The word ‘democracy’ is one of the most abused in today’s world. A watch on the news front will provide you with glaring instances. Let us keep away from the villains we love to hate – politicians, bureaucrats and corporates, and look at the mess we are in from a peoples’ point of view. After all, democracy, we are told time and again, is about people.
A democracy is built on several foundation stones – that of freedom and the right to dissent being the most critical. If you don’t have freedom, all liberal catchphrases become lies. And if you are not allowed to voice or give vent to your disagreements, democracy becomes a myth.
Everyone has an opinion about everything, but when opinions and interests clash, each such clash becomes a conflict situation. The right to protest is a democratic right, but when such protests overlap the interests of others, it becomes a conflict of interests. For a country as diverse as India, conflict of interests crop up in most situations. This factor, probably, is the reason why our country is in such a messy situation. We seem to be enforcing democracy across the country without taking into account what lies at the core – liberal values.
There are five Bs, rampantly abused across the country, that are tugging away at our democratic foundations –bandhs, blockades, bans, boycotts, and blackmails. Fundamentally, there cannot be anything wrong with any of these tools. What’s wrong, is the act of enforcement.
Bandhs are so frequently called, especially in politically volatile states, that they have lost their essential significance. Bandhs now come attached with a tag of fear. Today, bandhs are as much 'enforced' as they are 'called'. Any individual or organisation should have the right to call for a bandh; it is also the right of every other individual to decide whether to respond to such a call or not. The moment a person is coerced to support a bandh, it becomes undemocratic.
Looking at it tactically, a bandh ought to be a last resort for protest. In times of turbulence, we see political and, occasionally, civil society formations falling for this last ditch effort way too often. This is also the reason why we have seen court judgments against the very practice of bandhs. If bandh calls came without the muscle power factor, few possibly would be supported by people. Simply put: a bandh is a democratic tool, but enforcement of bandh is not democratic.
A blockade, on the other hand, comes with a mandatory tag of force. You cannot 'call' a blockade, you very necessarily 'impose' and 'enforce' one. Blockades can be of many kinds – from the one that we saw recently in Manipur that choked the heart of the state to the ‘rail roko’ and ‘rasta roko’ agitations that are frequently organised across the country. The latter are usually spontaneous and are specifically designed to disrupt normal life. If I were to mobilise public opinion in my favour, the last thing I would do is resort to a blockade.
Essentially, a ban is imposed by the State. But calling for bans is far too common in our country. Bans are frequently enforced through militant diktats in the Northeast. The issue is compounded by the fact that the non-State actors include civil society organisations too often for comfort. At its core, a ban is also an enforcement. We are not talking of banning carcinogens here; we are talking of banning of ideas – that of freedom of expression. On this count, a ban is only a form of censorship. You cannot have censorship in what we know as a democracy.
The counter to a ban can be a boycott. In fact, it is a more democratic alternative to a ban. In a democracy, one should be free to call for a boycott of anything – from books to people. Like the other tools talked about earlier, this too becomes anti-people the moment it is wreaked upon the masses with consummate force. Calls for boycotts, as we have seen in the case against many newspapers and magazines in the Northeast, come accompanied by vociferous and belligerent demonstrations, that by default assume the tone of an enforced ban.
The trickiest of the lot is one that we see every other day in the newspapers – the politics of blackmail. The anti-corruption protests and the associated fasts have assumed the tone of blackmail – that of Parliament. It is fine to say that politicians are answerable to the people, but the same has been institutionalised by our Constitution. The Lok Sabha is the House of the People. Holding Parliament to ransom is undermining the values of the Constitution. The politics of fasting is coercion by other means. The essence remains the same.
There are no hard and fast rules here, and people and political formations can often be driven to desperation when simplistic forms of protest and soft-spoken voices of dissent are turned a deaf ear to. The way out is liberalism – my protest should not trample on your right to live.
