Government of the people, by the people, for the people

In his famous “The Gettysburg Address” US President Abraham Lincoln inunciated democracy in these immortal words : “Government of the people, by the people, for the people”. Has this dream of democracy become a reality ? Unfortunately, we are far away from realising this great vision of a true democracy. We have still government run by the elected representatives of the people. People have no control over them once they are elected. Can we call it government of the people, by the people, for the people ? Unfortunately, answer is in the negative.

The tragedy of democracy is the silent majority which does not belong to any political party. Bulk of them are not vocal and do not speak out on any important issue. Their unexpressed views are just ignored. All decisions are taken by the majority in the legislature. Fact remains that they represent majority of citizens elected on the basis of their views at the time of election. During the term of the elected legislature several controversial issues might come up. People’s views might not coincide with the stand taken by the representatives elected by them. However, decisions on such issues are taken assuming that elected representatives reflect the views of their electorate. No conscious effort is made to ascertain their views and mould the decision in accordance with their views.

In a true functioning democracy, it should be possible for the majority of the electorate to influence the decision. Constitution (Amendment) Bill, about voter’s right to recall elected representatives, was introduced in Loksabha by C. K. Chandrappan in 1974. Atal Bihari Bajpai supported this but the bill did not pass. Shri Jayprakash Narayan and Anna Hazare also suggested adoption of right to recall. Right to recall laws are there in US, Canada, Japan, UK, Switzerland, Venezuela, Peru and Ecuador. Recently a corrupt MP of UK Fiona Onasanya was removed by recall.

A recall election is typically a process by which voters seek to remove their elected representatives before their term is completed. It has been in place in Canada’s Legislative Assembly of British Columbia since 1995. Voters can petition to have their parliamentary representative removed from office even if he is the premier, with a by-election ensuing soon after. In the United States, the states of Alaska, Georgia, Kansas, Minnesota, Montana, Rhode Island and Washington allow for recall on specific grounds such as misconduct or malfeasance.

In absence of a right to recall, it is essential to find some instrumentality to build up the pressure of public opinion, especially on controversial issues where many divergent views are held. Recently, former judges provided an excellent example of such a device by issuing a strongly worded statement against sitting judges making public statement. The maximum they are supposed to have gone so far was making obitar dicta which is not legally binding. We need more such enlightened groups of citizens to jointly express their views on important issues to build public opinion to influence the decision making bodies. The root cause of a difunctional democracy is the large mass of silent majority. In order to make democracy as “of the people, by the people, for the people’ we have to find ways to sensitise this large mass of people, such that they are able to make the government more responsive to their views on important policy decisions.

This anomaly, sometimes, takes a dangerous form when the differences between the government and the people become intolerable and people are forced to take recourse to violent representations as happened in Shri Lanka. We have to find a safety valve in the system to steam out such extreme mismatch between government and the people .

Until such time as we find a panacea for our limping democracy, at times in distress, we need a network of institutions manned by eminent professionals and enlightened citizens respected by people at large who do not owe alliance to any political party, religion, vested interest or any ethnic group but are pure Indians whose only concern, when they express their views on any issue, is the interest of the country and nothing else. We do have some such balanced institutions with men of honour and integrity. We need many more and we need to sensitise them in playing a more decisive role in moulding public policies.