SPEAKING
FREELY Popular protests rile India's
leaders By Pushkar
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times
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In his speech to the
nation on the eve of this year's Independence Day
celebrations, president Pranab Mukherjee observed:
'When authority becomes authoritarian, democracy
suffers; but when protest becomes endemic, we are
flirting with chaos.' While acknowledging the
legitimacy of anti-corruption protests in the
country, the president warned that endemic
protests have negative consequences.
Mukherjee also noted that "in a democracy
there is always
judgement day, an
election". This was a clear allusion that rather
than protest and flirt with chaos, the people
should wait for the next election.
Mukherjee's speech raises several
troubling questions and sums up the larger
attitude of the Congress leadership - to blame the
victim and expect that the victims only use the
act of voting to express their discontent.
First, Mukherjee at least implicitly
acknowledges that authority has become
authoritarian. Having said that, there is bare
mention in the speech about any concrete steps the
government has taken to curb authoritarian
authority on the part of elected and non-elected
leaders and officials. Surely, popular protests in
India or other parts of the world do not become
endemic because common people have nothing better
to do. They occur when people have real grievances
and those grievances are not addressed even over a
fairly long period of time.
Second,
popular protests have specific objectives. If they
are anything else but endemic and disruptive, who
would really bother about a few thousand people
who protest every now and then about bijli,
pani or bhrashtachar (electricity,
water and corruption)? Does the Indian state
respond to even legitimate demands from below
without the threat of chaos? Anything less than
endemic and disruptive protest activity is useless
for attaining the smallest of objectives. It is
another matter that popular protests may not
succeed despite being disruptive and endemic
because they are up against a formidable adversary
- the state. One Case in point is the Jan Lokpal
anti-corruption bill.
Third, the reason we
are flirting with chaos is hardly due to popular
protests. The Anna movement has fizzled out in
terms of street power and its disruptive
potential. The chaos that exists around us is
because neither the ruling party and its allies
nor the opposition have shown any real intent to
devise and agree upon a coherent set of policies
to address existing economic, political or social
issues. We are flirting with chaos because of the
indifferent and incompetent leadership and not
because hundreds of thousands of people have held
parliament hostage to a set of illegitimate
demands.
Sociologists and political
scientists working in the area of civil society,
social movements and democratization have
generally taken a more favorable view of the role
of popular protests and social movements than is
implied in Mukherjee's speech. They acknowledge
that popular protests occur for both "good" and
"bad" causes. As the late sociologist Charles
Tilly noted, once social movements become an
effective way of making claims, they are utilized
by democratizers as well as by non-democratic and
even anti-democratic groups. In other words,
popular protests can be categorized as
"democracy-enhancing" and "democracy-eroding" in
terms of their strategies and objectives.
The historical evidence from India and
elsewhere indicates that progressive social
movements are often necessary for the spread and
effective implementation of political, social and
civil rights. The simple existence of a variety of
rights remains irrelevant for a large majority of
the population in large part because of the
absence of sustained claims-making from below.
Social movements can play a key role in improving
the quality of democracy and they need to be
disruptive and endemic to achieve their goals.
Consider the second issue that the
president hinted at in his speech - that people's
political participation be limited to voting on
election day. The suggestion shows complete
disregard to the idea of political participation
in democratic societies.
Free and fair
elections at regular intervals are hardly enough
to ensure vertical accountability. Neither are
elections the only legitimate means available to
citizens in democratic societies to demand
accountability from their rulers. Those who have
'captured' the state-not necessarily in the
Marxian sense-do not become responsive to the
basic needs of the people just because they face
the prospect of losing elections in two years
time. Political participation of a second kind -
in the form of popular protests is vital to bring
about some modicum of accountability. A growing
body of research shows that it is this active kind
of political participation that is more useful in
bringing about political accountability and
responsiveness on the part of the state than
simple voting.
In democratic societies,
there is no place for authoritarian authority.
However, there is a legitimate space for endemic
and disruptive protests especially because they
appear to be the only way in which the people can
convey to their leaders that they exist.
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online
feature that allows guest writers to have their
say.Please
click hereif you are interested in
contributing. Articles submitted for this section
allow our readers to express their opinions and do
not necessarily meet the same editorial standards
of Asia Times Online's regular contributors.
Pushkar has a Phd in
political science (McGill University) and is
currently based in Gurgaon, India. He is a monthly
columnist for EDU
(http://www.edu-leaders.com/resources/magazine)
where he writes on the state of India's higher
education. He has previously taught at Concordia
University, McGill University and the University
of Ottawa in Canada
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