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VERDICT 2004- Civil Society and Democratization in India by Dr VERDICT 2004- Civil Society and Democratization in India by Dr. Yaaminey Mubayi Kontakt: [email protected] Dr. Yaaminey Mubayi has specialised in political history and development from the Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi and the London School of Economics, UK. She is an independent consultant based in New Delhi and writes frequently on issues of governance and development in South Asia. Elections 2004 in India, the world’s largest democracy, can be said to mark and epoch in the history of democratic nations. Nearly a billion people exercised their franchise voting out a confident and well-entrenched regime, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The Congress, a party regarded as bereft of leadership, emerged a winner. India is a country with crushing problems: over 300 million people below poverty line, a literacy rate of less than 60% and widespread social and economic inequalities. Yet the masses in this country, otherwise voiceless and disempowered, came together to exercise their vote with stunning clarity of purpose, in a perfectly democratic manner. When Mr. Vajpayee, Prime Minister in the NDA government, called the election six months ahead of schedule, it seemed to indicate a high level of optimism and confidence in their success. Encouraged by a buoyant stock market, an economy growing at the healthy rate of 10.6%, ballooning forex reserves, inflation in check, improved relations with Pakistan and a clean sweep in the State Assembly elections in October 2003, the NDA seemed poised for victory. It displayed its confidence through a high-tech election campaign, complete with film stars, television advertising and business jets and helicopters, to present to the voting public an image of ‘India Shining’. The Congress, on the other hand, started as the underdog. Its campaign was low-key and aimed at states where they expected to win. The party president, Sonia Gandhi, was pragmatic and accommodating in her approach, networking with regional leaders and forging alliances with secular partners. In response to NDA’s ‘India Shining’, the Congress pitched their ‘Hand behind the Common Man’. It was a strategy that paid rich dividends. The final results for the 539 seats in the Lok Sabha (Lower House of Parliament) are as follows: Congress + allies 219 NDA + allies 189 Left Front 61 Others (independents etc.) 70 - 1 - The Congress along with its allies formed a coalition government, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) with the support of the Left Front from the outside. Dr. Manmohan Singh, an eminent economist, career bureaucrat and former Finance Minister, a man universally respected for his integrity and competence, was chosen to be Prime Minister. Mrs Sonia Gandhi retained the post of party president but refused to join the government, thereby gaining moral stature and political maturity, in a country that reveres self-denial. Repercussions for Civil Society The result of the 2004 elections raises a number of questions regarding the nature of democratic processes in India. The citizen-state relationship, politics vs. governance and the reach of civil society institutions may be scrutinized through the lens of verdict 2004. In a vast and diverse country like India, with its burdens of large-scale poverty, illiteracy and social and economic inequality, as also its great potential as an IT and telecom superpower, what are the patterns of change that we can discern from the recent elections, that could shape future trends for development? In general, the idea of civil society, comprising associational inter-linkages between people outside the State and Market was first proposed by Alexis de Tocqueville, a French thinker in early 19th century. It is a powerful notion with important connotations for democratic development. Defined variously by Liberals, Marxists and Neo-conservatives, it has both the positive aspect of providing a ‘free’ social space for critique and evaluation of state action as well as the negative potential of endorsing dominant hegemonies. When we try to apply this notion to a largely traditional society like India, replete with primordial social groupings like caste, family, region and religion, it assumes a unique dimension. NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations) are commonly seen as representing the interests of civil society. There has been a proliferation of NGOs worldwide over the past two decades, a trend seen as a move towards greater democratization. There are an estimated 2 million NGOs in India, many of which have participated in elections 2004 in various ways. A brief overview of the key NGO roles in the event will reveal whether or not their participation strengthened civil society. 1. NGOs as Observers: Organizations like PUCL (People’s Union for Civil Liberty) have been long-established watchdogs for India’s civil society. The PAC (Public Affairs Centre) has a specific mandate for electoral governance. After a protracted struggle, they succeeded in having the Supreme Court pass an order in March 2003, on the mandatory disclosure of financial assets, educational backgrounds and criminal records by candidates. Local organizations like Loksatta (Movement Movement for People’s Government) - 2 - followed up on this by making public criminal charges against candidates in 2004. The CSDS (Centre for the Study of Developing Societies) conducted a comprehensive electoral survey, producing invaluable information, voting statistics and analyses that enriched public knowledge. 2. NGOs as Partners of Government Agencies: The Election Commission of India opened a window for dialogue with NGOs and other citizens’s groups to promote transparency in the electoral process. The NCPRI (National Campaign for People’s Right to Information) and the Campaign for Electoral Transparency were prominent organizations that worked to update the electoral rolls (www.indiatogether.org) At another level, some NGOs engaged with candidates and attempted to sensitize them to people’s needs. For example, YUVA in Mumbai presented alternative manifestos to candidates, focusing on the need for potable water. AGNI (Action for Good Governance and Networking in India) produced the Mumbai Citizns’ Charter, enumerating jobs, housing and governance as developmental priorities. The above two categories are similar as they subsume NGOs that participated in the elections without political affiliation. The next category deviates from this. 3. Right wing NGOs: These largely consist of the Sangh Parivar, Hindu revivalists consisting of the VHP (Vishwa Hindu Parishad) RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) Bajrang Dal and others. These are termed ‘social organizations’ by their leaders, and are used to propagate Hindu separatist ideology. They buttress the political influence of the BJP by building and mobilizing the Hindu votebanks, less through development initiatives and more through obscurantism and polemics against non-Hindu social and cultural forms. Working through organized local cadres, they have also used violence and terror as instruments of political mobilization in preparing for elections 2004. In January 2004, the Hindu Jagran Manch (Hindu Revivalist Front) instigated violent mobs to attack the Christian community in Jhabua, Madhya Pradesh. A number of churches were burnt and Christians killed. In February 2004 in Orissa, converted Christians were publicly humiliated and their heads shaved by Bajrang Dal and VHP activists. The Sangh Parivar has set up Vanvasi Kalyan Ashrams (Tribal Welfare Centres) in areas with a large Christian population, ostensibly to persuade them to reconvert to Hinduism. These centres were used to incite Hindu mobs, even as part of the election campaign. Sangh Parivar NGOs receive a large segment of their funds from non- resident Indians (NRIs) abroad. For example, the IDRF (India Development and Reconstruction Foundation) a Maryland, USA based NRI outfit, has recently been investigated by the US government for financing Right-wing Hindu organizations. - 3 - 4. NGOs for Communal Harmony: To counter the communitarian influence of Right- wing NGOs, there were a number of organizations promoting harmony amongst communities during elections 2004. ‘Insaaniyat’ actively distributed pamphlets giving information and exhorting people to maintain social and cultural pluralism. Medha Patkar, leader of the Save Narmada Campaign, called for a secular coalition of NGOs country-wide to highlight grassroots level problems and counter NDA’s India Shining Campaign. Thus, NGOs played an important role during elections 2004, though largely outside the political process. There were no well-known NGO leaders who stood for election to the Lok Sabha, with the rare exception of Sandip Dikshit from East Delhi. Except for the Sangh Parivar outfits, NGOs did not speak for any political party nor did theyr campaign for any candidate. They confined themselves to highlighting issues of democracy, transparency and strengthening participatory citizenship. So why verdict 2004? Why was ‘India Shining’ obliterated by the ‘Common Man’? Could it be that the associational concerns of civil society asserted themselves over primordial social groups, or is it more complex than that? An overview of some salient features of the results may provide some answers. A Complex of Many Factors 1. A view proposed by some sections of the press and endorsed by Left-wing parties (Communist Party of India, Communist Party of India, Marxist and the Forward Bloc) is that the verdict represents the voice of the poor against the NDA government’s pro-market ‘India Shining’ image. If that were true, how can one explain the victory of the BJD (Biju Janata Dal) an NDA partner, in Orissa, one of India’s poorest states? 2. Similarly, it is believed to be a backlash by impoverished drought-hit farmers, as in Andhra Pradesh, against the NDA’s high-tech and urban- centric model of development. This again does not explain why the BJP as a party scored over the Congress in Karnataka, also a drought-hit state which has seen a high degree of IT development in the recent past. Anti- incumbency seems to be major factor in these states, unlike in Orissa, where the BJD retained its eats comfortably.
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