DEMOCRACY?EAST IS EAST AND WEST IS WEST!

America and India: the best Vs the biggest

It is less than a year since George W Bush Jr took over as the Most Powerful Person on Planet
Earth. Even before he had settled down in White House, two reports appeared in the press,
one after the other- his daughter had been punished by the courts for purchasing liquor,
claiming to be an adult, which she was not! That alone is reason enough for one to admire the
American democracy (read society, if you will). At the same time, just imagine the
insensitivity of raining bombs on an even-otherwise devastated country like Afghanistan and
killing innocents by the thousands, irrespective of age, sex or culpability, and dismissing the
whole thing as collateral damages! But viewed from the narrow perspective of nationalism
can the American attitude be faulted? Definitely not! Contrast that with India- the worlds
largest democracy! Really, can we even recognise any semblance of democracy in this
country except for the fact that some people are driven to cast votes periodically?

Games the Rich Nations Play

When you have to compare two societies what do you exactly compare? History? Culture?
Per capita income? Or, in simpler terms, the quality of life? The United Nations has listed the
social development factors and one state, Kerala, in India is supposed to be rated fairly high
on these indices. A Keralite myself, I have my doubts if it is not a ruse by the US of A, the
real face behind the UN mask, to play patron and fish in troubled waters. Kerala, which has
the dubious distinction of having elected a communist government to power, being ranked a
front-ranking state in an otherwise mismanaged and apparently developing country, by the
greatest capitalist country itself! Isnt it actually the US of A patting itself on the back as a
true leader who can see things for what they are, without favour or rancour?

They will call the shots because they can

Well, there seems to be an implicit acceptance that the West is materialistic and developed
and the East, with the exception of Japan, is mystical and (forever!) only developing. Can
there be a greater distortion of facts? Definitely, there are certain areas where the West, led,
obviously, by the America, is ahead of the rest, including the East. Fortunately for them and
unfortunately for the rest, the area of marketing themselves and their products seems to be one
where they seem to dominate, head over shoulders! Or why should it be that the Indians
should be running around to get an American patent for Basmati rice or turmeric or neem
cancelled? As Bharatratna Dr A P J Abdul Kalam remarked- only strength respects strength.
May be he also meant that strength respects only strength. The truism in both cannot be
dismissed.

Complacency or Ostrich-like approach never pays

The great scientist also asked- we lack the self-confidence to see ourselves as a developed
nation, self-reliant and self-assured; isn't this incorrect? Yes and no. Yes, because we have
what it needs to be a developed, self-reliant and self-assured nation. And no, because, whether
it was Nehru running to the UN seeking a solution to the Kashmir problem or Atal Bihari
Vajpayee bending over backwards, offering help to the US of A, to nab Osama Bin Laden, the
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basic issue is the same- lack self-confidence! May be only at the political leadership level; but
ancient wisdom says jaisa raja vaisa praja and in a democracy, every people get the
government they deserve!

Destined to be exploited without the colonial yoke too?

That the nation was divided to please the architect of modern India is now part of history.
To compound a crisis, Mahatma Gandhi, a true leader and a visionary, rightly wanted the
Congress Party to be disbanded so that its fair name was not tarnished by self-seeking
individuals. Nehru would have none of that. And so, inspite of the fact that the leaders who
took part in the freedom struggle got themselves distributed in various parties, post-
independence, Nehru managed to corner all the glory of the party that led (I repeat, LED) the
country to freedom. While the rules regarding trademarks prohibit people, other than the
owners of a particular trademark, from using anything even resembling that trademark, the
Congress Party, under Mr Nehru, also managed to retain the tricolor as their party flag. After
all, how much is the chakra different from the charka, discernibilty-wise atleast? To add
insult to injury, we also have Mr Nehru changing the surname of his Parsi son-in-law, Feroze,
from Gandhey to Gandhi. The English language gives a lot of leeway in spelling proper nouns
and in the bargain if people can be confused into believing there is a Mahatma Gandhi
connection, lineage-wise, to his progeny, why not? And by blaming an entire party for the
crime of one man, Nehru decimated the only viable opposition he could have had then. So
was born the dynasty in a democratic country. But did anybody realise then that democracy
itself had been given a silent burial? I doubt how many realise it even today!

Faltering right from the word Go!

We, the people of India.give to ourselves this Constitution wrote the architects of our
Constitution, the most voluminous document of its kind in the world. The preamble sets out
the main objectives of the Constitution. It is a legitimate aid in the construction of the
provisions of the Constitution. And what does the preamble promise? To secure to all its
citizens: Justice, social, economic and political; liberty of thought, expression, belief, faith
and worship; equality of status and opportunity; and to promote among them all, fraternity,
assuring the dignity of the individual and the unity and integrity of the nation. And after more
than half a century of its existence how much of this promise has been fulfilled? Our political
leaders, master deceptors that they are, may claim that 50 years is too short a period in the
history of any nation. One need to only point out at Japan (though geographically in the East,
by all other means it is with the West, isnt it?) and Germany to call their bluff. Also compare
the natural wealth of this great country with the impoverished Japan and any sane citizen will
be shocked at the mess that our political leaders have made of this nation.

Crumbling pillars of our Constitution

Legislature and Executive. To blame the politician alone will be unfair. In fact, I, for one, still
consider him a shade better than the members of the other two organs of our democracy- the
executive and the judiciary. Theoretically speaking, all these organs are supposed to be
independent and expected to provide necessary checks and balances in wielding power.
However, though the politician has practically succeeded in making his will prevail over the
other two, he remains the only one with some accountability for his actions too. Atleast once

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in five years he has to get back to the people and explain to them his conduct and
contributions to the society. The head of the executive, The President of the Union, is almost
dismissed as a rubber stamp! And the administrators under him have been reduced to being
His Masters Voices! Or is it so? When Mr Ram Jethmalani was a Union Minister he went
ahead and ordered that the records in his ministry be made available to the public for scrutiny
and also that they could get a copy for a nominal fee. This happened long after the Right to
Information Act was first discussed and, as usual with such laws that tend to bring
transparency and accountability in the administration, was silently put in cold storage. It was
reported in the press that the Ministers orders were left confined to the paper it was written
on because his Secretary got the Cabinet Secretary to issue directions that the ministers
orders need not be complied with till the Right to Information Act was passed! Yes, our
bureaucrats in administration are not all that innocent. In fact, they are having the best of both
worlds. Authority without accountability, power without responsibility! Their mindset is still
the same as that of the government employee of the colonial era, but they now have the added
advantage of remaining in the shadows of their political bosses and pulling the strings from
behind, to serve their own selfish ends. There are exceptions like Alphonse Kannanthanam,
Sukumar Oommen, and Arun Bhatia. But they remain exceptions. The very fact that they
have risen to the positions where they are today should be seen as the Lord Almightys small
little mercies for the oppressed of this country. The system certainly is with the devil.

Judiciary. But even the administration is a shade better when compared to our judiciary!
Justice delayed is justice denied is a maxim that one learnt in the primary school. So
imagine the state of affairs when even under-trials are left languishing in jails for 30 or more
years. When even a life-convict is expected to be kept in jail for only 14 years or less, just
imagine the horror of spending so many years in jail as an under-trial in a case where the
maximum punishment could be just a few months! Here is a report by Swaminathan A Aiyer
Three liquidation cases in the Calcutta High Court remained pending for more than 50
years. And India can boast of the longest legal dispute in history- a land dispute in
Maharashtra lasted 650 years! If no new case at all are registered, says Debroy, the courts will
take 324 years to dispose of the backlog at the current rate of clearance. And this, when only
50 percent of the population is literate and the majority of the population is simply worried
where their next meal is going to come from! Agreed that, as usual, resources needed are far
more than what is available. But to accept that and rest the case would be nothing but a fraud.
And this is what Justice V R Krishna Iyer has written in Justice and Beyond: Why, in
Gandhian India, are sentencing provisions and practices sadistic and retributive, judges and
administrators dismissing as hawkish muck therapeutic and corrective alternatives? When do
we hope to modernize, humanise and democratise our legal system and tune it upto to Third
World conditions?

Rule of Law not Rule of Judges. The mainstay of any civilized society, leave alone a
democracy, is the rule of the law. For any law to be effective it should, first of all, be simple,
clear and unambiguous. The affected people should understand it and imbibe it in letter and
spirit. The need to go to courts to get interpretations for each and every clause certainly
doesnt speak well of the competence of our legislators. And worse, when the judiciary
interprets the same law to mean different, sometimes even contradictory, things under
different contexts, the public can only get confused and confounded, as they are now. In this
context it would be worth recalling that confusion had prevailed even in recognising the
preamble of our Constitution as an integral part of it! In 1961, the Supreme Court had

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observed that the preamble is not part of the Constitution, but in 1973, it held that the
preamble of the Constitution was part of the Constitution and the observations to the contrary
in Berubari Union case were not correct! Our present Union Minister for Disinvestment, Mr
Arun Shourie, has done yeomen service in compiling a number of intriguing cases in a book
titled Courts and their judgements. At the function held to release the book he also made a
tongue-in-cheek suggestion: that there should be a group of scholars reviewing all sensitive
rulings of the higher courts so that the judges were also careful that their judgements were
subjects to scrutiny! And this is what Ms Arundhati Roy, Booker-prize winner, has said: the
process of the trial and all that it entails, is as much, if not more of a punishment than the
sentence itself.

Education to usher in a Second Freedom Struggle

The way things are, there is definitely a need for a second freedom struggle. However, it is
doubtful if Mahatmajis methods would succeed today. The solution is in education, the aims
of which, according to Shri Bhanu Pratap Mehta, are: provision of a general intellectual
training, acquisition of appropriate skills to acquire or use information and inculcating a
healthy skepticism in students towards received facts. Let us not forget that eternal vigilance
is the price of liberty and that an alert citizen is essential for the success of democracy. So,
as an alert citizen, what do you find?

Re-write the Constitution not just amend it. Beginning with the Constitution itself, the rule-
books have to be re-written. Fortunately, the need for this is well understood even by the
powers that be. So there is a Constitution Review Commission studying our Constitution in
detail and is expected to recommend the changes that are needed to be incorporated. But the
way it has been going about doing its business and the cry for blood coming from certain
powerful quarters, one needs to be wary whether the task will be performed satisfactorily.
Considering that the present Constitution was documented at a time when patriotic feelings
ran high and so many intricacies were glossed over, it is no wonder that there is a lot of
infirmity in it. (Imagine the Speaker of the Lok Sabha calling a special meeting to draft a code
of conduct for our MPs and MLAs in the 50th year of the Constitutions existence!) So there is
need to understand where things had gone wrong and suggest workable remedies.
Unfortunately, it is with these workable remedies that there could be problems and the usual
tendency is to let sleeping dogs lie. That would render the whole exercise futile. Further, the
present Constitution was drawn up by a handful of leaders of the independence struggle. For
all their good intentions and integrity, there was a certain limit to their grasp of the
requirements, and to their ability to articulate them freely to a larger audience, maximise
inputs and arrive at better solutions. The story is different today. The experiences of 50 years
and the reach of the media need to be harnessed for getting inputs from a wider cross-section
of the population and a better Constitution drafted to spell out the objectives and means for
the next fifty years. Unfortunately, even the media has not fully woken up to its
responsibilities so far, in this context.

Out, party-based democracy; In, real democracy. It is a fact that party-based democracy itself
has failed in this country. So will the Presidential system, as in the US of A, work in our
context? No guarantee, there. But cant we think afresh, keeping in mind the lessons we have
learnt from our own experiences in the past fifty years? Shouldnt we tailor our solutions to
suit our problems? Here is one suggestion: Our government should function at three levels.

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Villages should form the units of administration. Villages should be linked through computer
networks to the next level of governance, that is the State. States should be linked to the
government at the Center. Polls should be conducted to elect representatives to an Electoral
College (EC). These representatives, Members of Electoral College (MEC) can be one per
500 or 1000 of the population, but should necessarily be one amoung them. MECs from the
village will function as the Village Panchayat (VP). The VP will send a representative from
amoung them to the State Legislature (SL) on need basis. This need will be decided by the
agenda before the Legislature and the competence of the MEC to address the issues in the
agenda. The agenda, of course, will be circulated by the State Secretariat well in advance so
that the issues are discussed thoroughly at the VP and every VP can send its best
spokesperson for the occasion to the SL. A similar exercise can follow for issues at the
national level taken up for consideration in the Parliament. Of necessity, the discussions
should start at the VP, ensuring the best democratic process at work always. And there shall
never be defections and toppling of governments for the five years for which each Electoral
College shall function!

Person-centered courts Vs Democracy-oriented jury. In the context of the judiciary too radical
reforms are needed, both structurally and functionally. Firstly, it has to become accessible.
For the short term, there can be more fast track courts, time-sharing the available resources
and supplementing them where needed. In other words, the courts should work in shifts, using
the present infrastructure and adding on minimum essentials like judges, clerks and storage
space for the documents? For the long term, there is a need to evolve a system where a jury,
comprising of atleast three law-qualified personnel listen to cases directly from the litigants
and the witnesses, including the investigating personnel, and give their judgements. A jury
can be constituted at the Village Panchayat itself, drawing on the resources from within the
panchayat or employing them from outside, if need be. The system of litigants employing
advocates should be done away with if justice is to be made accessible and fair. To streamline
the process, one member each from the jury may be made responsible for recording the
statements of the complainant(s) and respondant(s) and studying them in depth. Who is
recording what should be known only to the jury and not to anybodyelse, to prevent
extraneous influences being effective. All examinations/ cross-examinations should be done
by the Presiding Officer of the Jury and any question that any other member needs to ask
should be routed through the Presiding Officer only. The punishment should include cost of
the jury in real terms and should be realised from the judgement debtor. Where the judgement
debtor is poor, he has to be sent to prison and the cost recovered through his labour.

India: The Orwellian Animal Farm? Here is a quote from George Bernard Shaw- You will
never find an Englishman in the wrong. He fights you on patriotic principles; he robs you on
business principles; he enslaves you on imperialistic principles. Objectively speaking, our
people who have been wielding any power of the state, since independence, seem to be no
different. When there was a hue and cry in our media, about starvation deaths taking place in
the country at a time when food grains were rotting in government godowns, there was also
the report that some leaders had come out with the preposterous suggestion that mango
kernels had enough nutrients to sustain lives and since it was available in sufficient quantities
all the reports were concocted! Now consider also the two cases- one that happened in 1984,
with the national capital as the epicenter, and the other one that happened in 1991, at distant
Sriperumpudur in Tamilnadu. In the former, thousands of men of the Sikh community were
murdered in cold blood, even in broad daylight, in the open streets in residential areas and

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busy markets; and almost 20 years after the crime not even a single person has been
convicted. In the latter, an ex-prime minister, whose party had been routed in the earlier
elections, had been murdered by a suicide bomber, destroying with her whatever traces of
evidence that could have been there to track the crime. In less than 10 years, 28 persons were
convicted and sentenced to death. Same country, same systems; only the clout of the victims
mattered in guiding the course of justice. Did George Orwell foresee the shape of things to
come in this country when he wrote his Animal Farm and declared that all animals are equal
but some are more equal than the others? Permit me to quote one more example to
substantiate my argument that our whole system needs to be overhauled, if the objectives
listed in the preamble to our Constitution need to be realised. This is in the context of the
segregation of minority handicrafts at the India International Trade Fair at Delhi. This is how
the editorial in the New Indian Express read- The most charitable view of the segregation of
minority handicrafts at the ongoing IITF in New Delhi is that there is nothing more than
meets the eye in the decision. If on the other hand, it is part of a new policy, no words are
strong enough to condemn it. Nor does the segregation become less questionable because it
was the brainwave of the National Minorities Development and Finance Corporation, set up
for the welfare of the minorities. Yes, whether wittingly or otherwise, in fifty years of
freedom and democracy the only one lesson we seem to have learnt is to segregate and
segregate and continue with the divide and rule strategy we used to accuse our colonial
masters of. We need to unlearn this fissiparous habit and learn to get integrated. And
geography has no part in this. It has to come from within all of us and from within us only.
And it can be achieved only through proper education. The rest will follow.

Awake, Arise and rest not till

So we come full circle. Back to America, where an act of indiscretion involving an intern led
to a President almost losing his job. We have a good proportion of seats in our legislatures,
and even parliament, occupied by criminals. We even have an ex-justice of the Supreme
Court justifying her decision to let a criminal be her own prosecutor! And the people who are
the sovereign entities of this socialist, democratic republic are condemned to suffer in silent
agony their Constitution being ripped apart by all those tasked to uphold and protect it!

East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet- that is until the basic needs of a
democratic society are met. Here, we need to add to Maslows list of basic needs- food, sex,
clothing and shelter- one more: education! Education that enables one to discern between
right and wrong and education that gives one the courage of conviction to stand up to what is
right and, equally importantly, oppose what is wrong.

Since most of us believe in the power of prayers, permit me to conclude by quoting a prayer:
Oh, Lord! Give me the courage to change the things I can, the serenity to accept the things I
cant and the wisdom to differentiate between the two.

P M Ravindran
2/18, Aathira
Kalpathy-678003 (3778 words)