Marriage of inconvenience in Democracy: Politics with Principle!

Gandhi said, ‘politics without principle is prostitution’. The former is the play of power, whereas the latter is a set of rules based upon morality. It’s said that power has uncorrectable habit of breaching the law and principle to assert its authority; at the same time, only power has the potential to deliver justice in society. Both are complimentary to each other’s existence. Therefore, power is the necessary evil of society. Democracy is perhaps the only method of governing a society which promises to present a nuanced view of use of power by checks and balances.  But man’s Machiavellian mind has managed to invent the ways to exercise power by subverting principle even in democracy. And, that act of abusing power by undermining principle is called ‘corruption’. 

In a democracy absence of a strong opposition and continuation of a single party ruling the country for a longer term without any break is indeed a sign of farce democracy; in undiplomatic term it can be called a corrupt democracy. Such political system is prone to use corrupt means of functioning and preserving power. In 1950 India coming out of British colonialism became a democracy but could not develop a real essence of it which means a multiparty platform of politics. Without multiparty or a strong bi-party politics, a nation cannot claim to be a true democracy. Sadly for India, its politics has been, apart from a short period of Janata regime (1975-77), dominated by a single party, the Indian National Congress till 1989. Though it’s a pure coincidence that as the year 1989 offered a new era in the European liberal democracy with the Berlin Wall coming down in Germany; similarly, in India with the concept of “Mandal and Kamandal” taking centre stage in Indian politics, this year brought a new freshness to the democratic politics of the country as since then the non-Congress governments, for whatsoever little time, started making its presence felt in the national political consciousness. Though political analysts did think that a politics based on ideas like caste and religion would not bring any constructive outcome to the Indian society.  But we should also recognize a fact that a political issue is fermented upon the real social problems that it grapples with at a given time; and the caste was, and is, up to an extent, a reality of Indian society. So far as the topic of religion is concerned, it has always been used by leaders which include Pundit Nehru to take political mileage; but, it was quite naively used by Rajeev Gandhi by allowing unlocking the door of the Ayodhya Ram temple and undoing the Supreme Court judgment of “Shah-Bano case”. All these political events prepared a stage for a new “centre right” politics that was grabbed by the chariot man, Lal Krishna Advani of the Bharatiya Janata Party who made the Ram janam bhumi mandir an issue of national sentiment.  That contributed immensely in bringing the BJP laid alliance NDA in power at centre in 1998. Under Vajpayee’s leadership, the country saw since 1947 its first non-Congress government completing its full five year term in 2004. It introduced a new era of bi-polar politics which led India to become a rather stronger democracy.  Recent surprising victory of the Aam Admi Party in the Delhi assembly elections brought new winds of change into Indian politics; it appears to have made a new addition on the path of making Indian political party system more democratic and probably more transparent. The immergence of AAP generates high degree of hope which only time will tell if they’re able to meet the expectations of people or get reduced to just another de facto party with extreme Left ideology.

How has corruption as election issue evolved over the years in the Indian political discourse? How has that topic struck a chord with the people of Delhi that caused the victory of a barely twelve month old party in 2013 assembly elections? Will a party floated on the plank of fighting corruption sustain the rigorous tests of time in Indian politics where emotional issue matters more than the serious one?

For the first time corruption in public office came under light when the ‘jeep scandal’ case became a political issue in Nehru’s cabinet in 1948. Since then, the cases related to scam and misuse of power surfaced quite a few times in public space but people continued to reelect the same party, Congress in power again and again. Partly, because the opposition parties like the Swatantra party by Raja ji or the Jan Sanga by Dr. Mookerjee had had very less influence in pressurizing the government of the day in subjecting to a hard scrutiny; partly, the people of India were blinded by the aura of Nehru and Indira, and they did not put any question to their style of governance. The myth that Indira can never be wrong was challenged by the Allahabad High Court’s verdict in 1975; in which Justice Sinha’s famous verdict declared the election of Indira Gandhi null and void for using fraud means. In order to remain in power, Mrs. Gandhi imposed ‘emergency’ by subverting the constitution which is called the darkest hour of democracy in free India.

Nehru weakened the Congress by not nurturing a credible leader to replace him in his life-time. He could have taken the decision of taking retirement from active politics in late 1950s by transferring the leadership to a younger generation leader. But it did not happen; secondly, the immature death of Shashtri made India leaderless for some time. In that time of vacuum, reticent Indira became Prime Minister thanks to Kamaraj, but she took some time to make a leader out of herself. As Narashimha Rao puts rightly in his book, The Insider, that she in course of time developed incessable thirst for power. Her intense desire to remain in power brought dynastic politics that killed the inner party democracy in Congress, and as a by-product of the latter, it introduced the culture of fear, sycophancy and nepotism. Congress’ dynastic culture encouraged other political parties to indulge into the same practice. The dynastic culture is the largest contributor in making a party corrupt. As it’s said that fish starts to rot from the head; similarly, the seed of corruption was sown in the functioning of the political party that advanced to government, then this poison dwindled down into higher and lower bureaucracy. The principal reason of India being corrupt primarily lies in the fact that the political party system is corrupt. Another reason in making Indian corrupt is the free run of ‘License Raj’ from 1947 to 1991 that created bureaucracy a super powerful institution. The people working under the shield of bureaucracy considered taking bribe as their birth right. So, the centralized government controlled by socialist economy is indeed one of the major contributors in polluting the governance structure.

It happened quite a few times that corruption became an election issue, ex: in 1977 by the Janata party and by V. P Singh in 1989 after Bofors scandal. But, then after successive non-Congress governments did not do much in catching the culprits; instead, they simply buried them, and exhumed them time to time to gain electoral advantage in their favour. People realized that all political parties are equally corrupt so none of them would take any serious action against others because ultimately it’s going to harm each one of them.

In 2011 after the notorious 2-G scam broke, the stubborn government remained adamant in not taking any appropriate action against the guilty ministers. The BJP, being the main opposition party, did not let the parliament function for two weeks which drew the attention of the entire media towards the magnitude of the scams that the Congress and its alliance parties were involved into. The Prime minister and Congress president instead of making a statement in front of media, tried to put a carpet over the entire episode of scam. The more they tried to hide, the more curiosity and anger it generated in people’s mind. During the same passage of time, momentous gross scam of commonwealth games also hit the floor. All these events brought a perfect time for a nation-wide agitation; only a leader with non-political background was required. That gap was filled by an old Gandhian activist, Anna Hajare, from Maharashtra came to Delhi to sit on Dharna for ‘Jan Lokpal Bill, a strong law to curb rampant corruption in public office. Nervous government instead of letting Anna exercise his democratic right of staging a Dharna, sent him to Tihar Jail. This foolish decision of government backfired, and generated tremendous amount of anger in people’s mind. As a consequence of that, the Anna movement ended up becoming one of the most important political events so much so that media compared that with JP movement of 1975-77. It made Anna a hero of modern times, placing him near leaders like Gandhi and Jay Prakash Narayan.  People around Anna, Arvind Kejrival, a Ramon Magsaysay awarded activist and Prashant Bhushan, senior advocate of Supreme Court became a household name as they appeared multiple times in front of media to brief about the outcome of a failed negotiation process that went in between them and the Congress leaders.

Finally, after a few backstabbing from government, the team Anna understood that the government is deaf, and democracy is dead as it refuses to hear the voice of people in street.  So it provided a reason to Arvind kejriwal and Prashant Bhushan to take that fight to a next level; thus, they decided to take a plunge in electoral politics by floating a political faction called Aam Adami Party. That was politically a wise decision to conclude the entire movement by forming a political party that could enjoy the support of all those middle-class people who stood by Anna team.   

Then, it was required to take first bold step which was to test the waters by fighting Delhi legislative elections. They all sensed correctly the mood of people which was direly against the Congress. So, the next correct step that they took was to challenge a very tall leader in the electoral battle. In politics to achieve big, one needs to uplift the height of a leader; one of the secure ways of doing that is to pit him against a tall leader of adversary party in elections. If the underdog leader loses, he wins people’ sympathy; if luckily he comes out as a victorious then the whole world belongs to him. Risk in politic yields a mightier outcome. Kejriwal due to his activist background has always been at ease in taking risks. He decided to take on political heavy weight, three time Chief minister of Delhi, Sheila Dixit. Congress and BJP both the parties took him quite lightly calling them a party with an ambition of collecting funds only. But when the election result stunned everyone even the Kejriwal team as well. The AAP ended up winning 28 seats out of 70, which is a historic maiden performance for a less than a year old party. Had the Congress party managed to present, and pass a bill almost like ‘Jan Lokpal’ then today there would not have been any Aam Admi Party. Power brings arrogance that eats up the ability of a man to think rationally, and to distinguish just from unjust.  That’s the reason due to deep arrogance Congress could not perceive the direction of wind, and paid the price in Delhi assembly elections for their lack of political wisdom.

Skeptics say that today’s 24x7 media channel era needs political theatre which can be fed to viewers continuously. No one will disagree that Kejriwal and his team are quite good at sitting on dharna, and at attracting a large crowd of young people which can provide instant topic for interesting TV debate; but, they need to understand a fact that after forming government the time of activism is over, and the time of delivering on the promises they made pre-election has arrived. People seem to be apprehensive about the future of the AAP. Can a party floated on the plank of fighting corruption sustain the rigorous tests of time in Indian politics where emotional issues prevail over the serious ones?

This is true that topic of corruption has popped up time to time in public discourse but it has not yielded much political dividend to leaders in elections. The issues that most likely appeal to people are found to be related to identity politics. It’s a debatable fact that Indians do crib about bad road, poor transport facility but when it comes to electing a leader for one’s own locality then they’d like to choose someone who belongs to their own faith, cast or region. Though this picture is not always true but for a larger part of northern rural India, people do vote on the basis of caste and religion. One needs to analyze it meticulously which says that India is a collectivist society (tribalism). Collectivism is a value system opposite to individualism which encourages a man to identify as a member of a community but not as an individual. His decisions, even personal ones, are deeply influenced by his family and community.  Collectivist people believe largely in belonging to a group based on linguistic, religious, territorial sub-national identifying factors. A voter, therefore, from collectivist society would want to see a man in power that belongs to his cast, faith or region. This gives a sense of empowerment to the voter. Poltical pundits explain through such theories the ascendance to power of leaders like Mayawati, Mulayam Singh and Lalu Prasad. They all are known for their corruption charges and poor track record in governance but still they got re-elected to office of power.

Since 1989, this genre of politics took a forefront thanks to leaders like V P Singh, Kanshi Ram, L K Advani and a few others. The caste based politics seems to have lost its charm in early 1990s. Since 1991, entire political narrative of the nation got encircled around two ideological poles, secular versus non-secular or communal. This divide got sharpened aftermath of the Gujarat riot of 2002. In that dual completion of secular vs. communal, the issue of corruption remained suppressed.  It’s an irony that till a few years ago Indian politicians were convinced that on the basis of either good governance or corruption, they cannot win elections. The paradigm shift took place with the chief minister of Gujarat Narendra Modi’s win in his second consequent assembly elections which proved that if a government delivers good governance then it can get re-elected on that plank. This trend remained maintained in the BJP ruled states where good governance was, and is given importance. It’s worthy to note that this trend has not received the same degree of reciprocity from the Congress ruled states. It’s because Congress has always maintained in keeping state leadership very weak and central high command in Delhi highly strong which gives a free hand to the lady sitting in 10-Janpath to pick the Chief Ministerial candidates as per the interest of the central leadership, especially the one family. In the play of power distribution in between centre and state, people of India got the raw deal of bad governance in Congress ruled states; Maharashtra is one such example.  

  

The need of the hour hints that political parties ought to work upon making governance an election issue but not corruption because the latter is a by-product of the former. If a country is governed well, then it will create an atmosphere that would dissuade corruption. Under good governance, it includes moralizing public office, judiciary and police.  By focusing merely on corruption, it will not solve the problem but it will only show a dreamy land to people for a certain time, and then after it will leave them completely disillusioned and angry again. Therefore, the Indian electorate has to get mature then only the narrative of its polity can move from secular versus communal divide to performing versus non-performing political party.