The Ramanathans of Janaagraha recently wrote an Op-Ed piece in the Indian Express where they made some crucial points with respect to Democracy in India. Quite rightly they have narrated the complexity of the situation that lied in front of the stalwarts of the country in 1947. The choices were difficult and tradeoffs were complex. However, they have not done justice to the history of India while narrating the complexity. Neither have they done a holistic evaluation of the options in front of our forefathers. This write-up hopes to touch upon those aspects for further consideration by the larger readers of the country.
In the modern sense of democracy, they are quite right that India took a big leap in opting for Universal suffrage. At the outset, its certainly a demonstration of faith in the people. They articulate 3 crucial concepts of nation building and state building as two essential parts of democracy. They are right that the Universal Adult Franchise co-opted the entire country in nation building and made everybody an equal partner in this process. They quite rightly point out that this very big leap has derailed the state building process.
But the reasons given in support of Universal Suffrage and the suspicions of Upper Class are misplaced thought. There are two aspects to this
1. The reason for the kind of derailment of the State Capacity building we faced was not in the Universal Suffrage but in the nature of the Universal Suffrage that we designed. It is necessary to note that an individual cannot meaningfully elect a representative for the Corporation, Legislative Assembly and Parliament even in the future because the it is nearly impossible to elect evaluate the roles and responsibilities of such representatives and match an individual against it. The complexity of electing is in the increasing order of the three mentioned. Such an election is meaningfully possible for only a chosen set of Experts. And this has nothing to do with the Caste. In a nutshell geographic representation for a role that is fundamentally in a totally different realm is by design flawed.
Not that we did not have options. Such options are already in use but in great limitation. India could have designed a Parliament of Professionals. The Professionals could be drawn from a very wide representation such as Farmers, Doctors, Engineers, Daily Wage Labourers, Businessmen etc., This of course required a different vision of Democracy and Parliament. A detailed articulation of this system is beyond the scope of this response but suffice to say that conceptually this system has two advantages.
A. This does not harm the concept of Universal Franchise. Everybody has a Vote but will part of the election process of not all candidates. Everybody chooses a professional constituency where they earn their Voting rights based on their background.
B. A Farmer knows how to evaluate somebody standing for that constituency - so do doctors, engineers etc., This effectively means that people vote candidates based on their specific background and contribution and not in a very general sense. This makes choices possible, easy and effective and thereby contributing to a meaningful representation in the country. This ofcourse means that the Design of representative constituencies need to be holistic and comprehensive.
C. This would have further weakened the Caste system. The Parliament by default would be a common platform for all professions. People are representing their virtual communities of professions rather than the physical communities of caste. They are answerable to their virtual communities. A farmer sits along with a doctor not because they manipulated and won by the virtue of their belonging to a caste but by creating a meaningful engagement with doctors across regions.
Fundamentally this could have been done without compromising Universal Adult Franchise.
2. Its untrue that there was no precedent of Democracy in India in the pre-British era. The organization of India into communities where each community functioned independently is essentially a vision of democracy unique to India. Ofcourse, its a communitarian view of democracy and not the modern universal democracy but not to recognize the democratic nature of the communitarian society of India would be wholly unjust. Two critical examples are worth noting
A. The Uttiramerur Inscription on the temple of Uttiramerur clearly establishes the nature of democracy that existed in the town/village of Uttiramerur in the 10th Century AD. Since the whole thing is inscribed on the stone walls of the temple - it can no more be denied as a figment of imagination as the historians of India have done post 1947. Further, the democractic system and process articulated in such detail give a clear view of the intellectual depth and practical genius of people of that time. There is no reason to believe that the people of Uttiramerur were exceptional geniuses much against the ethos of that time. They were very much people of that era and if we dig deep we will certainly find more such instances. We need to have open eyes if not open minds.
B. The Princely State of Mysore introduced a Legislative Council where elected representatives from the Society participated in the Legislative activities of the state. This evolved continuously and grew in size over a period of time. It is important to note that this happened when there no pressure on the King to institutionalize such reform. It was the natural orientation of the Kings to include the larger society that drove them to bring these changes. It is also to be noted that life around the Princely states of India were better than the British ruled regions of the country.
Lastly, India would not have sustained democracy if such an ethos was already not existing in the country. There are any number of countries where enthusiastic progressives have forced democracy but the countries have largely collapsed to worse forms of undemocratic extremities. If India has sustained then naturally something in the society must have sustained it despite the state capacity not catching up with the democratic intentions and processes. The question could our vision of democracy have leveraged the solid foundation and ethos to create a thriving version of the same and placed itself more comfortably or created an architecture thats a burden on the foundation.
This is not to belittle the Constitution stalwarts. They made hard choices sincerely and honestly. But are we going to evaluate the choices hard to create a more meaningful architecture for the future or going to give them and ourselves a walkover in this process.
Nevertheless a good article by the Ramanathans that make us think meaningfully in this direction.
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