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| The problem with AAP's mohalla sabh |
| The problem with AAP's mohalla sabhas
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| INDIA
, 4-January-2014
21:39:1 PM |
| Stanley Baldwin, the 1930s British Prime Minister, infamously said of the UK press that they exercised "power without responsibility, the privilege of the harlot down the ages". The Aam Admi Party's mohalla sabhas are in danger of going down that path.
Don't get me wrong. I am all in favour of mohalla sabhas and entirely at one with the AAP in holding that the single biggest lacuna in our 66-year old democracy has been the failure to move from representative to participatory democracy. However, the idea is far from new. Back in 1931, when Gandhiji was asked what his "dream" was for independent India, he replied, "I shall work for" - note, not "dream for" - "an India in which the poorest will feel it is his nation" - emphasis added to draw attention to ownership as the key to empowerment - "in the making of which he has an effective voice" (emphasis again added to rub in the importance of "ownership" and "voice" as the necessary precursor of effectively controlling one's own destiny).
The overwhelming tragedy of Indian democracy has been that the ordinary people, the aam admi, do not believe themselves to have any ownership of the political process other their once-in-five years vote, and to be totally deprived of a voice, let alone an effective voice, in the running of affairs that impinge most directly on their everyday lives.
Recognizing this a quarter century ago, Rajiv Gandhi sought the transition from representative to participatory democracy as the centre-piece of the 73rd and 74th amendments that brought grassroots democracy as a Constitutional right to our villages and mohallas by founding the revolutionary new system of inclusive governance for inclusive development in Gram sabhas in rural India and "Ward sabhas" in urban India to whom the elected representative local authorities would be both responsive and responsible.
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