Speak for yourself

Does the government represent the people of India? That is the large question posed and answered by the Anna Hazare-led civil society group that champions its own overweening version of the Lokpal Bill. They claim that a referendum they conducted in HRD Minister Kapil Sibals constituency,Delhis Chandni Chowk,proves that the people want it their way,and that legislators,the so-called representatives of the people have failed to represent the people.

Questions in the survey included queries about who should investigate charges of corruption against the prime minister,who should give permission to register an FIR against a corrupt judge,who should investigate allegations of bribery against MPs,and up to what official level the Lokpal should have jurisdiction. Roughly four lakh forms were distributed,out of which 86,000 responded and 72,000 were processed. Never mind the inherent skew in such a survey or the little matter of how the questions may have been worded Hazare and team insist that their survey reflects the peoples will,and so presumably their version of the bill should be shoved into Parliament,bypassing our well-established lawmaking processes.

This sense of being more elect than the elected is dangerous,as is the practice of relying on referenda to settle issues of import. The dangers of direct democracy have been made clear around the world. Popular demands need to be mediated and filtered through representative institutions,in order to be just. For instance,despite the Swiss conceit that their bottom-up legislation is the most effective citizens can vote up to 30 times a year on national and local questions,these have often worked in odd and unfair ways. For instance,one Swiss canton denied women the right to vote locally until 1990. Sometimes,these referenda worked in majority-driven illiberal ways,like Switzerlands minaret ban of 2009. Certain US states like California that use referenda and ballot initiatives have found themselves stuck with incoherent mandates,apart from a flat-out denial of certain constituencies say,homosexuals in Colorado or immigrants in California. The larger point is,we must be wary of referenda that claim to speak for the public at large the only trusted way to deliver on the peoples will is through democratic institutions.