Open Forum
New Delhi, 18 March 2010
They And The People
GOVERNMENT FOR
POLITICIANS
By Dharmendra Nath
(IAS (Retd)
Are politicians a class apart? A Laxman cartoon shows a man
sitting in luxurious surroundings. He says to his visitor ‘You are telling me
about the difficulty of living. You must have seen me going through hell before
I joined politics and became what I am today’. What can one add?
We see around us the emergence of a class of professional
politicians, even hereditary politicians who seem to presume that running the
government or meddling with it is their birth right. Politics is their
business. They are not good for anything else. They lobby for themselves, their
family even their extended family to retain their toehold. Odd though it sounds
but Parliamentary and Assembly seats are already being described as
‘hereditary’ family seats.
So strong is the inheritance culture in our politics that we
cannot imagine in the political class a father telling his son that he has
nothing to give him and that he must work his way up. The father in fact leaves
no stone unturned to induct his son or heir in his place. While it eases
matters for them, the problem for the society is that its future is thereby indirectly
mortgaged to its past. Same old set of people. Upholding of family traditions
etc. How does change come in? How do others get a chance? How do we become more
inclusive?
Democracy and dynasticism should be opposites. But here they
are not. Our democracy seems to be merely seeking a democratic endorsement of
the dynastic principle. We are harking back to monarchy while professing to
practice democracy. B R Ambedkar warned us early enough ‘Democracy in India is only a
top dressing in an Indian soil which is essentially undemocratic’.
Politicians actually tend to see themselves as a class
apart, an exclusive ruling set. They do not even live with their constituents.
They occasionally visit them like absentee landlords of the past. Their
political party is their fiefdom and they delight in being feted and called party
“supremos”.
Greek democracy of 6th century BC chose its
representatives – their Council of Five Hundred and earlier Council of Four
Hundred - by draw of lots. That gave every one an equal chance. Money could
play no part. Further, they barred re-election. That gave more people a chance.
That also prevented creation and
consolidation of a vested interest.
Our Election law permits a person to contest elections
indefinitely, enabling him to perpetuate himself. After him his heirs step in. Popular
participation which is the essence of democracy is lost.
Originally the political class used to be of representative
politicians. If people got elected they entered politics and public service. They
were in fact called to public service. But today’s class of power-hungry politicians
looks at politics in quite a different way. Their primary aim appears not so
much to represent the people as to capture the resources and the power of the
government through the electoral process. Their focus is not governance, but control
of government resources. Manipulating the voter rather than representing him is
the core agenda. All they want are Lenin’s ‘useful idiots’.
Our Prime Minister Manmohan Singh while addressing
Collectors’ Conference in Delhi
way back in June, 2005 said ‘Politics in a democracy has to be a purposeful
instrument of social change….unfortunately, many a time politics becomes the
instrument of self-aggrandizement. And many a time, it ceases to be a
purposeful instrument of social change’. That indeed is our tragedy.
The overwhelming impression is that politics is about money.
Even candidates seeking political elections stand out as a distinct class. In
the last Haryana Assembly elections 2009 almost 50 per cent of the candidates
of all political parties were reported to be having assets of over Rs one
crore. The same was true of Arunachal Pradesh. How is this class representative
of a country whose 40 per cent population lives on less than Rs 20 a day? A
split of this order belies any claim to our being a representative democracy.
We see here a dichotomy instead of oneness of interests
between the elected and the electorate. This dichotomy is reflected in their
economic status and lifestyles too. A look at the areas inhabited by them and
by the ordinary people makes out the contrast.
Also we may contrast the display of security that surrounds them with
the lack of security that is all about us. Their tax arrears proclaim their
status as do their beacon lights. They are VVIPs. We have traveled very far
indeed from the days when rulers went incognito.
This forces us to pose the question, is our politics ceasing
to represent popular sentiment? For example, people would like to place loyalty
to the country above every thing else but the politician is ever on the look
out for the divisive vote which may give him a numerical advantage by pandering
to some narrow social or regional interest. The call to outsiders to move out
of Mumbai is only one such instance. Euphemistically it is called vote bank
politics. The same applies to Bangladesh
immigrants, they constitute another coveted vote bank.
People would like to see their democratic institutions free
and independent but the politician is devising ever more subtle and devious
ways to keep them under his control. It may be through pliable persons or
through rendering the institution itself toothless. Similarly, people would
like their State represented in the Rajya Sabha by an insider but the
politician thinks otherwise.
People would like the perpetrators of Ayodhya and Delhi Sikh
massacre brought to book but political considerations dictate otherwise.
For people sugar and kerosene are commodities of consumption
but for politician they are primarily political commodities. How much these commodities
should sell for, when should their prices be revised, are decisions
orchestrated by him with a very careful eye on how it is going to affect him.
Importance of party loyalty and of towing the party line further
complicates matters. Political parties have their own agenda and tactical
moves. They too have to survive. The party in fact acts as a third factor in a
politician’s relationship with the people. That is not the end of the story. Special
interest groups and their lobbyists too come in between.
We may like to bring in here outright perversions like ‘Cash
for votes’ where the elected representative voluntarily sells his vote to the
highest bidder for personal gain. He represents no one in doing so.
With rampant self-seeking and palpable differences of position
and perception between the elected and the electorate - which are further
complicated by considerations of party loyalty - how can we expect them to
understand and reflect real concerns of the people?
Howsoever they may try to fill the gap through rallies, the
divide between the politician and the people refuses to go away. Government of
the people, for the people and by the people is a good prescription but filling
it is not a simple and straight matter. ---INFA
(Copyright,
India News and Feature Alliance)
|