The threshold for being able to “do politics” is so high that ordinary citizens find it difficult to engage with public life. This is often seen, both by the public at large and by the political power holders, as a legitimate expression of popular sovereignty.įour, while adult suffrage brought about political equality in one stroke, our politics is marked by deep inequalities. In the name of people and people-power, norms and institutions are sacrificed. Our public life generally manifests a robust disrespect toward institutions to the degree that politics often resembles shades of populism. This is partly because of the common understanding that “politics” means interference in institutional functioning. Today, even as we witness a serious erosion of most institutions, we must also admit that even in the past there has been a failure to ensure autonomy and efficiency of institutions of governance. In any case, our true contribution is not in creating institutions but rather in their talented mishandling - transforming them into instruments of oppression at worst and repositories of power and privilege at best. The enabling role of institutions is lost. Ironically, a majority of the new institutions we create tend to serve the purpose of controlling citizens. The Constitution gave us many institutions and subsequently, Parliament has added to them regularly. India cannot complain about the paucity of institutions - we have institutions aplenty. Third, democracy depends on a web of institutions. From the extant document, a new Constitution is thus extracted as an instrument of regulation and control rather than freedom and well-being.Īlso in Express Opinion | Why PM Modi’s comment on ‘black magic’ is off-colour In fact, the objective of rebuilding society is denied primacy. The ornamental status of the Constitution fails to serve its true purpose - imposing strict limits on those who hold power - and draws attention away from the task of rebuilding society. Our legislative choices, executive practices and judicial interpretations have undermined the Constitution from time to time. The two most revolutionary elements of the Constitution - fundamental rights and directive principles - are conveniently set aside from time to time in favour of setting up a state that is more a menace to citizens than their friend and benefactor. This is reflected in the governance practices of the present regime but it also predates it. More worryingly, the stabilising dimension of the Constitution is used to make the state all-pervasive and transform governance into full-time, all-round regulation of the idea of citizenship. There are celebrations of that document but the adoption of its spirit in social and political practice is half-hearted. India takes pride in a Constitution, which is both a stabilising and revolutionary document. The second contradiction is about the foundational document. This also undermines the importance of the idea of the people because once democracy is sidelined, people exist only as constituents of the nation rather than as having agency. In this hierarchy, democracy is secondary to the nation. Besides, a new hierarchy between the nation and democracy is emerging. Apart from privileging one community over others, the idea of the people is also beset with the exclusion of the physical peripheries of the nation. The famous phrase “we the people” will continue to be invoked but it will refer to only a select section as the people. The nation envisioned 75 years ago was certainly not confined to any one community but today, the entire nationalist rhetoric is marked by exclusion and an overemphasis on community identity. This tends to result in exclusion rather than inclusion.
The present juncture is marked by attempts to shrink the nation to one community. Yet, we are on the path of limiting both the scope of the nation and the expanse of what constitutes the people. They are also about the abstract idea of the people. This contradictoriness emanates from the celebrations themselves. Don't Miss from Express Opinion | As we celebrate the 75th anniversary of our Independence, a thought for what we lost