One of the key issues that occupy voter imagination with
regard to the coming elections is the tension
between identity and
governance in Indian democracy. Most of the political parties,
especially national parties, are claiming to have moved to a governance
paradigm as against the mobilisation of social groups on the basis of a
‘narrow’ identity. The Congress claims to have introduced a new
discourse on ‘good governance’ with the introduction of economic
reforms; the BJP under Narendra Modi is projecting governance to induce
growth, prosperity and higher GDP as a solution to many evils plaguing
the nation; and the newly formed Aam Aadmi Party says it has introduced a
post-identity and post-ideology politics to strengthen democracy by way
of foregrounding corruption as an issue concerning all castes, classes
and regions.
What exactly was the problem with
identity politics? India has seen an exponential growth of identity
politics in the last two decades. While it mobilised the marginalised,
it ushered in piecemeal changes and introduced competitive mobilisation
by different social groups leading to sectarianism and
identity-fetishism. This has led to the creation of new social elites
among the hitherto marginalised social groups such as Dalits and
Muslims, leaving behind the bulk of the population in whose name the
specific identity groups are mobilised. It is these elites who then make
demands of their own such as the need for ‘Dalit Capitalists,’
unmindful of the fact that such an economy would exploit Dalit labour
more than anything else. Further, identity politics entrenches
patron-client relations in between the social elites of the identity
groups and the rest of the population belonging to those identities.
The
worst outcome of sustained identity mobilisation is the proliferation
of intra-subaltern conflicts as we have witnessed among the various
Dalit sub-castes in Andhra Pradesh, between Dalits and the Other
Backward Classes in Khairlanji in Maharashtra, and between the OBCs and
Muslims during the recent riots in Muzzafarnagar in Uttar Pradesh. These
conflicts are not only replacing the conflict with elites, within and
outside their respective groups, but are also making an alliance with
social elites possible or rather a necessity to win elections, as is
clear from the shift in the BSP’s language — from Bahujan to Sarvajan —
making an uncanny alliance between Dalits and Brahmins a viable strategy
in Uttar Pradesh. Finally, identity politics has failed to deliver
material benefits and open up widescale economic opportunities.
Symbolic mobility
Instead,
it has propelled symbolic mobility and psychological empowerment, of
the kind displayed by the symbolism of Mayawati, (who installed statues
of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar) and Lalu Prasad Yadav of the Rashtriya Janata Dal.
While they contribute to ideas of dignity, respect and a sense of the
self, and remain important achievements in themselves, cultural mobility
invariably leads to demands for a share in the economic resources. This
can clearly be observed in the case of Muslims who, especially after
the Sachar Committee report, are demanding better educational and
employment opportunities. In India, we are strangely witnessing a
simultaneous rise of cultural assertion, and economic dispossession,
which is what makes our democracy look chaotic and, for some, even
unruly. It is for these reasons that there is a new consensus of sorts
against the adverse impact of identity politics on Indian democracy
among the upwardly mobile professional/urban classes, as well as the
rural and urban poor.
While one understands why the
new language of Narendra Modi or the AAP has come as a relief for many,
we need to ask two follow-up questions. Have political parties and their
mobilisations in fact moved beyond identity mobilisation? Is the
alternative to identity politics to be found in the language of
governance? First, it is a grave exaggeration if one were to believe
that political mobilisation has un-problematically moved to a more
universal governance paradigm from ‘sectarian’ identity politics. Even a
cursory look at all those political leaders who have come to symbolise
the discourse of governance will make it evident that it is laced with a
‘liberal’ dose of identity mobilisation.
For
instance, Nitish Kumar’s governance is combined with sub-categorisation
of the OBCs into the EBCs and the MBCs. Mr. Modi’s corporate governance
and growth-centric rhetoric are combined with a deeply polarising
discourse against the minorities that he returns to when he alludes to
the ‘burqa of secularism’ or claims to being a ‘Hindu nationalist,’ or
deliberately compares the minorities to ‘puppies that have come under
the wheels.’
It is therefore untenable to imagine
that the Modi of 2002 is very different from the Modi of 2012. It is not
explicit identity versus governance, as popular discourse has come to
perceive, but more of a certain combination of identity with the
rhetoric of efficient governance. Similar is the case with the AAP. It
has made a pitch for a similar shift to a more identity-blind,
transparent and accountable governance, and also cited this as its
mobilisational strategy for the elections in Delhi; the most cited case
being Shazia Ilmi, a Muslim, contesting from a Hindu dominated
constituency (though it is a different matter that it was a one-off case
of a prominent face of the AAP losing the elections). Whether it is the
composition of the AAP Ministry or the nature of polling where many
surveys found Muslims voting in much smaller numbers for the party than
others because there weren’t too many Muslim faces in it, identities
have not really died out. Identity claims have only moved from claiming
exclusive cultural dignity to attempts to combine them with new types of
economic opportunities. It is evident in the case of Gujjars demanding
the status of STs, or Rajputs wanting to be listed as OBCs. The issue
here is not mobility in ritual hierarchy but a share (legitimate or
otherwise) in state resources.
Finally, is the
alternative to the ills of identity politics to be sought in governance,
if it means an exclusive growth-centric strategy that India began with
during the phase of liberalisation in the 1990s, which prompted Rob
Jenkins to refer to it as ‘reforms by stealth?’ It has since moved to a
judicious or otherwise combination of reforms and social welfare
policies, such as the Right to Food security, the Land Acquisition Bill,
and the Street Vendors Bill, apart from the MGNREGA, riding on which
the Congress came back to power in 2009. Or, for that matter, the
governments of Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh have been voted back in
the recent elections in 2013 in recognition of the spate of welfare
policies that were put in place. Governance as growth has very
marginally translated into a trickle-down for the poor, and therefore
the need to have more pronounced social welfare policies in place.
Participatory democracy
Having
said this, it must be recognised that in spite of ushering in a spate
of welfare policies, the prospects for the Congress are rather bleak,
precisely because it seems to have failed in delivering and implementing
them through effective governance strategies. It lacked transparency
and accountability and got caught in a series of high-level scams. This
not only makes the government inefficient but also look arrogant in a
mood of ‘participatory democracy’ that we are witnessing. Strangely
similar is the case with the Left-of Centre parties such as the CPI and
the CPI(M) that have continued to raise issues of poverty, ill-effects
of FDI on the marginalised, landlessness and displacement, but could
neither creatively plug into identity mobilisation nor particularly look
accountable and open to dialogue and participatory ethos, which partly
explains their declining presence in electoral calculations.
This,
however, does not mean we move back to an exclusive growth-centric
governance paradigm. Rather, the road ahead is a choice between
governance combined with a polarised polity and governance combined with
a social-democratic welfare agenda that is inclusive of all social
identities such as Dalits, the OBCs, the minorities and women.
Identities cannot be undermined or brushed aside, nor can they simply be
mobilised for cultural assertion any more without including a concrete
and tangible programme of economic empowerment, while governance cannot
simply mean growth any more but means the way it contributes through a
discourse of accountability, institutional procedures and transparency
to widening economic opportunities and a more inclusive democratic
order. The chances are wide open, and the party or parties that can
effectively combine the two and their new meaning that is taking shape
in Indian democracy will, in all probability, surge ahead in the coming
elections.
(Dr. Ajay Gudavarthy is Assistant Professor at the Centre for Political Studies, JNU)
Only a party
that combines governance with a welfare agenda that is inclusive of
social identities such as Dalits, OBCs, minorities and women can surge
ahead in the coming elections
Comments
Post a Comment