An essay on Power to the People

                   Awake, Arise: AAP’s successful twin experiments with Power to the People

2013, the year of aam admi also marked the 150^th 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 17^th 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.