Sunita Narain: Failure of democracy

DOWN TO EARTH

This month, Jantar Mantar in Delhi was the venue of two protests: victims of the Bhopal gas tragedy and those displaced by the Sardar Sarovar dam over the Narmada river. Both cases involve victims of "development". The answer is to find and to ensure a resolution so that not just one side wins the battle of wealth creation "" all win. Or, at least, one side does not lose so desperately. It is important to ask why the Indian state is increasingly unable to find this balance. What is the nature of protest, if the democratic institutions of governance "" including electoral democracy "" fail in public perception and on the ground by failing to reconcile competing interests?

It is here that we must begin to look at the state of our institutions, which need to deliver on these promises. Take Narmada. The Supreme Court, which granted permission to build the dam, gave specific directions that it would be built pari passu (in conjunction) with safeguards against environmental damage and ensuring rehabilitation of affected villages. To ensure this was done, an institutional framework was set up. It involved setting up two separate sub-groups on environment and rehabilitation. These sub-groups are headed by the senior-most bureaucrats to the government "" secretary of environment and secretary of the ministry of social justice and empowerment. It is only on their assessment that the Narmada Control Authority "" chaired by the secretary to the union water resources ministry "" can give clearances. The bottom line is that if these institutions "worked" then, perhaps, the balance could be secured.

The issue today is two-fold: first, these institutions do not work. In this specific case, because people have not been rehabilitated as was required. The other is that the institutions may have worked but people do not believe they do. In other words, these institutions have a fatal credibility crisis. In both cases, people then have no option but to take to the streets "" peacefully and then, with growing despair, violently.

Unfortunately, we talk about institutional reform using glib (and meaningless) words such as accountability and participation. I say glib, because we do the opposite of what we say. Our institutions are less accountable today than they were before the information revolution. Our institutions are less open than before media and civil society empowerment. Our institutions are certainly less knowledge-driven than they were before computers and the Internet. As a result, we are fast losing our ability to "work" democracy.

We still don't know, for instance, in this case of Narmada, how the sub-committee on rehabilitation and then the secretary water resources decided and verified the claims made by state governments on rehabilitation and their process for ensuing ground realities were considered. We still don't know because the data is never made public, because critics are never consulted; because even the affected people are never asked. The institution loses credibility. We lose.

The fact is that our institutions are increasingly weak, because we have decided to de-politicise governance. The role of politicians is not to be middlemen in petty governmental contracts but to resolve societal contracts, through arbitration and empathy. Narmada and Bhopal are about the failure of negotiated democracy. They are our failures. They are our shame.