Democratising a democracy

Governments should learn to live with the new reality

It’s not just India that is seeing “popular” challengers to the existing scheme of things acquire new heft: civil society activists and quasi-Gandhian icons leading street protests have put governments on the defensive with an ease not seen till now. One is a movement against corruption, another against the arrest of a police officer, and a third against an official definition of what constitutes poverty. This so-to-speak democratisation of a political system that is already a democracy, but perceived as being run by a power elite, has acquired a global flavour — not just because of Arab Spring but also because a small “Occupy Wall Street” protest has mushroomed into a multi-city phenomenon termed “American Fall”. That, in turn, has come in the wake of the surprising success of the Tea Party movement in the US, as a challenge to the mainstream political parties. Elsewhere, in Israel for instance, citizens have taken to impromptu occupation of streets in a middle-class protest against expensive housing; that spontaneous outburst has since grown into a broader cry for social justice. The street protests in Greece are against austerity measures and new taxes, and therefore in a more traditional mould. But the lesson for established political authority everywhere is that societies have become more democratic and less top-down.

Blame social media – services like Twitter and Facebook – which facilitate an instant feedback loop and make communication more two-way. These were used in a novel way in the riots that swept England some weeks ago. Even when these tools are not used, as in the protest against forcible land acquisition in India, 24-hour TV news channels in a race for viewership ratings have acted as megaphones for protesters. Taken together with the Right to Information law and the tradition of public interest litigation, the constant challenges to authority have acquired a frequency, dimension and character not seen before.

Governments may want to fight this phenomenon, but would be better advised to adjust to the new reality. Popular protests are like a fifth wheel (the other four being the legislature, executive, judiciary and press); and like all fifth wheels it makes life more complicated. The debate on the poverty line was not always well informed, nor was it entirely rational, but it raised serious questions and made the government respond. Still, the questions come thick and fast: who elected Baburao Hazare, and who gave a TV anchor with less than one per cent rating the right to say “The people of India want to know…”? If civil society activists cannot win even municipal elections, why are their voices magnified? And is 24-hour TV creating a feeding frenzy? These are legitimate questions, and harried ministers say no government can function in today’s environment. But they have to do just that, and should learn afresh how to address the two questions at the core of popular protests: growing inequality and systemic legitimacy.