Time to reconfigure our democracy

System Overhaul

Ronald Reagan, the former US President, was a brilliant raconteur with a large repertoire of jokes about the old Soviet era. One such was in the context of how democracy flourished in the US as opposed to the Soviet regime, and goes like this: “An American tells his Soviet friend, ‘I can walk up to the Oval office, thump the desk, and tell the US President that I do not like him.’ The Soviet heard him, thought for some time, and said, ‘Well, I can do the same thing in Moscow, too’. ‘You can?’ asked the American in amazement. ‘Yes, the Russian replied -- ‘I too can walk up to the Kremlin, thump the desk of the Soviet Premier, and tell him that I do not like the US President’!”

We live in similar times in very many countries now. And this despite the fact that the concept of democracy is popular across the world (even North Korea calls itself the ‘Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’). We seem to have lost our voices. Or, to put it differently, we do have our voices but we all sing the same tune. We have forgotten the tunes. Again, the basis, like in the Soviet era, is fear. There they used to put a person who sings a different song in a Gulag and throw the key away. Now, they settle for various other measures. The effect is the same – you are frightened into submission. So, you either join the chorus or sit quiet. It is said that democracy comes with the freedom to complain and a tacit understanding that the government won’t punish the complainer. This is being broken.

Fareed Zakaria terms this combination — of a regime with popular support which, paradoxically, also erodes the constitutional and legal structure of good government — as an ‘illiberal democracy’. Which is a tragedy.

Most tragic it is for the nation. It is in discussion and debate and airing of views that policies get sharpened. It is with differences being aired, with public discourse, that the participation of the citizenry, which is such an essential element of democracy, takes place.

It is tragic for the government, too. Let us not think that governments make policies and laws with anything other than the best of intentions. But therefore, it is in their interest to get feedback from everybody, to understand concerns, address them -- either by tweaking the policy or by putting at rest the unease of the citizens.

It is a tragedy for the citizenry, who participate in the building of the nation. Their concerns — real and imaginary — would remain unaddressed. That, in turn, makes them unwilling partners in the nation-building process. The result will be an unhappy implementation of government policies. You cannot have progress without the support of everybody. You cannot have progress with large segments of the population living in fear and being economically backward. And this is simply because no country can ill-afford to slip into what Larry Diamond, a political scientist at Stanford University, calls a “democratic recession.”

Democracy is much more than periodic elections, one cycle of which starts today in Uttar Pradesh. Democracy is accountability. Democracy is participation of the citizens in the policymaking process. Democracy is not just the voice of the elected representatives, but also of the citizens who have elected the representatives to voice their concerns.

What then should a government do? It can, for starters, encourage different voices. Encourage dissent. Hear them. Where there is merit in the dissent, change the policy; where there is no merit in the dissent, explain to the people why their concerns are misplaced.

The government should encourage the press to speak fearlessly. Empower them to tell the truth. For, as Steven Pinker says, democracy is a form of government that threads the needle just enough to prevent people from preying on each other without itself preying on the people.

And for all this to happen, there is a need, as a recent article in Foreign Policy suggests, to relook at the election process. That instead of first-past-the-post, we should have proportional representation (PR). That this will serve disparate societies that we live in better. Proportional representation, with its emphasis on seats to be given to a party in proportion to the number of votes gained, ensures greater representation of different views.

Though it was not said in the context of India, there is great merit in this suggestion. This has been debated in India from the time of the Constituent Assembly discussions, but it has never been pursued. And it makes eminent sense for a vibrant, very diverse country like ours to seriously debate and consider PR.

It is not that PR is perfect. It does have its flaws. It could result in coalition governments and their attendant challenges. It is better than the first-past-the-post principle which determines electoral results today simply because all voices will necessarily have to be heard. Governments will not be formed exclusively by parties that do not have the mandate of nearly 60-70% of the population. In PR, the other 60-70% would have adequate representation and act as an essential check on the government.

The last word again to Zakaria – “We enter the 21st century asking one of the oldest questions in politics, much older than the Enlightenment ideas that democracy was built on. It is a question the ancient Greeks and Romans debated more than two millennia ago: How do we produce virtue in human beings?”

How, indeed?

While we contemplate on this, let us seriously debate if we need to have electoral reforms, and if we do, what should those be.

(The writer is a former Chairman of the Central Board of Indirect Taxes & Customs)