JOIN USAnna Hazare and Baba Ramdev are being criticised for promoting extra-constitutional and unaccountable centres of power and thereby weakening democracy. People of the country have elected members of parliament and given them the authority to make laws for governance of the country. People have not given such a right to Hazare or Ramdev.
These are self-appointed centres of power. Giving them importance amounts to neglecting the elected MPs and weakening democracy. But Hazare and Ramdev indeed have a role to play.
Problem is that the purported accountability of the elected MPs may be unreal. Actually politicians manipulate the voters. Voters are by nature shortsighted. They are focused on immediate personal gains to be obtained from the politicians rather than long term welfare of the society at large.
An honest MP will get road made in the village but may not help much in getting an out-of-turn gas connection. On the other hand, a corrupt MP will not get the road made but help in getting gas connection. He will siphon off Rs 1 crore from the budget and distribute saris worth Rs 10,000. Unfortunately, the voter recognises the sari but not the road. He does not have the mental capacity to understand that taking a sari today will lead to the road not being built and he remaining in perpetual poverty.
Voters are manipulated by the MPs due to this shortcoming of theirs. American psychologist Edward Bernays has explained the matter. Bernays assisted president Woodrow Wilson in turning American public opinion in favour of the First World War. He worked for American Tobacco Company in the 1920s. At that time it was taboo for women to smoke in public.
He persuaded women rights activists to take out a procession in New York city smoking cigarettes. This got huge publicity and encouraged smoking among the women. Hitler's propaganda chief Goebbels persuaded the Germans to cleanse their race based on Bernays' teachings.
Bernays views on democracy are enlightening. He described the public as a herd that needed to be led. Bernays’ fundamental axiom was to control the masses without their knowing it. Bernays expressed little respect for the average person’s ability to think out, understand, or act upon the world in which they live.
He said, “No serious sociologist any longer believes that the voice of the people expresses any divine or specially wise and lofty idea.”
One-sided information
Yet we cannot decry democracy because it gives people a route to self-governance even if it is inadequate. The inadequacy arises mainly from provision of one-sided information. Democracy fails if only one stream of information is provided.
Democracy can be successful if alternative viewpoints are available and pubic has an option to choose between them. Question, then, is how to provide the voter with choice so that he can actually apply his mind and arrive at his own conclusions. This, precisely, is the role of Hazare and Ramdev. They are placing before the people an alternative viewpoint and enlivening democracy. We cannot depend upon the elected MPs alone to deliver good governance.
It is unwise, therefore, to crush Hazare-Ramdev movements. The choice here is between moving move slowly in the right direction or to move fast in a possibly wrong direction. If Hazare-Ramdev movements are recognised and given importance then progress will be slow. We will spend much time debating whether a new Lokpal Bill is required or not. This debate is likely to take us in the right direction.
A judge can quickly deliver judgment after listening to only one party. It takes much more time if both parties are to be heard. Yet, ex-parte orders are not respected because they are more likely to be in error. The same holds for democracy. We must recognise and encourage Hazare-Ramdev movements even if they are taking the society in the wrong direction because such debate is fundamental to the determination of right and wrong.
Great civilisations like those of Egypt, Sumer, Greece and Rome have ceased to exist because they moved fast in the wrong direction. They did not encourage debate among the people to determine right and wrong. The Indian civilisation has been able to survive uninterrupted for nearly five millennia because it had created a space for such extra-constitutional centres of power.
Historian A L Basham writes: “A strong king was always a check on brahmanic pretensions, just as the brahmins were a check on the pretensions of the king.” And, Romila Thapar says similarly: “The gradual politicization of the office of priest (purohita) can also be seen in the priest becoming a check on the monarch.” Gandhiji wanted to disband the Congress and convert Congressmen into constructive workers who would live among the people and guide them in selecting the right MP. Lenin spoke of the Communist party guiding the government.
The common strand in all these formulations is the existence of a centre of power that exists independent of the government. The role of the brahmin and the priest is being discharged by Hazare-Ramdev movements. So let us encourage them and help the people make their own decisions.