Democracy needs challenges to assert itself

Dharamvira Gandhi

Former MP

IT is better to start on a depressing note than to end on it. So, let me begin with a dark prognosis. A very large ship is about to sink. I am aware that the sinking ship has become a very popular metaphor these days. In most minds, this phrase evokes an image of the Congress party. But all this is part of a design to divert attention from the fact that a far larger ship is sinking. The name of this far larger ship is Indian democracy.

It’s often said that the threat to democracy comes from communal-majoritarian politics and authoritarian leaders. Undoubtedly, there is truth in this statement. It is often said that the threat is aggravated due to a weak and divided Opposition. That too is a reality. But all these are surface phenomena. The real threat arises out of deeper political realities. People start looking for a strong and supreme leader who can demolish an imagined enemy. Democracy is imperilled, then, by democratic processes themselves.

Common sense is the first casualty when diabolical political designs succeed. One could simply ask: why should the BJP and its supreme leader be scared of a sinking ship? Why do those who lure the rats with political and other kinds of cheese shout the loudest that rats are jumping off the sinking ship? Perhaps it will help accelerate the sinking of the ship that is Indian democracy.

It is often said that the threat to democracy comes from communal-majoritarian politics and authoritarian leaders. Undoubtedly, there is truth in this statement. It is often said that the threat is aggravated due to a weak and divided Opposition. That too is a reality. But all these are surface phenomena. The real threat arises out of deeper political realities. There have been instances in modern history — some very famous ones as in Germany of the 1930s — when democracies have committed suicide. People start looking for a strong and supreme leader who can demolish an imagined enemy. Democracy is imperilled, then, by democratic processes themselves.

There are large parts of this country where the devil can win elections far more easily than the angels. There are times when the electorate showers affection on its tormentors and votes against its own interests. Consider the following. Those who presided over the disaster last year in which thousands lost their lives due to shortage of oxygen are declaring without batting an eyelid that not a single person died due to oxygen shortage. Dead bodies floated on the river and more were abandoned half-buried in the sands of the riverbed. What could be a more heart-wrenching example of callous rulers first tormenting and then mocking the very people who elect them than this? And yet, can one be sure that these rulers will be punished in the elections?

If all this sounds like blaming the hapless people, then what about the not-so-hapless — the educated, the resourceful, the opinion-makers — who can read, calculate, articulate and assess? Can they not calculate how many lakhs of crores have been mopped up from the common people through petrol, diesel and gas prices; how many lakhs of crores have been transferred to the corporate capital and the filthy rich through bank frauds and through other dubious means? Did demonetisation end black money?

I am saying all this because I should know. I should have known better in 2013-14. At that time, I was part of the movement that ended up paving the way for the unprecedented crisis the country is now faced with. I thought that “India against Corruption” was the harbinger of revolution against corruption. I still think that corruption existed under that regime. But where is any comparison with today’s wholesale and colossal corruption, one form of which is the massive transfer of public assets to the select corporate groups? Where do I find an Anna Hazare now and how do I ask a Vinod Rai for the actual size of 2-G losses to the State? Should I not ask Arvind Kejriwal to explain how did his political journey that started with the Lokpal movement end up with fooling the people with free pilgrimages and neighbourhood yog-shalas? How does one explain the Delhi government paying for the commercials that exhort young people to become job-givers rather than job-seekers? Modi was more realistic when he asked young people to make a living by selling pakodas.

I am a Punjabi and I am an Indian. I am proud to be both. For half a century, Punjab has been my karmabhoomi. How am I supposed to feel when this glorious part of India appears prone to the same machinations from which more unfortunate parts of the country are suffering? Is Punjab going to see communal and sectarian conspiracies that will usher us into an era of lynchings and riots? My hope has been that Punjab is better than that. My hope is that Punjab will help avert rather than facilitate the sinking of Indian democracy. But the emerging political situation is a cause for great concern.

Elsewhere, rats may be jumping off a supposedly sinking ship, but in Punjab, the Captain himself has jumped off. If for four-and-a-half years, the Congress government was hand-in-glove with the opponents of the ruling party and at the eleventh hour, the deposed head of that government joins them, are Punjabis going to clap because the Congress has been punished? Or are they going to reward the B-team of the BJP, which is what AAP has become?

The Congress has never been a tightly knit and ideology-driven party. It has been replete with opportunists and hidden or not-so-hidden communalists. It has been natural for many Congress leaders to walk over to the BJP. The Congress is going through convulsions because it is trying to reinvent itself. A Congress that is ideologically committed to oppose the communal-majoritarian politics and resist a supremely authoritarian leader is trying to emerge from its own past. This difficult struggle is being led by a young brigade that is trying to occupy the left-of-centre space in the mainstream political spectrum. That is why the corporate sector too has turned into a sworn enemy of this kind of Congress.

The fate of Indian democracy at this juncture hangs on the outcome of this struggle. The ship can be prevented from sinking only if all progressive and secular-modernist forces realise the epochal importance of this struggle and come to the aid of the new Congress that is trying to emerge under the leadership of the young brigade.

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