No system is as perfect as the ideal situation. Given this basic premise, we can see how India’s democracy is far from perfect. Firstly as parties go, most of them do not adhere to their constitutions, and the amount of ‘personality’ heft that Indian politics cowers to, it would appear as though we remain feudatories fawning over the ‘anointed heirs’!
I am not using this blog to postulate any preference as democratic choice for our voters. For that would violate the basic and most fundamental exercise that this blog is all about- Trying to make sense of the convoluted processes that adorn our polity today and seeing what these trends portent for us. While what I essay forth may not have an immediate traction, in the longer run, for any citizen to become an enlightened player in our constitutional process, these issues cannot be glossed over and need to be grappled with.
Intra party democracy is singularly absent in all parties and some semblance of it is practised with Left leaning parties where they do vote their leaders in, from time to time. The BJP started off in a refreshing manner, breathing in a new wave of ideologically servitude and bespoke solutions to their party leadership, while acknowledging their parent RSS based at Nagpur. Whenever the political leadership had a say in national discourse, while RSS did try or tries to place its priorities, we have seen that the BJP has been able to stick to an agenda largely of its own making. So even if the RSS frowns over former INC legislators or former affiliates of other parties from being inducted into the BJP, the past four years have seen such lateral inductions into the BJP. Likewise, the rise of sons within the BJP is also something which the ideological parent is not comfortable with, but in a sign that BJP has now become mainstream, and its unintended consequence has been that now it is looking in ground practises almost a mirror of the Congress party. Arun Shourie has caricatured the current trend of the BJP as ‘Congress plus cow’, and while it may be a case for some introspection, most of the voting public must welcome such dilution of ideological purity, for any good practise of democracy, parties must be more prone to consensus and commonality of approach so as to form a larger stable mandate for governance.
Actually few people see how Indira Gandhi contributed to this level of degraded discourse in our party politics. While she held sway, many regional satraps of the Congress were made aware of how their turf was whittled down. In fact, the handling of YS Rajasekara Reddy’s son after his tragic demise, is characteristic of how Indira would have handled the situation. After her own assassination, Rajiv was appointed PM, so if Jaganmohan Reddy and YSR’s widow sought a similar deal for AP, they were shown their place. Since exception in Congress was only for Indira and her offspring, every other leader who nursed ambitions within and without knew that it was a matter of time and opportunity to create his turf as a regional party. Much of how Anti Congressism spawned had to do with the realisation that Congress was increasingly not an umbrella organisation, that Congress was not large enough for leaders with genuine grass roots democratic DNA, and that regional leaders must be refined to playing puppets, dancing to the tune of the High Command. There was a time when no Congress CM actually completed five years in office during the Indira years and this weakened the Congress so much that be it Trinamool or National Congress or Tamil Manila Congress or now YSR Congress, these must all be seen as responses to the strangle hold of the High Command and the desire of leaders to break free.
But if one took a step back and viewed this a little historically, then you can see how Indians perhaps had grown accustomed to having one paramountcy and leaning on that paramountcy to promulgate orders during the Colonial era and even the Mughal era that preceded it. Remember that the Great Maratha Empire too chose not to overthrow the Great Mughal at Delhi, but rather to control that Throne and exploit the opportunities of existing network, rather than to create new ones. It is over this last three hundred years, that Indians saw a new form of power wielding where one could remain unaccountable as the power behind the throne, and enjoy such leverage without none of the risks that came up with directly wielding that power!
So can we now see how the mighty Indian National Congress soon degenerated into a bunch of 600 principals, all seeking some sort of tacit importance quite like the number of ‘gun salutes’ , now measured by how early and how long they managed an audience with Indira and her ‘regal’ council? Even the Aam Aadhmi Party of Mr Kejriwal has seen leaders leave in droves once they understood that it was converting into a regional party with Mr Kejriwal as the satrap. After all the Janata Party and every other offshoot of it was born in Anti Congressism, forged from the realisation that absolute political power in their area of political sway would come only if they broke the shackles of the Indira Congress and became regional chieftains in their own right. So like Royals of yore who wanted a good deal with Delhi, they stuck to their political independence and maintained their governmental dependence. Only the Dravida movement and the RSS backed Jan Sangh which is precursor to BJP were ideologically driven by factors other than anti Congressism. The Left parties including the ‘Naxal’ extremes were driven by Marxism, Leninism and were perhaps the two extremes of Communists movements, with democratic participation under a non Communist Manifesto, swearing allegiance to the Constitution of India which is a remarkable thing, and other being the People’s War Group or Maoism inspired armed rural insurgency that challenged the Indian State.
Yet we can see how the Dravida movement degenerated. DMK the larger splinter, has been reduced to a party of Karunanidhi’s family, and the AIADMK has become Jayalalithaa loyalists party. And both are comfortable paying lip service to the ideal of a casteless society while promoting caste based groups and sects in controlling the popular vote in their strong holds. Thus the Dravida movement while successful in removing the Brahmin community from political voice and learned expression, and reducing the Tamil Brahmin into a kind of Jewish fringe without the power of a lobby in USA, has unravelled into a cesspool of caste affiliations and power play. So Caste based violence and subjugation is very much present and gathering momentum in these harsh times when job market is under great stress, thereby surviving by offering doles to one electorally strong caste or other.
The BJP has made a transition under Mr Modi. With his confidante Amit Shah now likely to remain President till the fate of the reelection campaign is clear in 2019, the BJP has broken the rule about tenures of Party Presidents, a policy in which then younger and upcoming leaders like Sushma Swaraj and Nitin Gadkari got a chance to be groomed by Atal and Advani combination, the stalwart pair who saw Jan Sangh transform into the BJP.
If you looked at Sonia Gandhi’s contribution, it is this- that resurgence of strong local leaders was now made possible within the Congress. So Hooda of Haryana, Gehlot of Rajasthan, Kamal Nath of MP or Siddharamiah of Karnataka were able to see very stable terms as CM, only Maharashtra which was a coalition with NCP saw leadership change at State level for government. This principle was viewed very seriously by RSS which also allowed Narendra Modi, Shivraj Chauhan, Vasundhara Raje and Raman Singh to rule undisturbed thus creating state level stability which was affording those who were loyal to national parties to enjoy local stability that they would otherwise get only if they went regional. RJD, JDU, JDS, SP, BSP, BJD, AGP,NC, PDP,TDP, AIADMK and DMK are all parties involving one or two family level personalities. The TRS of KCR which began like the AGP has quickly degenerated into a DMK type party with extraconstitutional roles assumed by nephew, son and daughter of founder president KCR! So while Sonia Stance has contributed to stem the desire for splinter groups of national parties, the rise of regional groups catering to niche communities and castes is not hindered, due to the punch they have well above their weight at the state level or at the national level.
In the midst of this comes the Rahul Gandhi formula. Rahul has expressed on numerous occasions for a US style Primaries system, where major parties like his INC should allow for candidates from Block Taluk and District level to come up through primaries where Congress and their allied voters vote for them, thus making a larger popular grassroots level democratic set up within the Congress party. This would eventually throw up candidatures for MLA and MP nominees of the Congress and would one day make for a Convention which would elect the Party President and the members of its highest body- the Congress Working Committee. He tried this experiment in a local level in a constituency in MP where a Ms Natarajan lost her candidature despite being a sitting MP of the Lok Sabha from that very constituency. So perhaps right now, this experiment is in cold storage, but for long term results all political parties in India must have intra party democracy to be eligible for electoral registration and perhaps for electoral funding too.Recently Rahul tried another technology based solution where he called upon Congress workers to nominate their choice for CM in the three states the Congress won in North India. We know that the final choice of CM in each state was an outcome of real politik and not that vote, but what it does is kindles hope for the Grand Old Party to return one day to her grassroots level of democracy.The BJP has made great strides with conferences with party workers from booth level, with the call “ Mera Booth Sabse Majbhooth”. While right now Amit Shah is focusing on it as an electoral strategy, it has the capacity to convert into a grass roots level organisational expression of inner democracy.
So the voter must hope that democratic trends do imply for our parties to wear their democratic credentials on their sleeves. Show us how they voted their manifesto, how they chose their nominees and how they elected their organisational representatives. The Election Commission has been largely unable to enforce parties adhering to their own constitutions. The Press has ignored it royally. Think of it like our cricket. The local Ranji games are most important for our players to come up for national selection. Ranji itself comes out of district level games and club level performances. If Ranji Trophy is not able to make an arresting case for players to showcase their talent, India’s cricketing bench strength will die down. It is by strengthening the regional players, by strengthening cricket coaching and game at local level that India can produce champions at the international level. So without grassroots participation our democracy can never be cricket, can never be a Gentleman or Lady’s Game!
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