…And the search for exemplary leaders

IN AN IDEAL world, one would expect political parties to welcome opportunities to showcase their commitment to transparency for the greater public good. After all, they are the pillars of India’s democratic framework. Those elected as MPs and MLAs represent political parties that—in turn—are expected to uphold values enshrined in the Constitution and manifestos they put forth. Political parties and elected representatives should embody ideals that a polity stands for and adopt institutional processes rooted in ideals. But has this abstract democratic ideal ever been put into practice? Specifically is this sort of arrangement practical, indeed viable? In the present context of political atrophy and paralysis in the corridors of power, should the citizenry tamper its expectations on issues of public accountability (therefore, morality)? Do inhabitants of our political establishment today have what it takes to rise above the self-serving travesty that our democratic processes have descended to? In short, do our political leaders have the capacity to rise above their self-interest to serve the needs of the public good? On how to understand the moral core of public life, Akeel Bilgrami’s observations on Mahatma Gandhi’s approach are especially illuminating. In an essay entitled Gandhi, the Philosopher (Economic and Political Weekly in September 2003), he says Gandhi’s ideas contain an implicit proposal: “When one chooses for oneself, one sets an example to everyone.” For Gandhi, a satyagrahi was required to live an exemplary life. As an exemplar, she embodied, or as Erik Erikson put it, actualised, the ideals that she stood for in the pursuit of her ends, the most glorious of which was the truth. How does this notion of the satyagrahi (or for our purposes, the figure of the “politician”) as exemplar play out in real life? To punctuate his interpretation of the issue, Bilgrami recounts an episode that occurred when as a young boy he went out walking with his father: One day, walking on a path alongside a beach we came across a wallet with some rupees sticking visibly out of it. …My father said: “Akeel, why should we not take that?” Flustered at first, I then said something like, “… I think we should take it.” My father looked most irritated, and asked, “Why?” And I am pretty sure I remember saying words more or less amounting to the classic response: “Because if we don’t take it then I suppose someone else will.” My father, looking as if he were going to mount to great heights of denunciation, suddenly changed his expression, and he said magnificently, but without logic (or so it seemed to me then): “If we don’t take it, nobody else will.” Bilgrami says that as a satyagrahi, Gandhi does not treat the truth as a cognitive notion at all, but as an experiential notion, woven into everyday practices, stretching from how to treat a wallet lying on the curbside, to debating principles of public interest enshrined in the Constitution. In all of his writings, Gandhi recoiled from static notions of truth that intellectualised the relationship of people with their world, because such cerebral intellectualising alienated people from their moral experience of life in all of its glory. What does this notion of the satyagrahi as exemplar have to offer today’s politician? As the institutional embodiment of public life, politicians know that their everyday actions must exemplify— for the citizenry to have faith in them—the kind of moral turpitude that transcends institutional processes and political machinations. For the political establishment to meet its responsibilities it needs to not only function transparently but also with accountability, and be perceived to function in such a manner for the public to have faith in it. Political parties have to be exemplars of what they represent. Should they choose to hide behind labyrinthine bureaucratic processes and legal sophistry to protect their self-interest, they will have failed the citizenry. On whether our politicians come close to embodying the high standards outlined by the Gandhian ideal, the prognosis, I’m afraid, does not look good. This conclusion emerges from the disappointing way in which the country’s political establishment has chosen to respond to a landmark judgment of the Chief Information Commissioner (CIC) of India. In June 2013, the CIC ruled in favor of bringing India’s political parties under the ambit of the Right to Information Act (RTI). Under Section 2(h)(d)(ii) of the Constitution, a public authority is a “non-governmental organisation substantially financed, directly or indirectly by funds provided by the appropriate government.” The government provides political parties a range of benefits, such as land allotments, tax breaks, and free airtime on Doordarshan and All India Radio. The rationale for these, as stated in the CIC’s order, lies in the public character of the political party as an institution. The government does not regulate political parties in any significant way; and the current order by the CIC places no limits of any kind on their functioning. All it asks for is a disclosure of where parties get their money from, how they use it, and in this sense, that they function in a publicly transparent manner like all public authorities that are beneficiaries of public largesse. The CIC’s judgment relies on the logic that public institutions that receive public benefits because they serve a public good should be subject to public scrutiny. A party is not a private institution. Independent legal minds applauded the CIC’s judgement, and, it should be welcomed because if implemented, it has the potential to increase levels of transparency. Even as this article goes to press, virtually all parties assembled in the Parliament are in the process of overturning the CIC’s judgement by amending the Right to Information Act. This isn’t bad, it also looks bad, and will do little to restore the dwindling faith of the citizenry. Political parties are the most visible organisational manifestation of the country’s political processes, and in spirit, they are the organic link between the institutions of the state on the one hand, and the people, on the other. Gestures like the ongoing attempts to kill the CIC’s judgment are undermining this fragile link. Worse, such conduct demonstrates the degree to which the country’s political establishment has fallen.