Though middle classes usually have been perceived by the political establishment to have only marginal importance based on its numerical sparseness vis-à-vis the electoral politics, the centerpiece of a mass democracy like India, they have always played a significant role in shaping the public opinion on a number of issues that affect Indian society, politics and economy.
Till recently, political parties, leaders and their apparatchicks, sympathasiers, apologists in the media generally believed that no matter how much vocal the educated, city-bred critics from among the middle classes appear to be, neither the party ruling the government nor the major opposition parties (harboring an intention to topple it and come to power after the next election) have anything to fear from these agitators because of their own strong ‘mass base’ which in the Indian political lexicon is sometimes pejoratively termed as the ‘vote bank’.
The twin advantages that the political parties had derived (and continue to do so) by sticking to their comfort zone are (a) the numerical preponderance of their support base and (b) the awareness about the lowest common denominator that binds and cements this base, namely, narrow sectional, sectarian, regional, religious interests in the context of winning the electoral battle (which, sadly, has become the be all and end all of the Indian democracy). Indian parties have by and large, over these last sixty five years since independence, found in the issues related to reservation of caste-based job and education quota (with further religion-based sub-quota being attempted recently) much more emotive appeal for the mass electorate they identify as their major constituency, and therefore put their weights behind such slogans and political actions, rather than enlightened measures for bringing corruption under control or to usher gender equality or dignity and justice for women. Also over the years the mainstream parties, often solely governed by populist tailism (not to forget the calculation of the eventual accrual of the electoral benefits) have unwittingly pandered to pressure groups fighting for the recognition of the various regional (even sub-regional or tribal) aspirations and ethnic identities. So much so that today there is a genuine fear of marginalisation of the so-called ‘national’ parties and their increasing irrelevance in major states and regions of this sub-continental nation.
However, over the last decade or so a wind of change has become slowly but surely emerging in various parts of the country, especially in major cities and towns which, somewhat awkwardly, may be described as an awakening of a liberal conscience of an under-performing democracy and it is the middle classes that are taking the lead. Broadly there were four notable developments that could be said to provide a backdrop to the new assertions to reclaim democracy in this country from being hostage to petty party politics.
The landmark public protests by large sections of concerned citizens in respect of the travesty of justice in the Jessica Lal murder case (and the Priyadarshini Mattoo rape and murder case in almost contemporaneous time frame) brought about a new non-political space where students, youth, women, senior citizens, activists, NGOs could publicly articulate their anguish and dismay at the apparent miscarriage of justice. Though limited in scope the successful outcome of these protests in creating enough public pressure to cause revisiting these cases at the higher courts and eventual sentencing of the accused suggested a template for the citizenry to articulate their justified grievances against the non-performance of the machinery of the state. More pertinently, the activists on the streets and their silent supporters in homes and offices saw that money, political connections, muscle power need not invariably tilt the scale of justice in favor of those who flaunt them and ordinary people could get justice from the judicial system which otherwise looked inefficient and ineffective.
Apart from the judiciary another pillar of the democratic system, newspapers and the media in general – especially the television – played a singular role in communicating about these instances of struggle for justice to almost every urban home with persistence, amplifying the impact and undercutting the usual bland bureaucratic understatement and misinformation that police and the government sources use as a strategy for pacification and diverting attention. Active and alert media, notwithstanding their commercial imperatives and considerations, sometimes resembling like a sort of ‘media trial’, which could be potentially dangerous if unregulated, was the second weapon agitating people discovered in their democratic armoury to challenge the current interpreters of Indian democracy.
No praise is perhaps too much for those intrepid grassroots social workers, NGOs and some leading individuals who, since about 1996, demanded the right to information as a constitutional right, fought government apathy through various levels to move from the very weak ‘Freedom of information’ act through drafts of a model Right-to-information (RTI) act, persevered with the parliamentary committees and the UPA government (with lobbying through the National Advisory Council) so that the act finally entered the statute book in 2005. Much of the democratic citizen activism that we saw these last two-three years would not have assumed the potency but for the way this act was utilized by alert citizens to pile up incontrovertible evidence of many acts of commission and omission on the part of the government both in formulating and implementing many public policies of importance.
It so happened that the government’s own auditor, the CAG, came up during these last two-three years with deeply critical reports on government’s expenditure on a number of projects, starting with the commonwealth games, following up with those on the revenue give away (as in the cases of 2G airwaves and coal block allocation), which largely shaped the public debate and questioning of certain policy decisions of the government and their implementation. In other words executive judgments, instead of being approved in a routine manner as was the staid norm in the past, came up for critical appraisal by an constitutional institution, very much a part of the government. This was followed by detailed investigations by government agencies, court cases and landmark Supreme Court judgment canceling the 2G allocations.
(... to be concluded)
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