When I think about things we can do to ensure that democracy
survives, improves and flourishes in India throughout the foreseeable future,
the following, it seems to me, have become absolutely urgent.
We should drastically amend the Representation of the Peoples Act and other basic laws to provide that
1.
Political parties cannot proliferate
endlessly, with almost indistinguishable manifestos and differentiated only by
their leaders who fight and drift apart from mother parties to satisfy their
own egos, ambitions and narrow interests,
2.
Make the Election Commission a truly
powerful and impartial body, supervised by Parliament alone (with a strong
voice for the opposition which the ruling party cannot steamroll), which will
monitor all political activity of all parties and not only just before and
after elections,
3.
Parties must be commitment bound to
deliver on at least most of their pre-election promises or resign from power,
and no party may criticize government policies which it itself espoused
strenuously while in power,
4.
Electoral constituencies must have the
power of recalling their representatives at any time after the first year if
they turn out to be duds, frauds or downright criminals,
5.
Serious and repeat offenders of a
criminal nature (which must include election fraud) must be permanently barred
from standing for elections,
6.
All parties must fully and honestly
publicize their sources of funding, itemized in case of all large donations,
and parliament and courts must stringently monitor which donors are being
unlawfully favoured when those parties are in power,
7.
All legitimately recognized parties
must be publicly funded, at least up to 80% of their needs, and allow
compulsory audit of their finances.
8.
The Constitution must be amended to
spell out very specific rules about how elections and politics may be done, and
the High and Supreme courts must exercise unceasing, strict and minute
supervision over the whole process, perhaps assisted by a public ombudsman.
9.
Illegitimate, coercive muscle power
must be removed from the political arena by an all-round consensus among all
contending parties. Investigative agencies must not function at the whim and
behest of executive authority, but only under parliamentary and court
supervision, with stringent media oversight.
10. The
mass media must commit themselves to genuinely fearless, probing, analytical
and impartial reporting,
11. Accredited,
well-respected, well educated social workers must be encouraged to join
politics en masse after they have made their reputations in their chosen fields
of service,
12. The
well-off elite with time and leisure on their hands must be encouraged likewise
to join public service, so that they are not easily lured by the temptation of
misgoverning to make big bucks quickly for themselves and their kin.
13. All
political parties whose agenda openly spread lying and hateful fiction about
their perceived ‘enemies’ in society must be put beyond the pale, once and for
all, whether they are on the left or right, religious or atheistic, whether
they are feminists or misogynists, casteists and vegans or those who want to
kill casteists and vegans.
14. Civil
society NGOs with good and long-standing reputations must be strongly
encouraged to take a hand in the political process (in this context, read this article).
15. All
elected leaders, from town councillors to PMs, as soon as they start behaving
like kings and despots, must be summarily removed from office as soon as a
minimum number of genuine complaints have been registered, which may vary from
100 in case of a panchayat pradhan to 100,000 for a prime minister.
16. Since
the permanent rather than elected executive actually runs the day to day
administration and deals with all citizen needs, requests and demands (sarkari naukars, from the peon right up
to the department IAS secretary), and since they have acquired a deep, abiding
and countrywide reputation for being incompetent, unwilling, grossly unhelpful
and venal on the whole, all political parties must come together to remove or
cure this scourge once and for all – a sarkari naukar will work hard according
to well defined standards day in, day out round the year all his working life,
to be judged only by his clients and supplicants, or be first warned, then
suspended, then dismissed, and finally in extreme cases jailed. There is no
other way of clearing this particular Augean stable without making a
frightening example of a few tens of thousands of careers and lives ruined. It
has gone on for far too long.
17. Voter
education must be made a very serious and compulsory part of school education
right from class 6 to 12, so that when they start choosing their candidates,
they may not vote like ignorant or brainwashed idiots (as even most college
graduates do in this country). This ‘education’ must clearly teach growing
generations what they should ask of their elected representatives, as well as
what they should not ask or expect.
18. Much
more power should be devolved down to the states, and further onwards to the lower
units of local self government, so long as they commit formally that they are
all going to obey the Constitution, never dream of seceding, and accept a
minimum template of duties and commitments to the voters that has been set by
higher levels of government – indices that can be constantly monitored,
measured and commented upon, like crime rates and literacy rates and employment
rates and pollution levels, to mention just a few.
19. Absurd,
out of date and utterly anti-democratic laws like the sedition act must be
repealed and thrown into the dustbin of history. Every citizen must be free and
unafraid to air his views on any subject of public concern, as long as her
views are reasonable and informed.
20. Learning
from the best practices of all nations which are widely recognized as
successful democracies must be made mandatory for all who dream of being our
future leaders.
Achieving all this will take time, but a beginning must be made, now. Even ten years later it might be too late, and democracy might dissolve into first anarchy and then autocracy, as it has often done in many countries.
Achieving all twenty of the above will be very hard, and all of them may never be fully achieved. Also, in the off chance that they are indeed all achieved, it still won’t make for a perfect democracy – nothing is ever perfect, certainly not something as complex and messy as a democracy of such gigantic proportions – but India will certainly become a much better place to live in.
The whole question is whether a sufficient number of intelligent, wise, civic minded citizens are at all keen enough to preserve and improve democracy in India. From what I have seen over a period of nearly fifty years of observation and reflection – I have been politically conscious from a very early age – I fear that that might not be the case. If that is true, democracy in India is doomed, and, despite being one who is painfully aware of the drawbacks of democracy, I would opine that that would be a disaster for almost all of us.
One last word. I first wrote out a similar list of desiderata in 1987 to help out a friend who was going to sit for the UPSC examinations. Thirty six years on, I have found little reason to make major changes in the list – indeed, I wrote this one out almost off the cuff. Shows both how little India has changed in the intervening years as much as how stable my own opinions have remained.
[It should be obvious to any mindful reader that I do not side blindly with any single existing political party or ideology. For instance, much that the TMC or BJP are currently doing might be wrong or bad or simply misguided, but I know and remember too much of the CPIM and Congress eras to imagine naively that everything will be hunky dory if only they can return to power, having learnt nothing about honest and good governance in the intervening years out in the wilderness]
