Democracy Like Ashwathama’s Milk
Often, a thought crosses my mind, when looking at political landscape and electoral issues in India - do we have a democracy that is like Ashwathama’s milk?
Ashwathama was Guru Dronacharya’s son in the epic, Mahabharat. Dronacharya’s household, was struggling with poverty despite of being the official teacher of the princes of Kuru Vansha (clan) of Hastinapur, not unlike many teachers in USA. They were always running low on groceries and even milk was a luxury. Ashwathama was young, when he saw some prince drinking milk. So he wanted some and asked his mother. They neither had milk nor any money to buy it. But Ashwathama was crying and hungry and could not take no for an answer. So his mother mixed some flour into water so that it looked like a whitish liquid and handed it over to him. He, apparently, not knowing how real milk tastes like, happily gulped down the liquid thinking he got his wish fulfilled.
Similarly, we wanted to be democracy and we may be satisfied with the fact that we got a democracy. It looks like a democracy; but actually doesn’t feel like one. To me and to many other Indians.
Don’t get me wrong. We have had a good run with democracy compared to the (mostly failed) states around us, with only one noticeable hiccup in 1975-77. Successive governments, even when from different / opposing political parties, have peacefully and smoothly handed over the reins. That is not a mean feat by any measure, especially for a nation that had not really had any democracy at all levels until 1950s, and had to overcome several obstacles to create a sovereign democratic nation of diverse cultures, not to mention poverty, femine, and illiteracy etc.
For past 70ish years, we have implemented largest “free and fair” elections in the world. We have a multi party democracy that while representing the diversity in our society managed to come together to run the nation. We are among the fortunate 62.2% human population that lives in democracies and is deemed to have the political freedom. We have not had any coups and interference in governance from armed forces. We are in somewhat of an enviable position, as, at least on paper, we seem to have all the attributes to make huge progress and make our mark on the world stage.
But then, why does our democracy, even after many generations, does not feel like a “real” democracy - a democracy where ordinary citizens feel that their voice matters, a mature democracy where the democratic values are truly interwoven into the social ethos, a democracy where the 4 pillars - legislative, executive, judiciary and media are strong and independent, a democracy where elections are free, fair and level?
In the times, when the most established democracies are floundering with unprecedented challenges, this question is even more important as finding answers to it can only strengthen our democracy.
We switched - somewhat abruptly - from being a collection of states ruled by dynastic monarchies / autocracies. But over the years, political dynasties have formed to replace those. At various levels, in various parties, these dynasties tightly control who can represent voters. Money and muscle rule supreme. Newcomers from grass roots, despite of all good leadership qualities and approval ratings usually have a hard time contesting elections, especially if they do not align themselves to the interests of these entrenched powers. Even the elections for the lowest levels of governments - the local bodies - are not exceptions.
Interestingly voter turnouts in elections remain encouraging and politics is a hot discussion topic across populations. But most citizens don’t become active beyond voting or just hotly debating the current political topics. Attendance at town halls is abysmal. We have representative democracy so can’t expect citizens to be involved in the governance directly. But then, how often do citizens get to express their grievances to their representative?
Then there are some populations like tribals in central India and some regions like the North-East that don’t feel well integrated and well represented at the higher government levels. Women are not well represented either - only 61 out of 543 MPs in Lok Sabha (lower house of parliament) are women while 47% voters in 2014 general election were women. So they vote at par, at least in percentages, as men but remain under represented on the legislative branch. Even when they are elected, the primary decision makers (“remote controls”) are men behind the scenes and the women are reduced to proxies - a scenario that plays often at lower government levels where some constituencies are reserved for female candidates. Similarly, there is a age issue too. Despite of most the population (65% below 35) being young, most representatives are much older. So the demographics of representatives doesn’t really reflect the voter demographics.
The dynasties and their inner circles, their enablers, power brokers and agents - lets call these as the “ruler class” - essentially exercise control over the vibe in public, even when not in power. The ruler class has its factions and parties and they furiously fight each other on all fronts. So even grassroots movements are interfered and soon become a source of political tensions. [e.g. Maratha Kranti Morcha, Anti Corruption Movement of 2011-12] That avenue for citizens to make their voice heard fizzles out. Thus the non-ruler class i.e. the “peasants class” is valued for the votes it supplies but more often than not, it is denied a fair chance to address its concerns via the democratic process.
Weakening of legislative, executive, judiciary and media branches
Elected politicians exert unreasonable control over executive branch. Appointments, transfers, careers, and even day-to-day decision making of government are micromanaged by the ruler class for their benefit. The ones who do not oblige are obstructed in carrying out their duty, harassed and even hunted. The law enforcement agencies especially are very tightly controlled for obvious reasons. Every department or arm of the executive branch is used to milk the public resources and/or benefit the ruler class in some way. Bigger the opportunity to milk, more contention for the ministry. It is very very rare that autonomy of a department is untouched. Thankfully, the Election Commission is one is such exception, though historically there have been attempts to exert control on it too.
Judiciary is largely thought to be independent but it is barely functioning in the interest of the common citizen. Law enforcement is compromised and that puts limits on how justice can be delivered. Perhaps it is deliberately not well staffed so the cases drag on. The provisions in law and process are exploited by the ruler class to make judiciary crawl even on the most obvious of cases. Corruption in judiciary does not get enough publicity, maybe in an attempt to preserve people’s faith in it, but let’s face it - there is enough evidence to believe it does exist. The ruler class, especially those in power, can better cater to judiciary’s demand shifting the balance of the Lady Justice’s scale to them.
Media is not free and fair either. India ranked 138th in 2018 among all nations on Journalistic Freedom. Masters of most outlets have claimed allegiance to one faction of ruler class or the other. Reporting is rarely balanced, well researched, and factual. Even the grass roots reporters have come to expect something in return for publishing “news”. Politicians use the news cycle as their free publicity mechanism and reporters or outlets that present them favorably are rewarded in some way. I do not see enough investigative journalism and follow up on the important issues. Media in rest of the world is not totally free and fair but in some developed countries with democracy state of media seems a bit better than ours.
The desire to be in power and benefit from it, coalition politics, and multitude of other factors have rendered the legislative branch quite dysfunctional. Few legislators uphold the basic civility, let alone the democratic virtues even in the “temples of democracy”. The branch needs to set an example for other branches but it is a disgrace currently. With politics of elections taking precedence over legislation and debate, the parliament is barely functioning, on the simplest of metrics.
The role of the non ruling MPs has been reduced to obstruction and theatrics. Interestingly we call them the “opposition” rather than “non ruling”. A picture is painted that unless we are the government we can not do anything. That's not true. If these MPs are willing to work constructively and put national cause and long term benefits ahead of their short term political gain, much can be done.
Thus with zero-sum game politics pervading in the country, the four pillars do not stand strong and independent.
Erosion of Democratic Values
Prior to independence we had never experienced democracy. And the one we got was immediately taken over by the “ruler class”. With most of the population struggling to meet their basic needs, there wasn’t much scope for the democratic ideals to take a firm root among the peasant mindset. What peasants participated (or were allowed to participate) were the elections, that too, voting in particular. But there is more to democracy than just elections. The democracies are founded on basic ideals or values. These values haven’t been sufficiently ingrained in our population. Ideology of our founders, especially the one on which we base our constitution upon, has eroded.
The list of democratic values can be stated in different ways but respecting the human rights of all, including those who don’t agree with your views, is the most important democratic value. However, it is quite often the first one to be trampled upon.
Schools don’t do a good job of impressing the students with these ideals or training them in skills necessary to be effective as citizens. Students are not guided enough on debating, engaging in persuasion, providing constructive feedback, and working together for common good. They are told to blindly follow the authority and independent thinking isn't encouraged. Student organizations are crowded with vested interests. Virtues are praised at best but aren’t sufficiently rewarded. We sure teach them the arithmetics of majority, but we don’t reach them how democracy is different than mobocracy.
Furthermore, there aren’t good processes or institutions to groom the next set of leaders. Our society lacks role models who epitomize the democratic values. Incoming generation of leaders just ends up blindly mimicking the ways of their leaders while their ideology (if any being followed) remains restricted to pretentious displays. Speaking at a high level, the leaders who fought the British and subsequently led Indian governments were following certain ideology. Their parties produced many leaders who dressed like them but didn’t really up the bar. Why?
We don’t see good examples being set by elected representatives. They themselves don’t seem to uphold these values. Simple thing like having a good debate with civility is difficult. And there seems to be a competition to out-race each other in this downward spiral.
Culturally we have been trained to give undue respect to authorities and unquestioning obedience gets confused with loyalty. Except when asking for votes, ruler class, does expect more privileges, higher priority and better rights than an ordinary citizen. And citizens dare not question it. There were never enough Lal Bahadur Shastris among the elected. “Public servant” is one of the biggest ironies in India.
In the representative democracy, elections are a necessary evil. There is more to democracy that just elections. But India’s democracy seems to be completely fixated on elections. Politically, every move is calculated, to win the upcoming elections and when an election is over, no stone is left unturned to make sure either the power is retained or regained. And that is the source of the rot!
It is an all too familiar experience. Almost a deja-vu. A beeline forms to bid for tickets at the party high command. Money and muscle comes out for the desired effect. Even local body elections campaigning budgets balloon to mind boggling proportions. Every dirty trick in the playbook is used to malign the opposition. Bigger the pot, bigger the brawl. Lofty, unrealistic but populist promises are thrown at peasants. Rhetoric hits the highest pitch. Since everyone’s vote counts the same, the ones that can be influenced in bulk easily (i.e. vote banks), get catered the most. Carrots are dangled in front of voters. Even money is paid out for votes. Peasants voters are made to feel appreciated and looked after until end of the voting hours. Peasants think they voted someone in or out on the results day and feel powerful. The clock starts ticking for the next election.
Meanwhile the dealings, in-fighting, corruption among the ruler class continues. Just like it did for centuries among different states and among factions of a state until the British took over entire India. Barely any time is spent on real policy discussions for benefit of public. Equations of elections are more pressing or enticing to solve to them than the real problems of constituents. Not that no attention is paid to the problems; those are discussed and analyzed but I feel not from the intent of solving but rather to gain some political mileage from them.
The candidates that have good character, use reason, have compassion for all constituents, are capable and are in it for the right reasons don’t usually succeed (e.g. Jaya Prakash Narayana). Rather those who can stir up the emotions of their vote banks, have larger campaign budget, and commit anything as long as they gather majority of votes casted, win.
We got to ask, elections are free from what? Elections are fair to whom? It is an herculean task to conduct elections in out country and kudos to the Election Commission for doing that. The commision alone can not fix what is wrong with our elections. It will take a combined will power of all political parties to make it happen. But they feel it is suicidal to bring in election reforms.
The Cause and the Solution
So to recap, we have a phony democracy. It has adversely affected our collective well being and national progress. On many metrics we have become better than we were at the time independence but had we had a real democracy, I think we wouldn’t have been so low on the social progress index (100th in 2018, a tier 4 country), human development index (130th in 2018) and corruption perception index(81st in 2017). With a good democracy we would have seen no farmer suicides, no female infanticides, better roads, better infrastructure, have been more successful in sports on the world stage (cricket is an exception), taken care of our environment better, had better educational institutes (none of our universities are considered among the best research universities in the world), and so on.
The buck stops with voters
Democracy is the best form of governance our society has yet established. It is, though, not perfect. Our founding father assumed, like other established representative democracies, that all the voters are fully aware and carry out their duties responsibly. They act rationally and their decisions are well informed and well thought out. On that assumption rests the success of any democracy. And votes are only to be blamed for its failure. If the voters fail a bit, it wreaks havoc that lasts beyond just one election cycle. Recent examples of 2016 Presidential Elections in USA and the Brexit Referendum in UK should never be forgotten.
The vicious cycle in our democracy can be broken, by voting. Let’s ask ourselves: Do we think enough about our voting choices? Given that the votes lead to long term consequences, do we devote enough time to research candidates? Do we have an honest dialogue with fellow citizens to focus on real problem instead of the election rhetoric?
Voting - a right, a duty and a contract
Voting is a constitutional right and a duty. Both. It must not be called “मतदान”. We are not donating anything. Rather we are endorsing representatives to make good decisions for us. In exchange of this leadership privilege to the candidates, we are asking for a commitment to our cause. This is a contract. We are going to rip the benefits of electing a competent leader or suffer the consequences at the hands of a moron or a monster. Either ways we are bound to what we decide so we got to decide as seriously as we take any big decision - like buying a house, taking up a job, relocating to a different city. Such decisions aren’t easily reversible, have a long term impact and so is the outcome of an election.
Voters have been given very little tools to find out credibility of candidates, and establish their qualifications, financials, work record, character, and vision. What’s App and Facebook and in general, any social media is not among them. Election Commission and respective state election commissions (e.g. Maharashtra), Parliament website, and MyNeta.info etc have a bunch of resources. Unfortunately, not enough thought and effort has gone into these to make them super useful. And given that transparency is not a preferred virtue in Indian politics a lot of information is just not easily available to public. The candidacy forms submitted to election officers are public. But they do not contain work history, positions taken by the candidates in the past and what were their achievements if previously they were in power. Nonetheless, it is better than voting blindly or along the party lines.
None of the Above (“NOTA”) is an option included on the election ballot. It registers that you did not prefer any candidates. Even if NOTA gets highest votes, currently, the candidate with 2nd highest votes will be declared as the winner. So in that sense it is just registering your displeasure anonymously without any harm to the running candidates. However, it does prevent anyone else from casting a bogus vote in your place. So, you should go and vote in any case. In future, through PILs, we can hope to make this provision more effective.
We can help to stop the spread of the misinformation (“fake news”). Such propaganda campaigns are run by political parties and enemies of the nation. They have very disastrous effect on society and democracy. Do not trust social media posts and don’t forward the messages without fact-checking. Ideally do not accept any money for votes. If intimidated in doing so, vote per your choice - it is anonymous and safe. With smartphones, it is easy to record and report any malpractices on election booths. Opposing parties will be glad to reveal each other’s wrong-doings. But take precautions in doing so - it won’t be anonymous. Election commission has launched cVigil app to report breach of model code of conduct during elections, anonymously.
Future-proofing Our Democracy
In some sense, our democracy is yet to mature. It has to thrive in spite of constant efforts of the ruler class to undermine it. It has to prosper in face of the threats posed by external entities. It has to realize it unfulfilled promise to the masses. For it to make it happen, we have to make it future-proof. We have to introduce measure that will clean it from the influence of the vested interests. We have to introduce “checks-and-balances” that make all four of its branches independent and robust. Here are some proposals that I have come across.
It takes vast amount of resources to conduct elections. Resources that are very precious to a poor and populous nation like ours. So the elections need to be done right. We should clean them up to clean the politics in India. Some election reforms are very much needed based on our collective experience so far.
Public / state funding of election campaigns
Most corruption is motivated by the need to procuring funds to enable gaining or staying in power. A lot of black money is pumped into elections. Money is distributed to voters in lieu of voting promises. Gifts and feasts to “karyakartas” have become a norm. This makes elections an uneven playing field where the uncorrupt dare not enter. This can be avoided by mandating the use of only state funds. This is tough to enforce but will make most of the established malpractices difficult to continue.
Who can qualify contest elections? There are some restrictions already. And I think adding a restriction to bar a candidate who has in past used his/her authority, while in power, to commit a crime and gets convicted for it should be barred for life. Similarly there should be a term limit on the same candidate for the same post. E.g. a two term limit on being a MLA / MP from the same constituency.
Stricter accounting and monitoring of campaigns
Political donations must be transparent and fully trackable. It should be known to everyone whether a candidate or a political party is funded by the wealthy to extract future gains at the cost of public good. Current rules are lax at the best. We got to step up the pressure on the lawmakers to make effective rules without any obvious escape routes to bring accountability and transparency in election campaigns and political party funding.
Direct elections to certain posts
This breaks the loop of party politics a bit and has been a very welcome change especially for local elections in Maharashtra. I hope that this is followed by rest of the states too.
Candidates should be invited for a public debate moderated by a neutral authority much like Presidential Debates in USA. This will test candidates’ knowledge, experience, and views. It can test whether their election manifesto holds any water. Voters can hopefully then look beyond just the charismatic personalities and rhetoric. Dynasty candidates can not then rest of their families’ laurels. And importantly, it will brings public’s attention to one of the important democratic virtues - engage in a meaningful conversation even with those with opposing views.
Political parties have pros and cons for democracy. One downside is sometimes to secure “numbers” needed, parties adopt questionable tactics in elections. They do not always field the best candidates. Rather the “self-financing” candidates, candidates with muscle power, candidates satisfying certain religion-caste equations are fielded. If candidates for MLA and MP constituencies are to abandon party politics, we could see better ones, the ones who have work to show, would win assuming a level playing field such as state funding of election campaigns.
Public scrutiny of election manifestos - The scrutiny should include a “fact-check”, ball-park budgetary estimates to fulfil them, how realistic the promises are, and importantly it is the same promise being repeated over and over again without ever fulfilling it (e.g. “गरिबी हटाओ”)
Restrictions on post-election, unholy alliances
“This is quite a game, politics. There are no permanent enemies, and no permanent friends, only permanent interests.” (William Clay)
The permanent interest here is being in power as long as possible. This has made any other ideology obsolete. Elections are fought on some rhetoric and overnight enemies become friends or vice versa to be in power. We have to demand, because our vote is a contract based on the promises made, that any step contrary to those, will automatically bring in disqualification. In general it is a hard thing to enforce and we just have to wait until the next election to vote out the representatives. But in some cases it is so brazen that it can be detected and prevented easily. E.g. entering into a power-sharing agreement (or alliance) with whom you contested the elections. One might justify just power-sharing as a pragmatic outcome. But more often than not, it is just a con.
We have to be aware of their rights and duties, laws and policies, and grievance redressal mechanisms. We have to demand accountability and transparency. We have to say no to anything and everything that’s enabling the ruler class to exploit our democracy. Right to Information (RTI) is a great weapon. Actively participating in local body town halls is a must. Asking questions to representatives is a must. We got to participate in our democracy and that’s the only way to make it participatory. It has to be bottom up; not top down. We have to take time out for it. Consider the mount of time our non-working but voting population spends in front of TV. They have to step up.
Inculcating Democratic Values
The upcoming wave of new voters should be educated in the basics of democracy. And needs to be ingrained with various democratic values. I think we are failing them, otherwise. I am not aware of widespread school or college level programs to bring up these young voters and tomorrow’s leaders. They need to be taught how to work together. How to respect each other’s views. They need to be made the seekers of truth and common good. They need to be informed that no one person, no one party is above their or nation’s interest. They need to be trained to identify long term versus short term benefits and how to value the long term benefits over the short term. They have to be made champions of clean characters. We have to prevent any wave of “anti-intellectualism” among them. It is hard. And ruler class may be again hesitant in supporting this outright as any other initiative that possibly threatens their stronghold on the power. But we have to start and the start can be simple. As simple as just letting students run their governments to manage various school / college aspects. Let them debate the complex issues. Let them learn and practice to politely but firmly express their views, grounded in facts. Let them ask questions to authorities fearlessly. Let them think critically, out-of-the box and let’s reward them for it. The reward can be in terms of financial assistance or educational / job opportunities.
Ultimately, it’s not one Modi, not one Gandhi, but only we, the citizens of India can fix our democracy, if we choose to. Let’s vote right. Let’s be involved. Let’s act. Only then, the values that we promised ourselves to secure for us - Justice, Liberty, Equality and Fraternity - will be fully realized, protected and passed on to generations to come.
