"The government of the people, by the people, for the people"

At what point of time I was introduced to this definition of democracy, I can hardly remember. It is quite ingenuous though; I am yet to come across any other; quite a few descriptions could be found, but not definitions. It is exhaustive, avoids jargon and yet, one can't quite put one's finger on a particular word and say that it's too simplistic. But, this post is not about the definition or its ingenuity, it is not about the Gettysburg address in which Abraham Lincoln first pronounced it in 1863. It is about democracy and its working in this age, nearly 150 years after Abraham Lincoln inadvertently used the phrase to describe democracy in America (incidentally, as a friend of mine pointed out, even Abraham Lincoln wasn't very optimistic that the world would remember, what he said then - "world will little note, nor long remember what we say here"). The sole purpose of beginning the post with this definition was to remember, what really democracy was supposed to be and what it has come to be.

It is some worrisome features that the Indian democracy has acquired over the past 60 years of its independence, that concern us here. And they are not worrisome because they are faulty, which they certainly are. They are so, because we seem to be perpetuating their existence by using the same faulty line of thinking, that created them, to rectify them.

I think this would be an appropriate juncture to declare any prejudices I may have here, before I endorse or criticize a particular view-point. I have always criticized the Parliamentary form. Considering that many, though not all, features of political systems originate from their parent systems of government (Parliamentary, Presidential or Collegial), I am bound to link these features to their origins. Then again, I have no intentions of comparing the two systems today. They will be discussed only as far as their effects are concerned.

The features that I intend to discuss are,
- Representative form and its limitations for enforcing political accountability
- The multi-party system and its working
- The anti-defection law (52nd Amendment to the Indian Constitution)

Naturally, all these topics are linked with each other. So, their separate treatment will only be for the sake of understanding their effects in isolation to begin with. They will find a mention in all the posts intermittently, as and when the linkages need elucidation.

When I began writing this post, the idea was to write a short one, describing each feature in brief. But as I actually sat down to write it, I realized that it was much more complicated than I had perceived it to be. Ergo, I have decided to break it down into parts, each covering one topic and hopefully, to conclude in a separate post. So, here we are.

Representative Democracy and Political Accountability

We are often told that administration is becoming complex, because of progress in science and technology and population explosion. As Humphrey Appleby, the quintessential British bureaucrat, often told his "political master", Jim Hacker, that the size of bureaucracy had increased because of the volume of legislation passed by the Parliament and not, as is usually thought, by the bureaucracy that creates work for itself (Parkinson's law). Ignoring the self-serving/self-seeking rhetoric of Sir Humphrey, it can't be denied that there is some substance to it. Legislation and hence administration have become complex. And in this complex world, where the government has come to occupy a cardinal role that compels it to regulate the activities of citizens in almost every single sphere, how evolved are the instruments of ascertaining the will of the people that it claims to represent? In short, when we say that it is "the government of the people, by the people and for the people", how do we make sure that it really is the government of the people, all the time, on every single issue?

This brings us to the most basic requirement of a democracy - instruments of public accountability. The most rudimentary forms of accountability and ways of ascertaining people's will that democracies conventionally offer are,
- Periodic Elections
- Judicial Recourse

Election was invented as a way of ascertaining people's will - that people elect their representatives periodically and the representatives govern them on their behalf. This, incidentally, created, what is currently the most popular form of democracy, known as the Representative Democracy. The other form being Participative Democracy, some what akin to Gandhiji's vision of self-sufficient villages and indirectly elected and organically linked provincial and national governments. One hardly needs to go into the details of why the Indian electoral system needs reforms (and I am not alluding to the electronic voting machines here either).

And although, generally, the Judiciary has been considered as the most satisfactorily run branch of the government (notwithstanding the objections of the Legislature in general and Mr. Somnath Chatterjee in particular, who was joined by Justice V. R. Krishna Iyer recently) in India, the recent instances of intransigence of some of the judges of the honourable courts, allegations of corruption and the unpleasant episode between the Supreme Court and the Central Information Commission have only added to the conclusion that even the Judiciary is in a dire need of reforms, systemic and otherwise. The 3 crore cases pending in the courts further strengthen our case.

These are, but the most general objections to the conventional instruments of accountability. They tell us that these instruments are not working effectively even with the originally limited expectations from them. The second category of objections relate to their inadequacy vis-à-vis the changed role and the expanded reach of the government. The first we hope should be addressed at least partly by electoral and judicial reforms. It is the second one that concerns us here in this post.

After assuming the role of a welfare state post-independence the government entered the social and industrial sectors and the bureaucracy started expanding. Even after the advent of L-P-G (liberalisation-privatisation-globalization) the government machinery remained as vast as ever, but for a very different reason. It is regulating and legislating in more areas than it did 60 years ago and it needs just as large a bureaucracy as it did, as a welfare state.

But, this ubiquitous nature and the expanded mandate of the government is hardly ever reflected in elections. They are still fought on limited issues, which have been pursued and discussed ad nauseam. And I concede that not all issues are as important as 'secularism' (can't help but roll my eyes here!), but occasionally, when other equally or more (and possibly the most) important issues emerge, they rarely find a mention in any of the election manifestos, or are brought up in the public sphere to seek people's mandate on them (and not to instigate 'big fights' and shouting matches of similar genres). There has been a myriad of such issues, but the one that comes to my mind immediately is Nuclear Liability.

It may not be appropriate to describe its timing as 'fortunate', but the judgement on Bhopal gas tragedy came at the second most opportune moment (considering that it arrived too late, anyway), when the government is investing massive amounts of money in nuclear energy. It is not only the utterly irresponsible manner in which the entire matter was handled that's appalling, but also the absence of any genuine efforts to learn lessons from this bitter experience. The Legislature, it is said, failed to create a legal framework to prevent such industrial disasters in the first instance by failing to encourage internalisation of the cost for adherence to the safety norms by providing for stringent penalties for negligence and secondly to create a liability regime that can at least get sufficient compensation for the victims (though I am told that the Law of Torts and the Indian Penal Code are adequately capable of addressing these concerns).

Notwithstanding the absence of such laws or their incompetence, the least anybody would agree to is that they deserve a thorough public scrutiny. The government envisages a contribution to the tunes of 20 GW to India's energy mix from nuclear sources by 2020. The nuclear reactors will be located all over the country exposing majority of the population to possible nuclear disasters. The world so far has seen 2 instances of major nuclear disasters (Three Mile Island and Chernobyl) and it goes without saying that India is not capable of handling a disaster of even half their intensity. The point I am trying to make here is that when the government decides to
1. Make nuclear energy a major source of energy
2. Route the liability for a nuclear disaster to operators alone (thereby failing to create any incentive for the suppliers to invest in safety features)
3. Cap the liability arbitrarily without any reference to a future revision
4. Provide for a substantial part of the capped compensation to be made from the public purse and does it all so surreptitiously, under whichever political compulsions it may have had, it leaves us hardly any alternative but to question the very legislative mandate of the government.

The Loksabha is elected on election manifestos. Did the election manifestos of either the ruling party or the parties in opposition have any reference to Nuclear Liability? If we decide to cover it under the general subject of 'infrastructure development', it only goes to show how cavalier an attitude we have adopted on issues, which can affect the lives of millions of people.

Notwithstanding the election manifestos, the analyses of past elections have proved amply that voting patterns are highly subjective and dynamic. For one, the basis of voting for a particular party can also be negative as has been proved time and again. Secondly, with a multi-party system and the system of first-past-the-post, one has to be too naïve to believe that a candidate representing a particular constituency was elected by a majority of people from that constituency, let alone assuming that his party's stand represents the stand of a person voting for him on every single issue. These follies are only compounded by the inadequate separation of powers afforded by the Parliamentary system (here we go!) between the Legislature and the Executive.

Now we can certainly understand the preoccupation (bordering on obsession) of the major parties with, what they think are the most important issues and that not all issues can be foreseen and discussed at the time of elections. But the least that can be done is to encourage a public debate on such issues. There has to be some way of ascertaining people's will on issues that have never been discussed in the public domain or during elections.

In times when the government that represents 1.2 billion people, tries to regulate their activities in almost every single sphere, it is too simplistic and naïve to assume that the people have given the government the mandate to legislate on every single issue. We can probably leave defence out of this for its implications on national security and emergencies that need quicker responses, but other issues have to be in public domain for sufficient period before a decision is made.

The most commonly used argument against this is that people are not educated enough to contribute constructively to such debates because of their "technical" nature. I think this argument smacks not only of a patronizing attitude but also of political convenience. The argument that people are intelligent enough to decide what constitutes 'secularism' (the word continues to be considered vague and debated on even by constitutional experts as to whether it means equal treatment to all religions or state neutrality in the matter of religion) but they can't decide for themselves if there should be a cap on compensation in the event of a nuclear disaster is highly untenable.What is really so incomprehensible? Do people need to understand nuclear physics and the working of nuclear reactors to decide if there should be a cap on compensation in case of a disaster that can kill and handicap millions and affect generations and pollute environment irreversibly?

Even if we consider these arguments to be genuine, there has to be a beginning on public education. Quite mysteriously this lack of faith in people's ability to adapt to new systems because of lack education is often absent when it comes to introducing things like plastic bags or pesticides, which need more public education to ensure a responsible usage and disposal than political reforms. How long can we hide behind the argument that the Indian voter is not capable of handling referenda or the system of proportional representation or multi-member constituencies? Today, 27 years after Bhopal gas tragedy, when there is a general feeling of dismay at political and corporate apathy, people hardly have anybody but themselves to blame. If there is a nuclear disaster awaiting us in the future, the fall of the government for its "collective responsibility" will hardly help the victims.

I realise that I have used only one example here, that of Nuclear Liability, as it was the most recent one that I could think of. But it applies to every single important issue, such as constitutional amendments, creation of new states, caste-based census and anything and everything that has never been in public domain or not been discussed adequately and generally legislated by circumventing public mandate.

To conclude, elections are only an instrument and not the only instrument of ascertaining people's will. With the increasing complexity of administration, more effective instruments must be utilized and invented. Referenda are quite popular in many countries and it wouldn't hurt to give them a try. Over the period of past 60 years we seem to have forgotten that elections are important only as far as they help us elect people's representatives in an effective manner. Neither are they infallible nor are they a panacea; they are only a means to an end. If they are inadequate they must be supplemented. We are facing a new age which brings with it its own unique problems, which need new solutions, which, of course, can't be instant. There will have to be a learning process, which can evolve a system that addresses our concerns, but the process must start, if it is to be effective, by accepting the shortcomings of representative democracy.