The Hindu Business Line : From party politics to people politics

How to restore the country back to its sovereign masters, “We, the people”, away from the clutches of the political class, is the most pressing question facing the polity today. For, without such an effort, attention to systems and structures alone cannot sustain the true spirit of democracy.

Every citizen must regard it his duty to preserve the sanctity of the three core prime movers of democracy — the will of the people, government with the consent of the governed and equality before law — so that they pervade every sphere of national life. Failure to do so will only make the people victims of oppressively rapacious party-cum-power politics and drive them to taking law into their hands and look to vigilantism as the solution.

Already, there are alarming signs of such loss of faith in established institutions. There have been demonstrations, blocking of road and traffic, and even, as recently witnessed in Bihar and UP, blinding and lynching of purported thieves, with every chance of their increasing in frequency and violence.

A recent editorial in a journal of an organisation fighting corruption called for ‘encounter killings’ of political and bureaucratic ‘demons’ by the public.

This is not as bizarre as it sounds. Some time ago, the whole country rapturously applauded when a Supreme Court Bench of Justices S. B. Sinha and Markandeya Katju said: “The only way to rid this country of corruption is to hang a few of you (accused in a corruption case) on the lamp post. The law does not permit us to do it but otherwise we would prefer to hang people like you to the lamp post... Everywhere, we have corruption. Nothing is free from corruption. Everybody wants to loot this country. The only solution for this menace is to hang some people in the public so that it acts as a deterrent on others.”

Prussian conformity

This is what governance piggy-backing on party politics has brought the country to. The representative forums of State Assemblies and Parliament only peripherally reflect the will of the people since under the first-past-the-post system, candidates are declared elected on securing sometimes as low as 10 per cent of the total electorate of the constituency.

The credibility of those who win is vitiated by booth-capturing and rigging that are freely resorted to by parties.

Everywhere, as a Western political scientist put it, parties loom so large as intermediaries between the elected representative and the people that they have become ‘regular intimidation agencies which make the members...simple puppets on the parliamentary stage’, imposing a kind of ‘Prussian conformity’ in the division lobbies.

There have been suggestions to change the electoral system to the presidential form, or proportional or list method, but mere tinkering with the system will not be of any avail until the people as a whole are imbued with the democratic temper.

Whatever the mode of election, lifting politics from the depths into which it has sunk will only be possible if the people are vigilant and apply the correctives through well-organised and effectively-run civil society organisations.

They should boldly come forward to put up their own people’s candidates of impeccable credentials, elbowing out party candidates.

Sporadic attempts are being made, and some constituencies have seen impressive victories by civil society candidates whose campaigns have been characterised by low expenses and high people’s participation. This must become a regular feature throughout the country.

Voters must also be given the choice of a new button ‘None of the above’ in the electronic voting machine to enable them to reject the whole party bunch and put the political class in its place.

The Government must quickly act on the Election Commission’s proposal already before it to this effect.

B. S. RAGHAVAN