Geopolitical Analysis

By K N Pandita

Westminster model democracy takes a long time to strike its roots deep in the psyche of the people. The British democracy is more than a millennia, and the American democracy is nearly 250 years old. The survival of democracy, as we glean from the example of the two countries mentioned above, depends on how pragmatic these are with the inbuilt capacity of adjusting with a new imperative that appears rapidly in an age of scientific and technological advancement.

The beauty of the system is that it has the capacity of an assured mechanism in the form of parliamentary debates and votes. The usual practice is of obtaining a majority vote in favour or against a tabled proposition.

The much-debated aspect of the Westminster module of democracy, which India chose after her independence, is under intensive debate among the political circles in civil society. No governance module including the Westminster type of democracy is without a flow. That cannot be. But the module of democracy that we have borrowed from Great Britain is the one that is less harmful to the governed in comparison to other arrangements.

The decisive factor for the Constituent Assembly to opt for the Westminster type of democracy was the heterogeneity of the Indian civil society. That is why some political scientists call India not a country but a sub-continent. There is an exhaustive debate among the historians and political scientists in our country on the nature and depth of the multi-faceted diversity of our society. The British colonialists invariably threatened Indian freedom fighters and their think tanks that the type of democracy they visualized for free India was bound to lead to the fragmentation of India at the end of the day.

The nagging issue confronting contemporary democracies is that of “majoritarianism”. It has taken an uglier turn in India in particular though as a matter of principle no democracy in the world can be called unitary on cultural, religious and other counts. Believing that democracy is a number game, all political parties focus their attention on how to win a majority vote on a national level. A majority means power and authority over all state organs and finally the institutions. The question, no doubt ugly and embarrassing, lies in the behavioural evolution of democracy and the democratic mindset. We are not showing maturity and sensibility. In normal conditions, the political parties and especially the mainstream parties make their selves as the target and not the people in whose name they want to become representatives.

An Indian educationist was on a visit to the UK where he was scheduled to interact with the students of 8th standard. Out of curiosity, he put a question to his pupils seeking their views on democracy and democratic form of government. One among the students stood up and said,” Sir which democracy are you referring to, the British or the Indian”? That is the crux of the issue.

The reason why our freedom movement leadership decided in favour of democracy as the form of governance was the heterogeneity of our society. It is right that it worked but it is not right to say that it worked without tensions and irritations genuine or not.

The reason why the early stalwarts of independent India did not pay full attention to the latent irritants was that the element of moral imperative supervened in all major policy matters of the state. The moral plank in this country is of long-standing and service. Satyagraha had become an article of faith with Gandhi Ji and its spirit percolated down the political and social spectrum.

Somehow not too serious an attention was paid to the fallout of the advancement of scientific and technological age from which India could not remain distanced anymore. When Nehru said that the dams and hydropower generating projects were the temples of new India, it meant there was a vision of future development and that did happen even if it was not on a mind-boggling scale as we find in China. India could not divorce her civilizational fund and make a violent shift to modernity because it is an agricultural country with agriculture as its mainstay. And Indian farmers are conservatives of a type. That is the reason why when the tractor was first introduced, Dr Rajendra Prasad, the then President of India cautioned the country about the possible negative consequences of mishandling the soil.

With the onset of the era of advanced scientific and technological activity with an impact on life patterns and living standards, there gradually surfaced the item of identity in its various forms and manifestations. As India began to wriggle out of abject poverty and illiteracy through a massive programme of bringing education literacy and scientific temperament to the masses of people especially rural India, the urge for the assertion of identity became sharper. The downtrodden classes and the economically weaker sections of the population beheld a new world opening before them. The question was to provide conditions that would help them absorb the impact of a changing India. In due course of time, the clash of interests began to take contours. With that, the elements that lend support to them also began to evolve. Indigenous cultural traits began receiving a fillip and people of India who had known one leader and one party throughout the freedom movement pandered to local leadership, local issues and local solutions. The emergence of regional parties with regional agendas should have been dovetailed to the mainstream politics and political trends in the country. Skill and deftness were needed. Avery peculiar phenomenon of contemporary Indian political scenario is that the voter draws a clear line between his regional and national perceptions and votes accordingly. Wooing the regional parties by the mainstream parties is, unfortunately, becoming a bane for the health of our democracy. Most of the ills that we find today steering into the eye of nationalist leadership are the misuse and misguidance of regional vote banks. It is a clear indication of degraded political ethics.

In the final analysis, what we need to think about seriously is that should we work for ourselves and our parties or the nation. No service is sincere and honest if not accompanied by renunciation. Now that we are entering the 75th year of our independence, we must make some introspection, and frankly admit that we have faltered and fallen. We need to rise, given our stereotype a shaking and move forward.