Grassroots democracy, an idea whose time has come

It has become customary for Indian leaders to proclaim that India is not only the biggest democracy in the world but also the ‘Mother of Democracy’. Indeed, it was, but not for the reasons they cite such as the existence of non-hereditary rulers in India before anywhere else. It was just the opposite. It was a ‘democracy’ in true spirit despite being ruled by kings and emperors, almost right up to the advent of the British. That was primarily because authentic governance at the ground level – through bodies called sabha and mahasabha in south, and Srem, Nigama, and Nigama-Sabk in north – was almost entirely under the command and control of the people.

Then again, a state can be a democracy despite having a king or emperor at the top. We have quite a few in today’s world. And also many countries which have non-hereditary or ‘elected’ leaders are not democracies by any stretch. The real test of democracy is what it means in Greek – rule by the people where it matters most: daily life. And the ancient Indian model ensured that. In India, the king was the head of the state, but not of the society He had a place in the social hierarchy, but was not the highest place.

As far as daily life was concerned, the points of contact between the state and the ordinary interests of the daily life of the people were indeed very few. In other words, monarchy and democracy were mutually reinforcing, not colliding. Ground-level or local bodies were practically in character sue generis or stand-alone; like, in the words of a former British Governor-General ‘a separate little State in itself’. They were fully in charge of administering their designated territories and were fully empowered to raise revenues necessary to discharge their responsibilities.

At the same time, the king was empowered and expected to intervene and adjudicate when necessary to enforce discipline and accountability in the local bodies. There is a record of several interesting cases of the royal power being invoked and exercised in the interest either of the assemblies or of aggrieved parties. The kings too found it advantageous as a kind of safety valve. They were very useful to mobilise public spirit and popular participation to cope with emergencies and natural calamities. At times like that, everyone chipped in and even temples were willing to part with their jewelry.

This is the kind of spirit we lack in modern India. This kind of grassroots governance and its ‘richness of structure, was what, as Rabindranath Tagore pointed out, enabled both our rural society to function without dependence on external help and to remain unimpaired by aggression from outside. It provided what one commentator called ‘a kind of Noah’s Ark’ and another to note that it enabled it to remain largely unaffected by ‘more religious and political revolutions than any other country’, like a ‘rock by the rising and falling of the tide’.

In post-independence, our leaders chose to turn their back on this kind of democracy and opted for the Westphalian style of sovereignty and the Westminster system of governance. That meant that the state became all-powerful and society lost its co-equal status. The praxis governance mandated by our Constitution – which is actually a cross-bred of unitary and federal systems – made the state the supreme power and concentrated all political power between the Centre and States. Local self-governance got identified with a village, which was ridiculed as a ‘stink of superstition’ and ‘symbol of backwardness’. That doomed genuine grassroots governance, the existence of which was what entitled India to be hailed as a ‘mother of democracy.’ Modern India’s lack of seriousness about local governance was strikingly shown by the fact that its Constitution relegated such empowerment to a Directive Principles, something like an ideal not real..

Conclusion

The bottom line is this: It is only through constitutionally empowered bottom-up governance that India can be effectively governed; indeed, it is the only way the sum of its parts can be more than its whole. The roles played in the past by monarchs – substantive but supportive; non-interfering but a vigilant watch dog – can now be the roles of the federal and state governments. Shift to bottom-up governance could be the solution to the now famous Rajeev Gandhi statement (1985), namely, that out of every rupee targeted towards welfare and poverty alleviation only a fraction, 15 paise, reached the intended beneficiary. The figure might vary and technology has made a difference but the syndrome persists. That is because the issue is not only leakages and corruption; more fundamentally it is the very process of policy-making and project formulation. That has to be fully in the hands of institutions proximate to people, which also will insure transparency and accountability. Such governance will also go a long way towards social justice and targeting the needs of the local most-needy. Last and the most important, this is the only practical way to cushion the agency of administration from party politics and emasculate the money and muscle power in our democracy.

With so many tangible benefits much in its favor and despite the 73rd and the 74th amendments to the constitution, why hasn’t it happened? First, the political class saw this idea as tantamount to cutting off the supply of oxygen of power. For, as a famous American adage goes, all politics is local. Second, even these amendments were ineffective because it made the states ‘responsible to establish a strong local self-government system’ and for ‘devolving power, responsibilities, and finances’. To expect the states to voluntarily to fall in line was at best extreme naiveté. It is like expecting a villain of the piece to be a Good Samaritan. The local bodies must be directly empowered by the constitution as part of a new ‘division of power’ between the Centre, States and local bodies.

The message is clear. A democracy that is not grassroots–centric is a sham democracy. That was how it was before and has to be in the future. The world over, there is now a renewed interest in this kind of governance and a realization ‘that systemic problems are best addressed and carried out at the root level through cooperative communities’. A study sponsored by McKinsey Global Institute starts off with the statement, “Our world is big and complex, but human progress is still about life on the ground, up close and in detail.’ This is what is called subsidiarity in political science – the idea that you should devolve decision-making to the lowest level that you can to get the best outcomes. The anomaly is that while India, in which real and robust grassroots democracy flourished for so long, abandoned it soon after it became a free nation and chose the western style representative democracy, that very west is now inching towards that which India abandoned, partly disillusioned with its own version. The silver lining is that should help us to quell some of the opposition and to bring it on to the front burner of public discourse. Only through that can we create the momentum necessary to make it a reality. That may take time but there is no time to dither any longer.