Time to Restore Civility in Political Debate

Dr M N Buch, 

Dean, Centre for Governance and Political Studies, VIF

For us Indians there are certain truths which we should take as immutable. The Constitution of India, the basic features of which have remained unchanged despite a number of amendments, is the document which prescribes how this country will be structured and governed. Article 1 categorically states that India is a Union of States, which means that it is a true federation in which the Union as an entity exists because of its constituent States. One without the other is incomplete and, therefore, whilst there can be debate on whether this federation needs a strong Central Government with viable and powerful States, or whether the States should enjoy the highest degree of autonomy with the Centre being the cementing force, India cannot convert itself into a Unitary State. The Qasi federal structure is here to stay.

The Preamble defines governance in this country in unambiguous terms. India is fully sovereign and this is non-negotiable. It is socialist in the sense that the Preamble itself mandates justice, liberty, equality and fraternity, which means that there is equality before law, there is freedom of thought and expression, every citizen has equality of status and opportunity and fraternity ensures that there will be a brotherhood of man in which no one is high and no one is low. The Preamble also states that India will be secular and, in the context of the partition in 1947, this was a very brave decision because whereas Pakistan chose the path of theocracy, we opted for a nation in which everyone was welcome, regardless of religion, caste and creed or, for that matter, place of birth. Secularism in this context is what makes all of us equal. The Preamble further states that India will be democratic and that it will be a republic. One has no alternative available whereby the republican form of government can be replaced by a hereditary monarchy, nor can the democratic process be replaced by authoritarian rule or totalitarianism.

The Constitution has adopted the Westminster form of democracy in which whilst there is separation of power between the Executive, the Legislature and the Judiciary, there is a coming together of the Executive and the Legislature through the Council of Ministers. The Prime Minister is appointed by the President, but because he has to enjoy the confidence of the House, to which he and his ministers are collectively responsible, obviously only that man would be appointed whose party or political group enjoys a majority in Parliament. This is an important point to be borne in mind because it determines the shape that our democracy will take in order to elect a government. Every five years a general election is called for electing members of the House of the People, that is, the Lower House of Parliament. Because India is a democracy in which Article 19 of the Constitution guarantees freedom of speech and association, it is obvious that there will be different streams of political thought and ideology, ranging from the extreme left to the extreme right. The bounds within which these thoughts will be expressed and ideologies expressed, are that the fundamentals of our Constitution, our sovereignty, socialist ideal, secularism, democracy, republican status and the Union of States cannot be questioned, nor their overthrow advocated. However, within these limitations every group of persons, every individual and every political party has the right to not only express itself but to propagate and promote its ideology. When there are different schools of thought prevailing in politics and the objective of every political party is to win favour with the electorate and thus aspire for power, there is bound to be debate. There is also bound to be dissent, internally within a party and externally between parties. The objective of debate is to convince people that a particular party, its ideology, programmes and practices is best suited to governing the country. For example, a party may profess dogmatic socialism and nationalisation of all industry and business as the best way forward for India. Another party may advocate capitalism, free enterprise and laissez faire as the best policy for the country. In between there may be many shades and nuances of political policy which different parties may advocate. This is perfectly legitimate and in fact desirable. It is then for the people to choose which party they will accept as best suited for government.

At a time when the Congress Party under Jawaharlal Nehru was virtually the uncrowned king of India and the Opposition was numerically very small, we still had stalwarts like Ram Manohar Lohia, S.A. Dange, Syama Prasad Mookerjee, Rajaji and other towering persons who were in political conflict with government and expressed views contrary to those held by Jawaharlal Nehru. However, they were heard with great respect and their words carried weight. There was a level of debate in Parliament and outside it which was so civilised, so serious, so ideology based that we could pride ourselves on traditions of parliamentary democracy perhaps not found even in Britain. Those were the golden days of Indian democracy and the Indian Parliament. Surprisingly this is also the period in which Nehru introduced the concept of planned economy, not of the Soviet model, but the uniquely Indian one in which justice and equality were more important than Marxian dialectics. The Indian model, recognising that capital formation through private enterprise was just not adequate to accelerate the Indian economy to a higher plane, decided to use the State and public enterprises for building the infrastructure and laying the base for a capital goods industry which could modernise the country. This was not a dictatorial decision but a democratic one in which critics and criticisms were heard, given due weightage and did influence decision making so that the planned economy did not transform itself into a bureaucratic dictatorship. The above example is given to support the thesis that civility of debate did exist in India, partly because of Gandhian traditions, partly because Nehru was a democrat, partly because his opponents were also democrats. Power was a means of service, not an instrument for self aggrandisement.

All that changed in 1967, when in some of the States outright bribery purchased Members of the State Legislature, defections were engineered and elected governments caused to fall through dubious means. Now power became a commodity which could be purchased, attaining of power became a goal in itself and the wholesale subversion of the State to convert it into a means of amassing wealth through which power could be purchased became a norm. All means, however foul and unfair, become legitimate in order to gain power and with this principles, ideology, consistent political thought, pragmatic programmes, all were thrown out of politics and the political process became totally corrupt, When a political system becomes corrupt there are evil consequences which flow from it. Corruption is not restricted to top levels, but soon permeates down to the lowest government functionary. If the guardians of democracy, the legislators and the ministers, become corrupt, they cannot occupy high moral ground when dealing with their subordinates, but they actually use their subordinates in order to garner money. The subordinates, in turn, have to prey upon the citizens to collect money and the rot sets in so deep that soon every point of contact between a citizen and a government functionary becomes a source of milking the citizen even for getting his legitimate work done. This is the state to which we have brought India and, perhaps, in a way the Anna Hazare movement was a citizen reaction to the systematic climate of corruption that we have created. Such a climate endangers democracy itself because if citizens lose faith in the system, then either there will be anarchy or there will be totalitarian rule and both would be highly undesirable.

One natural consequence of the loss of political innocence is that the level of political debate has hit rock bottom. The politicians, though having no specific ideology, philosophy or programme to offer, want to be elected so that they can enjoy power. They seem to have fine-tuned the old saying, “When in the right, fight like hell. When in the wrong, admit”. The new saying seems to be “Who says you have to be in the right. In any case, when in the wrong thump your opponents”. Carried further, the entire political scenario becomes one of just attacking one’s opponents, not for their policies, not for their performance but on totally personal grounds. The new form of debate is shrill, accusatory, perfectly comfortable with telling lies and happiest of all when heaping unprintable abuse on one’s opponent and accusing him of everything, including murder, sexual depravity and misbehaviour, corruption, even to question the legitimacy of his birth. However, under no circumstances tell the people what you have to offer them if you come to power because the fact is that you have nothing to offer and in any case you only consider them as a kind of voting machine which is to be milked in order to gain power. Ram Manohar Lohia was extremely critical of Nehru, but at no time did he intend to cause hurt and at no time did Nehru take umbrage at what Lohia was saying. There was never any intention to cause any bodily harm or any humiliation to one’s opponent and one admires how Morarji Desai ensured that Indira Gandhi was not victimized and Atal Bihari Vajpayee took care of the comfort and honour of Sonia Gandhi. There was at times acrimony but there was no vendetta. Certainly there was not the kind of churlishness exhibited by Mamata Banerjee towards the Left in West Bengal after she came to power. If one were to define the politics of those days one has to use the word “civilised”.

If one were to survey the political scene today what would one find? There is an enormous promotion of factors such as religion, caste, region, language, group animosities and hostilities, all in order to promote the narrow interests of a particular group or party. This inevitably leads to fuelling narrow religious considerations, generating communal animosity, promoting caste interests over national interests and regional interests over the wider interests of a State, violent manifestation of one’s prejudices, a weakening of the administration, thus endangering the safety of citizens and, perhaps, national security and certainly corruption on an unprecedented scale. All these are the antithesis of good government which, incidentally, has to be the objective of every political party. The Constitution gives them no alternative and the fact that they are doing the exact opposite shows that they have no respect for the Constitution.

May one suggest to all the political parties to read Part IV A of the Constitution which gives the fundamental duties of the citizens. Article 51 (A) states that it shall be the duty of every citizen of India (e) to promote harmony and the spirit of common brotherhood amongst all the people of India transcending religious, linguistic and regional or sectional diversities; to renounce practices derogatory to the dignity of women” and (j) “to strive towards excellence in all spheres of individual and collective activity so that the nation constantly rises to higher level of endeavour and achievements”. Can this be done if the level of political debate is reduced to a public brawl in which, whereas nothing positive is offered, the opponent is attacked, with no holds barred? Therefore, if democracy is to be saved, if the Constitution is to be respected, if the nation is to rise to new heights, it is absolutely vital that civility be restored. The dictionary meaning of civility as per Chambers Twenty-first Dictionary is “politeness”. Civilised, according to the same dictionary means agreeably refined, sophisticated or comfortable; socially, politically and technologically advanced. Civility in debate and civilised debate leads to civilization, defined by the dictionary as “a stage of development in human society that is socially, politically, culturally and technologically advanced”. Remove these three words, civility, civilised and civilization from the dictionary and we would have a nation of morons at constant war with each other. A constitution which mandates fraternity, assuring the dignity of the individual, gives to every citizen equality before law, calls upon him to strive towards excellence, has no place for lack of civility and civilised behaviour in the political process. The manner in which our politicians are behaving today shows that they not only have no respect for the Constitution, but rather that they hold it in contempt and are happy to violate it. More than good government, more than eradication of corruption, we need to restore to politics a standard of values and morality, we need to return to civilisational roots, we need to restore civility to debate.

Deconstructing the AAP Phenomenon

Dr M N Buch, 

Dean, Centre for Governance and Political Studies, VIF

“Never start a paper with the first person singular” was the advice that my English teacher gave me in the first standard in my school in Lahore, St. Anthony’s High School. On 10^th February 2014, Barkha Dutt interviewed Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal before a studio audience, which was broadcast, probably live, on the NDTV 24x7 channel. What one saw and heard was deeply disturbing. One is acutely aware of the fact that in metropolitan India, which represent six percent of our total population and in Delhi, where less than one percent of the population lives, there is a great deal of discontent because of lack of meaningful central, state or local government and the inefficiency and corruption which has grown out of this. This could easily be handled by firm, principled, honest government, but nowhere is there much evidence of the will to govern and provide good government to the people. In Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh, the situation is better, but our so called liberals and activists have such loathing for BJP that neither Narendra Modi nor Shivraj Singh Chouhan is acceptable to them. It is from the miasma of political despair that Kejriwal and Aam Aadmi Party have been born and because they at least promise to be different large sections of society have been attracted to them. There can be no other reason for the rout of the Congress in the NCT of Delhi elections and the strong signature of Aam Aadmi Party in the Vidhan Sabha.

Those whom no one (including I) thought could make a strong showing not only managed to get 28 seats out of 70 in the Assembly, they also came to power with an ill advised Congress deciding to support a minority government. To madly mix metaphors, Congress now not only finds itself hoisted by its own petard, it is also on the horns of a dilemma. Withdraw support, let the government fall and enable Kejriwal to project himself as a martyr who has been sacrificed because he dared to innovate. Continue support, enabling Kejriwal to enact legislation which, while constitutionally unacceptable and, therefore, not to be signed into law by the Lt. Governor, would still project Kejriwal as the champion of the people. What Kejriwal hopes to get out of this is many more seats in the NCT of Delhi Assembly (he estimates 50 seats) and some in Parliament at the next election. What the Congress gets is a fear of extinction in Delhi. What BJP hopes to get is the entire bowl of cream as the two cats claw each other to shreds. What a scenario! Does one see shades of the last days of the Weimar Republic?

There was a corporal of Austrian origin in the German Army of the Kaisar during the First World War called Adolf Schikelgruber, who later attained great notoriety as Adolf Hitler. By profession he was a painter, not an artist but an actual painter of walls, doors and windows, etc. He took the defeat of Germany in the First World War almost as a personal affront and shared with the Junker class officers of the army the view that it is not Germany which had lost but rather that the moneybags, the unscrupulous businessmen, who had betrayed the nation. The Treaty of Versailles imposed severe reparations on Germany, transferred German speaking Alsace-Lorraine to France from which Prussia had wrested it at the end of the Franco Prussian War of 1869-70, allowed French and other allied occupation of the industrially important Ruhr, caused the Kaiser to abdicate, thus ending the monarchy and generally imposed on Germany humiliating conditions which patriotic Germans could not stomach. A republic was established under the Weimar Constitution, thus named because it was framed and finalised in the resort town of Weimar, but the largely Prussian led army, though considerably reduced in size, remained intact. The jingoistic military ethos of Prussia was kept alive by a band of dedicated Generals and other senior officers and whereas the republic soon went down the drain because of a weak government and a struggling economy, the army quietly tried to rebuild itself with the sole objective of restoring the dignity and power of Germany. Corporal Adolf Schikelgruber, initially an observer but soon to become not only the major but the sole player in the tragedy which engulfed Germany, tried to put together a new political philosophy and wrote a book on this called ‘Mein Kampf’ or My Struggle. This book should be compulsory reading for everyone, especially for students of political science and for those interested in politics, because from it emerged an ideology, party and government so tyrannical, so utterly brutal that by comparison Attila The Hun appears to be a nonviolent saint.

How else does one describe the government of a person which happily killed six million people because they happened to practise Judaism? Hitler’s creed was simple. Germany lost because its government was excessively mild and unfocussed. Therefore, it allowed the Jews and their money power to betray the country and that is why the country was meek and impoverished. Ergo, eliminate the Jews and paradise will return on earth. This he set about to do with single-minded ferocity and simultaneously built up the army and in doing so threw the French out of the Ruhr. He looked for a racially pure Germany in which the Aryans were the super race. Then there were the inferior races of Slav origin who inhabited the countries to the east of Germany, that is Poland, Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union, etc. The Slavs were inferior to the Aryans and, therefore, Untermenschen, that is subhuman. To the west was France, racially acceptable but culturally decadent. Further west lay Britain, whose people were largely of Anglo Saxon origin and, therefore, Aryan, making them the natural allies of a pure Germany. Replace the decadent political system there by the far healthier Nazi philosophy and there would indeed be heaven on earth.

To achieve all this Hitler needed the power to legislate. When he became the Chancellor (Prime Minister) of Germany in 1933, he led a minority government which came to power because the socialists quarreled amongst themselves like the Congress does in India, the Left was in disarray and the people were looking for a saviour who would rescue them from the misery into which the Weimar government had cast them.

One sees an almost equal scenario with what happened in Delhi recently. People who were disgusted with the previous regime did vote in adequate numbers to give the Aam Aadmi Party a respectable minority status. The Congress, like the Opposition in Germany, felt that Kejriwal could be handled and, therefore, decided to support Kejriwal to form a government. Meanwhile, the BJP sat back to observe the unfolding drama. Like Hitler who persuaded President Hindenburg to invite him to form the government, with outside support, the Congress, too, decided to entice Kejriwal to form a government in Delhi with outside support of the Congress. The parties in Germany, like the Congress in Delhi, felt they could handle Hitler, just as Congress felt that they could handle Kejriwal. Hitler’s first act was to persuade Parliament to enact the “Gestz zur Behbung der Not von Volk und Reich” or “The Law For Removal of The Distress of The People and the Reich”. Under this, Hitler got sweeping powers on legislation through ordinance, surrendered voluntarily by Parliament. This happened on 5^th March 1933. On 9^th March 1933, just four days later, he abolished the States, thus converting the Federation into a Unitary State. In May 1933, he abolished the trade unions and in July 1933 all parties were abolished, except the Nazi Party. Using the Constitution and mandate of Parliament, Hitler not only destroyed the Weimar Republic, he abolished democracy and became the sole dictator and arbiter of Germany. The horrors which followed till Germany capitulated in May 1945 are well recorded by authors such as William Shirer, Allen Bullock, Trevor Roper, etc., and need not be repeated here. Schikelgruber, the painter, had now become Adolf Hitler, the Fuhrer.

Is Arvind Kejriwal a potential Hitler? The answer is a categorical NO. Is he a demagogue? The answer is an emphatic Yes. Does he want to create a dictatorship? The answer is a somewhat reluctant No because there is a long way to go between being the Chief Minister of a Union Territory and the undisputed leader of India, not a Hitler but certainly a potential Indira Gandhi of the days of the Emergency. Even that is bad enough, because Barkha Dutt’s interview did give glimpses of the innate megalomania and extent of low cunning of Arvind Kejriwal. One is unable to resist the temptation of referring to Kejriwal’s early years as an officer of the Indian Revenue Service who did his best to stay on in Delhi or its vicinity while his colleagues were shunted out to distant places. One is aware of the fact that he took two years study leave and did not fulfill his obligation of serving the government for at least three years on return from study leave. He also sat on the notice given to him in this behalf by government and almost a year later he suddenly took out the paper and flourished it in a public meeting addressed by Anna Hazare, stating that Government was trying to pressurise him not to participate in Anna’s movement. It is for the reader to decide whether this conduct is ethical.

It is a fact that people in India have increasingly found that in their interface with government, they have become the prey and government functionaries have become predators. This has manifested itself in all pervading corruption with which the average citizen had to contend in even petty matters. This has begun to hurt to an extent where it has almost become life threatening. Gradually public anger is mounting and this factor was clearly identified by Anna Hazare and Arvind Kejriwal. Where they pioneered a new path was in using public agitation as a means of focusing public anger and thus concentrating the energy which flowed from it. The highly individualistic, personal experience based anger against corruption, switched from the anecdotal and the personal to a public anger which focused on corruption per se. This was all to the good because the hydra-headed monster of corruption had to be killed.

What causes corruption? Corruption of the type one gets in India is a hallmark of, a necessary corollary to, the inevitably natural outcome of a situation in which the executive government has become weak to the point of impotence and the act of governing itself has almost disappeared. In an executive government driven by a complete lack of ideology, a political system in which immediate expediency overtakes principled government, in which power becomes the sole objective instead of being an instrument for promotion of public welfare, the entire system is bound to become corrupt. The purchase of power itself is an act of corruption and in order to do the act one has to use corruption in order to earn money to buy power. This corruption can only be curbed and destroyed if we first make politics itself more principled. Power must no longer remain the end objective, nor should power be used to buy power the next time round. Public welfare must replace personal aggrandisement as the guiding star of politics. If the Aam Aadmi Party is able to achieve this then, of course, it would be a genuine servant of the people and a saviour of the republic. Is that happening?

Instead of looking at systems, both Anna Hazare and Arvind Kejriwal have found the ultimate remedy for corruption, an institution called the Jan Lokpal. The Scandinavian countries thought of on Ombudsman as early as the eighteenth century, but the objective of the Swedish Ombudsman, for example, is to push government towards genuine, people friendly, open governance and not go around punishing persons guilty of corruption. From good government has flowed a corruption free society. China, on the other hand, has a harsh political system in which those who are corrupt face the grave danger of judicial execution. China has probably executed more persons charged with corruption than any other country has even jailed. The emphasis there is on using the penalty of the law as a deterrent, without trying to find out the flaws in the system which permit or even encourage corruption. Therefore, despite a high level of law enforcement, China is considered one of the most corrupt countries in the world. Whom does Kejriwal want to emulate, China or Sweden? The Jan Lokpal looks very Chinese to me.

The way the Delhi Government is functioning there is no attempt to even conceptualise systemic reforms which would reduce the citizen-government interface, make laws, rules and procedures so simple that anyone can understand them, eliminate all delay in administration so that delay cannot be a weapon for extorting money and then trying to ensure that in a time bound, people friendly manner government work flows smoothly and the people who have contact with government are able to get decisions without any delay and, therefore, without harassment and the need to pay a bribe. This needs very systematic analysis of every rule, every procedure, even of the manner in which the official manning a desk works and then setting in place monitoring systems which ensure that the citizen gets quick remedy from a government office. I am not speaking in the air because thirty-six years earlier as the head of Delhi Development Authority (DDA), I practised precisely what I have preached and though everyone likes to view his own work with rosy tinted glasses, I think the jury did decide that in the short period that I was with DDA, the organisation had certainly become more people friendly, more effective and, therefore, less corrupt. For Kejriwal none of these count because it is either the Jan Lokpal or nothing.

To return to Barkha Dutt’s programme, one was disturbed not because there was anything argumentative or hot tempered about it, but rather because the arguments put forward by Arvind Kejriwal to justify himself appeared prima facie unexceptional, the audience reaction was favourable and the manner in which Barkha herself seemed to hang on to every word uttered by Kejriwal signalled agreement. In trying to justify subsidies, Kejriwal explains that it is about Rs. 250 crores which constitutes the power and water subsidy in a budget of Rs. 40,000 crores. Very convincing, till one disaggregates the subsidy from the Delhi budget and adds it to the budget of the power distribution companies. Their budget is not Rs. 40,000 crores, from their earnings has to be deducted the cost of power supply and the amount mentioned by Kejriwal then becomes a very substantial portion of the net available to the power distribution companies. That fact was hidden by Kejriwal from the audience and naturally out of ignorance people applauded him. He mentioned that the Delhi Golf Club only pays a ground rent of Rs. 15 lakh per year, whereas the property is worth thousands of crores. According to Kejriwal, this gives a subsidy of Rs. 1.5 cores per year to each member. The members do not get a share of the capital cost of the land, which had been allotted by the British when New Delhi was under creation and whose value then was only a few thousand rupees. To extrapolate thereon today’s value of land which is very high if the land could be sold and zero if it cannot is unfair and then to claim that each member is being given a subsidy of Rs. 1.5 crores is a not only a jugglery with figures, it is downright deceit in order to win a point. It is like talking about Coalgate and estimating losses of lakhs of crores of rupees without at the same time stating that in many cases if coal had not been allotted, thermal power plants would either come to a halt or new power stations could not be built. When this sort of argument is expanded to a national scale then what comes to mind is the argument given by Hitler about the Jews and the lies told by Goebbels. This is the stuff of which dictatorships are born.

In the ultimate analysis, only that government is good for this country which has the will to govern, creates systems which are people friendly and builds an environment in which people find gainful employment, wealth increases and equity rules the distribution of wealth. Such a society has no place for corruption and corruption will soon end. One suspects that the Jan Lokpal will only be one more agency that the corrupt will have to appease and, therefore, like every other such agency in India, will become a source of corruption. What an irony if a movement which started as a means of ridding society of corruption becomes an agent for creation of an organisation which adds to corruption.

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Verdict 2013 – Lessons for both the Congress and the BJP

Dr. A Surya Prakash, 

Distinguished Fellow, VIF

As the campaign ended in the Delhi State Assembly Election, leaders of both the Congress Party and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) tended to be rather dismissive of the challenge posed by Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). When asked by media persons if she was worried about the growing popularity of AAP, the former Delhi Chief Minister, Ms.Sheila Dikshit reportedly countered by asking “Who is Arvind Kejriwal?”. This was on December 4, the day of polling. On December 8, the day the votes were counted, the people of Delhi had answered her query! The BJP too tended to under estimate AAP. A national leader of this party is said to have described this fledgling political outfit as a “Chillar Party”, meaning that its worth was equivalent to small change or that it was nothing more than a children’s outfit. He too has had to re-evaluate AAP after December 8.

However, now that AAP has spread itself on the electoral map of Delhi, both the national parties need to understand the reasons for the rise of this party, which is neither based on caste or religion or region, as most new political entities are in the country, nor is it an outfit with deep pockets. In fact, after many decades, AAP is the first party which has ensured hundred percent transparency in regard to party funds and openly solicited financial support for the Aam Aadmi (Common Man). The party has risen precisely because the two national parties were seen to be contemptuous of the need for a moral and ethical framework for politics.

The UPA’s image and that of the Congress Party took a beating beginning with the scandalous stories of corruption in the conduct of the Commonwealth Games. Thereafter, many more skeletons tumbled out of its cupboards including the 2G Scam and Coalgate. This led to a national anti-corruption movement headed by Gandhian Anna Hazare for a strong Lok Pal to check corruption. The Congress Party and many union ministers were initially derisive of Anna’s efforts and this only propelled more public anger. Eventually, the government came up with a draft that fell short of Anna’s expectations. When the movement was at its height, ministers like Mr.Kapil Sibal mocked at Anna and his lieutenant Arvind Kejriwal and said laws. are made by parliament, not by gatherings in Ramlila Maidan. He also said those who lacked the ability to enter electoral politics and win seats in democratic bodies should not lecture the government. Kejriwal decided to float AAP, much against Anna’s will, to put an end to these jibes, and going by the Delhi result it can be said that he has succeeded in silencing every Congress leader who laughed at the Anna movement two years ago.

Apart from corruption, non-governance became yet another malady afflicting the UPA government at the Centre. The prime example of this was the growing insecurity among women in the national capital and the brutal rape and killing of Nirbhaya in a bus in Delhi in December, 2012. The paralysis at the government level was most visible as the union government and the Delhi Government squabbled over who was responsible for women’s safety.

As the recent election results show, the Congress has got its just deserts. But if we are to apportion blame for the rise of AAP, the BJP must get its share of it. Although the Congress Party’s arrogance and corruption created the ground for AAP, much more was expected of the BJP, which was the main opposition party. However, the BJP failed to corner the government and take the initiative for a strong anti-corruption law. It allowed the advantage to slip away and fall into the hands of Anna Hazare and AAP. Similarly, the BJP failed to take the moral high ground on issues like criminalization of politics and self-aggrandisement of MPs and MLAs with endless perks including the demand for red beacons atop their cars. In short, the party failed to take the lead and AAP stepped in to fill the moral vacuum. Throughout the campaign, the AAP accused the BJP of being the B Team of the Congress and said that the Congress and the BJP were two faces of the same coin. Somewhere this accusation struck a chord with the electorate, depriving the BJP of the much-needed majority in the Delhi Assembly. That is why Mr.Kejriwal’s initial promises include a strong anti-corruption law and an assurance that no MLA of AAP would use the red beacon on his or her car. The people are disgusted with the behavior of MPs and MLAs, who have become arrogant and insensitive to peoples’ feelings. That is why the red beacon has become a symbol of hatred of the elected representative.

There are several other factors which have hurt the image of the BJP. For example, many MPs of this party have been caught in scandals like Cash-for-Questions and corruption in MPLADS. In both these instances, many MPs of this party were caught on camera indulging in corrupt practices during sting operations. The cumulative effect of all this and the unwillingness of the party leadership to breakaway from political practices that created disgust among the people hurt the party and weakened its fight against the Congress. It is sad that the BJP, which once claimed that it was a party with a difference, has become as insensitive to these issues as the Congress. If the BJP does not make a quick course correction, it will cede the moral space to the Aam Aadmi Party in several more regions of the country.

The voters have given a massive rebuff to the Congress Party and it will take that party a lot of time to recover lost ground. Meanwhile, the BJP will have to guard against complacency and take immediate steps to counter the influence of the Aam Aadmi Party if it wishes to replace the Congress at the national level. Till September 13 this year when Mr.Narendra Modi was anointed the party’s prime ministerial candidate, the BJP’s cadres were dispirited and had gone into hibernation. The recent results show that Modi’s leadership has electrified the cadres and got them to work for the party with renewed vigour. Mr.Modi will now have to take the next big step to once again make the BJP the party with a difference and enable it to recapture the moral high ground. This can be done by taking a firm stand against corruption and self-aggrandisement of peoples’ representatives. Mr.Modi has the moral aura to assert himself on these issues and he must do so quickly. If he fails to do so, the Aam Aadmi Party will continue to be an attraction for citizens in Delhi and beyond and this will certainly hurt the BJP’s final tally in the Lok Sabha poll of 2014, just as it hurt the BJP’s dream of recapturing Delhi in 2013. Will Mr.Modi act?

Use and Misuse of Public Funds: Some Questions Which Must be Asked

Dr M N Buch, 

Dean, Centre for Governance and Political Studies, VIF

Recently Rahul Gandhi visited Bhopal for a day on purely Congress Party work. He did not come by a normal commercial flight, the fare of which he could have reimbursed as a Member of Parliament. He came by a special aircraft and for his personal protection a bullet proof armoured vehicle had been sent in advance from Delhi by train. Naturally he was accompanied by his SPG escort and more than one thousand policemen were deployed for his protection and general bandobast. He travelled in a convoy of several cars, piloted and escorted by the police and barricades were erected for crowd control. I cannot think of the Chairman of the Labour Party in Britain travelling in that country in such style and at such a great expense. In Delhi the Sonia Gandhi family maintains a life style which undoubtedly must cost a great deal of money, certainly more than can be afforded by the emoluments earned by her and Rahul Gandhi as Members of Parliament. The question which the people of India must ask is, “Where is all this money coming from?”

I am not targeting Rahul Gandhi or the Congress Party because every party and every leader does exactly the same thing. The BJP President Rajnath Singh travels by special aircraft and helicopters as do Mulayam Singh Yadav, Lalu Prasad Yadav and leaders of the parties in the Southern States. The Congress Party is supposed to be the richest political party in India, followed by BJP and CPI (M). If we take the population of India as being 120 crores, including adults and minors, if a party were to collect five rupees per head that would still come to only Rs. 600 crores. Considering the life style of our leaders, the cost of their travel, the huge amounts spent during elections, it is obvious that parties and party leaders are accepting money from business houses, whereas their followers are extorting money from smaller businessmen. Why should a business house give any money to any politician unless he is convinced that this is a form of investment which can be encashed at huge profit, to the advantage of the politicians also for overlooking the malpractices of the business house? One is told that the House of Tata refuses to pay bribes and I am prepared to accept that the family of Jamnalal Bajaj, mainly Rahul Bajaj, would also be principled in this behalf. But that is not true of most of our business houses and, therefore, party funds are very largely dependent on contributions from black marketeers, people indulging in illegal business and business houses, some on the make but most who know that if they are to survive they have to please the politicians. This is the root cause of corruption and surely the question must be asked, “Why are parties and politicians sourcing funds from businessmen and why are businessmen doling out such huge amounts?’

In my family we three brothers were in the IAS (the middle one died when he was just 52 years) and my wife was also an IAS officer. She, my youngest brother and I are pensioners and no doubt after the Sixth Pay Commission the pension is enough for us to live reasonably comfortably. It is not enough to afford luxury, which is why my wife is unable to replace her eleven-year old car. In some ways we are fortunate because there is a huge escalation in land value and the house which I built in 1975-76 cost me just about rupees three lakhs, including the cost of land, which is now worth crores of rupees. However, I cannot think of acquiring more property at today’s prices. On the other hand most of our politicians have acquired assets for which there is no logical explanation in terms of what they earn. For example, a Chief Minister of Arunachal Pradesh once told me that his Industries and Excise Minister, who belonged to a particular tribe, came from a poverty stricken household but he now owns a hotel in Itanagar, properties in Guwahati, Delhi and Bombay and is an extremely wealthy man. I can give any number of examples from Madhya Pradesh of politicians who could not afford a bicycle now owning several cars, others who could not afford a one room tenement having luxurious bungalows and commercial properties, with their wives being loaded with jewels. Where does all this money come from? Elections cost huge sums of money and it is obvious that political parties cannot afford to give every candidate crores of rupees for an assembly or parliamentary election. A person who has spent rupees five to ten crores to win a parliamentary seat has obviously to collect money by illegal means in order to recoup what he has spent. He becomes corrupt, he corrupts the system by forcing his civil servants to assist in collecting money, the civil servants in turn find that it is lucrative to be corrupt on their own, unscrupulous contractors and businessmen take advantage of the corruption of the bureaucrats and the politicians and, therefore, spurious drugs and liquor are sold and kill innocent people, the roof of a hospital collapses with patients occupying the premises, a Dawood Ibrahim flourishes and scams occur on a national scale.

Let us carry the analysis further. There are two phenomena which one does not find in most developed economies which are also democracies. Newspapers such as Le Figaro, Washington Post, The Times do not carry several one-page advertisements celebrating the birthday of some leaders, highlighting by way of an advertisement the speeches of a Chief Minister or lauding appointment of some political leader to a post in government or in a government corporation. There are no hoardings and ceremonial gates put up all over the city because an office bearer of a political party is paying it a visit. There are no bill boards or hoardings at street corners and along public roads containing the portraits of politicians and celebrating something relating to them. That is the way of dictatorships. The Nazi Party rallies at Nueremburg, the portraits of the Great Leader adorning the streets of Pyongyang, the statues of Stalin and Lenin in the Soviet cities are all hallmarks of Fascist and authoritarian Communist societies. The situation in India far exceeds anything that was found in Nazi Berlin, Mussolini’s Rome, Franco’s Madrid or Kim Il Sung’s Pyongyang. It goes even further than Mao’s Beijing. The sycophancy and the prostration before the leaders is so sickening that one is sometimes ashamed to be an Indian. In a democracy the citizen is supreme, the system of politics is multi-party, the voter decides who governs us and the Constitution prescribes how we shall be governed. Party leaders individually count for nothing and even so powerful a person as Margaret Thatcher would have been laughed out of court if, for example, she were to visit Liverpool at the height of her power and her party tried to plaster the city with her portraits. Why, then, does India, which calls itself the world’s largest democracy, have a culture of what is nothing short of idolatry with regard to its political leaders? The media, the party workers, the bureaucrats, the political parties themselves and, sad to say, citizens at large are guilty of this miasma which has overtaken our society and our politics. We must ask the question why this has happened and we must root out this toadyism lock, stock and barrel.

Advertisements in the newspapers in favour of our politicians cost a great deal of money, may be about rupees two crores for a full page advertisement in a national newspaper. Where is the money coming from? Who pays for the banners, posters, ceremonial gates, the tonnes of flowers when a person like Advani, Rahul Gandhi, etc. visits a city? Quite apart from the waste there is also the case of the corruption which accompanies such expenditure, all of which is ultimately paid for by the common man. Why are we not asking for an immediate end to this practice? As a young District Magistrate I have had visits of Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Morarji Desai, Jaiprakash Narain and others to my district headquarters. What we see today did not exist then and certainly politicians were much simpler in those days and more austere. We have to return to the days of sane politics and people must insist on this.

We can no longer hide behind the ‘purdah’ of democracy when dealing with corruption. I, as a citizen, would like know why the cases of disproportionate assets against Mulayam Singh Yadav and Mayawati, both in Uttar Pradesh, have been pending for so long. The allegations do not relate to some obscure tale of illegal funds passing through a confusing maze of transactions in Mauritius, a West Indian island, anonymous banks in Switzerland or Luxembourg. They relate to tangible immoveable assets in India, to cash payments, bank balances and jewelry. The allegations are false, in which the case should be closed, or they are correct, a prima facie case exists and the matter should be challaned before a court of competent jurisdiction. Instead the Delhi Police Special Establishment (popularly known as CBI) digs up or buries the cases from time to time according to the need for the support of the Samajwadi Party or Bahujana Samaj Party when things become dicey in Parliament. That CBI is professionally incompetent, its officers are not above corruption and its is extremely selective, depending on what government wants, in prosecuting offences, is well known. The Supreme Court bravely states that it will free CBI from political control. Why does the Supreme Court not ask the Inspector General of the Delhi Special Police Establishment, who is a legal entity, also known as the Director of the Central Bureau of Investigation, which is only a non statutory executive agency, to read Chapter XII of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973? In the matter of recording of FIR, investigating an offence, apprehending accused persons, collecting evidence, arriving at a conclusion whether a prima facie case does or does not exist against the accused person or persons and then deciding to either challan the accused in court or to submit a final report seeking permission to close the case, the police has complete and absolute legal autonomy. Only a superior police officer has the power to supervise a case under section 36 Cr.P.C. and section 158 Cr.P.C. However, even a superior police officer cannot direct that the investigating officer excludes from his investigation a person against whom there is a prima facie case, or include in the charge-sheet a person against whom there is no evidence of a prima facie case, challan a case in which there is no evidence that an offence is made out or submit a final report for closure in a case where there is enough evidence for a charge-sheet. No one, minister, civil servant or superior police officer can make an investigating officer delay an investigation or make a false investigation. That provision already exists under the present law. Even if the law does not specifically state that a Law Minister or an officer of government is debarred from interfering in an investigation, there are any number of decisions of the Privy Council, our High Courts and the Supreme Court which makes this amply clear. What other autonomy does the Supreme Court intend to confer on CBI? Will the greatest respect to our courts my submission to them is to use their judicial power to make officers, including police officers, function according to law instead of making statements about how they intend to liberate officers or organisations from the control of government.

I think a question must also be asked of the Executive as to why it has abandoned its executive functions. Despite what some police officers like to believe, the police is part of the executive arm of government, whose existence is determined by laws enacted by the Legislature, whose authority and functions are prescribed by such laws and whose accountability and subordination are both determined by law. Let me give one example. The Supreme Court is insisting that the police should not function under the control of government. Superintendence over the police vests in government and must continue to do so. The power of superintendence does not mean micro management of the police, but it does mean that the framework of policing, the objectives of policing and the broad policy relating to the methods of policing will be laid down and prescribed by government through rules, regulations, manuals and standing orders. In the ultimate analysis the Minister in charge of Home is accountable to the Legislature for the manner in which the police functions and neither the Supreme Court nor any other authority can dilute this accountability of the Ministers. Suppose the police exceeds its powers, misuse its authority, harasses citizens, indulges in excessive force in dealing with a law and order situation, fails to deal with crime because it is corrupt or incompetent and questions are raised about this in the Legislature. Can the Home Minister turn around and say, “I have no control over the police, I cannot shift an officer, I cannot punish him until some prescribed authority permits me to do so?” The legislators will then demand a change in the law and if this demand is supported by the majority, the law will be changed.

What we need is a balance between the authority of the Executive, the role of the Judiciary in ensuring that all executive arms, including the police, function according to law and for the police to be operationally autonomous so that it can fulfill its task of maintaining order, preventing crime and quickly detecting and prosecuting offenders. This calls for restraint, rational thinking, proper legislation, competent executive functioning and vigilance on the part of the Judiciary which, in the present surcharged environment, is no where visible. The question which people must ask is “Why is this so?”

Good government is a function of a proper balance between the Executive, Legislature and the Judiciary. It is equally a function of integrity, honesty in the matter of working and efficiency and competence on the part of the constituents of the State. I consider the role of the Legislature and the legislators pivotal because it is this body and these persons who, because they are constituted by the freely cast vote of the citizens, are the key components of a representative democracy. Legislators have a constitutionally defined role and that consists of enactment of laws which are in the public interests, approval of the annual budget and individual items of expenditure and grants to meet such expenditure and then maintaining a watch over government to ensure that it functions in a manner such that the funds allotted to it by popular will, expressed through the representatives of the people, are properly utilised. This is done through questions, resolutions, debates, call attention motions, adjournment motions and through functioning of the Public Accounts Committee, the Estimates Committee and the various standing committees for different departments, which all call government to account. At every step the Executive is accountable to the Legislature and if legislators were to do their duty the end result would be good government. But the fact is that the legislators do not do their duty, most sessions of parliament are heavily interrupted by agitations, there is very little meaningful debate in State Legislatures or in Parliament and most legislators are more interested in getting executive posts or in interfering in the day-to-day working of the Executive by demanding postings and transfers, insisting on work being done according to their whims and fancies and using the bureaucracy as a means of making money rather than in attending to legislative business. Should not a question be asked why the legislators do not perform their legitimate function and instead make it impossible for the bureaucracy to function? Should we also not ask why the bureaucracy has become so used to this situation that it has now become a willing partner in what ultimately leads to wholesale corruption?

We have been silent too long and an Anna Hazare fasting to end corruption, an Arvind Kejriwal jumping around and agitating, a Prashant Bhushan filing public interest writ petitions do not even scratch at the problem. We need a massive upsurge of public anger which would tear down the posters of our leaders, dog their footsteps when they talk nonsense in public and insist on an austere style of living and functioning of the politicians and the civil servants. That will bring us back to the early days of independence, when India looked to the future with hope, the politicians still imbued with a sense of Gandhian morality and the civil servants enthused by and proud of their role in building a new and prosperous nation.

Maintenance of Public Order

Dr. M.N. Buch
Visiting Fellow, VIF

It is the fundamental duty of the State to maintain public order. The definition of public order is given in section 31 of the Police Act of 1861 and requires that order will be maintained on public roads and in public places, obstruction will not be caused by assemblies and processions and, when this is read with section 34 which make it an offence for any person to cause obstruction, inconvenience, annoyance, risk, danger or damage and section 23, which makes it incumbent upon the police to maintain the public peace and prevent the commission of offence and of public nuisance, it is clear that public order really means that the actions of a group of individuals should not impinge on the rights and convenience of any other group. An assembly of persons who use criminal force in order to cause a public servant to desist from his duty, resist the execution of any law or legal process, commit mischief or criminal trespass, deprive any other person of his property, enjoyment of a right of way or peaceful enjoyment of rights by use of criminal force, or use criminal force to compel a person to do an illegal act automatically becomes an unlawful assembly under section 141 of the IPC if it consists of five or more persons. For the purpose of maintenance of public order and tranquility an Executive Magistrate or a police officer is empowered under Chapter X Cr,P.C. to cause the assembly to disperse, if need be by use of civil force or with the help of the armed forces. Every act of disturbance of public order is a cognisable offence, to prevent which a police officer may arrest the accused under section 151 Cr.P.C. Under Chapter VIII Cr.P.C. such persons can be bound over for keeping the peace, be of good behaviour and generally behave in a lawful and orderly manner. The duty of the Executive Magistracy and the Police to maintain public order is thus clearly laid down by law.

Apart from arrest, binding over a person for good behaviour or using force to disperse an unlawful assembly, the Executive Magistracy and the Police have the legal authority to regulate assemblies, public meetings and processions. Whereas under Article 19 of the Constitution the right to assemble peacefully is guaranteed, reasonable restrictions by law on such assembly is permissible under the same Article. After all, the enjoyment of one’s fundamental rights is limited by the requirement that this should not impinge on the fundamental rights of other citizens. If, therefore, there is an assembly of people or a procession which obstructs the public way, prevents citizens from going about their lawful work or endangers the public peace, the authorities are duty bound to step in and prevent any disruption of public order. The authorities are not only empowered in this behalf by law, they are duty bound by law to ensure that every assembly of persons works directly within the confines of what the law permits. If the Executive Magistracy or the Police lays down certain conditions or prescribes the minimum requirement of what an assembly of persons can or cannot do, then disobedience of such lawful order is an offence. Apart from the provisions of the Police Act disobedience of an order promulgated by a public servant lawfully empowered to promulgate such order is an offence under section 188 IPC. If the defiance of such order leads to serious offences such as rioting, then it can invite the provisions of sections 147 and 148 IPC. If public servants are assaulted in the process this will be a more serious offence under section 152 IPC, which would carry a penalty of up to three years rigorous imprisonment. If arson is caused, property is damaged, citizens are assaulted and grievous hurt and death is caused to any persons or persons then the provisions of sections 302, 304, 324, 325, 436,438, etc. would all be attracted. The scheme of the law is that citizens will maintain public order, will be liable to punishment if they cause disorder, damage, hurt or death that the authorities charged with the maintenance of public order will take necessary steps and issue necessary orders to maintain public peace and, where necessary, use force to bring offenders to book, disperse unlawful assemblies and restore public peace.

The British administration was quite clear about the duty of the authorities to maintain peace. The rebellion of 1857, during which atrocities were committed on both sides and after which terrible retribution was exacted by the victorious British, left an administrative legacy in which the obedience by Indians of every order of a government official was demanded and every act of disobedience was looked upon as mutinous behaviour. The Rowlatt Act and what happened in Amritsar in 1919, leading to the Jallianwala Bagh massacre were all part of the post mutiny syndrome from which the British suffered. Undoubtedly the Civil Disobedience Movement of Mahatma Gandhi, followed by the Quit India Movement, severely questioned this doctrine and created a situation where on the part of the British there was insistence on obedience and on the part of the Indians there was an equal determination not to obey the orders of the British rulers. The fact that ultimately the British had to moderate their response to the Civil Disobedience Movement is the ultimate tribute to the Mahatma‘s call for the movement to be totally nonviolent and based on the principle of ahimsa.

I joined the IAS in 1957, that is, just ten years after independence. The post 1947 doctrine of public order had undergone substantial change during the Independence Movement, but we were still told in the IAS Training School at Metcalfe House that whereas one should impose a prohibitory order under section 144 Cr.P.C. only in extreme circumstances, once such an order was promulgated it had to be obeyed and enforcement had to be rigidly done, if necessary by the use of lethal force. It was drilled into us that the State would collapse if we allowed prohibitory orders to be disobeyed because that would bring the entire administration into disrepute. Firing in the air was totally prohibited because stray bullets could hit innocents and partly because such firing is ineffective and could encourage the mob to indulge in greater violence. Now one finds that the Police is reluctant to fire at specified targets, firing in the air is resorted to frequently and this does cause unwanted casualties because some innocent is hit at a distance from the scene of the incident.

With independence the political process was strengthened and parties with different ideologies came to power in different States. For example, in West Bengal the Left Front came to power, whose specific aim was to establish the hegemony of peasants and workers. Thus, despite the fact that wrongful restraint and wrongful confinement are offences under the Indian Penal Code, gherao of business and industrial establishments by workers, prevention of free movement by the management and even intimidation of the management became quite normal, with the police being give orders not to intervene despite the fact that a crime being committed. This brought another dimension to the question of law and order. Public agitations against shortages of essential commodities, inadequacy of municipal services, in support of demands of students, etc., brought the people on the streets and such assemblies could not be treated in the same manner as unlawful assemblies of hooligans or agitators bent on mischief. Now a new dimension of public assembly and public order had to be faced by the Executive Magistracy and Police.

As the years passed religious processions and events have proliferated in India and whereas in the past religious processions were strictly regulated, as time passed and political support began to be given to such processions, the Magistracy and the Police also became inert in regulating such processions and events. Now any wretched marriage procession also results in obstruction of public streets and the Police stand by as helpless spectators. When political processions and agitations take place, as they frequently do in our cities, the Police seem to be almost totally helpless and have virtually given up any attempt to regulate such assemblies. At almost every political meeting, especially of radical groups, the scene degenerates into a near riot situation in which passers by are threatened and intimidated, shops are forced to close, public transport is attacked and quite often the Police and peaceful citizens are physically assaulted. Unregulated public meetings, therefore, are often an invitation to rioting.

Let us take the case of two cities, Delhi, the capital of India and Mumbai, the capital of Maharashtra. I have a quarrel with the name of Mumbai for a city whose authentic name really is Bombay. Where the present city is located there was no habitation, with such habitation as there was being located to the north at Vasai, which the Portuguese, who owned the territory, had named Bassein. The Bay around which the present city of Bombay is located was Bom Bahia, or Beautiful Bay. When the Portuguese Princess Catherine of Braganza married King Charles II of Britain she brought as part of her dowry Bom Bahia, which the British promptly renamed as Bombay. It is said by the Shiv Sena that the name Mumbai has come from the Goddess Mumba Devi. This temple itself was established long after the first British settlement of Bombay and, therefore, can hardly form the base of the name Mumbai for the city. My view is that either the city should continue to be called Bombay or it should be renamed as Vasai, the original settlement in the region. I have elaborated this issue because the Shiv Sena is prone to extreme violence on the question of this name. The name of the city is really a non-issue because in Gujarati and Marathi it is always called Mumbai and for the Hindi speaking people it has always been Bambai. The fact remains that if a name can arouse passions, including street violence, we should really be worried about the health of our polity.

To return to the main issue, because Delhi is the national capital and the police is not under the control of the elected government of the National Capital Territory, but is under the superintendence of the Lieutenant Governor, himself a central government appointee, it is less susceptible to pandering to local sentiments when dealing with a situation relating to public order. Therefore, processions to Parliament are stopped at least two kilometers from Parliament House. Whether it is Baba Ramdeo or Anna Hazare, a kisan agitation or labour strife, processions and assemblies are strictly regulated and the authorities do not hesitate to act firmly. Of course the same Delhi Police failed miserably in 1984 to check the anti Sikh riots, but that was an exceptional situation. Of course that is no excuse for what happened and it is unfortunate that even 28 years after the event no civil officer, no police officer, no instigator of the anti-Sikh pogrom has been punished. The Delhi Police has no special competence in crowd control, but its objectives are clearly defined and, therefore, it is an effective instrument for the maintenance of public order in Delhi.

In Bombay, by contrast, the Police are subject to the superintendence of the State Government of Maharasthra. By and large Maharashtra has been ruled by the Congress Party and even today there is a coalition between the Congress and its offshoot, N.C.P. Maharashtra has been subjected to some murky political manoeuvrings and just as Vasant Dada Patil was a creation of S.K. Patil, the Shiv Sena is also a creation of Vasant Rao Naik, who used it to counter the militant trade union leader, Datta Samant. All such noxious creations grow into monsters, as experienced by Indira Gandhi whose government built up Jarnail Singh Bhindrawale as a counter to the Akalis. The Shiv Sena has turned into such a monster because its avowed policy is that it will not hesitate in the use of violence to force its will upon the people of Maharashtra. This has taken the form of violence against restaurant owners from Udupi and Mangalore, harassment of Bihari migrants and exploitation of any communal situation in which Muslims are involved. The handling of Shiv Sena by the Maharashtra Police in Bombay has been so weak-kneed as to be an absolute disgrace and a blot on the face of a Force which once claimed to be the best in India. In the matter of communal riots, inaction by the Police at one end and uncontrolled action at the other have resulted in Bombay being a city which from time to time is torn apart by riots.

Let us take the recent case of August 11^th when the Azad Maidan became the venue of extremely ugly rioting by a group of Muslims who had gathered to protest against what was happening in four Bodo Districts of Assam. The gathering had the approval of the Police, but it soon degenerated into a situation in which two people were killed, several policemen injured, vehicles were burnt and weapons were snatched from the Police. This is unfortunate and demoralises the Police. The Police Commissioner of Bombay has been shifted, but only after a very aggressive meeting addressed by the MNS Chief, Raj Thackeray, which held out menace to the Muslims. The Police Commissioner defended himself, but there were certain basic flaws in the manner in which the situation was handled at Azad Maidan on 11th August. He said he desisted from firing because in 1992-93 it had resulted in 188 deaths and it was almost made out as if the deaths had occurred in police firing. In fact had the Police used adequate force at the earliest juncture in 1992-93 the total number of deaths would not have exceeded ten or twelve because the rioting would have been suppressed at an early stage. In the Azad Maidan case certain basic principles of crowd control were ignored by the Police. All Police Manuals prescribe that when faced with a mob armed parties must be organised in a minimum of section strength, to be commanded by a senior officer not below the rank of a Sub Inspector. Under no circumstance should the armed parties be brought into close proximity of the crowd and if the crowd becomes menacing enough to endanger the Force then the armed parties, on appropriate orders from their senior officers duly approved by a Magistrate, must use their fire arms in a controlled manner to disperse the unlawful assembly. In Bombay armed policemen mingled with the crowd and, therefore, could be overwhelmed by it. That is how their weapons were snatched. When an officer of the rank of Additional Director General of Police himself forgets what the Manual prescribes, how can he be forgiven? The senior officers at Azad Maidan, far from controlling the crowd, rendered the jawans vulnerable to mob action and this only proves how incompetent they are. My suggestion to the Maharashtra Government and DGP Maharashtra would be that they very quickly attend to the training and competence of their senior police officers when dealing with a mob. The police action or lack of it on 11th August at Azad Maidan is a prime example of how not to deal with a mob.

The first principle of dealing with a law and order situation is that the officers on the spot have as their first and only priority the very quick restoration of public order. It is possible that people are agitated about an issue with justification and that the issue should be addressed by the appropriate authorities to rectify the situation. That, however, cannot be the determining factor in preventing the officer in charge of a situation to act decisively. If a Muslim mob on an issue relating to injustice against Muslims turns violent, the issue of justice takes a back seat because the mob must be immediately controlled and without inhibition. If a mob dominated by extremist Hindu elements creates public disorder it must be dealt with firmly as a mob and not as a Hindu mob which might have some justification for its agitation. In other words, when the Executive Magistracy and the Police are dealing with a law and order situation they should leave aside moral questions relating to justification of the agitation and instead take all the necessary measures to restore order. It is only after order is restored that wider questions can be addressed. This applies to all situations, including hooliganism by Bajrang Dal on Saint Valentine’s Day.

We need to build in this county an environment in which laws and lawful orders are respected. Instead we are moving more and more towards a state of anarchy in which the strong dominate the weak, mobs rather than the Police rule the streets and the normal life of the people is disrupted from time to time because someone decides to organise a protest or an agitation. Such protests, such agitations, without necessarily promoting their own cause, result in disruption of normal life and must be put down with a heavy hand. People accuse the Police of being an instrument for terrorising of the citizens. My allegation, however, is that we have rendered the Police to a state of impotence, so that it now finds it difficult to maintain public order even under normal circumstances. This is a very dangerous portent.

Has the Political Class Failed Us?

A. Surya Prakash
Senior Fellow, VIF

The end of `Operation Jantar Mantar’ by Team Anna without any tangible gains vis-à-vis the fight against corruption and the indications from within government that the Lokpal and Lokayuktas Bill, 2011 may not come up for debate until the Winter Session of Parliament – should come as a major disappointment for all citizens who believe in the pursuit of peaceful and democratic solutions for major problems confronting the country.

With Anna Hazare virtually throwing his hands up and signalling the failure of the tried and tested Satyagraha route, every section of the political class, and this includes the ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA), the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), the Third Front and the still nebulous Fourth Front, must be laughing all the way to their respective vote banks. This is a moment of triumph for politicians as a whole because they have successfully beaten back, at least for the moment, the biggest threat that was posed to their corrupt ways. The UPA of course is leading from the front and has been able to stop the anti-corruption movement dead in its tracks.

One year ago, as the Anna Hazare Movement picked up, the UPA government introduced the Lok Pal Bill in the Lok Sabha and repeatedly claimed that it was committed to the passage of this law. Other members of the political class made similar noises and swore that they too were keen on having an independent ombudsman to probe cases of corruption. However, within parliament there was an unwritten agreement among all parties that they should not go beyond rendering lip service to the anti-corruption movement. All parties also believed that by dragging the issue, they could tire out the crusaders. This plan appears to have worked. Twelve months hence, the anti-corruption crusade has become a victim of middle class ennui and the much-talked about bill has virtually gone into cold storage.

Caught in a maze of corruption, the UPA government was not keen on having an independent Lokpal. But it was not alone. It got some overt and covert backing from virtually the entire political class. The government introduced the Lokpal Bill on August 4, 2011 in the Lok Sabha and immediately referred it to a Standing Committee head by Mr.Abhishek Manu Singhvi. This gave the government a much-needed breather and also an excuse. It asked Team Anna and others to advance their arguments before the committee. The Singhvi Committee recommended that the Lokpal must have constitutional status and parliament must take a call on whether to bring the Prime Minister within the purview of the Lokpal. It said group A and group B employees must be brought within the purview of the Lokpal, but the Chief Vigilance Commissioner should have jurisdiction over group C and D staff. The committee wanted MPs to be kept out of the Lokpal’s purview in so far as their vote, speech and conduct in parliament was concerned. The judiciary was also to be outside the Lokpal’s jurisdiction. It suggested a single law for establishment of the Lokpal and the Lokayukras in the states. Once the committee’s report was tabled, the government withdrew the bill it had introduced in August and came up with a new bill – The Lokpal and Lokayuktas Bill, 2011.

After much debate, which drew nation-wide attention, this bill was passed by the Lok Sabha and the government raised the expectations of the people by pretending that it would see the legislation through in the Rajya Sabha as well. However, the government’s real intention – to stall the passage of this legislation – became clear when the bill came up for discussion in the Upper House on the last day of the Winter Session in December, 2011. The Congress Party’s floor managers cleverly ensured that MPs belonging to many small and regional parties raised objections and obstructed the debate. Thereafter, as the debate dragged on, the party took advantage of the commotion in the House and mischievously ensured the adjournment of the House sine die, even though MPs wanted the debate to be concluded. With the abrupt adjournment of the House, the curtain came down on the Winter Session of Parliament, thereby giving the government yet another breather.

However, when the Budget Session of Parliament opened in February this year, the UPA resumed its subterfuge. It promised to complete the legislative process in the Upper House but sprang a surprise on parliamentarians and the nation as a whole last May, when it announced the bill was being referred to yet another committee – a select committee of the Rajya Sabha. Sadly, the BJP became a party to the government’s dilatory tactics. This committee has been given time till the end of the Monsoon Session in September to submit its report. So, even as Anna Hazare and Co have ended yet another indefinite fast in order to live to fight another day, there are indications that the bill will not come up for discussion until the Winter Session of Parliament this year. Going by the prevailing mood in the political class, do not be surprised if this bill too suffers the fate of all previous Lokpal Bills and lapse when the present Lok Sabha is dissolved in May, 2014 or earlier.

In the year gone by, the UPA government has slipped further down on the credibility meter and strangely, it is taking the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) along with it. As the main opposition party, the BJP ought to have been the moral policeman and the standard-bearer for clean governance, but it is even more irrelevant today than it was a year ago. The Congress and the BJP are now seen as two sides of the same coin. The people feel that they are merely engaged in a mock fight and they are tired of listening to the same old rhetoric. Film maker Shekhar Kapur correctly summed it up when he said the debate is not about the failure of the UPA but about the failure of the political system itself.

“India does not need change of government but change in political system. 65 years of current system has created huge divide between the people and governance”, he said in one of his recent tweets.

The Complex Art of Political Organisation

Dr. M.N. Buch

Visiting Fellow, VIF

The science and business of government is what politics is all about. In fact the dictionary meaning of politics is “The science or business of government; moves and manoeuvres concerned with the acquisition of power”. Politics is played by political parties and in a democracy it is political parties which contest elections and which, if they are fortunate enough to be favoured at the polls, form a government. Therefore, in a democracy any group of people which wants to capture power and thereby determine the manner in which a country will be governed has to form a political party. Anna Hazare, who had taken up the theme of fighting corruption and eliminating it, largely through a law in this behalf to be enacted by Parliament, finding that the agitational approach alone was not enough to win success, has now decided to use the political road to power in order to achieve his objective.

Before India embarked on its campaign for independence this country did not have any meaningful political parties because the road to government and to power lay not through the political process but rested on the bayonets of an imperial power. One was either British; therefore a ruler or one was an Indian whose principal task was to be governed by his imperial masters. Here there was no room for politics or a political party. No doubt there were movements such as the revolutionary movement led by the Anushilan Party in Bengal, but this was a pure campaign of terror whose ultimate objective was nihilism and, therefore, this group did not really constitute a political party. Its origin was the partition of Bengal by Lord Curzon, which it hoped to undo by creating a situation of anarchy through terror. It suffered the fate of all such movements, which was that the British security apparatus penetrated its cellular structure and then destroyed it. This was an excellent example of how a terrorist movement could be broken, but in my view it did not constitute a political movement.

My contention could be questioned because on 28th December, 1885 the Congress was born in Bombay through the initiative of Allan Octavian Hume. This initiative had the blessing of the British Viceroy, Lord Dufferin. Hume intended this party to be a group which would meet under the chairmanship of the Governors of the Provinces as a type of grievance court which could place before government issues relating to India. However, the Viceroy wanted an Indian to preside over the Congress so that it could place the Indian point of view before government without inhibition. Hume was the first General Secretary of the party and remained so till 1907. Lest it be understood that the Congress at the time of its origin was a party fighting for independence, it might be noted that in 1888 the President of the party was George Yule, an Englishman, in 1894 it was Alfred Webb, in 1904 it was Sir Henry Cotton, a retired ICS officer and in 1910 it was Sir William Wedderburn, who had been Secretary to the Government of Bombay. The early role of the Congress is best described in the words of Louis Fischer in his book “The Life of Mahatma Gandhi”. I quote, “The Congress was organised to channel popular protest into legal moderation. But into the channel flowed the fresh waters of national revivalism… The world theosophist movement … likewise fed that pride in the past which constituted the foundation of the movement for national regeneration.

Thanks in part to the unification and orderly administration of the country by the British, Indian industrialists, Hindus and Parsees in particular, grew rich and began to buy out their British partners. The emergence of Indian capitalism and a new Indian middle class gave a powerful impetus to the urge for self-government. Under these multiple influences the Congress outgrew its collaborationist boyhood and became a demanding youth”. Here it needs to be acknowledged that in the conversion of the Congress from a group which petitioned the British into a political party which became a formidable instrument for organising the whole of India into a freedom movement, the greatest credit must be given to Gopal Krishna Gokhale and to Bal Gangadhar Tilak who coined the slogan “Swaraj is my birthright”.

The metamorphosis of Congress from a group representing Indian interests into a political party whose objective was the same as that of any modern political party, that is, the ousting of foreign rule and then gaining power to govern the country, followed a long and tortuous path. A comparison could be made with the African National Congress in South Africa which also began as a group of people believing that the white masters could be petitioned to recognise the existence of the black population and then gradually turned into a political movement which combined militancy with genuine politics and then culminated in the elimination of apartheid from South Africa and its replacement by a genuinely democratic polity. Because the Congress had a leader of the stature of Mahatma Gandhi and ANC of the stature of Nelson Mandela the transition of power from imperial rule in India to independent India and from white supremacy to genuine democracy in South Africa could take place without embitterment or hatred for the British in India and the whites in South Africa. In this lies a lesson for those who want to constitute new political parties in India, for example, Anna Hazare. There seems to be a belief in the followers of Anna Hazare that because theirs’ is a popular movement against corruption and if the movement converts itself into a political party it will instantaneously be voted to power. Thereafter it will then be able to use this political power to abolish corruption. Fortunately politics is not like a packet of Rasna, a flavoured powder which one dissolves in water to create an instant cold drink. Politics, even the politics of revolution, is an evolutionary process in which first there is an idea, then the idea is converted into a seed, the seed into a seedling, the seedling into a tree on which grow various branches which together constitute politics. People who start a political movement need enormous endurance and staying power if they want their ideas to mature into the tree of which I have spoken.

Let us take the example of two revolutionary movements, that of Lenin in Russia and of Mao-Tse-Tung in China. The seed of Marxist philosophy was sown by Karl Marx in the latter half of the 19th Century. It was the consequence of the horrors of the industrial revolution which planted in Karl Marx’s mind an idea that the future belonged to the proletariat and that could only be achieved through a total egalitarian dictatorship of the proletariat in which ultimately the State would wither away. This gave birth to the Communist Party which, after intense struggle in Russia and in the midst of the total defeat of that country in the First World War, resulted in the elimination of the Tsarist regime and the establishment of the Soviet Union under Communist rule. The objective of this political movement was the destruction of the existing State in Russia, but it was not an anarchist movement because its sequential objective was to establish the Soviet Union as a dictatorship of the proletariat. There was no instant fix in the change of the political and social order; it came at the end of a long, hard struggle. Similarly, the Communist triumph in China in 1949 was the result first of the Sun Yat Sen Movement in China in which the Kuo-min-tang party established by him overthrew the old imperial order and established a republic. Despite the interregnum of Chiang Kai-shek, during whose regime the Kuo-min-tang descended into the depths of corruption, Mao Tse Tung’s Communist Party struggled against the government and this ultimately resulted in the Chinese Revolution of 1949. Unlike the Soviet Union, where Lenin and Trotsky heavily depended on the urban proletariat, the Chinese Revolution was entirely peasant based because the reality of China was that it was a predominantly peasant based country. Mao’s genius lay in realising that dogmatic Marxism which depended on the urban industrial proletariat needed redefining in the Chinese context and here it is the peasants who constituted the proletariat.

In India independence saw the Congress in power in the Centre and the States, just as in Pakistan it was the Muslim League which gained power. After Jinnah’s death and the assassination of Liaquat Ali Khan the politics of Pakistan underwent a change. Multi-party democracy virtually disappeared and despite its sporadic emergence from time to time in various forms, the fact remains that in Pakistan it is the Army which calls the shots. India continued in the democratic mould. The Mahatma realised that the Congress was all powerful in India, it was in government and could not, therefore, oppose government and, therefore, Congress rule would degenerate into one party rule. No one-party rule can be truly democratic. He fully appreciated that the Congress consisted of many disparate elements which come together in the freedom movement, including the powerful group of socialists. The cementing force which held these groups together was power and this is the worst kind of a bond because it only temporarily binds groups within a larger whole which can ultimately only be destructive. He recommended that the Congress should dissolve itself and new parties should be formed according to their respective ideologies which could help democracy to function. When this did not immediately happen the Mahatma tried to create a group of Constructive Workers. They would not go into power politics but would guide government and the people in the running of government on truly democratic, nonviolent lines. For Anna Hazare and his associates I would like to quote the words of the Mahatma who said, “I do not want to take power into my hands, but abjuring power and devoting ourselves to pure, selfless services of the voters we can guide and influence them. It would give us far more real power than we shall have by going into the government. A stage may come when the people themselves may feel and say that they want us and no one else to wield power. The question could then be considered”. Let Anna Hazare not feel that he is the only crusader against corruption. This is what the Mahatma had to say “There is so much corruption today that it frightens me. Everybody wants to carry so many votes in his pocket, because votes give power… Banish the idea of the capturing of power and you will be able to guide power and keep it on the right path… There are other ways of removing the corruption that threatens to strangle our independence at its very birth”.

To return to the main theme of this paper, a multi-party democracy needs more than one political party, but does not need and cannot survive fragmentation of parties into tiny components, each with a highly selfish agenda of its own. Therefore, before a new player enters the political scene it must first identify its own ideology and spell it out, first to its members and then to the people at large. The Communist Party was born out of a Marxist ideology, the parameters of which were created by Marx and the body of which was created by Lenin. Karl Marx was the ideologue and Lenin was the person who gave substance to the party. Fabian socialism in Britain grew out of an idea and the originator of this dogma was the London School of Economics. Even the Nazi party, or the National Socialist Party to give it its full name, was born out of a somewhat confused amalgam of racist thoughts, Nietzsche’s philosophy of rejecting the Christian compassion for the weak and advocating the creation of the Ubermensch, or superhuman, combined with an ill formed idea which was generally anti capitalist and ultimately focused onto extreme anti Semitism. The point being made here is that even the ultimate horror launched on the world by the Nazis came out of some form of ideology. However, let me hasten to add that this was an aberration and does not represent what I mean by ideology in the context of politics.

From the ideology of a party emerge its programmes, aims and objectives. Whereas these can be flexible to a contextual reality, ideology must be based on firm foundations. Judged by the criteria of ideology and ideology-based programmes, no political party in India lives up to their ideal. Politics is a game of power and ideology is what lends a direction to the purpose for which power will be utilized. When Clement Atlee came to power as the head of the Labour Party in Britain his programme, based on the ideology of socialism, was to make available universal health care and education to all, to nationalise major industry and to transfer from private ownership to the public domain the major utilities and capital goods industries. Atlee’s government proceeded to achieve its objectives with single minded purpose and succeeded. That is the power of an ideology based programme. By contrast in India, especially after 1967, almost all programmes of all parties are based on expediency because the objective is no longer to govern but to gain power and to use it for self-aggrandisement. This means that even the existing parties are no longer ideology based and, therefore, Indian politics has become rudderless. That as a result of this India is fast becoming a victim of non-governance does not seem to cause any worry or concern to any politician or political party. I can think of nothing more cynical than L.K. Advani’s recent statement that in 2014 India may face a situation in which neither the BJP nor the Congress can form a government, that some third party candidate will become Prime Minister and an extremely weak coalition will be cobbled together, either with the support of the Congress or the BJP, which will just not have the capacity to govern India. As the senior most active leader of the BJP it was Advani’s duty to suggest steps which could strengthen the major political parties and thus enable either the BJP or the Congress to be sufficiently strong in Parliament to form a meaningful government. I am afraid a leader of his seniority and status cannot enjoy the luxury of making cynical statements without suggesting a remedy.

In an earlier paper I have referred to what is happening to this country because of the state of degeneration of our political class. Now into the fray has jumped Anna Hazare with his motley group of supporters whom he has now disowned. I myself was approached by a person who is a former civil servant, whom I personally like, to join this group and offer my candidature for Parliament. Fortunately I have had the experience of a parliamentary election in 1984 which I narrowly lost because the then Chief Minister, Arjun Singh, had heavily manipulated the votes in two assembly segments where I have not served as an officer. I am proud of the fact that I carried all six assembly constituencies of Betul District where I had been DC twenty-five years before the election. That, however, was a one time phenomenon only, because I had no organisation, no money, no vehicles and the entire election was fought by the students of the district and by people at large who had fond memories of me as their D.C. I certainly do not have the resources and energy to again fight such an election and I also acutely realise that I retired from Service twenty-eight years ago and I cannot expect people to fight an election for me on the basis of old memories. I mention this because whatever its intentions, the Anna Hazare group must realise that fighting an election calls for an organisation, which we call a party. Even after totally eliminating the corruption factor it should be understood by Anna Hazare that a parliamentary constituency, especially a rural constituency, covers an area of about ten thousand square kilometers and embraces at least eight assembly constituencies. For the candidate and the supporters to travel around the constituency and place their point of view before the electorate requires fairly complex logistics, including ten to twelve off road vehicles, their drivers, POL, maintenance, etc. A parliamentary constituency has probably about five thousand polling stations at each of which a candidate would need two polling agents to look after his interests. These agents would have to be given some small sum of money, say Rs. 100 each for the day of poll, for refreshments and food. Taking into account the cost of travel and of the polling agents’ allowance alone, a parliamentary election campaign needs a minimum of rupees twenty-five to thirty lakh. Which honest candidate from an ordinary background would be able to find this large amount? That is where party funding comes in and this becomes the root of all corruption. The very process by which Anna Hazare now wants to eliminate corruption is the genesis of corruption. By all means go into politics because that is a fundamental right of every Indian citizen, but do so with eyes open and an acute awareness of what politics requires.

At present Anna Hazare has no ideology at his command. Neither he nor his colleagues understand dialectics, they do not have the capacity to formulate long-term programmes, they have no clearly enunciated objective other than the elimination of corruption and that, too, through an Act, the draft of which has been prepared by Prashant Bhushan and his father, Shanti Bhushan, together with some inputs by their colleagues. The very act of drafting the Bill and then insisting on its adoption by Parliament without changing a comma or full-stop is aimed at completely undermining the democratic process as exercised through Parliament and does not bode well for the future of any political party to be set up by Anna Hazare. What will be the stand of this party on economic organisation in India? Will the economy be based on free market capitalism, will it be socialism or will it be a continuation of the present mélange? How will the new party tackle the problem of unemployment? How will it deal with questions relating to energy, physical infrastructure, social infrastructure, the future of education and health services, the policy relating to industry and a future blueprint for agricultural development? In other words, what will be the philosophy of government of this new party? I do not think anyone has applied any thought to these issues. It would be a tragedy if an anti corruption movement ultimately becomes a farce in which Don Quixote, Anna Hazare, mounted on a spavined charger and accompanied by his Sancho Panza, Arvind Kejriwal, goes careening across the plains of La Mancha tilting at windmills. That is how I see the fate of the Anna Hazare movement, for which I blame Anna himself. A novice at politics, totally unable to fathom how complex a political organisation is, led by the nose by unscrupulous former bureaucrats and half baked activists, on whose bandwagon has now jumped V.K. Singh , I see Anna Hazare and his laudable campaign to fight corruption disappearing without a trace in the dreary desert sands of Indian politics. Gandhi understood politics, used it to build a national movement for freedom, but then by choice preferred to stand outside politics. Anna is the exact opposite.