Awake, Arise:
AAP’s successful twin experiments with Power to the People
2013, the year of aam admi also marked the 150th birth anniversary
of Swami Vivekananda. Swamiji popularized the sloka from Katha Upanishad “arise,
awake, stop not until your goal is achieved.” (Uttisthata
Jagrata Prapya Barannibodhata) This message was to his fellow countrymen to
get out of their hypnotized state of mind.
Arvind Kejriwal riding on Anna Hazare’s
movement, ‘India Against Corruption’ has
successfully awakened the aam admi to rise and have his say in the recently
concluded Delhi elections. He continues to exhort him not to stop till his goal
is achieved.
What is an aam admi’s goal? It is Swaraj or freedom from the ruling
‘elite’ whose rule is rather exaggeratedly
shown to be more oppressive than was that of the British Raj. His goal is
to make his and his fellow aam admis’ voice heard as he believes that through Swaraj
the government of the ‘elite’ will be replaced by the government of aam admi
and thereby the government will be made directly
accountable to the people of India that has a large majority of aam admis. The AK’s
model of Swaraj lays stress on self
governance, community building and decentralisation.
The Numero Uno of aam admi, Arvind Kejriwal says his party will not be guided by
any ideology( though his friend, philosopher and guide Yogendra Yadav had stated that AAP is a
socialist party)and that they are
entering politics to change the system.
Utopian in concept, the AAP aims at replacing
the neo-plutocracy by aam admi democracy where the governance is in the hands
not of a few, but of the entire people of the nation (that necessarily has to
include the non aam admis as well). But AK repeatedly says that he is not the
Chief Minister, the aam admi will be( this automatically excludes all non aam admis). He has thus cut a deep division between aam
admi and the non aam admi.
But what is baffling is who is the aam admi?
In simple definition it refers to the common man. But that does not explain his
full credentials. When the India Against Corruption movement began a lot of the
apathetic middle class joined it. They were mainly the government employees –
the Babus- who enjoy all the government
perks including accommodation, government health scheme benefits, constant
increase in pay through additional Dearness Allowances, and of course good
money received under the table( about which ironically they protest). So the
aam admi that AK refers to may not be the middle class, but those who are at a
still lower rung of society- the large group that daily experiences deprivation
of the minimum level of existence. No wonder, AK appeared to them as the new
Messiah and awakened them from their ignorance to an awareness that they have a
voice to make demands.
AK’s utopian idea of governance by the masses
is already in existence in villages and rural areas. The form of governance through
seeking the views of the villagers is known as the Panchayati Raj, the earliest
form of local government in villages where each village is given responsibility
for its own affairs. Modern Indian government has decentralized several
administrative functions to the local level, empowering elected gram
panchayats. Thus AAP’s vision of governance is an extension of
Panchayati Raj from the villages to the larger Metropolitan areas that are
burdened with complex issues and multidimensional problems. These problems will
multiply hundredfold on the National scene. So what is done through gram
panchayats at a micro level may not be possible at a macro national level.
It is well known that the population keeps
increasing in the urban areas with daily influx of villagers into the metro
cities. While there is no reverse migration from the cities to the rural areas,
the arrival of a large number of migrants to the cities makes heavy demands on
the resources available there -especially water, power, housing, security, schools
and sanitation. The AAP experiment( to
be tried form tomorrow) in mob governance
faces challenges from diverse population in the cities- from the rich
and the affluent to the middle level babus(government employees , small traders
and shopkeepers) to the aam admis, to
the migrants. How to please these varied groups if everyone is given voice to
demand his form of governance? AK talks about Mohalla sabhas. But even the
Mohallas in Delhi are many and the non-mohallas are of equal numbers. There
will be different demands on fund allocations by these Mohallas that will spark
internecine quarrel over the rightful distribution of funds as per their
individual demands. Participatory governance sounds brilliant as a concept but
this effectively means creating unhealthy competitiveness, antagonism and
conflicts among the people. Delhi, all these years has been a cosmopolitan city
– a mini India-where people from different states have been living together
forming sabhas and societies that banded
them together as distinct linguistic and cultural groups such as Tamils,
Keralites, Sikhs, Telugus , Maharashtrians etc. A uniform policy of governance
in the best interests of the citizens has served Delhi well all these years.
Maybe the aam admis of each group may not have reaped the benefits of such
governance, but to substitute it through Mohalla sabhas is to destroy the unity
and cohesiveness of the society. This is a danger that AAP cannot ignore.
Even if it is a bitter truth, it is a fact that a large number of aam admis
– more so the migrant labour- are illiterates and therefore they should not be
the arbiters of major policy decisions that includes security, education,
health, land acquirement, finance, generation of power, augmentation of
water supply –to name just a few. What
is now euphemistically called as mass-governance will descend to mobocracy-where
the uneducated and illiterate classes without knowledge, appreciation and respect
for law and order will have political control of public affairs. Delhi cannot
be ruled on the pattern of federal states where each has its own autonomy that
cannot be infringed upon.
The present political churning in India
reminds us of England of the1950s as it went through a social churning with the working class cultural movement that
developed in theatre,
art, novels, film and television
plays, whose educated 'heroes' from Brick Universities were described
as angry young men. This movement encouraging ordinary people to look back in
anger used a style of social realism, and presented the working-class
Britons living in cramped rented accommodation and spending their off-hours
drinking in grimy pubs,
to explore social issues and political controversies. The angry young men
voiced the dissatisfaction of the poorer industrial areas in the North of
England, and used their rough accents and slang. This was known as
Kitchen Sink School realism as it dwelt on the ugly realities of contemporary
life and sympathized with working-class people, particularly the poor. With the coming of large number of immigrants
in the decades that followed, there came a
perceptible decline in the attitude,
behaviour and manners of the English society.
The present cultural broadside against
everything the Establishment has represented is at the centre of AAP’s meteoric
rise as it touched the chord of every aam admi who had been denied the basic
amenities of living. It is worrisome to see the repetition of Kitchen sink
realism in India by well dressed,
educated and self styled guardians of the society’s morals and culture
who suddenly discover themselves to be
aam admis and hold forth on TV channels and
rile against establishment in the most
provocative language. The TV anchors and the experts enjoy shouting at the
‘netas’( or the spokespersons of the political parties), using the most
sophisticated and offensive barbs at them. In computer language this is a
finger-pointing exercise where the hardware vendor(anchor) points a finger at
the software(the representative of the neta’s party) and the software vendor points a finger at
the hardware and all the poor users(the
audience) gape at is the finger.
We are slowly descending into a society that
has no respect for cultured, civilized and refined language, thought and behaviour. Our educated classes have already come
to this level and make a virtue of mockery and supercilious remarks. It is good
to connect with aam admi and deliver the essentials to him. But before the aam
admi is empowered with political authority to make impossible demands as his birthright,
it is important to arm him with proper education that enables him to speak,
act, and behave like a responsible citizen.
Promising the moon will only make everyone ask for the Sun without
understanding that like Icarus, he will get his wings singed when he flies
close to the Sun. As for the pretending educated acolytes of AK, it is easy to
recognize the vacuity of our education system that has not helped them cultivate proper
reasoning and analysis. AK claims that governance is not a rocket science- but the art of
governance requires vision, ideas, policies, executive skills and a broad catholic understanding of different strata of
society.
AK and AAP have revolutionized the politics
of this country. Revolutions
are an integral part of human history in as much as they are an integral part
of the universal order. History of the world is a sum total of the history of
revolutions that have occurred at different periods. If we take the last three
hundred years, starting with the last decade of the 17th century, we
discover a series of revolutions that have changed world’s history and
contributed to the advancement of mankind. These revolutions, more often than
not have been violent which made Mao Zedong state that “Revolution is not a
dinner party, nor an essay nor a painting nor a piece of embroidery; it cannot
be advanced softly, gradually, carefully, considerately, respectfully, politely
and modestly. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one
class overthrows another.” But revolution is not to be identified with
rebellion. Rebellion is individual-centric unlike Revolution that touches
everyone.
History is replete with Revolutions. They repeatedly
bring about a cataclysmic change that arrest the flow of history, change the
track and trace a new path. So long as Man thinks (and he is genetically
designed to do so), he continuously conceives of ways and means of bringing in
a society that would not be imperfect. This is the genesis of all revolutions-
a search for a perfect or a near perfect social order. As a result, there has
been no one single revolution that can be said to be ultimate or definitive. As
time moves, every new order ushered in by a revolutionary movement is
intercepted in its march, marking the beginning of a yet another revolution.
Adapting the oft quoted hailing of a new monarch, it can be truly said: ‘
revolution is dead; long live Revolution.’
Camus rightly said: “If there had
been one real revolution, there would be no more history.” The history of
revolutions is a cyclical story of revolutions and counter- revolutions and in
all the cases the underlying urge has been the emancipation of mankind from
adverse political, economic and social pressures.
AK and AAP should recall what the great Greek
philosopher, Aristotle said about Revolutions which had effected change of
government in the Greek city-states of his time – alternating between oligarchy
and democracy –but a change brought in mostly without physical violence. He
said: “Revolutions are effected in two ways-by force and by fraud”, where fraud
is the process by which “citizens are deceived into acquiescing in a change of
government, and afterwards they are held in subjection against their will.” He
advocated persuasion to use of force to win the goodwill of people and their
allegiance to the ruling government.Aristotle's
understanding of revolution is fundamentally different from the modern
understanding, for to him it is value neutral. But if revolutions fail to live
up to those very ideals when they adversely impact people in the physical,
social and psychological dimensions of their personality. The failure is two
fold: it nullifies the positive effects of the revolution and it breeds a new
negativity in the post- revolutionary period. AAP has to bear this in mind even
as it celebrates the signal service it has done in revolutionizing Indian politics. AK on
assuming office has stated that the people and not he will run the government. This
is a novel idea and therefore attractive, but it is equally disturbing. Such
utterances have to be taken with abundant caution as mob-governance may end up
with disintegrating and dismantling the very structure of society. Disputes and
conflicts are endemic to human beings and therefore seeking Mohallas’ views as part
of empowering the aam admi will create more dissatisfaction and intolerance.
Governance is not the right of aam admi. It is the right of those who aam admi
elects to govern. Let democracy be for the people and of the people but not by
the people lest the Indian polity collapses at the high altar of governance.
Awake-
Yes.
Arise- yes ,but tempered with understanding.
Stop
not until the goal is achieved- ye, s with the awareness that awakening and
arising are continuous processes as the goalpost can never be a fixed one.
