Civil Society versus Elected Government

by SUDHANSHU RANJAN

The Union Government has announced that it would bring the Lokpal Bill in the monsoon session of Parliament which is expected to pass it in the winter session. The all-party meeting held on the Lokpal issue damned the civil society and passed a one-line resolution: “The all-party meeting agreed that the government should bring before the next session of Parliament a strong and effective Lokpal Bill following established procedures.†The Opposition parties are also peeved that their space has been occupied by the activists though they wanted to derive political mileage out of the movement led by the civil society against the government.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, in his interaction with select print media editors, said that the civil society would not have the last word though he would like to reach out to it. Earlier, Union Human Resource Development Minister and member of the joint Lokpal Bill drafting committee Kapil Sibal emphatically said that there would not be any involvement of the representatives of the civil society in law-making in the future and that the constitution of a joint drafting committee for the Lokpal Bill should not be taken as a precedent. Sibal made this statement after the talks between representatives of the civil society and those of the government in the joint Lokpal Bill drafting committee finally broke down and Anna Hazare announced the resumption of his fast from August 16 next. Chairman of the joint drafting committee Pranab Mukherjee has already stated that some sections of the civil society have hurt the democratic institutions. The Congress spokesperson said that these representatives of the civil society who are ‘unelected’ and ‘unelectable’ were behaving like tyrants and trying to dictate terms to Parliament. However, the National Advisory Council has approved a framework for pre-legislative consultation which, if adopted by the government, would mean people’s participation in framing laws. So, it will be proper to appreciate this term in the correct perspective.

Whatever political parties may say about the civil society, nobody can gainsay the fact that it is only because of the pressure of the civil society that the creation of the Lokpal is now a certainty. The idea was first mooted by C.D. Deshmukh, the Union Finance Minister in the 1950s, and then President Dr Rajendra Prasad supported it but Jawaharlal Nehru suspected the motive of Rajendra Prasad. Then Dr Prasad had commented that corruption would prove to be the last nail the Congress’ coffin. It goes to the credit of the civil society that it galvanised public opinion in its favour. People’s power has proved its might. The civil society has come forward under the leadership of Anna Hazare and forced the government to accept its demand. The countrywide movement was not only against the government or any particular party but against the whole political system. Political leaders who wanted to express solidarity with the cause in order to hijack the movement surreptitiously were booed away. Political parties, feeling jittery over the groundswell of support for Anna, have taken exception to the term ‘civil society’ and have condemned the movement as a reprehensible attempt to denigrate the parliamentary system. They are asking that if it is civil society, then are they uncivil? However, they have no convincing explanation as to why the Lokpal Bill has been hanging fire for the last 42 years. Now, people’s initiative has forced the government to accept the demand for which Anna went on fast-unto-death.

In a parliamentary system, elected represen-tatives are constitutionally assigned to work for people’s welfare but they often fail. Here comes the role of the civil society. It reminds one of Gandhi who shunned political power with contempt as he had unwavering faith in the people’s power which he wanted to strengthen. In Hind Swaraj (1909), he went to the extent of characterising the British Parliament, the mother of all parliaments, as infertile and prostitute. His demand for parliamentary democracy in 1937 was not a volte face but it was meant to be a stepping stone for self-rule as he tenaciously stuck to his philosophy of village republic till the last. He stands out as the only leader in the whole world who kept away from power after leading the freedom movement successfully though he was the natural claimant to it. He was convinced that state power alone cannot remedy all maladies of the society. In fact, he suggested to wind up the Congress party and form a Lok Sevak Sangh.

Jayaprakash Narayan (JP) was another colossus to keep away from power. After parting ways from the Congress, he devoted himself to the task of fortifying people’s power and village recons-truction and pleaded for lessening dependence on the state. He undertook an extensive tour of the country for awakening the masses. In the course of a journey in 1949 he was injured in a road accident in Bihar. His left hand was fractured which remained encased in plaster for three months. After the plaster was removed he found that the hand had totally atrophied. After some physiotherapy the blood circulation became normal and the hand regained its movability. JP has written: “Similarly the power of lokshakti, that our country had, seems to have evaporated like camphor. The reason is that the power was covered in the plaster of slavery for 100-150 years.†During the Bihar movement in 1974-75 he often said that in democracy ‘demos’ (people) had become recessive and ‘cracy’ (government) dominant. The term ‘civil society’ signifies what was earlier known as people.

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ALL of a sudden, ‘civil society’ has become a buzz-word or a catchword or a password nowadays. On the issue of corruption and black money, it has taken the government head on. Thomas Hobbes used the term ‘civil society’ in his Leviathan in which he propounded the theory of social contract that men could contract together in order to lift themselves from the state of nature to civil society. He believed it was necessary for self-preservation as the ‘war of every man against every man’ that constitutes the state of nature, according to him, would destroy the society. For him, the life of man was ‘nasty, solitary, brutish and short’. Thus, man always lived in the fear of death, and he found the remedy in the appointment of a sovereign, and a trade of personal freedom in return for personal safety. He held that individuals had a legitimate right to choose their ruler, but once having exercised that right, they did not have any role, and the ruler, whether monarch or assembly, is alone authorised to think and act for the community in matters of public concern. He allowed an individual the freedom to rebel against the state only for self-preservation if he was sought to be eliminated. As the joke goes, which he himself cherished, that his mother fell into labour with him on hearing the rumour of the Spanish Armada coming ‘so that fear and I were born twins together’.

In sharp contrast, John Locke believed that men were naturally peaceable and sociable, and that rulers must not enjoy untrammeled powers which should be limited by conditions imposed by those who delegated the power. Thus, he wanted the civil society to restrain the powers of the sovereign. Jean-Jacques Rousseau also held that citizens could rebel against the sovereign if the latter broke the contract. In fact, in 1689, the Convention declaring the English throne vacant accused James II of ‘breaking the original contract between King and people’.

According to Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, the evolution of society is marked by three stages—the family, the civil society and the state. The institution of family is based on altruism where everyone cares and sacrifices for one another, but it is particularistic, and so narrow, altruism. The next stage is civil society which is larger but there are competing groups and vested interests which fight amongst themselves. Every group wants to establish its supremacy. Thus, a rational state is required to meet very stringent conditions and save the society from anarchy and resolve conflicts.

In the opinion of Karl Marx, both civil society and state are less than perfect. In case of both Hegel and Marx, the idea of civil society was conceived in the context of transition of the feudal society into bourgeois or civil society. Whilst feudalism plonked human freedom by keeping individuals enclosed within rigid and localised enclaves of corporatist estates, capitalism unshackled those restrictions and made individuals freer and mobile. However, this new-found freedom proved empty and abstract. So, Hegel found the solution in handing over his individual to the state and Marx to the class, particularly the proletariat or the working class.

This conflict between the elected government and civil society goes on and on. The government feels and asserts that it has got the mandate of the people to act in their interest. Most governments do sincerely believe that they are working for the welfare of the people. Quoting Lord Acton’s aphorism that ‘power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely’, Dorothy Pickles writes that “the more fervently they believe that they do represent the general interest, the more impatient they will be of opposition that hampers their action†. But the general public or civil society has a major role to play so that the government does not behave like a tyrant. The Emergency reminds how Parliament and the Supreme Court can also trample citizens’ freedoms when even the right to life was suspended and the Supreme Court upheld it in the Habeas Corpus case. Referring to this case recently, the Supreme Court was magnanimous enough to admit that even the Court can violate human rights. In a democracy, everyone has a right to advise the government. Plato gives the following description of discussion in the assembly: ‘…when the debate is on the general government of the city, anyone gets up and advises them, whether he be a carpenter or a smith or a leather worker, a merchant or a sea-captain, rich or poor, noble or humble.’

When Mahatma Gandhi launched his non-cooperation movement, a person no less than Rabindranath Tagore protested and refused to take part in it. He felt that it would lead to anarchy and so the right way was to spread education among masses. Gandhi went to Santiniketan to convince him but he could not be convinced. Similarly, Hasan Imam, a leading barrister of Patna and Congress leader, was also opposed to the idea of non-cooperation. Gandhi went to Patna and had an extended discussion with him but he could not be convinced either. Annie Besant’s opposition to civil disobedience is well-known. B.R. Ambedkar rejected the concept of non-cooperation or civil disobedience in the Constituent Assembly saying that it would not be required in an independent India. However, Ambedkar never took part in the freedom struggle against the British either and kept opposing Gandhi. In independent India also, there have been movements, the biggest one being the Bihar movement led by Loknayak Jayapraksh Narayan. Every government questions the credentials of those who speak up against it. Indira Gandhi had questioned the legitimacy of the JP movement and had dubbed him a fascist who did not believe in democratic institutions. The British Government had questioned the credentials of Gandhi and his claim to represent the whole country. So, Gandhi was not the sole but just one of the representatives of India at the Round table Conference.

Some countries do provide for people’s participation in governance. Switzerland has three institutions of people’s participation—initiative, referendum and recall. Under initiative, a fixed percentage of people can initiate the process of legislation by signing the paper that a particular law should be enacted. Under referendum, people vote on a particular issue or bill. And under recall, they have a right to recall their representatives.

The euphoria generated needs to be kept up but for that a strong organisation is required. The volunteers of Anna’s fast may have rebuffed the political leaders who came to sympathise with the movement but the hard reality is that only these political leaders can organise rallies and demonstrations. JP also kept political parties at bay initially during the Bihar movement in 1974 but he was forced to accept their support later on. Gandhi also used the orgainsation of the Congress despite all differences with it in all his movements. He floated organisations like the Spinners’ Association or Village Industries Association but still had to depend on the Congress. The question arises: would the civil society be able to sustain the movement own its own? If that happens it will be welcome. However, there is a need for caution also. People’s power is supreme but it must not be unres-trained, otherwise it leads to anarchy as is evident from various incidents of mob fury where barbarism is at its peak. The alleged criminals are lynched, sometimes their eyes are gouged out and women are stripped and belaboured. This is the hideous facet of people’s power while Anna’s movement is a sublime facet. Both are the results of the pert insouciance of the government towards the public cause. But this nonchalance should galvanise the people into action instead of demoralising them. People’s power needs to be regulated by selfless leadership shorn of personal ambition; otherwise it will go astray and get frittered away.

The civil society must also ensure that it is not appropriated by political parties. In the US, Canada and some other countries there were several populist movements but they were appropriated by political parties. In India too political parties hijacked the JP movement to a large extent. Dependence on the state must be minimised and the relationship between the state power and people’s power has to be worked out.

The author is a senior TV journalist and columnist.