) both by Marxist leftists and non-Marxist leftists. BJP and its other incarnations were always opposed to anything which empowered the last person economically.
BJP should have some sense of self-esteem and should not disinvest the public sector to cover up its total economic failure.
On the issue of swadeshi, to keen watchers of BJP, it was always clear that the political platform, social base and ideology all went against the spirit of swadeshi.
If we go into the social background and the kinship network of national executives of various political parties and analyse the proportion of multinational professionals, black- marketers or NRIs, the results will be very interesting.
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But for the partial acceptance of the Mandal Commission Report, the upper caste vested interest would not have panicked fearing loss of power and consequently would not have joined the communalist bandwagon of Advani-Ambani Rath Yatra and Babari Masjid demolition squads. We all remember the small newspaper items those days cancelling the convention/congregation to be held on the issue of signing GATT, etc. In 1991 Mr. Man Mohan Singh came to their rescue when he announced his liberalisation package.
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25. SOME REFLECTIONS ON FUNDING AND VOLUNTARISM -Vijay Pratap; Assisted by G. Narendranath
[These ideas are the outcome of discussions with the Lokayan core group since 1980 and with the Coalition for Environment and Development (Finland), since 1988.]
The General Secretary of the Association of Voluntary Agencies for Rural Development (AVARD), one of the oldest networks of Gandhian NGOs, recently asked me whether Lokayan accepted foreign funds or not. Technically and even normally, the straight answer should have been that since December 1982, the foreign component of Lokayan is only in terms of the earnings from the sale of the Lokayan Bulletin to individual foreign subscribers and bulk sale to foreign Trusts, Foundations and NGO networks. Instead of this, I defensively explained that we publish the bulletin only in English; which we sell in the foreign ‘market’ as well. Thus, we cannot say that we do not accept foreign funds. Among the activists, at the present juncture, there are only three whole-time persons in Lokayan. Only one of them is drawing close to a full-time honorarium, which is about the same as is usually paid by low-paying urban NGOs. There is another set of 9 to 10 voluntary workers, who are not paid anything, while some of them, who come regularly to the office and have no personal source of income, are paid only Rs. 500 for conveyance expenses. For a variety of reasons, we had to suspend our Hindi journal, a step for which we continuously face brickbats from our activist friends at the grassroots not only in the Hindi-speaking region, but also from states like Orissa, Gujarat, Maharashtra, and even some friends in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka.
Why this long-winding statement, giving the details on the issue of funding, instead of a simple answer in yes or no? Probably because in real-life situations, ideal and pragmatic or moral and political are not exclusivist, dichotomous categories. In fact, it is the other way round. What is ideal and moral should also be practical and political. Therefore, it was in search of this holistic view, the urge to be more credible and more effective, as a part of larger radical interventions that Lokayan decided to stop accepting institutional support from international donor agencies. How far have we succeeded in enhancing our ability to intervene on issues of social transformation, it is for others to judge, but, I can assure you that our critiques from within are far more devastating than any critique from observers outside.
Lokayan’s view is that the bulk of the resources in terms of ideas, human-power and finances need to come from the society which we are seeking to transform. Issues of rootedness, indigeneity and self-reliance are important for all transformative movements in any part of the globe. However, equally important are the issues of international solidarity, sharing experiences with dissenting movements across nations and working for the weakest and humblest sections of our people (whom Gandhi described as Daridranarayan) not only in our own country, but also in any country on the earth. This kind of international solidarity based on the principle of serving the Daridranarayan has acquired a different kind of salience since the temporary gains made by global capitalist forces know no bounds whether it is a question of their profits or the question of 103 Printed on 13 December 2017 COMPILATION OF ARTICLES WRITTEN BY VIJAY PRATAP plundering nature, but Lokayan is clearly opposed to the marginalisation, undermining and sometimes the total displacement of issues of rootedness, indigeneity and self-reliance in the name of international solidarity. Examples of good work based on international funding are often used to justify the closure of the debate on the issue of the sources of funding.
Lokayan and many other organisations who do not accept funds from international donor agencies, do not take a position that foreign funds should not be taken by anyone under any circumstances. We are fully aware that those who accept foreign funds have raised many of the critical issues, which form an essential part of our contemporary radical consciousness. We are also aware that many NGOs have made such a substantial difference in the living conditions of thousands of poor people that one cannot but commend and salute such work. One of the many examples that come to my mind, is that of the work done by Rajendra Singh and his colleagues in Tarun Bharat Sangh, Bhikampura, district Alwar, in Rajasthan. They have created and restored hundreds of ponds, reforested the commons, increased nutritional levels of the local people and started many health programmes. If I were in the business of recommending or awarding Nobel Prizes or ‘alternative’ Nobel Prizes, I would feel honoured in awarding one to Rajendra Singh.
However, if foreign-funded good work is used to make fun of, ridicule or sneer at the arduous journey of empowerment of villagers of Bhim, district Ajmer, again in Rajasthan, by Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (Organisation for Empowerment of Peasant Workers), through primarily local funding resources, then Lokayan will counter such propaganda vigorously. Lokayan’s reaction will be much more intense on Rajendra Singh’s work if it is used to propagate that Indians by themselves, whether at the panchayat (lowest rung of the Indian state at the level of a village or cluster of villages) level, or at the national level, are incapable of handling and sustaining the participative mode of governance. We cannot allow the destruction of our cultural confidence by a few thousand dollars coupled with the usage of the dedication and competence of our young men and women. Losing our cultural confidence is the most dangerous form of disempowerment.
Examples of good work and paucity of funds in organisations like Lokayan are put forward to ‘show’ that it is almost impossible to raise funds locally. There can be nothing more misleading than this. Paucity of funds is a problem of those urban middle classes, who are socio-culturally rootless, spiritually lethargic to come out of the mad-race syndrome of ‘do-all’ and ‘get-all’ but still keen to believe that they are very ‘public-spirited’ persons.
No one can deny that just like mainstream politics, the internationally-funded NGO sector also has its share of opportunists and social climbers.
The debate for and against foreign funds cannot be compartmentalised into an either-or manner such that developing an internal critique on the work-style of public workers becomes difficult. Funding may be local, national or international: issues of austerity, accountability, team-work, sharing credit, nurturing the younger generation by those who have better access to resources, should remain the criterion for judging the good or bad work-culture. Public-work does have its
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own discipline and share of sacrifice; although in a deeper sense, no public work goes unrewarded. In fact, the sense of satisfaction and meaningfulness is itself a priceless reward for any public activity which we undertake. But unfortunately, there is a consensus among our elite and middle classes on not confronting uncomfortable issues, looking for soft-options, lofty- persuasive rationalisation of our limitations, and occasional glorification of our weaknesses. We also sneer at the courage of conviction or altruistic sense or longing to do selfless work among ‘ordinary’ frail human beings around us. I say ‘ordinary’ because it is difficult to make fun of ‘heroes’ of history but easy to make fun of the strivings of those ‘ordinary’ people whose cumulative might creates epochal people like Gandhi or Ambedkar.
Small sacrifices in everyday life by ordinary citizens have a crucial role in sustaining the notion, and work around issues, of larger public good. Human compassion, empathy and commitment for larger public good are the ultimate resources for all kinds of voluntarism. Many a time those who have access to easy funds - personal, national or international - tend to look for the substi- tutes of these resources in terms of professional competence or political skills. Nothing can be more dangerous than such a ‘professional’ understanding of voluntarism, which ignores or undermines the ‘ordinary’ and his/her capacity to contribute his/her share in the ‘voluntary efforts’ of the society. Computer boys of Rajiv Gandhi tried to destroy the cultural confidence of the rooted and more authentic political workers in his own party, which had a disastrous effect on the entire democratic political culture. Similarly, smart ‘professional’ social workers, speaking good English, generally culturally illiterate as far as Indian traditions are concerned, and making frequent foreign jaunts, are transforming the notion of voluntarism in such a manner that what is ‘paid work’ will be legitimised and applauded as ‘voluntary work’; and what is genuine grassroots, altruistic-voluntary work will not even be classified as work of any sort, because it does not have a project proposal, registered nameplate, bank account and project funds. This extreme myopia, in my humble opinion, has mainly been caused by a colonial consciousness.
The British, by enacting the 1860 Registration of Societies Act, sought to control our society. Mutuality, co-operation, spontaneity and the consequent robust civic-space were some of the attributes of our social system above the pollution line. This is not to deny the hierarchy, exploitation and caste-based begaar (to be compelled to work without wages), exploitation of physical labour without any corresponding notion of just wages for the scheduled caste workers, particularly in the agricultural sector. This issue has its own validity. It was because of our moral-ideological weakness with regard to the caste system that we faced humiliating defeats on the cultural and political fronts from the British.
The Societies Registration Act undermined voluntarism in the most fundamental sense. It usurped the act of voluntarism from civic society into the politico-legal framework of the state. Looked at from this viewpoint, all of us who have registered societies, are in fact a camouflaged arm of the state-sector rather than belonging to the consciousness of our civic society. Sensitivity on these issues will allow us to debate on the issue of foreign funds in a healthy manner. The
Pollution line is that social barrier below which castes were considered so polluting that even their touch ‘polluted’. Now they are listed in a statutory list called ‘Scheduled Castes’. 105 Printed on 13 December 2017 COMPILATION OF ARTICLES WRITTEN BY VIJAY PRATAP journey towards rediscovering our roots and authenticity will be long, arduous and sometimes frustrating. ______ Pollution line is that social barrier below which castes were considered so polluting that even their touch ‘polluted’. Now they are listed in a statutory list called ‘Scheduled Castes’.
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26. FROM DEMOCRACY TO SWARAAJ
-Vijay Pratap & Ritu Priya
Democratising locally to globally, in all spheres of life comprehensively, is the call of the day. It means a collective struggle for wholesome well-being and beauty on the planet encompassing swaraaj (self-rule), swadharm (each one's ethically bound duty), swaabhiman (dignity), saadgi (ecological lifestyle) and swadeshi (self-sufficiency).
Pursuing the Democratic Dream
People in South Asia have long cherished values which, in modern times, are best expressed under the rubric of ‘universalism’ and various dimensions of ‘democracy’. Before the colonial interventions of the West, the distinctive features of our socio-political system were cultural plurality, devolution of political power at all levels and the participatory mode of governance from the grassroots to the top.
We had our own failings, such as the obnoxious practice of untouchability, or the fact that communitarian principles manifested through the caste system degenerated into hierarchical fundamentalism. However, despite all kinds of failings, the sense of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam (a Sanskrit concept, meaning ‘The Whole World is one Family’) has been part of our cultural sensibility since time immemorial. That is why our socio-cultural diversity is a source of strength and in fact, the primary defining force behind our unbroken identity. There have, of course, been brief phases of ideological or identity polarisations. But soon after, the pluralist perspective prevails. The basic premise of this worldview is that no sect, religion, ideological group, class, socio-political formation, the state or ‘church’ can claim a monopoly of the truth. All truths have to start with the small letter ‘t’ and, depending upon the vantage point, they are able to capture only some aspects of the Truth and not the Truth as a whole. This forms the basis for a democratic society.
Conventionally, democracy is taken to be a political system based on the separation of judiciary, executive and legislature. In this system, the legitimacy of governance is derived from the electoral process and the right to vote. Such a narrow definition reduces democracy merely into a political instrument.
However, the last century has witnessed a series of transformations. They have generated an explosion of human energies never known before, devoted to redefining human life. The praxis of ‘new’ social movements embodies a much deeper and comprehensive meaning of democracy than what is understood and practised in the mainstream political discourse. Never before in the history of humankind have such a large proportion of human beings worked for swaraaj. (‘Swa’ + ‘raaj’ = self + rule, a term commonly used by Gandhi and the Gandhi-inspired movements in India.)
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Our aspiration is to redefine democracy from a mode of governance to a way of life. If democracy informs all levels and dimensions of life, this perspective of comprehensive democracy can be called sampoorn swaraaj (sampoorn = full, complete, comprehensive; sampoorn swaraaj = full realisation of self-rule).
To make the journey from the present liberal notion of democracy to that of sampoorn swaraaj, one looks toward the centre-left political processes, including social movement groups and parties with these inclinations. The rightist and the extreme left streams, who espouse violence as a political tool, are not part of this analysis.
The Contemporary Challenges before Centre-Left Movements in India (part of a larger South Asian identity) Colonial rule and the hegemony of the modern western worldview converted a large part of the elite mindset to its monolithic, and completely anthropocentric, reductionist notion of universalism. However, a large section of the people still retained their basic worldview while adopting ideas and knowledge from the modern west. The state acted as a bearer of the benefits of modern science and technology to the 'marginalized majorities' while maintaining some support to traditional and indigenous knowledge systems and practices. Gandhi’s dialogues with leaders of other streams, the pressure of popular democratic politics and the basic pluralist worldview allowed the retention of our moorings. The last twenty years have, in many ways, created a break with this legacy, the processes of globalisation of the 1980s-1990s hastening several transitions. We have become one of the globally vibrant economies in a time of worldwide recession, but we are not yet a stabilised economy. We are also in a flux as regards our social institutions, cultural choices and alliances of diverse political streams and formations. Retaining our moorings and yet gaining our place in the world, maintaining/regaining a quiet self-confidence that allows space for others, these are the challenges before us today.
At a larger level, we are one with the South Asian or even global South, as a large section of India’s citizens remain bereft of the benefits of economic growth. Our centre-left political streams have to address the issues of basic needs, while simultaneously preserving our cultural moorings. The divide within these streams arises from this dual challenge. Some espouse a statist position, attempting to balance economic growth and welfarism. In the process, divergent streams have emerged - those wanting to rely entirely on modern science and technology, and considering traditional indigenous worldview and practice 'backward'; and other streams that emphasise the contemporary relevance of indigenous knowledge and life patterns. Both are confronting their ideological and practical limitations. The welfare state not having delivered on its promises to the majority too well in the past century, and the ecological consequences of modern development, bring promises of the first stream into question. However, ensuring minimum basic needs in the present, with changing natural resource base, knowledge, life patterns and aspirations of the majority, is a challenging task for the second set. It has led a section of this stream to denounce modern science and technology as well as social organization, including modern democracy, as demonic and unsuited to our context. The radical Gandhian/indigenous Socialist stream attempts to bridge the divide through a praxis of (i) engagement with state and non-state efforts at meeting basic needs of the marginalized majority, (ii) generating dialogue on issues relevant to a democratic social development, and (iii) non-
108 Printed on 13 December 2017 COMPILATION OF ARTICLES WRITTEN BY VIJAY PRATAP violent resistance to ideologies, policies and actions that are seen as anti-democratic; those that tend to destroy the resource base, access to basic needs, worldview and cultural confidence of the marginalized majorities.
The Marxist-left has remained limited by its general inability to recognise and align with the indigenous radical idiom and symbols, thereby not relating to the majority on a cultural plane. The radical liberals, as well as Marxists, could not understand the severity of caste oppression including the practice of untouchablity among all religious communities in India/South Asia. Gandhi and his followers like Ram Manohar Lohia, were the ones who attempted to tackle this challenge head-on, besides the leadership from among the Dalits themselves like Jyotiba Phule and Baba Sahib Ambedkar.
Similarly, the high degree of participation of women in the national movement was a breakthrough of sorts. Unfortunately, its gains were not adequately consolidated in the post- independence period. There has been a strong women’s movement in the country in the 1970s and 1980s, resulting in assertions by women at all levels and adoption of legal provisions ensuring their social and political rights. It arose out of the several political streams of the centre- left, with the recognition of need for a specific focus on women’s issues. In the last two decades or so, there has been a regression in the women’s movement, with a more apolitical, north- driven, ‘gender issues’ agenda taking its place in articulating women’s rights without adequate interrogation of the patriarchal structures. However, the future scenario is more optimistic as there is reservation for women in the grassroot democratic institutions. This training of women at the grassroots is going to express itself at the provincial and national levels in the not too distant future. However, a greater and deeper engagement is necessary, to fight the continuing patriarchal structures and values as well as their backlash through cultural conservatism (as seen in aberrations like female foeticide, increasing suicides among young women, and the community’s violence perpetrated on those choosing to enter marriage against the traditional norms of exogamy), and to move towards non-patriarchal gendered democracy. The challenge is to internalize the values of feminism and swaraaj in the basic units of family and community. In the spirit of vasudhaiva kutumbakam, it is to be hoped that the 'global family' then also reflects these values and re-tailors its institutions, polity and economy accordingly.
Comprehensive Democracy or Sampoorn Swaraaj The idea of ‘self-rule’ goes much beyond the political. It encompasses life itself in a comprehensive manner that makes our lives more meaningful. Swaraaj relates to all dimensions of human life and applies to relationships at all levels, from the individual to the global: (1) the relationship between nature and human beings, (2) the dynamic of ‘the individual’ and ‘the community’, (3) the dynamic inter-relationship of ‘the self’ and ‘the other’, (4) the relationship of individuals and various types and levels of collectivities with governance structures, and (5) the relationship of individuals and collectivities with the market.
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The striving for democracy within these relationships can be respectively termed ecological democracy, social democracy, cultural democracy, political democracy and economic democracy. There is a comprehensive democratic revolution in the making: humankind is striving to redefine all the basic relationships of human life. No single ideology or region can be identified as the vanguard in terms of striving for the above five dimensions of democracy simultaneously.
Issues of self-rule, related to the dynamics of nature - human beings, have given rise to green parties, groups, movements and intellectuals all over the world. These green movements are increasing rapidly even in those parts of the world where, according to the conventional development indices, standards of material life are very high. In the societies of material affluence, there is an attempt to recover the ‘green consciousness’ and to address the challenges of ecological degradation. In most of the countries, movement groups are engaged in defensive action of saving the livelihood support systems, along with revitalising of ecological and cultural sensibility. Since these energies aim at greater participation of local communities in resolving the nature-human dynamic, we could call this the age of striving for ecological democracy.
Similarly, there is phenomenal human energy on this earth trying to redefine the individual- community dynamic. Issues of dignity are on the central agenda of many groups working for human rights, gender justice, anti-caste and anti-apartheid movements. There is almost a global churning for redefining social relationships, what we could term as social democracy. The response to the World Conference against Racism (held in Durban, South Africa, from 31 August - 7 September 2001) is an indicator of the revolutionary energies we are talking about. The women’s movement has now a gender perspective on all issues, it is no longer just a women’s rights movement. From this standpoint, this is an age of strivings for social democracy.
If we analyse the dynamics of the self and the other, and systems of meaning, an entire set of issues emerge under the broad rubric called ‘culture’. The human activity on this front is also of an unprecedented kind. There has been an explosion of new ideas and ideological confrontations, both violent and non-violent. The varied strivings of a cultural democracy are many: critiques of the culture of industrialised societies and modernity, the attempts at revitalising indigenous knowledge systems, emphasising the importance of the plurality of ideas and ways of life, and loosening the controls of orthodoxy, are all part of it.
After the majority of the states were liberated from colonial rule, they acquired greater control over their economies. The standard of living started rising, even though very slowly for some. Now, indigenous peoples with natural resource-based economies, and small and marginal farmers are in search for dignified ways of earning their livelihood. This is done through two ways of search and striving: first is to emulate (and even blindly imitate) the rich and prosperous North, the other is to recover the control over natural resources as well as knowledge systems in agriculture, medicine, food, water management, and so on. Both represent the pervasive desire for an economic democracy.
The anti-colonial struggles in the majority of the nations have constructed new political identities. A desire for self-rule is pervasive. The people are re-examining and redefining the transplanted colonial instruments. Sometimes there is regression as the firmly established elite
110 Printed on 13 December 2017 COMPILATION OF ARTICLES WRITTEN BY VIJAY PRATAP impose some form of authoritarianism. Fortunately, participation of people in the political institutions has acquired a tremendous legitimacy. (This explains why many dictators have had to undertake a legitimisation exercise through some form of election, howsoever partial or imperfect.) This constitutes political democracy.
The imperative of democratic revolution requires that we recognise and relate to the positive dimension of all these energies and contribute in forming them into a definable worldview and a dream for the future. This is our vision of a universal humanistic globalisation.
The Democratic Agenda In a phase of phenomenal upsurge of democratic aspirations, new norms have to be agreed upon at various levels of human collectivities. That has to be done through a process of participatory dialogue, even with the opponents. (Let us say, two neighbouring Nation States who are at loggerheads with each other, or two ideological adversaries in a single Nation State, or between and within communities and families.) One has to recognise the complementarity of each other’s ‘truth’ and consciously avoid being judgemental regarding the other’s viewpoint. The critical evaluation of other’s viewpoints has to be in an idiom that encourages moderation.
In discussions that have taken place at various national and international forums, people have started to develop ideas about building a global network of individuals and organisations sharing similar values and goals. Such an initiative could also be seen as an effort to engage the international civil society in organising global or regional dialogue processes about a number of issues that are of crucial importance at this juncture.
It is, admittedly, somewhat uncomfortable to discuss democracy – which, as a process of constructive self-engagement of humanity, should be indivisible – in such small bits and shreds. However, if the complexity of democracy is approached through the five dimensions mentioned above, this should bring forward a wider and richer spectrum of problems and possibilities. One possible articulation of these dimensions as thematic perspectives is suggested below. i) Empowerment of the Daridranarayan, the ‘Last Person’ (Economic Democracy)
All the greatest teachers of humankind including Gandhi, Mohammed, Christ and the Buddha, have emphasised the importance of empowerment of the weakest and the poorest of society. Many people probably consider such a concept either patronising, elitist or naïve. Despite that, perhaps the most important single test for any kind of democracy is whether it works so that it can protect the needs and rights of the poorest, most oppressed and least influential people in the society. What this means in each society and in each historical period will differ, because poverty and deprivation will be created and regenerated repeatedly through widely varied means. But the issue or goal is clear and remains the same. One of the main problems is how to relate to the needs and concerns of the Daridranarayan in a way that is empowering and not patronising.
With the Daridranarayan at the centre of all thinking, all issues concerning transactions of goods and services, technological choices and mode and relations of production have always been part
111 Printed on 13 December 2017 COMPILATION OF ARTICLES WRITTEN BY VIJAY PRATAP of human engagement. All such issues can be considered as the economic dimension of democracy, called ‘economic democracy’ for convenience. ii) Ecological Regeneration and People’s Control over Natural Resources (Ecological Democracy)
Environmental degradation - pollution of air, water and soil, loss of species and bio-diversity, destruction of the ozone layer, destabilisation of the climate, loss of trees and vegetative cover, soil erosion and desertification - is one of the most serious issues of our times. It should be a high priority for the movement. However, the discourse of the West and among the westernised organisations in the South is often very alienating for the majority of the (rural) people.
This discourse may result in programmes and measures neither understood nor owned by them. In the long run, such programmes can backfire. A better approach is to concentrate on people’s control over natural resources, and integrate the various environmental and conservational concerns in such an approach. Humankind’s relationship with nature as a consumer, controller, nurturer, destroyer, or as a small component of nature, are all issues to be dealt with under the rubric of ecological democracy. iii) Ensuring Human Dignity (Social Democracy) There is no doubt that the neo-liberal economic policies and other measures pursued by the ‘new right’ will be causing extreme poverty on a scale that could be unsurpassed in human history. In many cases the problems should be seen in the framework of empowering the Daridranaryan and as issues of acute economic survival. However, in most instances, issues like unemployment or underemployment, temporary employment, workers’ rights and the meaning and nature of the available working opportunities are issues of human dignity across the globe. Even in cases where the crumbs falling from the table of the neo-liberals are more than enough to satisfy the basic material needs of the people, human dignity is sacrificed in a most harmful way.
The hegemonic neo-liberal policies create identities of greed, promote consumerism and materialism and prevent people from making good moral choices and pursuing their spirituality. They sacrifice human dignity for profit.
The struggle for dignity and social equity has to be the principle issue among Dalits. This way they are well equipped to contribute from their perspective and experience in the struggle against satanic globalisation. It is the actual situation among Dalits that forced large number of ideologues, including Baba Sahib Ambedkar, to emphasise the importance of a caste annihilation movement in India. (In the rest of South Asia, due to the peculiar local situation, it is not even being recognised as an important source of inequity.) In the past two decades there has been regression of the upper caste from their earlier acceptance of empowerment of the ex- untouchable castes. Also, the increasing voice of women in the social sphere is being accompanied by new forms of perversions and violence against them, manifested e.g., by the declining sex ratio of 0-6 year-olds in India. These issues have to be viewed with their wider linkages under the rubric of social democracy. iv) Strengthening Plural Coexistence (Cultural Democracy)
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The issue of plural coexistence - and of the prevention of communal (or racial) violence - has a profound significance for every part of the world at the beginning of this millennium. When the world’s economic and cultural crises deepen, the threat of communal violence increases. In areas suffering from acute environmental degradation, the undermining of the natural resource base can aggravate such problems.
In South Asia, there is a living tradition of peaceful co-living of various ethnic and religious groups and of sects within religions. This tradition is under great strain and needs to be revitalised in the present context. A judicial pronouncement in Bangladesh in January 2001 banning fatwa (religious edicts) is an authentic illustration of cultural democracy. Among the Hindus, vesting of adequate dignity to the folk practices not conforming to Brahmanical scriptural norms should be a priority item.
A campaign for cultural democracy should also be a mobilising act against attempts to distort history in almost all countries of the world, including those in Europe and America. In Europe, the Muslims are being projected as a fundamentalist or non-pluralist segment of the society. The increasing polarisation between the Islamic countries and the West (the European Union and the United States of America) has been deepened by instances like the Gulf War in 1990, which created anti-West feelings throughout the ‘Islamic world’. The European integration - all the old colonial powers being fused into one new super-power - is worsening the situation because it is considered as the potential and powerful adversarial supra state by the Islamic states. The conflict will be further aggravated if the European Union becomes a real Federal State and if it develops a joint defence policy and a joint army. In that case all the EU member states, including the Nordic countries, will become integral parts of a major military super-power with a large arsenal of nuclear weapons.
Plural coexistence, however, should not be viewed from a negative viewpoint, but only through the scenarios of conflict that need to be prevented. It should be seen as richness, where new things are being created and recreated continuously through the interaction of differences. All of human history has developed through cultural interaction, diffusion and adaptation. Diversity in ways of life provides complementary ways of fulfilling the need for expression of diverse human tendencies in any society, and therefore must be nurtured. v) Nurturing and Deepening of Democracy (Political Democracy)
Political democracy, if not constantly cared for and defended, can be greatly undermined. All the possible checks that can be built against the un-democratising thrust of social systems can only be effective if the people actively guard democratic structures and norms. Democracy - defined in terms like participation, representation and rule of law, protection of cultural, linguistic, religious and political minorities and transparency of political decision-making - is to be nurtured and deepened. However, at present only one model of such democratic processes is being adopted by all the countries with different cultures, institutions and traditions: the western liberal or market democracy, whose specificities have evolved in a small cultural-historical zone of the globe.
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So far, the most important institutional framework for negotiating a society incorporating universalistic-humanistic values is political democracy, based on a multi-party system, adult franchise and separation of powers of executive, judiciary and legislature. Even this comes under threat when other forms of democracy are not realised. The principle of subsidiarity of power, i.e., allowing the people to exercise self-rule at the grassroot level, is crucial to ensure participatory democracy. District, provincial and national political power should not be treated as higher levels of power, but as different spheres of power.
The big wave of indigenisation and anti-westernisation - which is part explanation for the Islamic Resurgence, the growth of the Hindutva-movements and the economic and cultural rise of China - cannot be wished away lightly. If issues like democracy, human rights or women’s rights get labelled as “western values” by various oppressive forces in the South, there is a real danger that these values will be seriously undermined during the first century of the new millennium.
Directions of Search
In the bottom-up view of participatory democracy where institutions, ideas and ideologies are worked out by the people themselves, there is a contradiction in terms to suggest institutions of governance. Instead of giving a top-down solution, we would like to engage with the following questions with regard to the potential and direction which the present flux will take. Our method of working towards the ideal of sampoorn swaraaj is based on our belief that gives faith and hope in human beings and inclusive social processes.
Faith: We share a faith in fellow human beings, that selfishness and greed are only one part of the human journey and not the dominating, defining characteristic of human life. Wants can be fulfilled, and even indulged in, without being glorified. We insist that it is very degrading to define human beings as entities with material wants only. They have moral, spiritual and cultural orientations as well. Undermining these aspects is resulting in loss of meaning in life, generating a backlash in the form of religious extremism.
Hope: The faith in this notion of human nature creates a resource for perennial hope, a belief in human life being a constant struggle between good and evil. The task of building true democracy is now firmly linked with the global struggle to reform or transform capitalism without the imposition of a top-down, readymade version of socialism. It is a new project. However, it is based on the perennial human need to fight for the ‘good’ with values of compassion, justice, equality and freedom. It is based on understanding the spiral and web of life and to nurturing life in its most holistic sense in the contemporary context.
The Method: The method for democratic struggles has three aspects. One is ‘dialogue’, basically to recognise the contours of the present times. Through dialogues we not only recognise our times, but also understand the calling of our times. Dialogue at all levels, including with the adversary, is possible only if we do not believe in the conspiracy theory and believe in willingness of the human spirit for struggle and self-sacrifice against injustice. However, grasping the essence of the times will be incomplete if we do not simultaneously fight the injustice. For this, the second component is ‘non-violent civil disobedience’ that provides expression to the human struggle for ‘good’ over ‘evil’ and is an invitation for dialogue to the
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Proposals for Concrete Action With the above approach, and the contemporary challenges before centre-socialist-green-feminist social action, the following are some suggestions for concrete action. These are only illustrative, since action agendas will have to be developed by mass organisations themselves in a bottom-up approach and by advocacy campaign organisations, keeping the various linkages of comprehensive democracy and levels of social organisation in mind.
Dialogue • Opening up spaces for multiple visions to evolve, flower and express themselves. Dialogue, or in fact multi-logue across the diverse visions among the centre-socialist-green- feminist groups and between diverse strands within them, will enrich all human striving. This will strengthen each strand and sub-strand giving us the confidence to address the urge for equality and justice of billions on the planet. With a vibrant swaraaj stream, it should be possible to win over those engaged in violent struggle for justice and equality as allies in local and global non-violent civil disobedience movements. It will also make it possible to transform the adversary (the imperialist-capitalist, the mercenary terrorist, and the fascist) through a dialogic engagement and other democratic means.
• Institutionalising quasi-permanent structures/networks for enduring ‘Dialogues on comprehensive democracy’. We need to consciously and urgently cultivate peer groups, clubs, institutions, networks, movement groups and political parties to discuss the positive forms of intervention to deepen democracy.
• Institutionalising quasi-permanent structures/networks for enduring ‘Dialogues on democracy and globalisation’. This can be the most strategic tool for global democratisation, with the caution that it is informed by bottom-up processes. The space provided by the World Social Forum should be used for forging new global alliances. Conscious south-south dialogic interfaces must be ensured across Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, including the poor of the global North.
Defending the Democratic Spaces and Life Patterns • We urgently need to undertake some defensive actions as well. We need to evolve a defence strategy in preserving what the hegemonic forces have not so far destroyed. Southern civilisations have been practising for thousands of years a way of life that we now describe as ‘green principles’. A careful look at their livelihood support systems will show that limiting the wants was a conscious choice for conservation and regeneration of nature and not always due to sheer technological ‘backwardness’. But now, the present form of globalisation is destroying these communities at a very rapid pace. Global democratic forums need to set up a ‘defence committee’ to defend ‘green communities’ in the South. Otherwise, what has been preserved through thousands of years will be completely destroyed in the next couple of decades.
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• We need an independent information, research and media network to identify the democratic practices, struggles, dreams and dramas being unfolded and enacted in the family called Earth. We need to collect, collate and then share this information, especially for those who are still prisoners of the mirage of the American consumer paradise. We should resolve to set up such media centres all over the world and to disseminate this information in the people’s languages as widely as possible, besides doing so in English.
• All these dialogues and building up of institutions and networks should culminate into building a global front for defending, deepening and expanding democracy. This front can be built through a combination of intellectual activism and organisation building. The organisation building cannot happen through intellectual activism alone. The evolution of ideological frameworks and building up of networks can happen effectively if we use the tool of civil disobedience and constructive action, as evolved by Gandhi.
Organising for Non-Violent Civil Resistance • Those who believe in democracy have not only to shun violence themselves, but also have to delegitimise violence as a method for social change. They have to sharpen the tools of non-violent civil disobedience. Gandhi believed that only those who are civil and obey the laws of the land have the right to fight the unjust laws.
• A campaign should be launched against all diversionary moves which, in the name of cultural nationalism and ‘national sentiments’, put issues such as the right to work and right to sustainable livelihood on the back-burner.
• Non-violent civil disobedience should be resorted to if other steps of dialogue fail. For instance on issues such as: the agendas of boycotting genetically modified food-grains and biotechnology produced edible materials, of resistance to the setting up of Special Economic Zones (SEZs), mining and dam projects that displace large numbers of population. This needs prior adequate political and technical preparation, including sustainable land use planning.
• Democratising existing global institutions by sensitising them to the processes of non- violent civil disobedience and making them supportive towards the urges these actions represent. Civil disobedience will build pressure on existing institutions for their constant renewal by an interactive process.
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27. OUR SOCIAL MILIEU AND POLITICS OF TRANSFORMATION-I Conversation On Community, Individual And Democracy (Aug. 2010)
~ Vijay Pratap ~ Smitu Kothari
Any voluntary sector worker engaged in the transformative politics has to come to terms with various ideological sub-streams of change agents and the general cultural milieu of the people. In this editorial note we are considering the relationship among socialists and communists vis-à-vis the cultural milieu of our people and the role of the voluntary sector. In India, like elsewhere in Europe, socialists and communists owed their original identity to the Marxist tradition. But through a dynamic, interactive dialogue with Gandhi, the socialist tradition on the sub-continent acquired the character of a Gandhian left more than that of a Marxist left. Hence, unlike Europe, socialists in India represent a sub-stream of the left discernibly distinct from the Marxists. The aggressive nature of global capitalism, tremendous ideological churning among all the ideological strands and common challenges faced by them are forcing the Marxists and socialists to work together. This marriage will be brokered better if radical individuals and groups in the voluntary sector create a structure of dialogue among various sub-streams of those committed to democratic values. The in-built constraints of a party system will not allow a substantive ideological dialogic to take place.
In the contemporary world, fundamentalists’ identity polities is a serious diversionary tactic of the ruling classes which upsets the apple-cart of democratic transformation. Until the late ‘70s, India has been a fortunate country - in the sense that its pluralistic co-existence of diverse communities continued into the post-colonial era despite the fact that colonial power had tried to graft divisive identities. And most of us cannot claim to be absolutely free of the impact of this colonial consciousness. Since the late ‘70s, however, we have been facing identity assertions; sometimes even degenerating into outbreaks of violence and terrorism. Various elements of the democratic movement, i.e., the communists, socialists, various centrist parties, grassroots movements, various initiatives of the democratic intelligentsia and the voluntary sector, have been at a loss in meeting this challenge effectively; although reasons for their limited effectiveness are not the same. The ‘rationalist fundamentalist’ Communist and certain sub-streams of socialists do not have adequate ideological tools to relate to the spiritual-cultural traditions of our society which can provide sustenance for the radicalisation and consolidation of democracy. The voluntary sector has an inbuilt advantage of smallness in size of the organisation, as well as the area of operation. This gives ample scope for ideological exploration and organisational experimentation. Sampradayikta Virodhi Andolan (an anti-communalism group which came into being after the anti-Sikh carnage in Delhi in 1984) is a good example of collective rethinking by
117 Printed on 13 December 2017 COMPILATION OF ARTICLES WRITTEN BY VIJAY PRATAP the radical left, both of Marxist and non-Marxist variety, on issues of religion, culture and secularism. The Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust (SAHMAT) [which came into being when Safdar Hashmi, a leading street theatre exponent and member of the Communist Party (Marxist), was murdered by lumpen mercenaries at the behest of the local industrial establishment], has broken new ground in the politics of culture among the Marxist left of India. With their present position vis-à-vis Gandhi and the popular saints of the medieval period (the Bhakti saints), they appear as if they are the continuities of the non-Marxist socialist tradition. This kind of creative journey and the new incarnation of north Indian Marxists (authors have little understanding of the Marxist movement in Bengal and Kerala) was possible because SAHMAT operated in the framework of a registered organisation and exercised a degree of autonomy from discipline of the Marxist party. Gandhi, during the national struggle, provided a bridge between rationalist, sanitized seculars such as Nehru, Yusuf Meherally and Jayaprakash Narayan, and those deeply imbued in the spiritual cultural traditions of this sub-continent, i.e., Rajagopalachari, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Maulana Azad and Vinoba Bhave. There were also political stalwarts like Acharya Narendra Dev, a veteran democratic socialist leader with a profound understanding of Marxism and Buddhism. Ram Manohar Lohia, another veteran socialist, gave a radical meaning and content to various religious and mythological symbols of Ram, Krishna, Shiva, Draupadi, Savitri, Valmiki, Vishvamitra, Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad’s translation and commentary of the Quran, and deeply influenced many a practicing Muslim on the sub-continent during the freedom struggle and after. Mahatma Gandhi’s moral stature and his ability to build a broad-based mass movement with a radical thrust brought together on a single platform both the sub-streams of social change agents, i.e., the rationalist-scientific socialists or democrats and those belonging to the religious- cultural traditions, and were constantly engaged in a debate and dialogue with the other side. The critical attitude towards tradition because of a particular view of the past, and not born out of cultural ignorance. In the post-independence politics, this momentum lasted till the mid-60s. Till that time communalists remained at the margins of Indian public life and popular consciousness. This was despite the formation of a separate Pakistan State based on religious identity. Since the mid-60s, however, the cultural illiteracy and pauperisation of the post-independence generations started becoming visible in public life. This cultural vacuum has been seized upon to garner public support by communalists of all religious denominations. 6th December, 1992 was the culmination of the amoral ‘victory’ of the communalist forces. The cultural vacuum and the growing amorality in society is being responded to by groups and individuals through their cerebral and grassroots activism with an attempt to rediscover the spiritual, moral and cultural roots of social action. In this issue of Lokayan (13:1) articles by Asghar Ali Engineer and Deepti Priya reflect this search. From this issue we are starting a new section on ‘Reflections’. Our effort will be to publish material which brings forth the introspective, personal and moral dimension of our perceptions regarding various facets of our public life. We begin with Aruna Roy’s journey. We hope other activists will contribute to this column. A large number of groups in India have planned events for the 50th year of India’s independence. Let Lokayan journal participate in this pervasive search going on for the better future of this country, region and humankind as a whole through this introspective column called ‘Reflections’
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