Systemic Failure or Organ Failure?

Dr M N Buch 

(Visiting Fellow, VIF)

The Chambers Twenty-first Dictionary, which is quite an authoritative lexicon, describes ‘system’ in the following words, “A set of inter-connected or inter-related parts forming a complex whole”. The word ‘systemic’ is defined as “referring or relating to a whole organism. ‘Organ’ is defined as, “A part of a body or plant which has a special function, e.g. a kidney, a leaf”. Therefore, when an organ fails it is an individual part which becomes inoperative and, perhaps, with proper treatment the organ, or part, can either be repaired or made functional, or it can be replaced. A systemic failure, however, would be much more serious because in such a situation the entire system, or the complex whole consisting of individual organs, begins to give way and this can lead to what can only be called termination which is irreversible. Here all the organs either seriatim or collectively fail. The situation can still be retrieved by repair or replacement. The question which faces India today is whether our body politic is facing organ failures or is it that we are a looking at a system failure?

The total system under which India operates is what is provided in the Constitution. The body politic consists of three major subsystems, the Executive, the Legislature and the Judiciary which together constitute the whole system called the Indian State. Within the overall system and the sub-systems there are a number of organs which are required to perform specific functions. Schools and colleges are required to impart education, medical institutions are meant to look after the health of citizens the Income Tax Department is supposed to collect taxes levied by the Legislature, the Agriculture Department is meant to promote agriculture and the Police are required to create an overall environment of security and for that purpose to maintain law and order, prevent, detect and prosecute crime, guard the country against externally sponsored acts of terrorism and generally reassure people that they can go about their normal vocations in peace. This functional distribution or responsibility applies to all the organs of the State and to all levels of public servants, elected or appointed. Sometimes a particular organisation or department fails to live up to our expectations. Some civil servants do not carry out their duties faithfully. Quite often even at subsystem level there is failure, such as the virtual lock out of Parliament that we have witnessed for the last few months. Sometimes the citizens themselves are so annoyed with a particular organ of the State that they react strongly and, therefore, there is a hiatus between public servants and people at large. These are aberrations which will crop up from time to time in any system, but the system itself has to be resilient enough to apply self-correcting measures so that the organ which is faltering is brought back on track. Organ failure is correctable but when the self correcting mechanism fails it can have a cascading effect on the functioning of organs and an unchecked failure of one organ can cause other organs to come under stress and fall. This can lead to systemic failure, which has to be avoided at any cost.

How sound are our systems? Because the republic is founded on democracy and the fact that every five years people do exercise their franchise in an environment which is basically free of fear means that democracy has taken very deep roots in India. Democracy, therefore, becomes the very base, the very foundation on which is the system rests and this foundation cannot be destroyed. This does not mean that the superstructure, which corresponds with organs of a system, cannot be damaged, but systemic failure cannot take place unless the foundations themselves crack. The foundations of Indian democracy are stable and safe and this can be categorically proved by the failure of the State of Emergency which Indira Gandhi declared in 1975 and had to hastily withdraw in 1977. This is one side of the story, but the other side is that if organs fail and corrective measures are not taken in time, cumulatively this can lead to a system failure. There are many critics, many pessimists, who say that this is beginning to take place increasingly and that we are in danger of systemic failure. People with extremist views go to the extent of saying that the systems themselves are rotten and we should scrap them and create new systems. In Russia, the Tsarist Government and the Tsarist system had become rotten and, therefore, the Russian Revolution took place and Imperial Russia became the Communist ruled Soviet Union. Every organ of the old regime was destroyed.

The problem with revolutions is that they quite often go against the established nature of things and, in turn, they themselves fail. Two glaring examples of this are Russia today and the modern Peoples Republic of China. Within seventy years of establishment the Soviet Union broke up and disappeared, to be replaced by the Federated Russian Republic which has moved away from one party rule of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to something which is attempting to resemble western multi party democracy. The Eastern Republics have broken away from the Soviet Union and its successor State, Russia, as have Ukraine, Belarus, Latvia, Estonia, the Caucasian Republics of Georgia and Armenia. The system failed and the country split. The second example is of China, where Mao’s revolution transformed a rotten Kuo Min Tang governed China to a Peoples Republic, which consolidated the country but also brought it under harsh one party rule. Today, however, the picture has changed and is continuing to change. Under Deng Tsiao Ping and his successors China has moved away from an extreme Left Wing form of communism and instead wholeheartedly embraced the capitalist economic system. Politically China has remained under one party rule and the tension is apparent between an economic system which is liberal and a political system which is still rooted in the shibboleths of Marx, Lenin and Mao. Yet, this country has accepted Hong Kong and Macau, former British and Portuguese colonies, as part of China but following their old political systems. Here revolution has turned to evolution, which has kept the country intact and will probably drive it closer to liberal ideas of political organisation, though not necessarily the Westminster or the American model of democracy. This country is to be watched very carefully, not so much because it is now an economic powerhouse but because political changes are taking place which may have very far reaching effects globally.

It is in the context of what the holders of extreme views on how the Indian State functions have to say about scrapping the system that I have brought up the position prevailing in Russia and China. The Indian system of change is evolutionary rather than revolutionary and, therefore, the change tends to be seamless, painless and very long lasting. For those with short memories I would like to draw their attention to what Jawaharlal Nehru and S.K.Dey achieved through the Community Development Programme. Colonial India with its highly regulatory administration was launched on the path of development, especially rural development, by co-opting the people of our villages into an effort to galvanise rural society and unleash people oriented, people driven rural development. Without anyone realizing it, India evolved the system of development blocks, each headed by an officer specifically dedicated to the development agenda. The regulatory mechanism of the tehsil and district remained, but a new unit of administration, the block which was coterminous with tehsils in States which had small tehsils and with more than one block per tehsil where the tehsil was large and could be segmented into more than one block. Extension officers in various disciplines were posted in each block. The BDO was equivalent in rank to the Tehsildar, but because the development administration structure was separated from revenue administration, which could be called coercive to an extent, we had a new cadre of officials who were accountable to the people at block level and whose only agenda was improvement of the rural economy. Setting up a parallel development administration without reducing the importance of the regulatory administration was a remarkable achievement and India can take great pride in this. It is on this foundation that the subsequent panchayat Raj system has been created. This evolutionary form of passing real power to the people through the Panchayats is the an achievement of which India can be justifiably proud. Had we abolished the tehsil and had created only a development administration we would probably have had the chaos that now prevails in Pakistan where half baked reforms which virtually destroyed the district administration without a parallel Panchayat system to take over. This step disconnected the police from accountability to the Magistracy and converted the Deputy Commissioner of a district to a District Coordinating Officer with virtually no coordinating powers, has led to administrative chaos. Our method is better.

The recent debate has originated from the unfortunate rape of a young woman in a moving bus in Delhi and her subsequent death, which has led to an outburst of horror and rage against the manner in which the Indian State is functioning. People are absolutely fed up with crime, especially against women and the rape of the young lady has led to widespread public revulsion and demand for action. People want modified lynch law to apply, they are attacking the police, the judiciary and the legislature for failure to enact tough laws and to enforce them and they want sweeping changes in the organs of the State which would amount to systemic changes. Any attempt to tell people that whereas the anger is justified it is the law which must take its own course, not only because people demand it but because the law is on the statute book and it is the duty of the Executive to enforce the law. The anger of the people is understandable, but what is not understandable is the manner in which government has handled the whole matter. What the people needed was reassurance from the highest officials of the State, including the President and Prime Minister, that in the instant case there would be swift justice, in general there would be a tightening of security and law enforcement in such a way that law breakers begin to have fear of the law and that the general security environment would be improved so that everyone in India, especially women, has the right to protection of laws. This demand is absolutely justified and had government taken steps immediately which could convince the people that government is serious, the things which happened in Delhi when the protests started would not have taken place. If the President, the Prime Minister or the Home Minister, as also the Lieutenant Governor of Delhi had not sheltered behind police barricades and had come to Vijay Chowk to talk to the protesters, not only the would the people be reassured but the agitation itself would have ended. None of these functionaries thought it fit to meet the people, not within the four walls of their own office but in the open where people could congregate around them. A little courage shown by the leaders would have defused the situation immediately, but then we are ruled by insensitive people who are also cowards. This is a prime example of the executive organ of the State not performing its duty and to some extent this amounts to an organ failure. However, it is remediable if for the future the lesson is learnt and the administration goes out of its way to meet people, hear them and then provides suitable remedy and takes suitable corrective steps.

There are a few signals about organ failure or at least organ stress on which I would like to comment. The first goes beyond an organ and forms a sub-system which is a vital constituent of the Indian State. I refer here to the Legislature. Whether it be Parliament or a State Legislature, the legislative organ of the State is really the most important constituent of the democratic system because the House is elected by all the people and, collectively and individually, it and its members represent the people of India. The representatives of the people have at all time to be accountable to the people and, therefore, behave in a responsible manner. The people’s mandate to the Legislature is to deliberate and legislate, that is, give us a system of laws which makes India a society based on law rather than arbitrariness or whimsicality of the ruler. It is the custodian of the public exchequer in that it votes grants and the budget in its totality, which authorises the Executive to draw funds from the Consolidated Fund of India and make accruals to it through revenue and capital receipts. The Executive can neither impose a tax nor an impost, nor can it spend even a single paisa without the approval of the Legislature. In turn, the Legislature can call the Executive to account on how the money has been spent and in this it is assisted by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India. The Executive has to account for every expenditure and, therefore, the parliamentary convention is that if government if defeated on a Money Bill and, in particular the Appropriation Bill, it must resign.

The Legislature also calls the Executive to account in its executive functioning through questions, call attention motions, adjournment motions, motions of no confidence, debate, discussions and resolutions. This can only be done if the Legislature meets for extended periods of time, each day’s session lasts the whole day and discussions and debate take place in an environment of peace and normal give and take. If the Legislature meets for just 50 to 60 working days in an year, as is the case with most State Legislatures, or proceedings are held up for days and months because the opposition and the ruling party do not see eye to eye on issues and nonissues, then the legislative subsystem comes under more stress. This can affect the working of the Executive and then there is a real danger of a systemic failure.

There are remedial measures which can be adopted. India does need more than one party and, as I have written in the past in extenso, ideally we should have a centrist party, a left of centre party and a right of centre party in which the centrist party becomes a pivot, but also a role model which prevents an excessive swing either to the Left or to the Right. Splinter groups and purely regional outfits should either have no presence in Parliament or a very subdued presence. If we adopt one single political reform, that is, no independent can stand for Parliamentary election unless he has won at least one local government election and one assembly election, with a condition applying to regional parties or splinter groups that unless they, as a party, hold at least five seats each in the Legislature of three States, they cannot contest an election to Parliament. The smaller parties would then either have to merge into larger parties, or they would have to expand beyond the narrow confines of their State boundaries, or they would have to confine themselves to State Legislatures only. They would then not be able to exert pressure in Parliament which would be far more in proportion to their numerical strength. If the larger parties are no longer at the mercy of these small groups one can definitely expect more responsible behaviour by them, both in government and in opposition.

Moving from a whole subsystem to organs of government within subsystems, I would like to comment on three of them. The first is government. As a part of the Executive organ of the State the government is required to function within the mandate given to it by the people, that is, the approval given by the people during elections and the agenda and programmes of the party which is voted to power. The party manifesto, the party ideology and the party agenda cannot and must not be altered case by case and government must adhere to the policy guidelines provided to them by the manifesto and agenda of the ruling party. This will guide future legislation and it will certainly guide policy formulation on specific issues. Within these parameters, however, those instrumentalities of the State which are responsible for implementation of policy will take the orders from the law, the people’s mandate and the decisions of the Council of Ministers. The problem in India is that government itself vacillates and dithers, with the result that its officers do not have clear-cut orders or a clear-cut policy which they are supposed to implement. This is an organ failure, but if it enlarges itself to encompass the whole range of executive action, then organ failure here can lead to failure of the subsystem and this must be guarded against. The Constitution in Part XIV already gives the Civil Services protection against arbitrary action, the Preamble, Articles 14, 19, 21 and 38 of the Constitution lay down the fundamental duty of government to promote a welfare state and the Rules of Business framed under the Constitution categorically provided for the manner in which public servants will function, impartially and without fear or favour. If we can go back to a system in which every functionary is not only allowed but actively encouraged to do his duty according to the mandate given to him, we would be able to stop the downward slide of the efficiency and efficacy of our public servants. This is well within our means and if there is to be public protest, it should not be confined to an individual case of rape but must take the form of insisting that government functions effectively.

The second organ I would like to pick up is the judiciary, which is one of the constituent organs of the State and forms a complete subsystem. People talk of judicial reforms. Even the Supreme Court keeps emphasising this, but no one has really articulated what they mean by judicial reforms. Any reform which aims at reducing or in any way curbing the independence of the judiciary enshrined in Chapter 5, Part V and Chapter 5 and 6, Chapter VI of the Constitution has to be firmly rejected. If the judiciary, from the court of first instance upto the Supreme Court, becomes in any way amenable to pressure by the Executive or the Legislature, it can neither function independently nor can it be a guardian of the Constitution and the rights of the people against Executive or Legislative highhandedness. Having said this one has also to recognise that there is a great deal of inefficiency and even corruption in the judiciary today and that this has to be cleansed with a heavy hand. The cleansing process, however, must be a part of the judicial system, with no say of the Executive or the Legislature. The judicial reforms should take the following form.

1. An objective assessment of the strength of judges and magistrates from the court of first instance upto the Supreme Court which should be approved to deal with the huge number of cases now pending or likely to be instituted in future.
2. A process of selection of judges which safeguards the independence of the judiciary, but is transparent, open to examination and time bound in the matter of selection and appointment.
3. A clear-cut understanding by the judiciary at all levels that the provisions of section 309, Cr.P.C, which call for speedy disposal on a day-to-day basis will be applicable to every court in India and every judge and magistrate will be held accountable for delays. In this the High Courts and the Supreme Court must interact with the Bar Council of the State and Bar Council of India to ensure that these Councils lean hard on their members to help in speedy disposal of cases rather than act as obstructions which indefinitely delay trials.
4. The High Courts and Supreme Courts must exercise self-restraint in the admission of appeals and petitions so that trivia is thrown out at motion hearing. Today many petitions are entertained, especially Public Interest Litigation, where the issue is high profile that the judge can garner free publicity. This hits at the roots of the anonymity of judges. Today a normal petition or appeal before a High Court or the Supreme Court remains unheard for years at a time, but Public Interest Litigation gets priority. The Supreme Court must take a good hard look at what really constitutes public interest and must issue suitable directions to the High Courts so that normal cases received due attention. Of course, in order to achieve speedy trial there has to be the cooperation of the prosecuting agency and of the police in ensuring that process is served and presence of witnesses ensured.

The third instrumentality I would like to speak about is the police. At one level it is the coercive arm of the State because it is utilised for putting down public violence and maintenance of law and order. This is a legitimate role, provided that the police is not used selectively. We need to strengthen the Executive Magistracy and the Police in tandem so that, faced with a particular law and situation, the Police and the Executive Magistracy will react in an uniform and predictable manner. Minimum necessary force will be used at the first instance of a law and order situation developing, with the emphasis on preventive action, followed by physical force when that becomes necessary. Neither government nor any other functionary should be allowed to interfere in this part of the duty of the Police, that is, immediate intervention to prevent a law and order situation spiralling out of hand. If such a philosophy has been built into the Gujarat Police and Maharashtra Police the post Ayodhya riots in Maharashtra would have been brought under control very quickly, as would the post Godhra riots in Gujarat. The coercive arm of the State, in exercising force, must do so in the interest of the person at large, which means that necessary force will be used to curb lawlessness at the earliest juncture, with no one having the power to stop the police from doing its duty.

Another area in which the Police operates is in the prevention of crime, its detection, investigation and prosecution without delay and in maintaining surveillance over criminals, which would prevent them from indulging in criminal activities. Under Chapter XI of the Code of Criminal Procedure the Police is not only authorised but is required to take preventive action so that cognisable offences may be nipped in the bud. Under Chapter XII of Cr.P.C the Police is required to investigate every cognisable case and to carry the investigation forward upto the stage of filing a challan before a competent court. Under law the power of the investigating officer to investigate a cognisable offence is unlimited. His superior in the police hierarchy can guide him or even take over the investigation himself, but he can neither order him to drop an accused against whom a prima facie case is made out nor order him to falsely implicate someone against whom no case is made out. However, as we have seen in innumerable cases investigated by CBI, interference at political levels in the investigation of offences is quite frequent and this is one reason why CBI has such a dismal record of conviction If the Police is unable to investigate offences or is unwilling to do so, it is inevitable that lynch law will prevail, as happened at the time of the infamous Bhagalpur blinding case. If we are to be a society of laws then lynch law has no place in India. This means that for our own sake we have to make the Police an effective instrument of crime control and for this purpose we must give the police freedom of action. I do not agree with a great deal of what Prakash Singh says in the matter of details of police autonomy, but I am in total agreement with him that the operational freedom of the Police must be restored, strengthened and enhanced. Whatever legal changes are necessary in this behalf should be brought on the statute book with great speed.

There is no doubt that the superstructure of the State is under considerable stress. Different organs are distressed and weakened and there are signals about current or potential organ failures. As yet there is no danger of systemic failure, but it is about time that we took note of what is happening to the organs of the State and to apply remedial measures now.

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.