DEMOCRACY IN PERIL: IS INDIA A PSEUDO-DEMOCRACY?

Democracy as a potent tool to exercise control over the governance can be effective only when the citizens of a country are empowered in terms of :

a) Expressing their viewpoints without fear;
b) Assured dignity & enforceability of rights & liberties against arbitrary actions of the state
c) Possessing the ability to bring the requisite change & accountability in the system.

The vibrance of a democracy is best expressed through the amount of emphasis it places on human rights. If indices to measure democracy should be arrived upon, it should primarily include the attribute of “implied human rights”. There is a difference between universally agreed attributes of human rights and implied human rights. While the former is confined to defining human rights from the point of view of rights which a man/woman/child should enjoy, the latter is concerned with the emotional –psychological content involved by the virtue of being human. Accordingly,
even acts which cause small inconvenience/dissatisfaction for an individual citizen could be treated as a human rights violation. While there is a rising consensus among countries of the world with regard to maintenance of human rights, such an approach is essentially a micro-approach. There is a need to strive towards achieving implied human rights. The Scandinavian countries such as Norway, Sweden & Finland are already on that path. It is high time that India being the world’s largest democracy takes a baby step in that direction.

When the whole world condemned china for its gross violation of human rights during the 1989 Tiananmen square incident(where army tanks were sent in to crush protesting students),there were imminent comparisons with the human rights scenario in India. Media entities urged china to “learn” the “art of valuing a citizen’s rights & upholding their dignity” from India. In the past, India’s compassion towards its own citizens was setup as a benchmark /ideal to be followed .both nascent democracies like South Africa & seasoned ones like the USA & Canada sought to emulate the “gandhian vision” of a democracy.

However, recent trends in the human rights record of India have been abysmal. While overt violation of human rights in Kashmir, northeastern states etc have been highlighted in the UNDP human development report 2009, there are gross HR violations happening every minute in India as we speak.these go unreported or even unnoticed. We Indians thrive on this callous attitude. There is a scant respect for the “ aam aadmi “ whose everyday problems are treated as “minor glitches or aberrations” in a largely successful government machinery.

The treatment meted out to the common man in the event of a VVIP visit is particularly appalling. It goes on to show, how we value our citizens. It is ironical, how the government servants & elected representatives, who derive their purpose, authority & value from the citizens of India are given precedence over the citizens of the country!!. Traffic snarls during VVIP visits, cordoning off public places to ensure safe passage of VIP convoys etc have become the order of the day.

a recent incident , in which three aircraft loaded with around 500 passengers were not given clearance to land just because the president was supposed to return from Beijing. Over 11 flights were delayed, some of them cancelled and the three in question were circling in the air waiting for ground clearance. The flights were not notified in advance of plans to divert the flights elsewhere due to “security concerns which could endanger the life of the president”. They were left hanging perilously mid -air running on reserve fuel, with all the passengers hanging on to their dear lives. Now, if we are a true democracy, does it make sense to endanger the lives of 500 passengers & cause so much inconvenience to ordinary citizens , just to give clearance to the first citizen of our country? Is it not the moral responsibility of our government to value the lives of our citizens? ...and considering that this incident occurred just days after the tragic aviation disaster at Mangalore speaks volumes of our indifferent governance.

To top it all, apart from a few news items in the media, there was little public outcry. The people of our country have come to live with it. They have accepted it as a part of their life.it is difficult to say whether this is due to the passiveness ingrained in Indians due to nature of our freedom struggle or due to loss of faith of the people in general that any progress is achievable. But irrespective of what the reason is, we continue to live in misery & have accepted it as our fate.
This is in complete contrast to the attitude of citizens of western countries. There the citizens are proactive in demanding for their rights and the authorities are obliged to provide what the citizen demands of them.

A pivotal characteristic of a vibrant democracy is citizen activism. There is a need for the citizens of our country to shed their impassive & indifferent nature towards what is happening around them. Social consciousness brought about through awareness could help them in sensitivising individual towards other’s problems & issues in the society in general. An important lesson should be learnt from our freedom struggle. No change could have been possible without collective representation & demands. However, effective citizen group action should be accompanied by acquired human sensitivity.

If our civil society can take over the reins and act as a responsible “fourth pillar” of governance, its contribution towards strengthening democracy, ensuring the wellbeing of all citizens & achieving the ideal of “inclusive growth” would be priceless.

The government and its functionaries(civil servants included) are responsible to the citizens of this country both “collectively as well as individually”.i am stressing on this point , as the concept of responsibility of the government towards an “individual citizen” is often underplayed ,in favour of responsibility to the citizens as a whole. There is a need to revise our traditional concept of democracy and work towards establishing the notion that “the responsibility (of the state) towards the people of India is the sum total of responsibility of the state towards every individual citizen of India” .further, there is a need to define a new paradigm of democracy where, “the whole is greater than the sum of the parts”…..meaning, it is the primary responsibility of the state to uphold the rights & dignity of an individual citizen. The responsibility of the state towards an individual citizen cannot be shirked or compromised in the garb of securing responsibility towards the citizens of India as a whole.

Having said that, there are many problems involved in ensuring that a regime of participative governance & citizen activism emerges. Based on the experiences gathered in western countries, it can be inferred that people become proactive only when their basic needs are met. As long as there is deprivation, people would continue to be self-centered and not work towards development of the nation as a whole. The bureaucracy & the political heads would continue to wield a great deal of power there by jeopardizing the lives of ordinary citizens. The paradigm of “developmental bureaucracy”, “participative democracy” & “compassionate representatives” should work together in unison towards securing the goal of achieving a true democracy. If this is not done & if they pull in different directions, any claim of being a democracy would sound hollow.