Author: R Vaidyanathan
Publication: Firstpost.com
Date: August 23, 2011
URL: http://www.firstpost.com/politics/why-annas-middle-class-has-disdain-for-parliament-67213.html
The tripod constructed by Jawaharlal Nehru
consisted of socialism, secularism and parliamentary supremacy.
The socialism part went with Narasimha Rao,
even though the word is still in our constitution, which declares us to be
a socialist republic. Every elected representative is forced to swear by it,
exposing us to total hypocrisy in running our polity.
The day the law was amended to deny alimony
to Shah Bano, the edifice of secularism, too, developed a crack. In a society
which considers everything, including trees and animals, sacred, the notion
of "secularism" was anyway a bit stretched. It came down fully with
the Ayodhya agitation. However, our constitution includes secularism in its
preface. The word was inserted into the constitution during the emergency,
and was not a part of the original statute.
The third leg of the Nehruvian tripod, the
primacy of Parliament in making laws, was treated with an enormous amount
of respect, even reverence. Members of state assemblies and Parliament were
called law-makers even though a good number among them do not know what kind
of laws they make. The disconnect between our burgeoning middle classes and
the so-called law-makers has been widening in leaps and bounds in recent decades.
A great fault line has been developing for
a while, and this hasn't been noticed by blind political experts. Today there
is a huge trust deficit with the political class. In the early sixties, during
the conflict with China, this author has seen women giving away their gold
ornaments when leaders went around in jeeps to collect money for defence.
Today, women will probably run inside their homes if they see a jeep with
politicians asking for donations.
The Nehruvian middle class was essentially
a public sector one: they tended to work in government, or in companies owned
by government: HMT, Bhel, LIC, State Bank of India. Every engineer and accountant
in the 1950s and 1960s aspired to work for these companies, and prepared massively
for the stiff entrance tests.
The public sector middle class of those decades
was often aligned with Left unions. They sought the creation of more government
entities and agitated for enhanced pay. They waved flags when Indira Gandhi
nationalised banks. The middle classes shouted Inquilab Zindabad in processions
those days. Bengal led this class, and so did Kerala.
This middle class influenced and infiltrated
all aspects of Indian life, including the arts, cinema, literature, books
and history. They selected their "intellectuals" and "academic
leaders". The government was criticised, but only for being less leftist.
They captured the Planning Commissions and hundreds of other academies. They
were essentially government-subsidised revolutionaries. The pinnacle of their
achievement was the creation of the Jawaharlal Nehru University - appropriately
named - where "lal salaam" and "inquilab" could be paraded
as serious academic research in social sciences.
There was significant dissent even in such
places, but largely between the extreme Left and the moderate Left.
But the 1980s and, especially the 1990s, were
different periods. The fall of the Berlin Wall was a major marker on the side
of ideology. Narasimha Rao understood history better than many historians.
The economy opened up and a new middle class based on the service economy
came in being. The share of the service sector moved to above 60 percent and
its growth dictated the growth of the overall economy. Information technology
(IT) became the new beacon for the middle class. Let's call them the software
(SW) middle class.
Even though IT still forms a small part of
our service economy, the fact is it has replaced the public sector middle
class. The red flag changed colour, with a tinge of saffron. Its aspirations
are different. It includes not just the employed white collar worker; it also
contains a huge mass of the self-employed. Their numbers could be upwards
of 20 crore - 200 million.
The disconnect between this middle class and
the elected representatives is very large, particularly at the local level.
For instance, in Bangalore or Mumbai, corporators have no connect with them,
whether in terms of language, dress or idiom. Most corporators are road contractors
or hooch traders or lottery barons and the middle class is alienated from
them.
As for Parliament, who can deny that it has
many members charged with criminal activities? The criticism that has been
hurled against this new software middle class, which is largely with Anna
Hazare, is that it does not fully understand our parliamentary system. Our
Parliament is supreme and Anna is not an elected person, it is said.
Sure, but even Manmohan Singh is not an elected
person. He hasn't even been freely elected by the Congress Parliamentary Party.
The Congress constitution was amended in May 2004 to give Sonia Gandhi the
right to choose the party's PM, and she chose Manmohan Singh. The National
Advisory Council is not an elected body but it formulates laws which are accepted
by the government.
Seen against this backdrop, the issue of being
elected is treated as a joke by the middle class. The social contract of this
middle class with a parliament that is supreme is over. It is time our parliamentarians
- both ruling and opposition - realise this.
There is no point in asking why tribals and
the poor are not at Ramlila Maidan. They simply can't afford to be there,
or they will lose their daily earnings.
But it is more than likely that the poor are
with Anna because corruption affects the corporations and the richer sections
less. They can afford to pay bribes - and pass on the costs to their customers
or employers. Corruption, for them, is thus just an irritating expense.
For my flower vendor in Bangalore, though,
a bribe is a hurtful expense. It can be as much as Rs 30 on a Rs 300 turnover.
Arm-chair Leftists who do not understand much about the real India go on arguing
about how big business is with Anna. Maybe so. But the poorer sections are
more with him since he understands their hurt and loss and frozen anger at
the government's minions and their daily dacoity at their expense.
It is not that the masses are dumb, but the
law-makers are deaf. They talk about the supremacy of Parliament when the
third leg of the Nehruvian tripod is about to collapse. Are we in a position
to deal with this? Are we going to mouth age-old slogans of the public sector
middle classes of the 1960s or the new software middle classes? Is it possible
to bring Parliament and other elected bodies in sync with the aspirations
of the new middle classes?
Despite all the exhortations of Lenin and
Mao, it is the middle class which leads change in our country - whether it
was our independence struggle or the struggle against the emergency. If Parliament
becomes irrelevant then it is a huge challenge for us to rework our institutions.
That should be the focus now instead of the inane talk about how Parliament
is supreme or the constitution is supreme or the people are supreme.
Maybe, the time has come to ask ourselves
whether the current parliamentary system has outlived its purpose.
- The author is professor at the Indian Institute
of Management, Bangalore. Views are personal
