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Literary Review
Renewing the Republic
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India's Living Constitution takes stock of the career trajectory of the Constitution in the first half-century of its existence, says MALINI SOOD.
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THIS volume of 16 valuable essays by some of the most well-known and respected experts on Indian constitutional law, jurisprudence, and politics takes stock of the career trajectory of the Constitution in the first half-century of its existence. The papers were first presented at an international conference in January 2000 to mark the 50th anniversary of the Constitution. They are organised into five sections dealing with an overview (Upendra Baxi, Sunil Khilnani, Javeed Alam); organising principles (Rajeev Bhargava, Douglas V. Verney, R. Sudarshan, Pratap Bhanu Mehta); rights and justice (Neera Chandoke, Martha C. Nussbaum); equity (A. Vaidyanathan, Marc Galanter); and India's polity (Granville Austin, E. Sridharan, Peter Donald deSouza, Zoya Hasan). The project builds on T.V. Sathyamurthy's four-volume work Social Change and Political Discourse in India: Structures of Power, Movements of Resistance (OUP) published in the mid 1990s.
Since the Constitution was adopted, the political landscape of the country has undergone remarkable changes. The end of the Congress Party's dominance in independent India ushered in the age of single state-based parties, coalition governments, minority politics, and hung parliaments. The collapse of the bipolar world and the demise of non-alignment demanded a redefinition of India's relations with the rest of the world. New challenges emerged in the 1990s with economic liberalisation, India's integration into the world economy, globalisation, and the growth of a resurgent, confident middle class; the rise of new mass media; the emergence of subaltern social movements marked by the political assertiveness of the OBCs and SCs; secessionist movements in Kashmir, the North-east, and elsewhere; the emergence of various sub-nationalisms; and the rise of Hindutva. As the Nehruvian secular, liberalist-pluralist vision has come under attack, calls to review the working of the Constitution have become more strident.
This problematic of idealism versus reality — or what Satish Saberwal in his useful "Introduction: Civilization, Constitution, Democracy" calls the "culturally rooted gap between words and deeds" and what Granville Austin calls the "empty promises syndrome" — lies at the heart of this volume. Few will quibble with the assertion that the promise of the Constitution has been undermined or even betrayed by careerist bureaucrats, opportunistic politicians, endemic corruption, lack of civic responsibility, absence of political will, lack of accountability, or any number of other ills that ail our body politic. How do we make democracy real and meaningful in our segmented society, with its vast diversity, parochial loyalties, and ill-informed citizenry? How do we redeem the early emancipatory and egalitarian vision of the Constitution?
The contributors tackle these and many other such hard questions. The minorities question is a serious problem, involving as it does issues concerning secularism, group rights, the state-religion relationship, under-representation of minorities in elected bodies and government employment, iniquitous implementation of laws, negative stereotyping, violence during riots, sometimes by the agencies of the state itself, and the rise of Hindutva. Austin warns against the dangerous confusion in trying to promote national integrity with an agenda for national integration through the enforcement of social and cultural (and at times religious) homogeneity. E. Sridharan and Neera Chandoke argue that the only way out is to reassure the minorities by making citizenship rights more effective; indeed Chandoke proposes the grant of "the individual right to culture".
The failure of the prevailing "first-past-the-post" system of elections has led to the mushrooming of many "ethnic" parties, and the ill effects of the proliferation of these small, discrete regional political parties represents a threat to the stability of the polity. Douglas Verney calls for curbing this menace through anti-defection laws and sharply increased deposits required of candidates at elections.
Another threat to the polity comes from the under-representation of many dispersed or subordinated groups that see themselves as marginalised and deprived of the fruits of full citizenship. To reduce political alienation among such groups, Sridharan suggests, it is vitally important to enlarge a sense of belonging, to "renew the Republic". He examines India's electoral rules and wide range of alternatives now available that will permit important groups in India to share power in more equitable ways.
Reverse discrimination, the system of reservations introduced to compensate the SC / ST for their historical deprivations, has assumed a life of its own, transformed from a principle of social justice to a politically expedient mantra to address all manner of inequity despite the "creamy layer" syndrome. Critics of the mindset behind the Mandal Commission such as Marc Galanter call for a good hard look at the entire framework of compensatory discrimination, emphasising the need to include measures for self-assessment and an in-built mechanism for the system to dismantle itself.
Is there another way to achieve the social justice agenda that goes beyond compensatory discrimination? A. Vaidyanathan and R. Sudarshan assess the effectiveness and performance of the social justice agenda — including poverty alleviation programmes (PAPs), land reforms, and PRI-under various constraints and pressures such as globalisation, elite apathy, indifference, hostility, budgetary squeeze. Sudarshan advocates decentralised government as a potential antidote to the effects of globalisation on PAPs.
Another proposal that looks to the polity of the future is the enhanced presence of women in legislative bodies, which at least holds the possibility of subverting the patriarchal order just as the presence of SC in the legislative bodies has subverted the caste order in modern India.
Zoya Hasan reviews the debates on women's representation in legislative bodies since the early 20th Century, and particularly under the Government of India Act, 1935. The hostility to the current proposal for reservation of one-third of seats for women reflects the anxieties of the male career politicians to protect their own turf. The impressive participation of women of "backward classes" and the like in PRI without the necessity of any caste-based reservations may offer a welcome alternative to political mobilisation along the caste axis.
The increasing trend towards decentralisation at the state level, seen most strikingly in the functioning of Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRI), offers perhaps the best hope for the "renewal of the Republic". Peter deSouza highlights the role of the PRIs in giving democracy in India a "second wind" by expanding the scope of local politics, giving people a greater degree of control over their own lives, and enlarging the sense of "total power" in Indian society, that is, the capacity to get things done at the ground level. Similarly, E. Sudarshan emphasises the positive aspects of the PRI experience in grooming a new generation of political leadership at the local level by providing valuable learning experience in local government.
Despite the sense of disappointment, if not despair, that many Indians feel at the current state of the union, the contributors still see hope for redeeming the vision, promise, and ambition of the foundational text of our Republic.
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