UPA Achievements

[Guest]

[url="http://www.dailypioneer.com/260418/UPA2-and-the-ends-of-power.html"]UPA2 and the ends of power[/url]

Hiranmay Karlekar



The report card on the United Progressive Alliance’s performance in the first year of its second term in office need not be faulted on its self-congratulatory tone. All Governments or parties supporting them pat themselves on the back while presenting such documents. What leaves one with a profound feeling of disquiet is its failure to link its performance with any vision of the kind of India it stands for. It is important to mention this because in the absence of the statement of such a vision, the targets chosen and the success in achieving them become mechanical and bureaucratic exercises where success is measured in essentially statistical terms. Implementation lacks the kind of zeal that informs it when it is seen as a part of mission to transform society, which, in turn, requires a defining ideology.



There is, for example, the Gandhian vision of polity and society based on the concept of gram swaraj (village autonomy), an ethical public and personal life resting on a strong commitment to truth and non-violence, recognition of the dignity of physical labour and the virtues of simplicity and austerity. Marxism views ideas as super-structures of economic relations. Its ideological locus is the materialistic interpretation of history which is perceived as unfolding through the dialectic of class struggle leading to a proletarian revolution, paving the way to a final withering away of the state and the establishment of a classless society where alienated labour is a thing of the past.



The essence of the Humanist weltanschauung is encapsulated in Protagorus’ classic aphorism, “Man is the measure of all things.” Protagorus belonged to a period when gender equality and justice did not feature as a principal concern of political and societal discourse. A contemporary re-iteration of his encapsulation would be, “Humankind is the measure of all things.” Be that as it may, the central point of the humanist message is that freedom is the basic urge of human beings and rationality, the defining attribute of the species, enables it to be moral and the maker of destiny.



The three, besides political Islam, and their variants and derivatives —Maoism in the case of Marxism and Radical Humanism and Integral Humanism in the case of Humanism — have shaped political debates, with varying degrees of impact since the end of World War II. It is important to distinguish between philosophies/ideologies and agendas. The latter are the means of achieving the goals set by the former and, hence, have an instrumental role. Most of the non-Congress constituents of the UPA2 have not been terribly vocal about their ideologies. Their forays in this area have at best been desultory and platitudinous. So, unfortunately, have been the Congress’s as well. One can understand this in the case of the allies. Their emergence has more to do with the dynamics of regional politics and individual and collective rivalries than differences over first principles.



One expected things to be different with the Congress, an heir to the political legacies of Mahatma Gandhi and Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. Unfortunately, the expectation has been increasingly belied over the past several decades. One may, of course, be told here of the Congress’s commitment to socialism (still?), secularism and democracy and the UPA2’s common programme. The latter is essentially the alliance’s agenda and does not fall into the domain of philosophy. Socialism, Secularism and Democracy have become shibboleths through ritualistic reiteration and lack of sustained debate at the level of the party as to their content.



It is important to emphasise this. Each of these concepts is not only capable of a multiplicity of interpretations but is also instrumental in nature. There is, for example, Guild Socialism, Syndicalism and various hues of social democracy. Each of these brands, again, is vulnerable to misappropriation. Thus, Mussolini’s concept of a fascist polity was based on liberal borrowals from the ideas of the Frenchman George Sorel, the best-known proponent of Syndicalism, who conceived of a state structure based on federations of collectivised trade unions. Adolf Hitler thought nothing of calling his ravings National Socialism!



Similarly, there are many perceptions of secularism which most people believe stands for the separation of politics and religion. Though this concerns a very important dimension of secularism, it reflects a mechanical and legalistic approach which leaves the door open to a wide range of diverse interpretation of such issues as societal approach to religious minorities and minority-related affirmative action. Nor does such a definition address the issue of tolerance which can well be the subject of several debates.



Democracy too is a multi-dimensional concept comprising aspects such as constitutional forms, political systems, majority rule, minority rights, equality, access to opportunities and so on. Governments considered to be democracies emphasise these in their functioning in varying measures. Besides, Governments which are not democracies camouflage their authoritarianism by affixing to their names labels that mislead. Thus Field Marshal Ayub Khan had his Basic Democracy, and President Soekarno of Indonesia his Guided Democracy.



The instrumental character of the three concepts becomes clear on recognising that they are not ends in themselves. Democracy is a political arrangement that derives its justification in terms of maximising the freedom available to individuals in a society. Secularism derives its rationale from the need to protect discourse and governance from religious domination, secure freedom of faith and worship from sectarian restrictions, and ensure freedom from strife among religious communities. The various hues of socialism have stood for freedom from economic and social exploitation, and the freedom of the exploited and disprivileged to access economic power, which alone can lend content to the egalitarian dimension of democracy.



It is a reflection on our times that most political parties, in India and abroad, do not engage with ideological issues with the required seriousness. The reasons partly relate to the manifest decline in the quality of leadership, particularly the intellectual inadequacies of most politicians. Partly, they stem from the fact that politics is increasingly the business not of people keen to reform or remake society but to milk the system to make personal fortunes.



Whatever it is, the result is a failure to focus on the ends of power and question the basic premises of the pattern of development thrust on the country. One may have to pay a very heavy price on both counts.