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Commentary / Mani Shankar Aiyar

'We are not in other words, damned to democracy'

As Justice Sarkaria has noted in his justly-renowned report on Centre-state relations, most people are most of the time concerned with neighbourhood matters rather than high affairs of state. India's democracy provides outstanding forums for discussion and deliberation on matters quintessentially political, and all matters of high policy. In our first 50 years, however, institutions for democratic participation in neighbourhood matters have been, for the most part, conspicuously absent.

In Singapore, on the other hand, citizen access to elected representatives on neighbourhood matters, and the capacity of elected MPs to actually do something about neighbourhood matters, is as advanced as the scope for raw politics is limited.

In the United Kingdom, Parliament is for politics and policy and democratic local government for neighbourhood matters. It makes Britons proud of their democracy in a way in which we are not; and it makes Singaporeans proud of the excellence of their civic life in a way which must make any thinking Indian hang his head in shame.

We are more democratic than Singapore is when it comes to determining what an individual Indian's view is of, say, the CTBT. But we are in the hands of unashamed authoritarians when it comes to garbage removal. That is the paradox of our democracy.

We have to learn to preserve our democracy while increasing citizen participation in our democracy. Successful growth performers, strikingly South Korea and Taiwan, are learning that increased democracy is necessary for the preservation of the gains of growth. I am convinced most thinking Singaporeans would be relieved to breathe a little more of the oxygen of 'western freedoms,' and a little less of the carbon dioxide of what Lee is pleased to call 'Asian values.'

Reducing our level of democracy is, therefore, not the answer. We do not have to sacrifice democracy to secure development. We are not, in other words, damned to democracy. But we do need to make our democracy more democratic.

The first step in this direction is elected local government. This column has for so long been so obsessed with elected panchayats and nagarpalikas as to make it unnecessary to dilate once again on this point in this context. Suffice it to repeat it.

What is perhaps worth pondering over is whether the Rajya Sabha can be made to perform a function more useful than furnishing the Deve Gowdas of our democracy with an escape hatch. Would it not be more useful to abolish the Rajya Sabha altogether and in its place expand the Lok Sabha to at least double its present size.

After all, the Russian legislature has several thousand members of parliament, and while Russia can hardly be held up as a paragon of democracy, representation there at least has the merit of being more meaningful than in India. A doubling of the number of Lok Sabha constituencies would mean a halving of the numbers an MP is required to represent. This automatically means a doubling of the accessibility of the elected representative to his voters.

If the substitution of our bicameral Parliament by an expanded single chamber were to be matched by the substitution of legislative councils, where these exist, by expanded Vidhan Sabhas, the doubling of representativeness and accessibility in Delhi would be reinforced by the doubling of representativeness and accessibility in the state capitals. Along with truly effective panchayati raj, the Indian citizen might begin shedding his disillusionment with democracy through increased participation in democracy.

That, not Deve Gowda, MP (Rajya Sabha), on the ramparts of the Red Fort (good Lord, not once again!), is the birthday present our country is looking for as we wheel into the golden jubilee year of our democracy.

Mani S Aiyar
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