FEATURE
Can an individual be without any representative character?
P. M. Kamath
A common refrain that is heard in Congress circles, while referring to civil society, to undermine their importance, is to refer to them as “four or five self-proclaimed civil society representatives.” This suggests these members of group that is demanding action against corruption and seeking the establishment of Jan Lokpal absolutely have no public support at all. The only elected representative can claim to speak for the general public. My single purpose in this article is to show, how wrong this formulation of the Congress critics of current public demand for a Jan Lokpal at the Centre and Lokayuktas at the state levels.
The Congress refrain reminds me a brief meeting I had with former Prime Minister, late Shri Morarji Desai at his residence in Marine drive. By then having taught subjects like foreign policy, strategy, national security, international politics, American foreign policy, at postgraduate level and also guided several students in these areas, I thought I knew something about nonalignment. Hence, I told our former Prime Minister that “people think that foreign policy of nonalignment has lost its relevance. I would like to discuss some issue relating to it with you.” He flared up in anger and annoyance. He asked me: “Who are you to refer to people’s opinion? Are you an elected representative?” I was simply taken aback at the kind of response I had generated in him!
Today, if he was alive I would have asked him who gave him the mandate even though he was then the Prime Minister (PM) to tell Barbara Walters of ABC in Washington, DC in 1978 that he would “never go in for nuclear weapons even if the entire country is destroyed in their absence.” His question to me then is similar references now made to civil society representatives by some of Congress leaders. Does it mean that just because one is elected by the people, they can make any statement even contrary to the perceived national interest? Does it mean only elected representative can raise issues of public interest?
Congressmen who question legitimacy of the certain policy positions advanced by members of civil society, because as Congress Party spokesman, Shri Manish Tiwari said they are “unelected and unelectable.” But he accused them of being capable of posing a “peril” to Indian democracy. In this sense within the Congress and to that matter in every other political party there are persons who exercise power over public opinion who are never elected or contested elections but lost. Should therefore they be ignored in the party debates or public discourse?
But those who are elected, are they truly representatives of all public on all issues of public interest? Often those who are elected might get elected with as low as ten percent of popular votes! This happens because whenever there are many candidates, in the first pass the post system, lower the percentage of votes required to get elected. In this sense, “four or five” persons of civil society have the backing of crores of thinking people in the country—though it is a support to the ideas advocated by them and not necessarily to them personally.
This does not mean that civil society has conducted itself admirably well. First wrong step they took is in keeping out Baba Ramdeo from drafting committee stating that law-drafting is not a yogic exercise! Instead of taking two from one family of Bhushans, if Baba was inside civil society group government would not have been able even to think of breaking the unity of the civil society. That could also have averted tragic incident of police breaking the peaceful protest at Ram Lila maidan.
There is also the question of frequent threat of going on the fast unto death by Anna Hazare. Such threats only have diminishing returns in public life. Anna Hazare also has shown a most non-democratic approach to public life by stating that his draft be accepted in toto. Democracy means compromise, concessions and developing consensus on acceptable positions. Hence, what is necessary for the civil society is to tour the length and breadth of the country, address the general public and motivate the citizens to write to their elected MPs asking them to support the ideal idea of the Jan Lokpal.
But on one issue, civil society is fully justified, in my opinion. That it is absolutely necessary for the Prime Minister to be within the ambit of Jan Lokpal. To say that it prevents him from acting decisively on national security issues is most ludicrous statement. This reminds me how President Richard Nixon, only US President ever forced to resign on the ground of corrupting the constitution used often the concept of national security to justify his unconstitutional actions. He used concept of national security or concepts of similar meaning 31 times in his March 23, 1973 speech explaining or justifying Watergate Scandal. Mrs. Indira Gandhi also had used the concept of national security to justify imposition of national emergency in June 1975. Hence, if the office of the Prime Minister is transparent, no one would, only for political reason, hurl unfounded allegations of corruption against him. Law can provide deterrent punishment for making frivolous corruption charges against the PM.
But Kapil Sibal has a point when he argues in favour of making Jan Lokpal and Lokayuktas in states accountable by placing them within the ambit of the judiciary. These offices of ombudsman have to be accountable. Judiciary is a constitutional branch of the democratic system of the government and plays a role by itself in securing checks and balances within the government. Whenever, executive and legislature have failed to perform the constitutional functions, it is the higher judiciary to which citizens have increasingly begun to approach. Other independent constitutional authorities like chief election commissioner have also taken help of the judiciary in maintaining its own independent status. Manish Tiwari, incidentally, cannot dismiss superior judicial appointees securing accountability of the Jan Lokpal on the ground they are “unelected and unelectable.”
Crucial issue in every democratic system is: power holders have to be accountable while exercising the powers given to them by the constitution or the law. The PM is no exception. The political philosophy is well stated long back by Federalist paper No 51 which says:…”the great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer each department, the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachment of the others….Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.”
(Author is formerly Professor of Politics, University of Mumbai and currently Hon. Director, VPM’s Centre for International Studies, Mumbai & Adjunct Professor at Department of Geopolitics, Manipal University, Manipal.)
Hungry mouths’ day
Prof. B. M. Hegde,
hegdebm@gmail.com
“To see what none has seen before, you must look where none has looked before.”
Anon.
Otherwise called the poverty eradication day it is the only day that the world needs to celebrate every year as poverty is the largest curse on mankind. Not knowing where your next meal comes from has been and will always be the greatest risk factor for all diseases ranging from common cold to cancer, even the killer diseases like heart attack and strokes. While there are just about 39 million people suffering from the so called AIDS (we have the AIDS day) there are 840 million people in this world who live far below the poverty line. 540 million people in this world are severely malnourished for want of food.
India alone has a load of 67 million children suffering from malnutrition that leads to NIDS (Nutritional Immune Deficiency: Syndrome) on an average, 6000 children die daily due to NIDS in India! The world wide figures are staggering. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon laid out this sobering statistic as he kicked off a three-day summit on world food security Monday in Rome. “Today, more than 1 billion people are hungry,” he told the assembled leaders. Six million children die of hunger every year - 17,000 every day, he said.
No one thinks of having a poverty eradication day or simply poverty day or hungry mouth’s day. The reason is not far to seek. While we have heart day, diabetes day, cancer day, mothers’ day, father’s day, and valentine day, we do not have a poverty day. To have a day there must be a sponsor. Who will sponsor poverty day as that does not bring any business? Valentine, fathers’ and mothers’ days bring in billions of dollars business for the greeting card industry while AIDS day is a good business for the retroviral drug industry and so the story goes about diabetes day, heart day etc.
Right from the day of the Yangtze Valley peasants of yore to the present the greatest risk factor for all ills of mankind has been not knowing where one’s next meal comes from. Poverty is the womb of all illnesses. In addition, poverty is a double edged weapon in that the poor victim of illnesses loses his daily bread winning capacity as well making him/her poorer at the end of the day. Poverty and malnourishment lead to weakened immune system that is more deadly than the evanescent HIV virus. While we have so many “do-gooders” who build hospitals for eye, heart, lung, liver diseases, no one ever thinks of preventing all those diseases. Instead of operating on a mature cataract in the fourth decade for a poor man free, one could avoid premature cataract if the poor man is given good food with plenty of zinc and other minerals to postpone cataract to the 8th decade. Similarly, if we could eradicate poverty the largest load of heart surgery is from the simple post-inflammatory valve disease (rheumatic fever like) which is a hundred per cent disease of the poor, will perish.
Poverty and, consequent malnutrition, during the early months of pregnancy (first trimester) is the main cause of poorly formed brain, heart, blood vessels, pancreas and many other organs in those lucky children that survive the intrauterine life leading to poor learning (memory capacity) capacity, premature heart attacks, diabetes, hypertension and all other ills which need costly treatments. That is a good business for doctors and drug companies. Not a single infracaninophile (under dog lover) thinks of eradicating all these dangers very inexpensively by eradicating poverty, the root cause of all ills. Our present day efforts of disease mongering to control diseases, in this back drop, is so hypocritical that the world seems to live for the haves while the have-nots are used to get better the business interests of the former. The real Euclid’s Reductio ad Absurdum!
I was asked to inaugurate a recent AIDS day where I motivated an NGO which, had been the front to celebrate the AIDS day, to take up, instead, (or in addition) the World Hunger Day, at least once a year and explained to them, in great detail, the true need for such an effort. They, mostly young men and women, have taken the pledge to do so. I hope they will keep up their promise. We want this to be a great movement all over the world. Many of my friends after that meeting warned me that this will never succeed as they rightly pointed out that the rich live on the poor all over the world, in the first second and the third world. I was reminded of what happened to Wilberforce in the nineteenth century when started the Anti-Slavery march in the city of Edinburgh. People thought he was mad and advised him to desist from continuing his efforts as, at that time, the world economy depended only on slavery. He pushed on and within the next fifty years he was able to get the House of Commons to pass the famous Anti- Slavery bill! With God’s grace, I hope, we will be able to attract the world attention on this vital issue. The time is ripe now when the world is getting torn because of man’s greed while the bare minimum man’s need for life sustaining food is all but forgotten.
“There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.”
Søren Kierkegaard, 1813 to 1855
P. M. Kamath
A common refrain that is heard in Congress circles, while referring to civil society, to undermine their importance, is to refer to them as “four or five self-proclaimed civil society representatives.” This suggests these members of group that is demanding action against corruption and seeking the establishment of Jan Lokpal absolutely have no public support at all. The only elected representative can claim to speak for the general public. My single purpose in this article is to show, how wrong this formulation of the Congress critics of current public demand for a Jan Lokpal at the Centre and Lokayuktas at the state levels.
The Congress refrain reminds me a brief meeting I had with former Prime Minister, late Shri Morarji Desai at his residence in Marine drive. By then having taught subjects like foreign policy, strategy, national security, international politics, American foreign policy, at postgraduate level and also guided several students in these areas, I thought I knew something about nonalignment. Hence, I told our former Prime Minister that “people think that foreign policy of nonalignment has lost its relevance. I would like to discuss some issue relating to it with you.” He flared up in anger and annoyance. He asked me: “Who are you to refer to people’s opinion? Are you an elected representative?” I was simply taken aback at the kind of response I had generated in him!
Today, if he was alive I would have asked him who gave him the mandate even though he was then the Prime Minister (PM) to tell Barbara Walters of ABC in Washington, DC in 1978 that he would “never go in for nuclear weapons even if the entire country is destroyed in their absence.” His question to me then is similar references now made to civil society representatives by some of Congress leaders. Does it mean that just because one is elected by the people, they can make any statement even contrary to the perceived national interest? Does it mean only elected representative can raise issues of public interest?
Congressmen who question legitimacy of the certain policy positions advanced by members of civil society, because as Congress Party spokesman, Shri Manish Tiwari said they are “unelected and unelectable.” But he accused them of being capable of posing a “peril” to Indian democracy. In this sense within the Congress and to that matter in every other political party there are persons who exercise power over public opinion who are never elected or contested elections but lost. Should therefore they be ignored in the party debates or public discourse?
But those who are elected, are they truly representatives of all public on all issues of public interest? Often those who are elected might get elected with as low as ten percent of popular votes! This happens because whenever there are many candidates, in the first pass the post system, lower the percentage of votes required to get elected. In this sense, “four or five” persons of civil society have the backing of crores of thinking people in the country—though it is a support to the ideas advocated by them and not necessarily to them personally.
This does not mean that civil society has conducted itself admirably well. First wrong step they took is in keeping out Baba Ramdeo from drafting committee stating that law-drafting is not a yogic exercise! Instead of taking two from one family of Bhushans, if Baba was inside civil society group government would not have been able even to think of breaking the unity of the civil society. That could also have averted tragic incident of police breaking the peaceful protest at Ram Lila maidan.
There is also the question of frequent threat of going on the fast unto death by Anna Hazare. Such threats only have diminishing returns in public life. Anna Hazare also has shown a most non-democratic approach to public life by stating that his draft be accepted in toto. Democracy means compromise, concessions and developing consensus on acceptable positions. Hence, what is necessary for the civil society is to tour the length and breadth of the country, address the general public and motivate the citizens to write to their elected MPs asking them to support the ideal idea of the Jan Lokpal.
But on one issue, civil society is fully justified, in my opinion. That it is absolutely necessary for the Prime Minister to be within the ambit of Jan Lokpal. To say that it prevents him from acting decisively on national security issues is most ludicrous statement. This reminds me how President Richard Nixon, only US President ever forced to resign on the ground of corrupting the constitution used often the concept of national security to justify his unconstitutional actions. He used concept of national security or concepts of similar meaning 31 times in his March 23, 1973 speech explaining or justifying Watergate Scandal. Mrs. Indira Gandhi also had used the concept of national security to justify imposition of national emergency in June 1975. Hence, if the office of the Prime Minister is transparent, no one would, only for political reason, hurl unfounded allegations of corruption against him. Law can provide deterrent punishment for making frivolous corruption charges against the PM.
But Kapil Sibal has a point when he argues in favour of making Jan Lokpal and Lokayuktas in states accountable by placing them within the ambit of the judiciary. These offices of ombudsman have to be accountable. Judiciary is a constitutional branch of the democratic system of the government and plays a role by itself in securing checks and balances within the government. Whenever, executive and legislature have failed to perform the constitutional functions, it is the higher judiciary to which citizens have increasingly begun to approach. Other independent constitutional authorities like chief election commissioner have also taken help of the judiciary in maintaining its own independent status. Manish Tiwari, incidentally, cannot dismiss superior judicial appointees securing accountability of the Jan Lokpal on the ground they are “unelected and unelectable.”
Crucial issue in every democratic system is: power holders have to be accountable while exercising the powers given to them by the constitution or the law. The PM is no exception. The political philosophy is well stated long back by Federalist paper No 51 which says:…”the great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer each department, the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachment of the others….Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.”
(Author is formerly Professor of Politics, University of Mumbai and currently Hon. Director, VPM’s Centre for International Studies, Mumbai & Adjunct Professor at Department of Geopolitics, Manipal University, Manipal.)
Hungry mouths’ day
Prof. B. M. Hegde,
hegdebm@gmail.com
“To see what none has seen before, you must look where none has looked before.”
Anon.
Otherwise called the poverty eradication day it is the only day that the world needs to celebrate every year as poverty is the largest curse on mankind. Not knowing where your next meal comes from has been and will always be the greatest risk factor for all diseases ranging from common cold to cancer, even the killer diseases like heart attack and strokes. While there are just about 39 million people suffering from the so called AIDS (we have the AIDS day) there are 840 million people in this world who live far below the poverty line. 540 million people in this world are severely malnourished for want of food.
India alone has a load of 67 million children suffering from malnutrition that leads to NIDS (Nutritional Immune Deficiency: Syndrome) on an average, 6000 children die daily due to NIDS in India! The world wide figures are staggering. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon laid out this sobering statistic as he kicked off a three-day summit on world food security Monday in Rome. “Today, more than 1 billion people are hungry,” he told the assembled leaders. Six million children die of hunger every year - 17,000 every day, he said.
No one thinks of having a poverty eradication day or simply poverty day or hungry mouth’s day. The reason is not far to seek. While we have heart day, diabetes day, cancer day, mothers’ day, father’s day, and valentine day, we do not have a poverty day. To have a day there must be a sponsor. Who will sponsor poverty day as that does not bring any business? Valentine, fathers’ and mothers’ days bring in billions of dollars business for the greeting card industry while AIDS day is a good business for the retroviral drug industry and so the story goes about diabetes day, heart day etc.
Right from the day of the Yangtze Valley peasants of yore to the present the greatest risk factor for all ills of mankind has been not knowing where one’s next meal comes from. Poverty is the womb of all illnesses. In addition, poverty is a double edged weapon in that the poor victim of illnesses loses his daily bread winning capacity as well making him/her poorer at the end of the day. Poverty and malnourishment lead to weakened immune system that is more deadly than the evanescent HIV virus. While we have so many “do-gooders” who build hospitals for eye, heart, lung, liver diseases, no one ever thinks of preventing all those diseases. Instead of operating on a mature cataract in the fourth decade for a poor man free, one could avoid premature cataract if the poor man is given good food with plenty of zinc and other minerals to postpone cataract to the 8th decade. Similarly, if we could eradicate poverty the largest load of heart surgery is from the simple post-inflammatory valve disease (rheumatic fever like) which is a hundred per cent disease of the poor, will perish.
Poverty and, consequent malnutrition, during the early months of pregnancy (first trimester) is the main cause of poorly formed brain, heart, blood vessels, pancreas and many other organs in those lucky children that survive the intrauterine life leading to poor learning (memory capacity) capacity, premature heart attacks, diabetes, hypertension and all other ills which need costly treatments. That is a good business for doctors and drug companies. Not a single infracaninophile (under dog lover) thinks of eradicating all these dangers very inexpensively by eradicating poverty, the root cause of all ills. Our present day efforts of disease mongering to control diseases, in this back drop, is so hypocritical that the world seems to live for the haves while the have-nots are used to get better the business interests of the former. The real Euclid’s Reductio ad Absurdum!
I was asked to inaugurate a recent AIDS day where I motivated an NGO which, had been the front to celebrate the AIDS day, to take up, instead, (or in addition) the World Hunger Day, at least once a year and explained to them, in great detail, the true need for such an effort. They, mostly young men and women, have taken the pledge to do so. I hope they will keep up their promise. We want this to be a great movement all over the world. Many of my friends after that meeting warned me that this will never succeed as they rightly pointed out that the rich live on the poor all over the world, in the first second and the third world. I was reminded of what happened to Wilberforce in the nineteenth century when started the Anti-Slavery march in the city of Edinburgh. People thought he was mad and advised him to desist from continuing his efforts as, at that time, the world economy depended only on slavery. He pushed on and within the next fifty years he was able to get the House of Commons to pass the famous Anti- Slavery bill! With God’s grace, I hope, we will be able to attract the world attention on this vital issue. The time is ripe now when the world is getting torn because of man’s greed while the bare minimum man’s need for life sustaining food is all but forgotten.
“There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.”
Søren Kierkegaard, 1813 to 1855
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