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Journalism of Courage
It may seem odd to say this. But the big story in Uttar Pradesh isn8217;t out there among the bustling headlines. Most recently, it wasn8217;t spotted in the latest Ayodhya storm that writhed and died last week. UP8217;s big story is actually a long-playing silence.
It began all over again when the government changed once more in the state. A familiar lament rent the air. UP8217;s professional mourners had plenty to pick from. There was the stranger than usual pact sewn up in the backrooms: Maulana Mulayam meets Hindu Mahanayak Kalyan Singh, with the BJP blessing the nuptials. There was the Samajwadi Party preying on Bahujan Samaj Party, rehabilitation of Raja Bhaiyya, chief ministerial defence of Amarmani Tripathi, the Most Jumbo Ministry. In the melee, no one remarked on one missing thing: the new coalition had assumed power without framing a common minimum programme CMP. If it has, it is the state8217;s best kept secret.
It8217;s been an unlamented absence so far. Nobody missed the CMP when the bulky new ministry was posing for photos in Lucknow. Nobody asks about it now that the 8216;8216;Ram bhakts8217;8217; have gone back home.
The veteran and the cynical will shrug off the matter of the missing CMP as a fine point, an irrelevance really in UP. How will a CMP help? In the hands of the same discredited politicians, it will only be an effete nicety. Surely the issue in the state is the brazen opportunism, the wearying jousts of Mandal versus Kamandal, Mandal and Kamandal. In UP, they say, there is political fragmentation. The rest is commentary.
Yes and no. The diagnosis is all right. Since the mid 80s and especially in the 90s, UP politics has been a story of parts that refuse to come together in any whole. Greater representation is accompanied by greater distortions in representation. There is a terrible weakening of accountability despite the high turnover of incumbents. But the prescriptions are problematic.
UP cannot be swept clean with a legal broom. It won8217;t do to bring in an airtight law banning all defections, for instance, or to legislate the number of parties that can exist. Tightening the anti-defection law will concentrate even more power in party high commands; the will to control the number of parties overlooks the fact that they mirror real social cleavages on the ground. UP8217;s mess cannot be harangued out of existence. We cannot design a more scrupulous political class. Or elect a new people.
It8217;s about time UP watchers stopped lamenting what they cannot change and thought of the things they can. For a start, they could think about the CMP.
To be sure, CMPs are no panaceas. They can be documents of vague pledges and specific silences, mocked by the parties that sign on to them. Just look at the NDA8217;s sanitised National Agenda of Governance and then at the always-ticking Ayodhya bomb for proof. Drawing lines in coalitions is risky business in the best of times. CMPs can double up as smokescreens.
Having said that, a CMP helps. Because it is a step towards a more articulate politics. And because the prevailing incoherence provides crucial cover to the politician8217;s discretion and whim. A CMP coaxes some commitment from politicians who would keep all their options open always. It brings some transparency to political outcomes in coalition governments where they seem less a function of voters8217; choices than of invisible processes of inter party bargaining.
In the sands of UP rippling with a thousand quid pro quos, a CMP will etch some clarity and shape. It will announce a refusal to leave the government8217;s policy and programme to the short-term exigency or the last minute deal. Why must UP trust in Mellow Mulayam to do the right thing? Or leave it all to the trendy Lohiaite8217;s new fash frat 8212; Amitabh, Ambani and Co?
A CMP could even become the forerunner of the legislative agenda long gone missing from the state. The Vidhan Sabha meets only rarely here. In 2002, it met for all of 30 days; in this year, only 8. This is a state run by ordinances and administrative discretion. According to one estimate, it is also a state reeling under a staggering debt of Rs 90,000 crore and in which the only state expenditure that has shown a dramatic increase is on its administration.
A CMP is only one element of a more exacting politics that compels both party and government to spell it out and lay it on the table where the people can see; some form of inner party democracy is a crucial link in the chain. It has been argued that lack of inner party democracy lies at the core of our political incoherence. It leaves the criteria for the crucial decisions any party must take, be it selecting candidates or defining the party programme, deliberately fuzzy. It allows free play to arbitrariness and whimsy.
Students of politics point out that lack of inner party democracy also leads to greater fragmentation. If the criteria for upward mobility within the party are inarticulate and discretionary, newly mobilised social groups will be more encouraged to split parties or set up their own. Experience in Europe and Latin America suggests there is less fragmentation in the party system where intraparty democracy is better institutionalised.
Inner party democracy and common minimum programmes are parts of the same promise of improved political representation. If ideas and issues are spelt out in the fray, newly emergent social groups could aspire to a genuine empowerment. They could refuse to settle for the meagre takings on offer now: the opportunity to participate in a politics of arithmetic presence.
But first, we need to change the subject in UP. We need to drop the tired lament and raise an alarm about the missing CMP.
Will merely talking about it make the difference? And why single out UP? The reason why UP is special, perhaps, is that it suffers from aggravated symptoms of the incoherence that afflicts the polity. And because its politics has an amplified resonance throughout the country. No, talking about it won8217;t be enough. It will require more arduous efforts. But we could make a beginning.
Just who is this 8216;we8217;, the bearer of this responsibility? Does it include the people of the state? These, possibly, are some questions in UP.
