Chanakya's New Manifesto: To Resolve the Crisis Within India (13 page)

Political parties do submit annual returns to the Income Tax (IT) department. The IT authorities duly certify these returns, although several commentators feel that these audited balance sheets hide more than they reveal. Moreover, informal estimates indicate actual collections to be as much as ten times that which is disclosed. Significantly, the EC has no investigative or enforcement powers in this matter. As many as eighteen regional parties, including the National Conference, Trinamool Congress and Indian National Lok Dal (INLD), have not filed the report on their earnings to the EC since 2004.

The participation of those with criminal backgrounds in the democratic process should be a matter of deep shame and concern for all Indians. If it were a matter of the occasional ‘tainted’ candidate slipping through a rigorous screening process, we could be more forgiving. But it is shocking to witness how widespread the criminalization of our democracy has become. This became abundantly apparent in 2004 when the EC made it compulsory for all candidates to the Lok Sabha to disclose their criminal antecedents. What this revealed was that 128 of the MPs to the Lok Sabha, or roughly a quarter of parliamentarians, had criminal backgrounds.

The revelation of these statistics created national consternation, but nothing more. In the next elections in 2009, as we have seen, the number of MPs with criminal histories went up by 20 per cent, with nearly half of them facing serious charges. Now, almost one-third of the members of the Lok Sabha—the supreme legislative body supposed to make laws for the good of the nation—have criminal records. There is no indication that things are likely to improve. In the U.P. state elections in February 2012, early statistics showed that the Congress had put up twenty-six candidates with criminal records, the Samajwadi Party’s tally was twenty-four, and the BJP’s twenty. National Election Watch, an NGO working for clean politics, predicted that the final picture would show the above numbers tripling in the case of most parties.

Something else is revealed through these statistics which is possibly even more worrying. How do people of such backgrounds enter and flourish within the democratic system? The sad truth is that political parties not only callously condone the participation of such candidates, but in some cases actually welcome their support. All that party leaders worry about is whether their candidates in the polls can win or not.

What is even more scandalous is that some of these tainted people are actually selected to occupy powerful positions in government. Mohammad Shahabuddin, the four-time MP from Siwan in Bihar, was debarred by the EC from the 2009 elections after being convicted of murder. But, frighteningly enough, he was earlier, in the Deve Gowda regime, union minister of state for home, in charge of the police. The police had several non-bailable arrest warrants out for him, for offences ranging from murder to kidnapping to smuggling and the possession of vast amounts of illegal weapons, but he roamed free until Nitish Kumar in 2005 took the courageous step of arresting him in his MP’s bungalow in Delhi. Lalu Yadav, an accused in the fodder scam, could still qualify to become the country’s railway minister. Shibu Soren was coal minister in the UPA-I government despite being accused and convicted of murder. Although his conviction was subsequently overturned on appeal, the fact that a union minister could be
suspected
of murder was nothing short of shocking.

The visible deterioration in the functioning of Parliament and state legislatures has only reinforced the feeling of alienation in the ordinary person. There was a time when debates in Parliament were of very high calibre, with the right mix of oratory, substance, decorum and wit. Today, more often than not, our legislative forums present a dismal picture; shoes, mikes, chairs and any other disposable object at hand is thrown by legislators at each other; abuse is exchanged; the well of the house is routinely trespassed into; in the monsoon session of Parliament in 2012, the Rajya Sabha hit a new low when legislators from the Samajwadi party and BSP got into a brawl. Adjournments are the norm; presiding officers are helpless in the face of all this indiscipline.

The spectacle that unruly legislators make of themselves is not the only problem; this sort of behaviour ensures that no real work gets done. Entire sessions have gone by in recent times without business of any worth being enacted. The eighth Lok Sabha achieved 111 per cent work output; the eleventh 108 per cent; the twelfth was marginally better at 109 per cent; the thirteenth fell to 91 per cent; the fourteenth was worse at 87 per cent; and the fifteenth Lok Sabha performed the most deplorably achieving only 72 per cent output.

There is also the feeling that crores of rupees of taxpayer’s money is wasted because of stalled parliamentary proceedings. Each minute of Parliament costs the exchequer
2.5 lakh. The cumulative loss when entire sessions achieve next to nothing is colossal. In contrast, the British House of Commons, where debates are marked by civility even when the political atmosphere is heavily charged, hasn’t been adjourned for even a day
.
True, India is a far bigger country and the contextual differences are too many to expect the UK’s practices to be replicated entirely. However, there is no question but that the prevailing situation needs to improve drastically.

It has been argued that some of the blame for the chaos within our central and state legislatures is a symptom of the democratization of Parliament. An elite club has been rightly breached through the progressive empowerment of hitherto marginalized classes. The representatives of such sections are not schooled in old-world political decorum, or so the argument goes. This is a misleading argument. First, it is an insult to the more recently empowered parliamentarians to argue that they are incapable of adhering to universal rules of parliamentary decorum. They may be less anglicized, but it is incorrect to say that just because of that they are inherently unruly. No, the indiscipline of our parliamentarians simply reflects the lows to which parliamentary behaviour has sunk over the years where what was once considered aberrational is now routine.

Another worrying development is the acceptance of the dynastic principle in our political milieu. There is something abhorrent about the world’s largest democracy considering this as par for the course. While there can no legal injunction on political leaders anointing their progeny to succeed them, such behaviour should be repugnant to everyone who believes in democracy. The founding fathers of our democratic polity, never thought of ‘dynastic’ succession as the norm for political parties. Mahatma Gandhi actively discouraged his children and family from cashing in on his political legacy, as did some of our most distinguished leaders like Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, and Dr Rajendra Prasad. In 1959, when Indira Gandhi was elected president of the Congress, Prime Minister Nehru had to face criticism for promoting his daughter. Significantly, he was quick to deny this was his intention. ‘I am certainly not grooming her as my successor,’ Nehru told his critics, ‘In fact, for some time I was mentally opposed to the idea, but she was chosen, and we worked more like normal political colleagues than a father-daughter combination.’

His daughter behaved differently. When she came to power she almost institutionalized the dynastic principle. She groomed her younger son, Sanjay, to succeed her. Even worse, this was accepted without demur by her party members. When Sanjay met an untimely death in an airplane crash, his elder brother, Rajiv, an airline pilot and resolutely apolitical, was parachuted into the party. After his mother’s tragic assassination in 1983, he led the Congress to an unprecedented victory in the general elections. I had occasion to personally interact with him, and found him to be a man of both charisma and vision. The issue here is the manner in which his succession was taken for granted purely on the principle of dynasty. Unfortunately, that tendency has been perpetuated by the Congress party and its present crop of leaders.

Apologists of dynasties argue that if an ‘heir apparent’ is able to win public elections his or her choice is legitimized because it reflects the will of the people. Such a defence is unsustainable. It is hardly difficult for the chosen one to win in a constituency carefully nurtured by the parent for precisely this purpose. The entire party works to ensure a win. Electability in a pocket borough, or even a win elsewhere through a massive sycophantic effort does not make dynastic rule compatible with democracy. It is also argued that dynastic succession is valid if the ‘ruling’ family has made great sacrifices for the nation. This logic devalues the sacrifices made by advancing a base reason like the succession of one’s progeny as reward. A family’s preeminence in politics gives its progeny a natural head start in politics. This is a dividend which cannot be denied. Nor is there anything intrinsically wrong about a politician’s son or daughter following the footsteps of the parent. But to automatically assign to the children of high profile politicians the status of unchallenged inheritors of political power is quite another matter. It devalues the party, its leadership and the principles of a healthy democracy.

We have discussed, in the earlier chapter on governance, the deleterious consequences of having a PM who is a nominee of the real leader of the party, Sonia Gandhi. Manmohan Singh has never had the of authority regular PM in a parliamentary democracy. And his successor is seen to be Rahul Gandhi, the next in line in the Gandhi dynasty, with no proven credentials. To his credit, Rahul has consistently denied wanting to be PM, or even succeeding his mother as the party chief, but the well-trained Congress will have none of this ‘modesty’; the young man’s acceptance of his predestined rule the next supreme leader of the Congress is a foregone conclusion for most Congressmen.

Dynastic succession is not the monopoly of the Congress. We have Omar Abdullah, son of Farooq Abdullah and grandson of Sheikh Abdullah, as the chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir; we have in the Samajwadi Party the emergence of Mulayam Singh’s son, Akhilesh Yadav, as the unchallenged crown prince; in the Shiromani Akali Dal, Prakash Singh Badal has made his son, Sukhbir, deputy chief minister, leaving no one in doubt as to who his successor should be; in Bihar, when Lalu Yadav had to resign his chief ministership because of his alleged involvement in the fodder scam, he actually made his wife, Rabri Devi, who was a housewife with absolutely no experience of public affairs, his successor; in Tamil Nadu, the DMK is all about Karunanidhi’s family holding the levers of real power. The exceptions are those chief ministers who are not married, like Mamata Banerjee, Navin Patnaik and Mayawati (and even in their cases there is reason for constant scrutiny), or others who have on principle kept their families out of politics. Perhaps the two cadre-based parties, the BJP and the Communists, have a better track record in this matter.

A most deplorable consequence of dynastic politics is the abhorrent sycophancy it breeds. No one dares to even remotely question the writ of the dynastic patriarch or the heir apparent. The slightest form of dissent is equated with disloyalty or revolt. Retributive action against anyone guilty of this ‘misdemeanour’ is swift and surgical. The result is an atmosphere of frozen conformity and intellectual inertness that is reminiscent of repressive feudal courts in the era of absolute monarchies.

When contrasted with the great parliamentarians and political leaders of the past, this is indefensible. Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru frankly discussed their ideological differences. As the prime minister, Nehru never thought of trying to stifle his home minister, Sardar Patel’s differences with him on the merits of an issue. This healthy tradition of freedom of opinion within the framework of party discipline was the strength of the Congress in its formative years. It allowed for a cerebral candour without the automatic attribution of subversive motives or the taint of disloyalty.

Today, the tradition of constructive dissent and debate, so intrinsic to the true spirit of democracy, is missing in India’s political landscape. There are absolute leaders, absolute dynasties, absolute subjects and absolute followers. This has ominous consequences for the world’s largest democracy, whose very civilization has been moulded for thousands of years by the dialogic process of discussion and constructive argument. To restore to democracy its inherent principles, to save it from criminal distortions, to infuse it again with idealism and respect, to end the public’s alienation from its practices, to attract people with integrity and competence to its politics—these are the imperatives of today.

In order to take the measures necessary to restore credibility and dignity to Indian democracy,
Chanakya’s New Manifesto
states:

2.1    It is necessary to correct the distortions that have crept into Indian democracy. The nation must rise above narrow partisanship to collectively meet this challenge.

2.2    In our country, political drift has become one of the greatest impediments towards achieving reform of our democracy. The record bears this out. The Goswami Committee on Electoral Reforms was set up twenty-two years ago in 1990. Subsequently, there have been a host of other committees and reports, including the Vohra Committee in 1993, Indrajit Gupta Committee on State Funding of Elections 1998, Law Commission Report on the Reform of Electoral Laws 1999, National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution 2000, Election Commission of India Report on Proposed Electoral Reforms 2004 and the 2
^nd
Administrative Reforms Commission (ARC) 2008. None of these have been able to bring about comprehensive change and have remained confined to proposals, ideas and intentions. Some matters on electoral reforms have been pending before the Supreme Court for over a decade.