Life in a fake democracy

Whether it will be a gain for Congress or for the BJP, the government at New Delhi is bound to feel the tremors the state elections will cause. The change of government cannot be ruled out.

The unfortunate part is that the success of the Congress or that of the BJP will make little difference to the country. Both have been triedand found wanting. One is more corrupt than the other. If one is guilty of bank scam, the other is guilty of hawala. The first has favoured unscrupulous capitalists to fill the party8217;s coffers. The other has tilted towards traders to get contributions even at the expense of price rise in essential commodities.

In recent weeks I have visited more than half of India, the Congress-ruled Madhya Pradesh, the BJP-ruled Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan and the BJP-supported Maharashtra and Punjab. What is common in these states is corruption. More blatant is the corruption by family members of the chief ministers.

Exasperated, I brought it to the notice of Vajpayee some time ago. He did not contradict me but gave me a smile. He said just as the father put his turban on the head of his son to announce that he had come of age, the chief ministers were behaving the same way. Corruption should be taken as the inheritance going from one generation to the other. He sounded helpless.

Maybe, corruption has become anintegral part of the system. Maybe, it is a world phenomenon as Indira Gandhi used to say. Yet it is so demeaning and so demoralising that it is a sin to live with it. It makes a mockery of all values and the dreams the nation has cherished. It has sucked the country dry. One often feels as if he has reached the end of the road.

In any case, our era of romantic democracy cleanliness, equality, welfare and social justice 8212; is long over. The Congress8217; absolutism, the BJP8217;s Hindutva and the shrewd political opportunism of others have defiled it to the extent that democracy has started to lose its traditional appeal.

True, there are assemblies, cabinets, political parties, free press and other trappings of democracy. Elections are held and there have been smooth transfers of power. In the formal sense, India is today a parliamentary democracy. Yet our democracy suffers from illiberalism, imperfections and inadequacies, reducing it to what can be aptly called a fake democracy.

Democracy promisestransparency, but all the important decisions are taken in secrecy. A Bill on the right to information has been prepared after a long time. But there are so many provisos that every bit of government activity is sought to be covered.

The welfare is a far cry and is, at the best, meant for loyalists of the ruling party. Participation is there but only in terms of change of people, who actually participate after each change of the government. It can neither be widened nor empowered. Under the creamy layer, it is full of sleaze. There is no social justice or rule of law. But each government has its own definition of justice.

Too much effort is put to grab power and too much hankering by the elite to get more and more benefits. The government in power lacking both experience and vision have only managed to turn the people8217;s psychological clock back. While the party functionaries have no problem in sustaining themselves 8212; or even flourishing 8212; the mass of our population continues to suffer.

Our democraticspring is replete with instances where the conduct of the democracy has been dictated by brute state power, not by its own power of reasoning. Today, after a traumatic transition to democracy it is the same vain lot that runs the affairs of the state. So there is hardly any difference in the style of governance or in its attitude.

We take pride in having an elected government but it is the same known corrupt people the tax evaders, the bank defaulters, the smugglers and the criminals who are foisted upon an illiterate, poor electorate unable to make an informed political choice. The elections under prevailing system throw up not necessarily the best, the noblest or the fittest but the scum of the society, because they are manipulative enough to grab power. It is thus axiomatic that elections alone, even if they are fair and impartial, do not make political democracy.

I would have lived even with such a situation if I had not found my religion and culture deformed in the name of Hindutva. Stealthily andslowly, all the organisations, which have anything to do with culture, particularly history, are being packed with fundamentalists. What are the Murli Manohar Joshis and the L. K. Advanis doing to my pluralistic culture? They are hacking it limb by limb and putting it into a box labeled Hindutva.

I was not surprised when I found that the governing body of the Institute of Higher Studies at Shimla had been reconstituted, with the RSS-inclined members dominating it. The Education Ministry funds the Institute and Murli Manohar Joshi is the overall in-charge. Sure enough, he has been invited by the Institute to deliver the Dr Radhakrishnan lecture, which Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen had agreed to give.

Election results can never correct the Orwellian belief that 8220;who controls the past controls the future, who controls the present controls the past8221;. Such dangerous thinking can only be stopped by the realisation that history should unite, not divide, the nation. If not, the very democratic structure is indanger.