REWIND
New
Delhi, 19 January 2023
NEW MODEL OF GOVERNANCE IN NEW YEAR
By Inder Jit
Familiar resolutions
and exhortations are withusagain in the New Year, which also marks the
beginning of the new decade. The air is appropriately full of bon homie and
good cheer. Nevertheless there is a feeling of uneasiness deep down as most
people seek an answer to one question:
What will 1990 and the nineties bring for India? Stability and progress or
instability and strife? Many hopes have nodoubt been roused by the new
government. It has promised, among other things, “to restore the dignity of the
individual” and “to adopt an alternative model of governance and development
based on socialist ideals of economic equality and social justice …” But
disquiet persists and many ask: Will the V.P Singh Government last and, if so,
how long? Will the National Front continue to place the country before self or
will its leaders repeat 1979? Will the BJP and the Left Front parties continue
to extend full support to Mr. V.P. Singh? Or will they fall apart in the
pursuit of their pet politics?
Expectedly, crystal
gazers and political pundit have been in great demand over the past week Answers
vary, depending largely on personal predilections and respective attitudes to
Mr. V.P. Singh and Mr. Rajiv Gandhi. What 1990 may bring is anybody’s guess.
One thing alone is clear. The V.P. Singh Government has a fair chance of
survival for one simple reason. Every party, big or small, and every MP want
the ninth Lok Sabha to survive, notwithstanding its hung character. The recent
election has left all of them exhausted not only physically and financially but
also in spirit. Nobody is in a position to even think in terms of fighting
another election for at least two to three years. Already, the burden of the
approaching Assembly poll in several states including Maharashtra, Gujarat,
Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh and Assam, weighs heavily on
the top leaders of all the parties, not to mention the smaller fries. The
ensuing poll is certain to leave the parties more exhausted and to make them
think even less in terms of another general election.
But a little will
depend upon the outcome of the V.P. Singh Government’s decision to actively
probe the Bofors scandal. Its Ministers are confident of getting at the truth
and, to quote one senior leader, “In fixing Mr. Rajiv Gandhi”. Indeed, one
leader asserted: “Once Mr. Rajiv Gandhi is seen to be guilty of having
benefitted personally or having protected someone close to him, the Congress
MPs will have to pause and ponder – and taken hard decisions. Remember, all of
us and most Congress-I men belong basically to the old Congress culture…” The
Congress-I leaders, on the other hand, talk confidently of coming out clean.
Mr. Rajiv Gandhi asserted in the Lok Sabha at one stage last week: All the
accusations will be proved wrong.” His aides later added: “Once our leader is
proved clean, we will romp back to power. There will then be no stopping us….”
In another case, the outcome is almost certain to clear the ground for a ball
game at the Centre in which one to the two --- Mr. V.P. Singh and Rajiv Gandhi
--- will surely come to acquire the upperhand.
That too, will depend
on the V.P. Government’s ability to give us model of Governance and, bluntly
put, to prove Winston Churchill wrong once again --- as was done by Nehru,
Sardar Patel, Maulana Azad and other Congress leaders in their time. What he
said in the House of Commons in 1947while opposing the bill granting
independence to India needs to be recalled even if the words caused great hurt.
“Liberty,” he then said, “is man’s birth right. However, to give the reins of
government to the Congress at this juncture, is to hand over the destiny of the
hungrymillions into the hands of rascals, rogues and free booters. Not a bottle
of water or a loaf of bread shall escape taxation. Only the air will be free
and the blood of these hungry millions will be on the head of Mr. Atlee. India
will be lost in political squabbles. It will take a thousand years for them to
enter the periphery of philosophy of politics. Today we hand over the reins of
government to men of straw of whom no trace will be found after years.”
Many hark back today
to the hopes and expectations of Mahatma Gandhi and Nehru in the context of the
promise of “an alternative model of governance.” I, for one would, however, like
to remind that readers of masterly speech by Dr. B.R. Ambedkar on the concluding
day of constituent Assembly. He said, “Will Indians place the country above
their creed or will they place creed above the country? What would happen to
her democratic constitution? Will she be able to maintain it or will she lose
it again?” India, he said, was not new to democracy. Time was when India has
studded with republics and even where there were monarchies, they were either
elected or limited. They were never absolute. Again, it was not as though India
did not know Parliaments. Not only were their Parliaments but the Sanghasobserved
rules. They had rules regarding seating arrangements, rules regarding motions,
resolutions, quorum, whip, counting of votes, voting by ballot, censure motion,
regularization, resjudicata etc.
India had lost this
democratic system, Dr. Ambedkar added and asked: “Will she lose it a second
time”? Significantly, he answered, “I do not know. But it is quite possible in
a country like India --- where democracy from its long disuse must be regarded
as something new --- there is a danger of democracy giving place to
dictatorship. It is quite possible for this new born democracy to retain its
form but give place to dictatorship in fact. If there is a landside, the danger
of the second possibility becoming actuality is much greater.” He next asked:
If we wish to maintain democracy not merely in form but also in fact, what must
we do? “The first thing,” he added, “We must do is to hold to constitutional
methods of achieving our social and economic objectives.” It meant that “we
must abandon the method of civil disobedience, non-cooperation and satyagraha.”
Where Constitutional methods were open, there was “no justification for
unconstitutional methods.” These methods were nothing “but the Grammar of
Anarchy”.
Dr. Ambedkar added: “The
second thing we must do is to observe the caution which John Stuart Mill has
given to all interested in the maintenance of democracy, namely, not to lay
their liberties at the feet of even a great man or to trust him with powers
which enable him to subvert their institutions.” There was nothing wrong in being
grateful to a great man. But he quoted the Irish patriot Daniel O’Connel to
assert: “No man can be grateful at the cost of his honour, no woman can be
grateful at the cost of her chastity and no nation can be grateful at the cost
of its liberty.” This caution he pointed out, was far more important in the
case of India than any other country. For in India, Bhakti or hero-worship was
a “road to degradation and eventual dictatorship.” The third thing, he said, we
must do was to make our political democracy a social democracy as well. Social
democracy implied recognition of liberty, equality and fraternity as the
principle of life. The three formed a union of trinity. To divorce one from
other would defeat the very purpose of democracy.
Equally important
today is what Dr. Rajendra Prasad stated as the President of the Constituent
Assembly: “We have prepared a democratic Constitution. But successful working
of democratic institutions requires in those who have to work them willingness
to respect the view-point of others, capacity for compromise and accommodation.
Many things which cannot be written in a Constitution are done by conventions.
The way in which we have been able to draw this Constitution without taking
recourse to voting and to divisions in lobbies strengthens that hope. Whatever
the Constitution may or may not provide, the welfare of the country will depend
upon the way in which, the country is administered. That will depend upon the
men who administer it... If the people who are elected and capable and men of
character and integrity, they would be able to make the best even of a
defective Constitution. If they are lacking in these, the Constitution cannot
help the country. India needs today nothing more than a set of honest men who
will have the interest of the country before them.”
Old is not necessarily
gold. We do not have to stick by all the old rules of game. At the same time,
we cannot allow the law of the jungle to take over. In one single generation,
we have degenerated from an honest societyinto a dishonest one. We must cry a
halt to the new culture which has developed since 1969 and which saw many
established norms and values crash. More and more people are today inclined to
be a law unto themselves at their respective levels with little regard for
integrity, fairplay or truth. Often rules and situations are fixed and
manipulated to suit one’s own interest in the single-minded pursuit of power.
If the old rules are outmoded, new rules must be drawn up. But we cannot do
without rules. There was also need for much else: to reaffirm our commitment to
the Constitution and give ourselves a code of conduct and values --- values all
can share and values which will rekindle trust between man and man. It’s time
to heed Dr. Ambedkar’s warning and act.----INFA
(Copyright, India News
& Feature Alliance)
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