Commentary / Mani Shankar Aiyar
'We are not in other words, damned to democracy'
As Justice Sarkaria has noted in his justly-renowned report on
Centre-state relations, most people are most of the time concerned
with neighbourhood matters rather than high affairs of state.
India's democracy provides outstanding forums for discussion and
deliberation on matters quintessentially political, and all matters
of high policy. In our first 50 years, however, institutions for
democratic participation in neighbourhood matters have been, for
the most part, conspicuously absent.
In Singapore, on the other
hand, citizen access to elected representatives on neighbourhood
matters, and the capacity of elected MPs to actually do something
about neighbourhood matters, is as advanced as the scope for raw
politics is limited.
In the United Kingdom, Parliament is for
politics and policy and democratic local government for neighbourhood
matters. It makes Britons proud of their democracy in a way in
which we are not; and it makes Singaporeans proud of the excellence
of their civic life in a way which must make any thinking Indian
hang his head in shame.
We are more democratic than Singapore is when it comes to determining
what an individual Indian's view is of, say, the CTBT. But we
are in the hands of unashamed authoritarians when it comes to
garbage removal. That is the paradox of our democracy.
We have to learn to preserve our democracy while increasing citizen
participation in our democracy. Successful growth performers,
strikingly South Korea and Taiwan, are learning that increased
democracy is necessary for the preservation of the gains of growth.
I am convinced most thinking Singaporeans would be relieved to
breathe a little more of the oxygen of 'western freedoms,'
and a little less of the carbon dioxide of what Lee is pleased
to call 'Asian values.'
Reducing our level of democracy
is, therefore, not the answer. We do not have to sacrifice democracy
to secure development. We are not, in other words, damned to democracy.
But we do need to make our democracy more democratic.
The first step in this direction is elected local government.
This column has for so long been so obsessed with elected panchayats
and nagarpalikas as to make it unnecessary to dilate once again
on this point in this context. Suffice it to repeat it.
What is perhaps worth pondering over is whether the Rajya Sabha
can be made to perform a function more useful than furnishing
the Deve Gowdas of our democracy with an escape hatch. Would it
not be more useful to abolish the Rajya Sabha altogether and in
its place expand the Lok Sabha to at least double its present
size.
After all, the Russian legislature has several thousand
members of parliament, and while Russia can hardly be held up
as a paragon of democracy, representation there at least has the
merit of being more meaningful than in India. A doubling of the
number of Lok Sabha constituencies would mean a halving of the
numbers an MP is required to represent. This automatically means
a doubling of the accessibility of the elected representative to
his voters.
If the substitution of our bicameral Parliament by an expanded
single chamber were to be matched by the substitution of legislative
councils, where these exist, by expanded Vidhan Sabhas, the doubling
of representativeness and accessibility in Delhi would be reinforced
by the doubling of representativeness and accessibility in the
state capitals. Along with truly effective panchayati raj, the
Indian citizen might begin shedding his disillusionment with democracy
through increased participation in democracy.
That, not Deve Gowda, MP (Rajya Sabha), on the ramparts of the
Red Fort (good Lord, not once again!), is the birthday present
our country is looking for as we wheel into the golden jubilee
year of our democracy.
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