Indian Democracy: The Highness of Lows?

A DEMOCRACY should ensure people don't live at the mercy of a single person. Also, Democracy should be about questioning the contemporary and about being able to shape one's tomorrows oneself. This is equity characteristic of a democracy, isn't it? From the way the Telangana episode is unfolding, that equity appears to be denied, perhaps by means of the constitution itself, and in doing so, the President of India, sitting at the apex of the Indian Democratic Republic, seems unquestionable, till now.

If the President's office, occupied by a person with recorded political loyalty to a party that's in power at Centre, agrees to hand over a State Reorganization bill to the parliament, discounting the State's aspirations, the President is indeed portrayed as unquestionable because the rest of the country can only watch, quite literally though! Because the State and its millions of people are absolutely at the mercy of the President's office and the President's decision in this regard. Can such living in the mercy of a single person be called a democracy?

Something in this episode tells me there's an unwritten assumption in our constitution that people are expected to believe the President is unquestionable, and it is better that way for the nation! It is unfair & even unreal to expect an entire nation to assume that one human being in this nation will alone remain unquestionable, even in matters that directly affect the lives of millions of people spread across vast stretches of land - matching that of some countries in the EU! In fact the celebrated office of the President enjoys more constitutional allowances than a democracy can actually afford. For instance the Presidential Ordinance offers an easy route for a favourable political party in power at the Centre to enforce law without opposition, albeit for a maximum of six months.

While the constitution does provide solutions to overrule an unruly or insane President, it does not equip people with a solution to a problem that could arise out of a hidden nexus between the President and a few parliamentarians, who could use the President's political superiority and immunity of sorts to siphon party gains, and subsequently, individual gains.

Talking about living at the mercy of an individual - applying such observations to the Telangana episode India will come across to anyone as that democracy in which people live with the least number of total people that collectively represent them, yet the highest number of total people that don't represent them but are 'empowered' to express their voice for or against them.

That is perhaps a new high in lows among democracies.

People who have seen democracies in action in other parts of the world may see something fundamentally wrong in this setup. The idea of representation has been infected with a virus at birth - a virus of assumption that the newfound idea of representation would work, an assumption that people, hailing from ages of monarchy, would know how to handle representation and get what they need. This assumption has cost the Indian peoples very dear; it has cost them a constitution that is unable to sustain the nation as well as would be desired. This assumption has pushed people to now question its very sanctity and relevance. It has forced people to have the weirdest representation formula that doesn't work for people, but works to pull more power to the Centre. Its time those questions were asked out in public, even if it were addressed to the President.

(After deciding to post this, #PepperSpray has shrouded Parliament. What else could happen when an entire people's identity is so brutally trampled upon?)

The Anti-Incumbency Inherent in the Constitution!

ROOT causing Congress party's decimation in the recent State Assembly elections, especially in Delhi, and a similar decimation of the BJP in Karnataka earlier this year, one can find that quite a lot of blame of lacklustre performance at the State level is being attributed to the lacklustre performance of the ruling party at the Center. Said in other words, people heard lauding Congress' good governance under Sheila Dikshit in Delhi last 15 years are attributing this December election defeat to the poor governance by Congress at the Center.

This blaming scheme probably has its roots in the Schedule 7 of the Constitution of India, which distributes such subjects of governance to the Center that had rather been in State control so that a performance or failure of a State government can clearly be attributed to the State government alone. This arrangement of subjects - while it gives more control to those that run the Central government - creates a confusion among voters while assessing the performance or failure of their incumbent State ruling party, thereby rendering them clueless about which party their vote must go in current elections.

Whether this confusion is the genius of the Constitution or of the people that reserve the right to remove such confusion is an easy question to answer. Its the people, who hold the right to amend the Constitution - the legislators, that need to act and amend the Schedule-7 so as to re-arrange subjects of governance between the State and the Center. These people include elected members of State assemblies apart from MPs, for according to Art 368 an amendment to Schedule-7 needs approval from more than half of the State assemblies.

Now, in the interest of those political parties that have aspirations at both State and Central level politics I believe there is value in picking up this cause of an amendment to the 7th Schedule that is also long pending. There are some parties like the BJP, of course, that would like to keep the 7th schedule that way, what with the manufactured image of some of their larger than thou candidates whose projected national image is expected to win them State elections also. But is it really going to help once they gain Central power and continue to be subject to the same Constitution that is bound to pull them down, eventually?

Isn't it time we realized why people get bored of incumbent political parties even if, for a moment, we assume those parties were doing the right things? Isn't it time we saw the anti-incumbency inherent in our Constitution?

Tall Statutes, Taller Statues and Dark Shadows!

ALTHOUGH the author of this article appears to uphold the consideration promised in return to the original surrender made by the princes, and it deserves its respect, it may be important to ponder as to why there must have been such a surrender in the first place. 

With all their valor and revering subjects in their respective States, why did those princely States end up surrendering such huge amounts of money and property to a Union they were so reluctant to join in the first place? Given that affiliation and inclusion to either the Indian or the Pakistani republics was optional to these princely States, their inclusion amid heated expressions of reluctance must have been a coercion if not a conquer. In such a case what value does The Union hold to the people who belonged to these princely States and what reverence can be expected from them towards the Indian Union which upon a simple amendment to its constitution in 1971 repealed all the payments promised to the people of the dissolved princely States?

It is also questionable had these princely States not submitted and not reluctantly got coerced into The Union, would they have been in as poor state of existence as now? The Hyderabad princely State and its people, for instance, are having a bitter experience in the Indian Union now where their homeland - Andhra Pradesh - is being split in two much against popular demands against such division. Can we now pat Sardar Patel's back posthumously or our own backs for this abuse of centralized political power in inflicting pain to the Telugu people of Andhra by The Union? Did all the people who subscribed to this union in 1950 deserve this? Dont we need some time to slow down and think about a re-writing of such a constitution that lets someone to care so little for the very people of this union?

Isn't it even higher levels of stupidity to let national parties like the BJP and the INC to make this topic a bait to fish for popular votes in upcoming elections? Isn't it stupid to take sides of either of these parties (and their philosophies too) and thereby appear to support such continued acts of brutal coercion, division and undemocratic rule?

This statement by the author though summarizes to some extent the right spirit for us to derive from this piece of history bearing very well in current context:

In the end, the abolition of Privy Purses will remain one of the most shameful events in our constitutional history. The nation saved Rs.4 crore annually but lost its honour. It is equally regrettable that neither the Janata Party in 1977 nor any subsequent non-Congress government did anything to redeem Patel’s pledge. What purpose will, then, be served by spending Rs.2,500 crore to build the tallest statue in his memory?

Gottilla! Gottilla!

To all those "Kannada gottilla" speakers, here's my humblest response to your non-Kannada (especially Hindi) words spoken to me: "GOTTILLA!!"

In fact this approach worked like a magic this morning in my bus. One guy asked me about a bus stop in Hindi and I said the word - GOTTILLA pretty earnestly. After some murmuring and a long pause, the guy spoke again, this time in Kannada, however broken, and I gave a helping response in Kannada with a smile. He smiled too!

This should teach us two lessons - (1) that the people that come into our cities, no matter how fresh their migration is, they do have the capability to speak a few words because they want to make a living here, and (2) that it needs a little friendly, earnest and shrewd force to get those Kannada words out of their brains and mouths. We only need to be smart enough to realize (1) and strong enough to sustain (2)!!

Well this is the way relations can be strengthened. The imposition of Hindi, like a ghost-god that instills fear in the vulnerable, has instilled fear of attracting fellow countrymen's wrath of traitorship. This has made Kannadigas sitting ducks in the fire of Hindi Imposition and they've accommodated themselves to respond in Hindi on the very first utterance of that gottilla word.

In short the subtle negative in gottilla that has been working against us can easily, this way, be converted in our favour.

Of Financial Inclusion, Hindi Imposition, Gandhiism and InOrganic Growth

You've read the ATM story, haven't you? If you go into an ATM in Hubli, Karnataka and if you were among those crores of Indians that don't know Hindi, you are highly likely to be surprised by this ATM's user interface being in Hindi and English alone. Yes, there could be more ATMs in Karnataka that provide instructions in Hindi than ones that provide instructions in Kannada. This is a glaring trait of our bank markets that one can notice across the country - banks are yet another channel through which Hindi is imposed upon a large non-Hindi geography of India. 

At a time when India is reported to be suffering from poor financial inclusion across the country, the RBI - the central bank that governs all other banks operating in the country, and chartered to increase financial inclusion, sets such standards to these banks with regards to customer services and customer interaction that the banks are all but bullied to perceive better returns in displaying allegiance to the RBI than vowing to serve their customers' original, uncorrupted needs; those needs that require banks to offer services in a language the customer is most comfortable with. 

A brief look at some of the circulars issued by RBI to all types of banks in India will tell us what kind of strikingly lopsided a language plan has gone into the making of its language policies. These policies openly declare Hindi alone as the sacrosanct language that banks must accept in undeterred fashion and impede no processes involved in serving customers using Hindi whereas a similar treatment is not even dealt with for 21 other languages listed as Scheduled languages in the Constitution of India. 

The very act of making one language mandatory as opposed to making 21 other scheduled languages optional in a diverse market such as ours shows how market agnostic these RBI's regulations are and exposes the undesirable government control over a supposed market transaction. The people of India cannot afford to rest so much control in a banker of banks that remains market agnostic but never fails to uphold aspirations of a central government to promote Hindi in the market.

In fact, it appears from the powers entrusted in RBI, it could well be using it to dole out market benefits to banks as an incentive to promote Hindi usage and service among customers and employees respectively. Being instructed to adopt Hindi enablement as one of its top goals, the RBI finds success in this incentive route. A statement issued by RBI's former governor (Mr Subbarao) backing Hindi usage as vital to increasing financial inclusion in India sent a shocker to anyone who understands a customer's actual needs. This is an unfortunate development happening in an intersection of governance and market. 

While imposing Hindi through banks is evidently making financial inclusion a more elusive mirage, RBI has also been making many other things difficult for non-Hindi speaking Indians. The encouragement (and incentives ?) provided to nationalised banks to celebrate Hindi Day, Week and now Fortnight has in a way solemnized this unnecessary and expensive government intrusion into market territory. This has also added on most of India a huge annual tax burden camouflaged under the notion of a mythical financial inclusion, and an even more mythical national interest. In the wake of such Hindi imposing programs inserted by the government into the market, national interest could well be getting compromised, what with the interests of customers being thrown into air. Mahatma Gandhi once said that protection of customer interest should be the top undertaking of any business if it wishes to survive in a market.

In the wake of these anti developments it would be in the best interest of customers, and Indian citizens in general, that the Govt of India ceases to interfere in the operation of banks to this degree where it has to tell them what language must be used and what languages may be used. In a broader sense, the central government must also realize and honor the linguistic diversity in India and stay away from politics of raising the promotion of one Indian language above that of all other Indian languages. 

GOI must immediately make appropriate amendments in the Constitution to accord and reflect equality to all languages of this country. To start with, it should first make all languages listed in Schedule-8 as official languages of the Indian Union and the central government. 

Hindi imposition is an evil remnant of the imperial touch India experienced during the British era. It is in the best of national interest to shed this diseased skin and let Indian growth happen in its own way - organic or inorganic way.