Sunday, October 18, 2009

Dictator Democracy

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/opinion/edit-page/Dictator-democracy/articleshow/5120815.cms
An article Re-print of Jug Suraiya's Dictator Democracy on the ToI. While the treatment of the subject is sarcastic and humorous, it asks a very sensitive question: Whether government decrees and force feed democrcay like the one in Maharashtra is in true spirit of democracy.

Can democracy be a democracy and a dictatorship, both at the same time? Yes, it can, if it's Indian democracy. The Maharashtra government decreed that when the state went to assembly polls, Mumbai would forcibly be shut down shops, restaurants, schools, offices, factories, all closed so that people, with nothing else to be distracted by or to do, would be forced to vote.

The reason for this drastic measure to force-feed democracy or at least elections to Mumbaikars is that the otherwise 'can do' city is notoriously 'can't do' or 'won't do' when it comes to voting. This was evident in the last Lok Sabha polls in which the voter turnout was just over 40 per cent. The fact that the polls coincided with a long weekend which lured many Mumbaikars to out-of-town holidays was deemed to be largely responsible for the poor showing. However, sarkari concern was voiced over the seeming political apathy of a city which had just suffered a murderous terrorist attack and should have been all gung-ho about manning the barricades of democracy as represented by the ballot box, instead of swanning off on holiday.

To preclude the possibility of the assembly elections also proving a non-event in terms of turnout, the authorities reportedly issued orders that anyone failing to comply with the shutdown diktat was liable to face arrest under Section 135-B of the Representation of the People Act, 1951. To ensure compliance with this closed-door policy, special squads patrolled the city to make sure that no one was subverting democracy by trying to sneak into a school, or an office, or a factory, or a shop, or a restaurant. Go to vote. Or you might find yourself in jail: that was the message, willy-nilly, that officialdom sent out not just to Mumbaikars but to all of us who are citizens of this democracy.

Mumbai's case is symptomatic of a fundamental problem of our democracy. Democracy is supposed to be about empowering people, the common citizens, and helping them to get on with their daily lives as best they can (by going to schools, offices, factories, etc). But our sarkar seems convinced that democracy is only about empowering itself, at the expense of the people and their day-to-day needs.

India's political class and the successive governments that it forms, and which often comprise the strangest of bedfellows sees democracy only in terms of elections. It doesn't really matter which party comes into power, for in the end as a number of blatantly opportunistic alliances and coalitions have shown they are all fundamentally the same: cynical exploiters of the people.

Or at least that's the message that all our political parties have over the years been communicating, consciously or otherwise, to an increasingly sceptical electorate. The way our political parties, all our political parties of all shades and stripes, appear to see it is that the function of our democracy is only to hold periodic elections in which voters will, forcibly if necessary, vote one or other, or several, of these parties into power. Having fulfilled that basic duty (of having voted a politician into power) the voter can go jump. The voter's and the politician's democratic responsibility is over. Elections are the end all and be all of our democracy. And never mind what happens in between, never mind the persistent hardships and despair that citizens continue to face in their daily lives.

This is the real meaning of the Mumbai bandh on polling day: in our democracy the voter has no right of education, employment, earning a livelihood, whatever other than the right to vote. Indeed, as the Mumbai authorities would have it, the voter's right to vote is not just a right but an enforceable obligation. In other words, you've got to vote, whether you like it or not, whether you feel it's going to better your daily life in any way or not.

Jai ho to the democratic dictatorship of India that is Bharat.

Sunday, October 11, 2009

Noble Cause or Noble Duplicity

http://www.livemint.com/2009/10/11213737/A-prize-to-bind-nuclear-India.html: a Mint article on Obama, the geo-politics of disarmament and winning the Noble prize.

Prizes are usually given after the fact: Herta Mueller and Venkatraman Ramakrishnan first write about Romania or research ribosomes—they later get Nobels for their work. Then, there’s the strange occasion where a prize is awarded before the fact: US President Barack Obama wins the Nobel Peace Prize for just dreaming to rid the world of nuclear weapons. If that dream comes anywhere close to becoming fact, India will find itself with nothing to celebrate.

On the same day that Obama was awarded the Nobel, he sent a letter to the US Congress or “certification” under the US-India civilian nuclear deal. This certified that the US would work to “further restrict the transfers of equipment and technology related to the enrichment of uranium and reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel”.

There’s no cause and effect here as yet: US law requires this general certification. But what if there’s cause and effect in the future?

The Nobel is sure to give Obama affirmation about his ideas for a nuclear weapons-free world. The trouble is that he is unlikely to be able to get countries such as Iran and North Korea to back off from the path they’ve chosen. He is also unlikely to be able to get Russia and China to disarm before the US takes such steps. That leaves players such as India that are considered easy to arm-twist in this quest.

It’s no secret that the White House has pressured India in the last few months on this issue. Post-Nobel, there’s the danger this pressure will increase.

Part of this centres on the US Democratic Party’s perception of India as being “obstructionist”. While they kowtow to China, progressives refuse to acknowledge, unlike—and perhaps even in reaction to—Bush, the exception the civilian nuclear deal seeks to give India.

The other part centres on what US journalist Walter Lippmann observed in 1943 about the disarmament movement—that it had been “tragically successful in disarming the (very) nations that believed in disarmament”. India, as its no-first-use principle shows, shudders at the thought of deploying such weapons. Others don’t share that apprehension. Yet, India’s responsible behaviour makes it the low-hanging fruit the disarmament ayatollahs can pick on. The true rogue states are instead appeased.

India must resist these pressures and double standards. This means not only forceful diplomacy, but—in light of the US-India talks that recently commenced in Vienna over reprocessing nuclear fuel and that further facilitate commercial negotiations—also making sure it doesn’t rely too much on the US for materials or diplomatic favours.