India After Independence: 1947-2000 (79 page)

We may point out in the end that a federation is not a weaker form of union; it is a form of strong union suitable to a diverse society. Similarly, a strong Centre and strong states are not antithetical to each other in a federation. This was also the conclusion of the Sarkaria Commission, appointed in 1980 to examine Centre-state relations. The federal principle requires that both the Centre and the states should be strong enough to perform their functions and to deliver on their programmes and promises. Nor is there any contradiction between a strong nation-state and decentralization of power. Democracy, national cohesion and development in a diverse society like India’s require not greater centralization but greater devolution of power and decentralization of decision-making and decision-implementation.

In fact, greater decentralization and devolution of power to the third tier of government, i.e., local self-government, was a basic part of the national movement’s political-administrative agenda as also of the constitutional design of independent India. Consequently, an attempt was made in the late fifties to transfer a great deal of local administrative power to elected zilla (district) parishads and village panchayats, with a view to develop grassroots democracy and enable effective political participation by the people and involve them in the planning and implementation of various developmental schemes. The results of this attempt were, however, utterly disappointing because these third-tier institutions were soon downgraded and stifled by the bureaucracy and used by the landed elite to enhance the power they already exercised through control over land and greater access to state administration and local bureaucracy. Furthermore, the state governments were adverse to parting with any of their powers to institutions of local self-government. The only states where the Panchayati Raj (rule) experiment bore fruit in the eighties were Karnataka and West Bengal. The panchayats have, however, been restructured on a sounder footing all over the country in recent years and are beginning to show better results. One million of their three million members are women. On the other hand, the municipal government in most of India’s cities and towns continues to be inefficient and corrupt and lacking in effective administrative power; and there has been a continuous decline in urban facilities such as roads, parks, street lighting, water and electric supply, sewage, health care and sanitation, schooling and control of crime and pollution.

Political parties, which are the kingpins of a democratic political structure, have gradually become the weakest link in India’s political system.
Political parties and the party system have been decaying and suffer from several maladies. Among these are: inter- and intra-party instability; intense infighting and factionalism within parties; weak and inefficient organization in many of them, resulting in their fragmentation; the continuous proliferation of parties, leading to the formation of unstable coalitions; continuous shifting of loyalties of political leaders and workers from one party to another; lack of democracy and debate within most parties; failure to mobilize and provide support to developmental, welfare and social justice policies, with non-participation and lack of mobilization of large segments of disadvantaged groups except during elections. Most political parties function without any long-term political programme or developmental design and increasingly live from hand to mouth, diverting political debate from programmes and policies to peripheral or personalized issues. Many of them rely upon appeal to caste, religion or regional chauvinism. For example, since 1989, all-India elections have been fought over such non-issues as the Bofors and hawala scandals, the reconstruction of a non-existing temple, reservations of a few thousand jobs in government service, the merits of a Vajpayee over a foreign-born Sonia Gandhi, or victory over a few hundred intruders in Kargil.

To retain or acquire power, political parties have been indulging in unlimited populism, placating the voters with proliferating grants and subsidies, promises of free electricity, cheap rice and so on. Many parties and political leaders have been weakening political institutions by emphasizing their personal role and rule. One symptom of India’s political malaise is the refusal of political leaders to retire, however old or discredited they might be. They firmly believe in the old Sanskrit proverb:
‘Trishna na jeerna vayemesh jeenam.’
(It is we who have become old and not our desires).

An important consequence is that the political leadership has been losing authority among the people and is, therefore, unable to make the necessary institutional improvements and changes in society even if it wants to and even when it is backed by the required electoral majority. The more dangerous result is that the entire realm of politics has been getting devalued. There is among the people a growing distrust of and a cynicism towards politicians and political parties. Most people tend to associate politics and public life with hypocrisy and corruption. Because public life has thus become so discredited, idealistic young people have not been entering politics; those who do so regard politics primarily as an avenue for their social and economic mobility.

Yet, political workers, leaders and parties are critical to the functioning of political democracy and good governance. To sneer at them or to denigrate politics is a sure recipe for political disaster and an invitation to authoritarianism, fascism and militarism.

The decay of Congress organization has been serious since the democratic polity has developed so far under its broad umbrella or dominance. For years now, the flabby Congress party organization has done little systematic political work at the grassroots and has been little
more than an electoral machine, though it has become increasingly ineffective even as such.

As we have seen earlier, though Indira Gandhi succeeded in replenishing the party’s social support base, she weakened its organizational structure further by centralizing its functioning and increasing its dependence on a single leader. Unfortunately, no alternative political formation has emerged to perform the political functions Congress has performed as ‘the central integrative institution of the system.’ Congress is still the only national party which has a presence in all parts of the country and which is committed to secular democracy with a left-of-centre political character.

When in the Opposition, non-Congress parties have failed to provide responsible, rational and effective criticism. When in power, as in 1977, 1989 or 1998, they have not been able to put forward an alternative national developmental programme or agenda. Moreover, most often from 1967 till this day, with rare exceptions as in Kerala and West Bengal, they have formed unprincipled, opportunistic alliances to get into power, ignoring all ideological, programmatic or policy differences.

Among the opposition parties, only CPM and BJP have been partial exceptions to the process of the decay and in some cases disintegration and disappearance of political parties. CPM, too, has been stagnating for sometime. It has been rigid and dogmatic both in its organizational structure and political programme and policies. Even though it has accepted the logic of the parliamentary democratic system, its programme fails to reflect this recognition fully. While its political practice follows Euro-Communism or is social democratic, its guiding theoretical framework continues to be Stalinist, based on the notion of the violent overthrow of the capitalist system. Moreover, it too has no national developmental perspective within a parliamentary democratic framework. The only choice it offers the people is that of an alternative social system.

BJP is the only political party which has grown continuously in recent years. The growth of BJP is, however, ominous not only because of its appeal to religious and communal sentiments but even more so because of the RSS domination over it. Its basic cadre, leadership and ideological framework is provided by the RSS which seeks to establish Hindu Rashtra based on the exclusion of the minorities. Organizationally and ideologically undemocratic, the RSS ideology represents the Indian version of fascism. Without RSS, BJP would become, despite its communal outlook, just another right-wing party—a right-wing version of Congress—which emphasizes Hinduness or has a particular appeal to some sections of Hindus in the manner of the Christian Democratic parties of Italy and Germany or the US Republican party.

The party has grown in recent years because of the gradual disappearance of all other right-wing parties, decline of Congress, and the support of the burgeoning middle classes, which have, however, hardly any commitment to equity and social justice. But BJP, too, is beginning to suffer from many of the ailments of Congress as it grows electorally as an alternative to it on an all-India scale.

In recent years, a large number of regional or one-state, one-leader parties have come into existence as a result of specific local factors, the decline of Congress, and the immense possibilities of making economic gains through politics.

The prevalence of large-scale corruption, growth of crime and criminalization of politics and police have become major threats to India’s development, democracy and moral health.

The colonial administration was from the beginning inaccessible to the common people and ridden with corruption except at the top where salaries were very high. But because of the underdeveloped character of the economy and the limited character of the colonial state’s functioning corruption affected only a small segment of the people. However, with the introduction of the permit-licence-quota regime, shortages of consumer goods, and high taxation during the Second World War, blackmarketing, and tax evasion became widespread. But corruption had not yet pervaded the administration or touched the political system.

Economic development, a rapid and large increase in the development and regulatory functions of the state opened up vast areas of the economy and administration to corruption. Political patronage could also now be used to gain access to the economic resources of the state and to acquire permits, licences and quotas.

There were major signals in the Nehru era that political and administrative corruption, including large-scale tax evasion, was beginning to burgeon. Strong and timely steps could, however, have checked further erosion of the system as also reversed the trend. In the fifties, the tentacles of corruption were not yet far-reaching and major barriers to it existed in the form of a political leadership and cadre with their roots in the freedom struggle and Gandhian ethos, a largely honest bureaucracy, especially in its middle and higher reaches, and a judiciary with high integrity. But little was done in the matter. Nehru did take up individual cases of corruption but no strategy was evolved to deal with the roots of the problem and to act expeditiously.

As a result, the scale of corruption went on increasing as the government began to assume a larger role in the life of the people. Over time, the political system too began to fall prey to corruption. Not tackled at the lower levels, corruption gradually reached the higher levels of administration and politics. With added fillip provided by political patronage, rampant and all-pervading corruption began to engulf and corrode the administration. Corruption is, however, no longer the preserve of the bureaucrats and the politicians. No section of society is free from it; the media, academia, the professions and the judiciary have also got tainted by it. Today, so far as the common citizens are concerned, corruption, along with administrative delays and inefficiency, has become the bane of their lives.

The saving grace, however, is that there are still a large number of honest officials and political workers and leaders, but they are neither rewarded nor given recognition for being honest and are overshadowed by the constant denunciation, and even exaggeration of corruption in administration and public life.

A major source of corruption in the Indian political system since the late sixties is the funding of elections. Elections have been becoming costlier by the day giving unfair advantage to those backed by moneybags and black money.

For years, communal and caste riots have been initiating hooligans into politics. As a result of communalism and casteism, laxity in enforcement of law and order, corruption, and the use of money and muscle power in elections there has been the criminalization of politics in some parts of the country, with a nexus developing between politicians, businessmen, bureaucracy, police and criminals. The two naked expression of this unhealthy phenomenon are the large scale on which money, criminal gangs and civil servants are used for ‘booth-capturing’ and to rig elections in some states and the criminal records of some of those elected to the parliament and the state legislatures. One positive development in this respect, however, is the growing debate in the country on the ways and means—ideological, political, and institutional—needed to deal with the twin evils of corruption and the role of criminal elements and money power in politics.

Despite a certain disarray and deterioration in some of India’s political institutions they have continued to function and shown a resilience that has surprised many political scientists and dismayed the prophets of doom. Despite ineffective government, unstable central governments in recent years, greater violence in society, corruption in administration and political life, decay in political parties and party system, the prevalence of widespread cynicism regarding politics and political institutions, India’s democracy has shown remarkable vitality and continues to flourish, and its institutions have taken deep root. The authority of the electoral system has gone unchallenged so far. Elections, conducted under the watchful eyes of an independent Election Commission, still validate leaders and parties. The weapon of the vote is cherished and freely used by the people, especially the poor and the intelligentsia, to express their desires, to show their preference for particular policies and to punish at the ballot-box those who promise but do not deliver.