PARTICIPATORY VERSUS REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY

- Exploring New Paradigms in Self Governance

October 27, 2012

Background Note

"A government is…the most dangerous organization possible, especially when it is entrusted with military power.

"In the widest sense the government, including capitalists and the Press, is nothing but an organization which places the greater part of the people in the power of a smaller part who dominate them. That smaller part is subject to a yet smaller part, that again to a yet smaller, and so on, reaching at last a few people or one single man who by means of military might has power over all the rest. So that all this organization resembles a cone of which all the parts are completely in the power of those people or that one person, who happens to be at the apex.

"The apex of the cone is seized by those who are more cunning, audacious, and unscrupulous than the rest, or by someone who happens to be the heir of those who were audacious and unscrupulous."

Leo Tolstoy in `Patriotism and Government'

When Tilak declared: "Freedom is my birth-right", he was also echoing the voice of a nation struggling to find utterance; a voice that still resonates today along with other compelling voices seeking social justice, equity and good governance. These voices are being raised by a cross section of our society which is outside the spheres of government, the market and the family. They represent consumer associations, human rights activists, labour unions, women's organizations, professional associations and the like. They often find themselves arrayed against an unresponsive, insensitive, corrupt and hostile government which claims legitimacy only on the ground of having succeeded in our flawed electoral politics, and whose sole concern is political survival from one crisis to another.

After deliberating on the unfinished agenda of local self-government in a seminar organized by Common Cause in March this year, we had to conclude that two decades after the passage of the 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendments, actual devolution of powers and resources to local bodies had not taken place in conformity with the Constitutional mandate. In this inquiry, we had also touched upon the issues of individual liberty, sovereignty, participatory democracy and the principle of subsidiarity. This generated enough interest and excitement among the participants to encourage us to undertake a more penetrating exploration of the meaning and rationale of self-governance. We organized a Symposium on this theme on 27th October,2012 which was attended by some of the best minds on the subject in our country.

We bring you a condensed text of the Background Note circulated for the Symposium. The abridged texts of the Presentations are also before you. Regrettably, for paucity of space, we are unable to bring you the record of some very animated and interesting interactions from our participants. However, the full text of the Background Paper and the record of presentations can be accessed athttp://commoncause.in/DemocracyversusRepresentativeDemocracy.php

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In India, the Freedom Movement represented the first major peoples' modern mobilization in response to the call of civil society. It is true that the ground had already been prepared by the works of Raja Ram Mohun Roy and Dayanand Saraswati, the Bengali writings of Bankim Chandra Chattopadhya, the Sanyasi Revolt in Bengal, the War of Independence of 1857 and the electrifying call given by Swami Vivekananda to the Nation. While western scholars, including Max Mueller, the most perceptive of them, orientalists like William Jones and even the Derozians of the Young Bengal Movement, wrote about the eternal verities of India's legacy, there was an element of condescension in that approach as if they were looking at an inferior civilization from the standpoint of a superior. There were dominant intellectual forces, such as Kipling with his `White man's burden' and administrators led by Metcalfe and Macaulay, who wrote derisively about the archaic nature of the Indian educational system and about replacing this way of thinking with the more `rational' and modern British way. As a response to this concerted campaign, Sri Aurobindo wrote a series of articles titled, `A Defence of Indian Culture'. They constitute a powerful advocacy of our unique heritage and a fitting rebuttal of these motivated campaigns.

The advent of Gandhiji then changed the national discourse in a fundamental way. He took the Freedom Movement to the villages. The Movement, of which the Congress had so long been the voice, was after all a forum of the urban elite, of prosperous lawyers and some capitalists, or of `brahmins', as Jinnah would have it. Gandhiji gave an identity to the common man, even the illiterate; respecting his humanity as much as that of the others. That gave the Movement its strength and vitality. It was thus transformed into a truly people's movement. In the eloquent words of Nehru "and then Gandhi came…like a powerful current of fresh air…like a whirlwind that upset many things but most of all the working of people's minds".

Independence raised public expectation to a high pitch, but it brought in its wake despair and, worse still, confusion and chaos. In time, there seemed an overall public apathy and ennui. The Indian urban middle classes did prosper to some extent, but seemed to have lost the idealism and the energy of the past. The Emergency and worse days were to follow. Then JP came and the Indian political system was turned upside down. For the first time, there was a combined opposition and again there were portents of a new beginning. But not for long; reactionary politics came back with full force and cronyism in politics and business became the dominant concern. Our educational system failed to inspire or transform and our social and political institutions did not provide the vision of a great nation such as our founding fathers had visualized. Self advancement ruled the day in place of nation building and rampant corruption in public life became part of our way of life.

This is the stage at which Anna Hazare and his team launched their anti-corruption campaign. Their entrance into the public discourse appealed to large sections of people, both young and old, and again raised high expectations. However, the movement did not offer any new ideas, limited as it was by its single-point agenda of enactment of the Jan Lokpal bill. After a long and agonizing debate, one faction of the Anna Team is now morphing into a political party. It is perhaps too early to rush to a conclusion about these developments, but this is certainly a time for some intensive soul-searching.

Looking beyond political boundaries, civil society movements have carved out for themselves a place in all democratic societies. Regardless of the ultimate outcome of the Arab Spring and the Occupy Wall Street movement, a message has gone down to the people across the globe that human rights and democratic freedoms are universal human aspirations that can no longer be sidelined and that the resistance to structural economic exploitation cannot be put down by the brute force of the state.

The challenges before civil society are a legion. It is confronted with the threats of global terrorism and nuclear proliferation. The spread of MNC-led capitalism marginalises the small farmer and the unorganized worker. There is a rampant environmental degradation and pollution and mounting evidence of drastic climate change with all its noxious consequences. The Fund-Bank-WTO combine is exerting a relentless pressure for market integration across national boundaries with no safeguards for the small producer and the socially and economically challenged. There is a sense of public outrage over a wilful disregard of matters that concern a common human destiny. This outrage is shared by a global fraternity of concerned world citizens through the internet and the social media. In consequence, there is an unprecedented social awakening the world over and a constituency for radical change has also been created in India.

LEGACY OF SELF GOVERNING INSTITUTIONS IN INDIA

The system of people's participation in government in India has a long history. Steven Muhlberger, in his monograph, `Democracy in Ancient India', writes,

"The work of twentieth century scholars has made possible a much different view of ancient political life in India. It has shown us a landscape with kings a-plenty, a culture where the terminology of rule is in the majority of sources relentlessly monarchical, but where, at the same time, the realities of politics are so complex that simply to call them `monarchical' is a grave distortion. Indeed, in ancient India, monarchical thinking was constantly battling with another vision, of self-rule by members of a guild, a village, or an extended kin-group, in other words, any group of equals with a common set of interests. This vision of cooperative self-government often produced republicanism and even democracy comparable to classical Greek democracy."

He goes on to add,

"The experience of Ancient India with republicanism, if better known, would by itself make democracy seem less of a freakish development, and help dispel the common idea that the very concept of democracy is specifically `Western'."

Ancient literature on the Indian polity is derived from Brahmanical, Buddhist and Jaina sources. The Brahmanical tradition gives kingship the dominant place. The major documents in this tradition are the ` Manu Smriti ' and Kautilya's `Arthashastra'. These assigned the king a key role in society as the protector and arbiter of a social order based on caste. The king was also the guarantor of `dharma'. These two well-known works represent the dominant view of an order in which the monarch and after him the Brahmin class occupied the position of power.

The early Greek and Roman accounts from the time just after Alexander's invasion do mention numerous cities and larger areas which functioned as democracies and oligarchies, but these accounts did not receive serious attention. During the 19th century, there were some research findings based on the Buddhist Pali Canon which brought to light the evidence of a widespread republicanism. Research in the 20th century established that while there were many small kingdoms scattered across India, there also was a tradition of self-rule by guilds, village communities or groups of persons with a commonality of interest. We gather from one of the Jataka Tales that in the Licchhavi capital of Vaishali there were numerous rajas, viceroys, generals, and treasurers. The ancient texts also contain critical references to such power-sharing arrangements. TheSanti Parva of the Mahabharata records the participation of too many people in the affairs of state and laments that this was a great flaw in republicanism. A Jaina text criticizes the ganas for being disorderly and cautions that monks and nuns who visited them would run the risk of being bullied, beaten, robbed, or accused of being spies.

Although republican polities go back to the Vedic period, they were most common at the time of Buddha and Mahavira. By the sixth century B.C., self-governing organizations termed Gana or Sangha or in the case of lesser entities, as Sreni, Puga or Vrata, had come to be established, particularly in the northwestern and eastern regions of India. According to the Pali canon, the city of Vaishali was already a flourishing urban settlement in the fifth century B.C., with a large population and many storied and pinnacled buildings, parks and lotus ponds. It was celebrated for the beauty and artistic abilities of the courtesan Ambapalli. The ganas of Kusavati and Kapilavastu were important cities during this period. Panini (fifth century B.C.) gives us the terms for vote, decisions arrived at through voting and the completion of a quorum. There is evidence to suggest that the division of assemblies into political parties was common. The Pali canon( particularly the Mahaparinirvana-suttanta, the Kulavagga and the Mahavagga,) contains basic elements of democratic decision-making and could constitute our earliest records of the development of democratic ideology in India.

From these records we find that the rules for running the Buddhist sangha were based on those commonly found in political sanghas or ganas. R.C.Majumdar notes that the organizational techniques seen in the Buddhist sangha are suggestive of an advanced political culture based on popular assembly. The extensive research done by K.P.Jayaswal for his seminal work, `Hindu Polity', shows that in ancient India there was a fairly sophisticated tradition of people's participation in governance.

During the nineteen-twenties, Gandhiji's `Young India' brought out a large amount of data that showed the complex organization of the Indian society, and the general material, cultural and spiritual wealth of the country before the advent of the British. In the sixties, Dharampal, a historian and Gandhian scholar of repute, presented an entirely new picture of an economy based on an advanced science and technology. His research in Southern India produced surprising evidence of a high standard of education and a sophisticated academic curriculum. At about the same time, about 200 bundles of palm leaf records found in the Chengalpattu district of Tamil Nadu yielded a wealth of information on the functioning of the Tamil society of the 18th and 19thcenturies before it was disrupted and permanently transformed by British rule. These records pertained to about 800 villages and were part of an original survey of some 2000 villages commissioned by the British to understand the ways of the local people with a view to controlling them.

Some of the features of Tamil society of the eighteenth century, which emerge from the English records of the Chengalpattu survey and the original palm-leaf accounts, seem rather startling. For example, a few leaves record the amount of cultivated land under different crops and the actual produce of a village for each of the five years between 1762 and 1766. These data show that there were villages in this region which produced up to 12 tonnes of paddy per hectare of cultivation. Today, this level of productivity can be obtained only in the best of the Green Revolution areas of the country, with the most advanced, highly expensive, and often environmentally ruinous technologies. This information about the productivity of Chengalpattu villages in the 1760's forces us to completely revise our ideas about the scientific, technological and managerial skills available in the country around the time it fell to British power.

These records also tell us that each of these villages maintained an extensive establishment of administrative, cultural and economic functionaries and services, and also made provisions for larger centres of culture, religion, scholarship and administration, which provided the connecting link for the whole region. From the village produce allocations were made for each of these functions and services, and the total of these allocations amounted to 30 percent of the gross produce in most places. Thus the Chengalpattu village, it seems, functioned like the innermost circle of the oceanic polity of Mahatma Gandhi. Village level accounts of this type are an invaluable source for learning about a polity that was not controlled from a single centre. Besides telling us about the prosperity and functional efficiency of the pre-British Tamil society, they also give us a glimpse of the reality of economic and social relationships between the various communities within the village polity, and about the actual status of various jatis in an Indian society functioning according to its own indigenous genius.

The life that animated these villages was extinguished with the loss of autonomy of their communities. Their surroundings now are deteriorated, the houses and temples are in ruins, and the people have deserted the villages. Seen from the perspective of the eighteenth century accounts these look like ghost settlements.1

MICRO MOVEMENTS AND VOLUNTARY AGENCIES

Apart from the formal or the more visible civil society organizations, a large number of micro-movements or voluntary associations have played a significant part in this history. They range from Goraksha samitis, theatre and cultural groups, sports clubs, residents welfare associations, traders' guilds, cooperative societies and farmers' unions to self-help groups and such like bodies. The Kaira Milk Producers' Cooperative Union of Gujarat, for instance, represents the most successful and the largest cooperative union in the world. Not all these movements have been peaceful or development-oriented, however. Although some of these groups were non-political to begin with, the challenge of globalization in the last two decades has united many of them on a political platform at the state, regional and national levels. There has also been a strong underground movement since the days of Naxalbari that has grown in the rural areas of at least sixteen states. These developments have been attributed to the growing inequalities in our economic system and the disconnect of the political class and the bureaucracy with peoples' aspirations.

PANCHAYATI RAJ

The age-old system of Panchayati Raj, which has evolved over time into a vital instrument of democracy in modern India, is our unique contribution to the practice of grassroots democracy. Under this system, the Gram Sabha or the general assembly of all residents in a village or a cluster of villages is expected to play a pivotal role in governance, displaying some of the features of the popular democracy visualized by Gandhiji and some of our founding fathers. The ideal of Panchayati Raj was the subject of protracted debate at the drafting stage of the Constitution, but because of the influence of Dr. B. R. Ambedkar and other modernists, it was relegated to the Directive Principles, which made it non justiciable. It had to wait more than forty years to be given that status. After the 73rd&74th Constitutional Amendments, in spite of all the difficulties in its implementation, Panchayati Raj has established its position as one of the pillars of our democracy. Today, with 2,851,759 elected members, including 1,048,148 women, representing 233,606 gram Panchayats, 6,094 intermediate Panchayats and 543 district Panchayats, the Panchayats constitute the largest system of grassroots democracy in the world. The remarkable thing about this system is that it is a centuries old continuing tradition, which was not confined to political participation, but extended to other dimensions of civil life, like literature and philosophy, as eloquently argued by Amartya Sen in `The Argumentative Indian'.

GANDHI'S GRAM SWARAJ AS AN ALTERNATE APPROACH

We present below the essential features of Gandhiji's thoughts on the subject taken from Prof. Shriman Narayan Agarwal's `Gandhian Constitution for Free India'. Of this document, Gandhiji wrote in his Foreword,

"I regard Principal Agarwal's to be a thoughtful contribution to the many attempts at presenting India with constitutions. The merit of his attempt consists in the fact that he has done what for want of time I have failed to do".

Hence, it can be said that the document is a fair representation of Gandhiji's views on the subject. Gandhiji envisioned self-sufficient and self-governing villages or village clusters as the basic units of public administration in free India. Such a scheme would have been in conformity with the time-honoured traditions of the country.

THE PANCHAYAT

Every village shall elect by the vote of all its adults a Panchayat ordinarily of five persons. In the case of bigger villages, the number may vary from seven to eleven. The Panchayat shall elect unanimously its president or sarpanch. If this unanimity is not possible, all the adults of the village shall elect the president directly out of the member of the Panchayat.

The tenure of the Panchayat shall ordinarily be three years. The village Panchayat shall have the sole authority to appoint, suspend or dismiss the village servants like the choukidar, patwari and police officials.

The decisions of the Panchayat shall be, as far as possible, unanimous specially in cases that affect the right of minorities.

FUNCTIONS

Since the villages shall enjoy maximum local autonomy, the functions of the village Panchayats shall be very wide and comprehensive, covering almost all aspects of social, economic and political life of the village community.

DISTRICT PANCHATYAT

All the presidents of taluka Panchayats shall constitute the district Panchayat. Ordinarily, a district shall not contain more than a dozen talukas of the size indicated above. The tenure of the district Panchayat shall be three years.

Its functions shall be:

(a) to guide, supervise and coordinate the activities of taluka Panchayats and audit their accounts

(b) to make arrangement for collegiate or post-basic education

(c) to maintain well equipped hospitals for certain diseases that require specialised treatment

(d) to maintain a reserve of district guardians for emergencies

(e) to run district cooperative banks and marketing societies

(f) to make adequate arrangements for irrigation

(g) to organise inter-taluka sports and tournament

MUNICIPAL COUNCILS

There shall be ward Panchayats and municipal councils in towns, that will have extensive executive and legislative powers. Their functions will be, more or less, on the lines of the district Panchayats; they shall coordinate the activities of the ward Panchayats.

The municipal councils shall own and manage all public means of transport, electric powerhouses and water supply arrangements.

THE PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENT

The district Panchayats and municipal councils shall send their presidents to the provincial Panchayat. Its strength will naturally vary from province to province. In the case of smaller provinces, one more representative besides the president of the district Panchayats and municipal council may be sent to the provincial Panchayat.

The tenure of the provincial Panchayat shall be three years. It shall usually meet twice a year.

FUNCTIONS

One of the principal functions of the provincial Panchayat shall be:

to guide, supervise and coordinate the activities of the district Panchayats and audit their accounts

ADMINISTRATION

The provincial Panchayat shall be the legislature of the province. It shall, be uni-cameral, and will posses full powers within its territories to enact laws in regard to provincial functions.

There shall be complete separation of functions between the legislature and the executive. The provincial Panchayat shall appoint ministers or commissars in charge of different departments. The ministers, though fully responsible to the Panchayat, shall not be appointed from amongst the members of the provincial Panchayat.

The tenures of Ministers shall be three years. Ordinarily they shall not be changed by the new Panchayat, except on grounds of inefficiency and corruption.

Ministers shall not be appointed on party or communal consideration. They shall represent the best talent of the province. Their numbers shall be determined in accordance with the size of the province. It shall not be less than five and not more than nine.

THE CENTRAL GOVERNMENT

All the presidents of the provincial Panchayat shall constitute the All-India Panchayats. It shall be uni-cameral because the system of having two chambers is unnecessarily complicated and expensive. The tenure of the All-India Panchayat shall be three years.

FUNCTIONS

The functions of the All-India Panchayat shall be very limited in accordance with the basic principle of maximum local and provincial autonomy. Its functions shall be:

(a) to defend the country against foreign aggression

(b) to maintain a national force of guardians for internal law and order in times of emergencies

(c) to coordinate the provincial plans of economic development

(d) to run the `key' industries of all India importance.

(e) to manage the all India department of transport and communications

(f) to regulate currency, custom and international trade

(g) to maintain a few educational institutions of all India importance for technical and scientific research, and to advise the provinces regarding uniformity of educational standards

(h) to shape the foreign policy of the nation

The residual power shall vest in the federating units and not the Centre.

There shall not be any regular and rigid political parties in view of a very large measure of local self-governments. While every attempt shall be made to give a fair representation in the central executive to all communities specially minorities, the vicious principle of communal proportions shall find no place in the future Constitution of Free India. In fact, when India reaches the fully developed non-violent stage, there will be no minority having a feeling of separateness or inferiority.

THE JUDICIARY

The judicial system introduced by the British Government in India has worked havoc in the socio-economic life of the country. The Panchayats used to decide civil and criminal cases speedily and on the spot. False witness and perjury before the Panchayat were regarded as the greatest sins. Justice was cheap and fair. Modern courts, on the contrary, are very expensive; even very ordinary cases are disposed of only after months, if not years.

Even a highly reactionary Governor like Sir Maurice Hallett had observed, "I often think that the policy of the Government of India took a wrong turn when it insisted on centralising its administration. The old system whereby the village was, more or less, responsible for its own organisation was lost sight of and I think India has suffered accordingly. The Government in its desire for regimented systems on stereotyped lines has set up institutions such as magisterial courts on western lines and has forgotten that much of this work could have been better and more aptly conducted within the village itself. I would like to see every village or in a group of small villages, a Panchayat set up with powers to settle all minor disputes, whether they be of criminal, civil or revenue nature."

VILLAGE COURTS

The gram Panchayats shall be entrusted with the dispensing of justice; no separate judicial Panchayats are necessary. The poor peasant need not go out of his village, spend hard-earned money and waste weeks and months in towns on litigation. He can get all the necessary witnesses in the village and fight out his own case without being exploited by lawyers. When intricate points of law arise, a sub-judge from the Taluka or district could come down to the village and assist the Panchayat in deciding difficult cases. The sub-judge shall also act as a guide, friend and philosopher to the ignorant villagers by acquainting them with the laws of the state.

DISTRICT COURTS

The village Panchayats shall enjoy extensive civil and criminal powers in judicial matters, it will be unnecessary to have taluka courts. In special cases, appeals from the villages could directly be made to the district courts. Disputes in towns shall also originate in these district courts. The judges should be completely independent of the district executive officers. They shall be appointed by the district pachayats, and shall be irremovable during terms of office and good behaviour.

HIGH COURTS

In very exceptional cases, appeals from district courts shall be allowed before high courts. The judges of the high courts will be appointed by the provincial Panchayat. They shall be completely independent of the executive, holding office for life and during good behaviour.

THE SUPREME COURT

The Supreme Court of India will be the highest judicial authority in the country. Its functions shall be:

(a) to hear appeals from the High Courts

(b) to decide original cases arising out of disputes between the federating units regarding constitutional matters

(c) to religiously safeguard the interests of minorities by enforcing strict observance of the fundamental rights as specified in the Constitution

The judges shall be appointed by the All-India Panchayat. They shall be men of the highest merit and character absolutely free from communalism or party politics, holding office for life and during good behaviour.

REVISION OF LAW

The existing civil and criminal laws are foreign to the Indian soil; they are too complex and cumbersome. They will, therefore, have to be thoroughly revised under the new constitution. A special committee of experts may be appointed for the purpose by the Indian Constituent Assembly.

ELECTIONS

The system of elections advocated in this constitution is direct for the village Panchayats and indirect for the taluka, district, province and the All-india Panchayats. This system will combine the chief advantages of both direct and indirect elections. The election will be direct in the village that would enjoy maximum local autonomy. Since the functions of the higher bodies will be mainly advisory and coordinative, indirect election would be the most suitable method. It will avoid colossal waste of national energy, time and money involved in direct elections especially in a vast country like India. The unhealthy growth of political parties and communal feelings will also be automatically checked to a great extent. Since indirect elections will be confined to a few responsible individuals, there will be hardly any room for bribery and corruption. Besides, the representatives of the upper bodies will not be in a position to `forget' their constituencies because they would owe their delegation to the lower Panchayats.

FRANCHISE

The question of franchise and electoral qualifications will arise only in the case of elections for the village Panchayats. In the villages, elections will be on the basis of adult franchise irrespective of any distinctions relating to caste, creed, sex, religion, socio-economic position or education. Even literacy shall not be a mandatory qualification for a voter. Observes Gandhiji:

"I cannot possibly bear the idea that a man who has got wealth should have the vote, but the man who has got character but no wealth or literacy should have no vote. Or that a man who works honestly by the sweat of his brow, day in and day out, should not have the vote for the crime of being a poor man. I am not enamoured of the doctrine of literacy, that voter must at least have knowledge of the three R's. I want for my people to have knowledge of the three R's, but I know also that if I have to wait until they have got a knowledge of the three R's before they can be qualified for voting, I shall have to wait until the Greek Kalends. And I am not prepared to wait all that time."

SPECIAL QUALIFICATIONS

Although no rigid rules could be framed for the members and office bearers of the Panchayats, the following special merits shall weigh with the voters while casting votes in favour of different candidates:

(a) Literacy and general education

(b) Mature experience of civic life

(c) Financial independence (to eliminate chances of corruption)

(d) Record of solid and selfless service to the village community

In this context, any kind of canvassing in elections should be regarded as a disqualification. Membership of the Panchayat should be looked upon as a grave responsibility and not as a matter of mere honour and selfish gains.

FINANCE AND TAXATION

The existing system of public finance and taxation is highly inequitable and irrational. It will, therefore, have to be radically recast and overhauled. The following are a few important points that ought to be incorporated in the future Constitution of India:

(a) National finance shall be suitably decentralised so as to make local self-government a reality. At least one-half of the land revenue collected by villages shall be made over to the respective village Panchayats.

(b) Details regarding the allotment of the other half of the land revenue among the district, provincial and All-India Panchayats shall be decided by a competent commission appointed by the Constituent Assembly.

(c) Other revenues necessary for meeting local expenditure shall be raised by the village Panchayats by means of fasli chanda (harvest subscription), private donations, arbitration fees, fines, grazing charges, etc. Taxation in the form of direct manual labour by the villagers shall be encouraged.

(d) State expenditure on public utility services like health, education and research shall be proportionately increased.

(e) A graded tax shall be imposed on agricultural incomes above a specified minimum.

(f) Inheritance taxes on a graduated scale shall be levied on property above a fixed minimum.

(g) Income tax shall be a provincial source of revenue.

(h) Salt shall be free as air.

(i) Payment of taxes in kind, especially in the rural areas, shall be favoured.

EDUCATION

The present system of education in India has failed to meet the vital needs of national life; it is hopelessly out of touch with social and economic realities and envisions no creative and inspiring ideal. Far-reaching reforms, therefore, will have to be introduced under the Swaraj Constitution. The following are a few key points:

(a) Basic education shall be free and compulsory. It shall be imparted to all boys and girls up to the age of 14, through a productive craft like spinning, weaving and agriculture. Such education would serve a treble purpose in a poor country like India, namely, (1) It would impart sound knowledge to students; (2) It would meet most or part of the cost of education; (3) It would make students generally fit for a vocation in life.

(b) There shall be absolutely no corporal punishment in educational institutions.

(c) The medium of instruction at all stages of education shall be the mother tongue. The imposition of the English medium of instruction has, indeed, been one of the major educational tragedies

in this country. In Gandhiji's words, "It has sapped the energy of the nation, it has shortened the lives of the pupils. It has estranged them from the masses; it has made education unnecessarily expensive. If this process is still persisted in, it bids fair to rob the nation of its soul."

(d) The village Panchayats shall try to liquidate illiteracy as early as possible. Adult education, however, shall not be confined to the knowledge of the three R's. Adults shall be imparted general education in health, hygiene, sanitation, agricultural efficiency, cooperatives and civic rights. Hereto, the basis will be a craft.

(e) University education shall be confined mostly to higher technical training and research.

(f) It shall be incumbent on a graduate to render free social service for one year before receiving his or her degree.

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

In the past, crime was treated either with violent punishment or with overflowing sentimentality. Penology has now undergone a vital change in the progressive countries of the world. Crime has ceased to be regarded as a biological phenomenon; it is now recognised as a social product. Criminals are to be treated as persons and crimes as clinical problems to be diagnosed as in the case of other physical and mental diseases. Gandhiji would, therefore, eschew crime but seek to rehabilitate the criminal.

CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS

The administrative system envisaged in this Constitution is that of a pyramid whose broad base is composed of numberless village communities of the country. The higher Panchayats shall tender sound advice, give expert guidance and information, supervise and coordinate the activities of the village Panchayats with a view to increasing the efficiency of administration and public service. But, in the non-violent state of Gandhiji's conception, it will be the basic units that would dictate to the centre and not vice versa.

In fact, the whole system will be turned upside down; the village shall become the real and moving unit of the administration.

III

MOVING TOWARDS A PARTICIPATORY DEMOCRACY

Participatory Democracy has been defined as individual participation by citizens in political decisions and policies that affect their lives directly rather than through elected representatives.

The aim of discussion on this topic is to acknowledge the need to develop a model where people can participate in their own governance, to understand how it operates and to study its effects on the behaviour of citizens, politicians and over the final policy outcomes.

The form of democracy in our country is representative. Representative governments exist where the people delegate the task of government to representatives chosen through regular elections. An elected representative represents the citizens of his constituency, tacitly agreeing to serve their interests. Often, a representative must balance competing interests in his jurisdiction and try to satisfy the greatest number of his constituents.

However, once elected, the people's representative is set free to choose his own course. He often conducts the affairs entrusted to him in a manner which is against the wishes of the electorate. The result is cronyism, scams, dynastic rule, criminalization of politics, disruption of legislative

proceedings and many other abuses. At the policy level too, it is seen that the elected government may embark, without any serious public debate, on a course of action, which might have disastrous consequences for particularly vulnerable groups, for example, the decisions for privatization of strategic sectors of the economy, opening of retail trade to foreign investment, or exempting international nuclear suppliers from civil liability. Moreover, elected representatives, who contest on party tickets, tend to follow the party line, rather than the wishes of the people they represent. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that political parties require huge funds to finance the elections and these funds are provided by moneyed interests, which then seek to mould government policies to their advantage. Another important fact is that people vote not for meritorious individuals, but for candidates most likely to form governments. Hence, they do not vote for candidates who are not expected to win.

The first problem that arises from this behaviour is that only parties with money and muscle power, which are mostly corrupt, are perceived as serious contenders in the race for power. The second problem is that even if the people are able to bring to power a party of honest individuals dedicated to working for the welfare of the population, their government may, in the course of time, lose its way and not function in accordance with the will of the people.

In contrast, participatory democracy denotes a form of government in which non-governmental actors (usually citizens) are empowered to make decisions about matters that directly concern them and use the resources of the state. It is a process of collective decision making that combines elements from both direct and representative democracy. The citizens have the ultimate power to decide on the policies and the politicians assume the role of policy implementation. Since the politicians are divested of the right to alter the decisions of citizens, the electorate can easily monitor their performance, and that reduces their discretion over the final outcome. In this system, the extent to which citizens can affect policy and determine their social priorities is directly aligned with the degree to which they choose to involve themselves in the process.

The participatory model of democracy envisions a system where the citizens themselves are able to make decisions on all important issues of governance. A participatory form of democracy should eventually lead to an egalitarian social order, providing the space for more participation, better discussion and fuller realization of citizens' rights and their potential. In such a participatory democracy, the elected representatives would only make decisions on day-to-day issues and on subjects delegated to them. Implicit in this concept is the need for amending the structure of the Constitution.

An innovative solution that has been tried in many countries is the Referendum and the Initiative. These are methods through which some matters of policy and law-making are referred to a direct vote by the electorate instead of being solely determined by the elected representatives. They provide an institutional mechanism through which the wishes of the citizens are articulated when they do not get the desired response from their representatives.

Whereas the `referendum' is an instrument that allows the citizens to ratify or reject a legislation passed by Parliament, an `initiative' allows them to initiate a new legislation or constitutional amendment by putting their own proposal on the political agenda. A bill drafted by a group of citizens and supported by a small percentage of the electorate is put to a nation-wide direct vote. In Switzerland, two per cent of the electorate needs to sign and support an initiative to make it eligible for a nation-wide direct vote. If the citizen-initiated legislation gets a majority, it becomes a law. Examples of Participation in Governance from across the World

Brazil

The experiment of Participatory Budgeting, which was introduced in Porto Allegre, Brazil, in 1989, offers an interesting mix of several innovative features which combine both participatory and representative democracy. In this city, thousands of citizens gather every year in neighbourhood meetings to debate and deliberate on local priorities, and to elect representatives to negotiate with other neighbourhoods and local officials to approve the annual budget. Such local-level participatory planning is often accompanied by a process of participatory budgeting, where the executive branch of the local government delegates some statutory powers to the people living in the neighbourhood, thus according legal sanction to this practice. The priorities for government funding are decided upon by these people at the neighbourhood level through large-scale public consultations. The neighbourhood assemblies also choose community representatives, who then take the neighbourhood priorities to the higher tiers made up of themselves and elected representatives. In the municipalities, the Mayor initiates the delegation of authority.

This innovation brought an end to the tradition of deciding on public spending within closed walls and empowered the common man to participate in the process of decision-making regarding expenditure to be incurred on public welfare in consonance with the local priorities and specificities.

In brief, this is how it functions.

The city is divided into seventeen regions. Between April and May each year, regional assemblies (rodadas) take place in each region. The early meetings mainly concentrate on public scrutiny and control of the municipal government. The municipality is responsible for the proper implementation of the investment plan approved in the previous year. The following meetings focus on prioritizing ranks for each region and preparing a list of hierarchical demands for each priority based on lack of the service or infrastructure, population, and regional and city ranking of the priority. There are thirteen issue areas available and each region selects five priorities. All decisions are taken by majority rule.

These assemblies are the principal forum for popular participation, where the citizens participate as individuals and as representatives of various groups of civil society (neighborhood associations, cultural groups, special interest groups) throughout the yearly cycle to deliberate and decide on projects for specific regions and on municipal investment priorities and also to monitor the outcome of these projects.

The regional assemblies meet in March every year to elect delegates to represent specific areas, and discuss the previous year's projects and budget. The Mayor and his staff attend to the concerns of citizens regarding ongoing projects in the region. The attendance of participants decides the number of regional delegates per neighbourhood who would participate in the subsequent deliberations. The number of total delegates is based on a diminishing proportion to the number of attendees, and the proportion of persons from a specific neighborhood to that of total participation. The number of delegates for a region is determined as follows: for the first 100 persons, one delegate for every ten persons; for the next 150 persons, one for twenty; for the next 150, one for thirty; for each additional forty persons after that, one delegate. Specific neighborhood associations or groups are responsible for electing their own delegates.

Thematic assemblies (tematicas) take place subsequent to the regional assemblies or the rodadas and cover six important areas of Health and Social Welfare, Transportation and Circulation, City Organization and Urban Development, Culture and Leisure, Education and Economic Development and Taxation. Citizens' participation depends on their areas of interest. As in the case of the rodadas, the tematicas also take decisions based on majority. In a standard representative democracy, the task of budget planning and allocation would be left to civil servants and merely ratified by the local elected bodies.

There are many other nations which have tried participatory democracy in some form or the other with a measure of success. Switzerland Switzerland was the first country to introduce the instruments of Referendum and Initiative as early as in 1848. There are now 36 countries, mainly in Europe and Latin America, which have adopted these instruments at the federal level. Some others, like Brazil, Germany and the United States, have adopted it at the state and regional level. India has yet to adopt this method.

Indonesia

In Indonesia, following decades of authoritarian rule, hundreds of "forum wargas" (citizens' forums) have emerged as a new space where citizens, local officials, business, and other sectors can meet, discuss local issues openly, and identify solutions.

Philippines In the Philippines, local government legislation has created spaces for local community organizations and NGOs to sit at the same table with local elected officials to draw up development plans. Through a national coalition of NGOs, community groups and local officials are working together in new ways, and creating changes in how services are delivered. Uganda In Uganda, villagers across the country are involved in participatory approaches to developing priorities for the national budget through a program involving the finance ministry, national NGOs, and district and local governments. Uruguay In Uruguay, the people opposed a move by the government in 2002 to privatise the supply of drinking water and sanitation in the entire country. This was a commitment that the government had made to the IMF. The people countered with an Initiative demanding that access to drinking water and sanitation be made a human right. The Initiative received an overwhelming victory and came into effect in 2004. These are just a few of several thousands of initiatives around the globe in which citizens and governments are coming together in new ways to participate, deliberate, and develop solutions to pressing social, economic, and community development issues.2

Some provisional conclusions

History has shown that no government, howsoever powerful, can survive for long without popular consent. With all its obvious flaws, representative democracy is better than autocracy, because it has an embedded regulatory framework which has popular support; whereas autocracy of any kind leads to tyranny and other forms of injustice. Direct or participatory democracy seeks its legitimacy from the same principle as representative democracy: both affirm the sovereignty of the people. However, the agency of people's representatives in representative democracy tends to marginalise the people in the process of decision-making, particularly during the long gaps between elections.

The discussion so far has been about engaging the citizens in making decisions about their own governance. We have looked at some of the driving forces behind these developments and their evolution under different circumstances and stages of our history. The important thing is to see these developments as part of a process wherein each new initiative modifies and advances our experience of self-governance and thereby adds to our understanding of individual freedom and state responsibility and the manner in which they shape the course of our democracy.

Participatory democracy in its fuller sense may seem like a utopian dream, but given the fact that there is now a growing discontent among the people over the scheme of representative democracy, and also the fact that participatory democracy is being practised in various degrees and forms in many countries, we can perhaps aspire to a more responsive and inclusive form of democracy in the future. The lesson that we can draw from these experiences is that an alert and vigilant public is the best safeguard of our collective freedom. We must not expect dramatic changes in the way democracies progress towards this ideal, but we may derive comfort from the realisation that we are in a long distance run in which no more than the first few steps have been taken.

Plato, who in his writings laid out the contours of such a polity, puts it eloquently in words that still ring true,

"in heaven there is laid up a pattern of such a city, and he who desires may behold it, and beholding, govern himself accordingly. But whether there really is or ever will be such a city on earth,….he will act according to the laws of that city, and no other". A woman in a supermarket is following a grandfather and his badly behaved 3 year old grandson. It's obvious to her that he has his hands full with the child screaming for sweets in the sweet aisle, biscuits in the biscuit aisle; and for toys, cereal and pop in the other aisles. Meanwhile, Grandpa is working his way around, saying in a controlled voice, "Easy, William, we won't be long…easy, boy."

Another outburst, and she hears the granddad calmly say, "It's okay, William, just a couple more minutes and we'll be out of here. Hang in there, boy."

At the checkout, the little terror is throwing items out of the cart, and the Grandpa says again in a controlled voice, "William, relax buddy, don't get upset. We'll be home in five minutes. Stay cool, William."

Very impressed, the woman goes outside where the grandfather is loading his groceries and the boy into the car.

She says to the elderly gentleman, "It's none of my business, but you were amazing in there. I don't know how you did it. That whole time you kept your composure, and no matter how loud and disruptive he got, you just calmly kept saying things would be okay. William is lucky to have you as his Grandpa."

"Thanks," said the grandfather," but I am William…the little bastard's name is Kevin!"

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Overheard: My accountant is worth every penny he charges because of the time he saves me. This year, for example, he probably saved me five to ten years in prison.

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1 Excerpts from " Introduction on the Chengalpattu Studies" published in " The Hindu" ( April 2, 1991 , April 28, 1991) by J.K.Bajaj & T.M.Mukundan, CPS

2 Strengthening Participatory Approaches to Local Governance: Learning the Lessons from Abroad by John Gaventa