Non Party Political process R. Kothari.pdf

Praxis International

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THE NON-PARTY POLITICAL PROCESS Ranji Kothari A sense of uncertainty seems to characterize both our approach to public affairs and our modes of thinking about them. Underlying it is a growing contradiction between expectations born out of a given ideology, or doctrine, or theory—the Theory of Progress, the Theory of Development, the Theory of Participation—and what happens in reality. While all these are interrelated and will be dealt with, the focus of this paper will be on the problem of participation, its changing context and growing paradoxes, and the emerging possibilities and thresholds of both theoretical concern and practical action. My analysis will be based by and large on the Indian experience but is more widely applicable and will be presented in general terms. 1. PARTICIPATION, DEVELOPMENT AND THE STATE “Participation” is the crowning concept of the liberal paradigm of progress, equality and democracy. It is shared by a variety of occidental schools of thought, including those avowedly opposed to Liberalism. It is only with the dawn of the age of mass politics, and still later with the entry into the global political process of poor, “backward,” societies, that its innate paradoxes and contradictions came out into the open. With the advent of development as a doctrine of doing good to all, both academic and political interest in the value of participation soared high. Until, by the end of the sixties, it became clear that to participate in development was a prerogative (of some) although proclaimed as a right (of all), and that it was in particular denied to the “masses,” the people, the poor—in whose name development took place. The Myth of Participation The myth still persists—above all among the “masses” themselves. It has been propelled by two powerful streams of thought, populist politics and populist economics, one perfected as an art of arousing faith among the masses in their benefactors and the other developed as an expertise in legitimizing such a faith. Both have co-existed with popular misery, degradation and destitution. Herein lies the central paradox: the greater the misery the greater the faith in populism. And the key slogan of populism—whether of populist politics or of populist economics—has been participation.1 The more the economics of development, and the politics of development, are kept out of reach of the masses, the more the latter are asked to “participate” in them. For, they are told, it is for them that “development” takes place. If poverty still persists or at times gets worse (a fact that is smartly woven into the rhetoric of populism), it is because of extraneous factors intervening. Like

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corruption (a “global phenomenon”), lack of adequate capital (deliberately denied to us by world agencies), the price of oil and the world economic recession, the arms race (again externally fanned) and of course the destabilizing policies of outside powers. All this makes the task more difficult. But the ruling elite is, we are told, determined to stand up to the challenge, keep pressing for more resources, more technology, more SDRs, both to stave off the “painful transition” and to take the economy to a higher plateau of performance—in productivity, in availability of goods and services, and in the well-being and prosperity of the masses. If only the opposition would let us proceed, there would be fewer agitations and greater order. The politics are all right, the basic model is right, all we need is people’s cooperation and obedience to the law (participation) and less conflict. Some would say (especially the economists): less politics. Depoliticization Here lies the second major paradox of this age of participation: an increase in the intensity and volume of populist rhetoric which is, however, fashioned to de-politicize, in an increasing manner, the people, the development process, and indeed the operation of the political system itself, so that growing numbers of a powerless populace become marginalized both from the organised economy and from organised politics and become dependent on one or a few dominant individuals and their authorized agents—the techno-bureaucracy, the “dadas,” the skilled experts in communication and mass media. (As I will argue a little later, the opposition parties too are found to endorse the same political style: an increase in populist appeal alongside a decline in the people’s role in politics.) And yet the symbols of “people’s participation” are by no means given up; they have only been reduced to rituals of a plebiscitary democracy—the Leader going out to the people at regular intervals, meeting them in the thousands, becoming “one” with them and asking for their loyalty and their votes, not so much through party organisations or other institutional linkages with the people, but rather by personalised appeals and charismatic techniques instilling in more and more people a sense of threat to community, religion or nation. Here lies the third paradox of participation: the greater the withdrawal of power from the people and from organizations representing them, the more direct the relationship between those in power and those out of it; and the more isolated and marginalized and oppressed a people, the more dependent they become on the centre of power. Participation gets translated into clienthood, small crumbs thrown off the national “cake” during (or just before) an election, and the promise of more to come. Increasingly the poor and the helpless become trapped in this closed pyramid of participation. With this, participation—like development—becomes a legitimization of centralized governance, the dismantling of intermediate structures,2 a regime of law and order, and repression. The Role of the State These new mutations in meaning systems are directly related to the nature


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and role of the State in our times. Four interrelated processes are at work. First, the conception of autonomy of the State that was viewed as an instrument of transformation (both by the elite that came to power after Independence and by radical groups) is under decline, in part simply due to the proven incapacity of governments to perform, but in good part by deliberate design. The dominant elite, having used State intervention in the economic and social spheres for a quarter century after Independence and having developed a wide enough production base for supporting their lifestyle and the surpluses needed for political survival and manipulation, are seen to withdraw from an extended role for the State precisely at a time when such a role would have had to become more distributive and mass-oriented. Instead, the State is now perceived as an agent of technological modernization, with a view to catching up with the developed world and emerging on world and regional maps as a strong State (hence the vast sums spent on armaments) rather than coping with the pressing, often desperate, needs and demands of the poor. Second, in respect of the relationship between the State and civil society one finds that in a period of economic stagnation and political instability (the former growing from the refusal of the ruling elite to expand the internal market which would require redistributive policies, the latter from the consequences thereof, resulting in mass discontent and turmoil) the coercive nature of the State increases. There is a growing demand for unity and consensus—not in the form of an organic expression of civil society, but in the form of compliance with whatever happens to be the ruling orthodoxy, dissent against which is considered illegitimate. And as this happens the political process becomes limited to agents and emissaries who in the course of time become less interested in playing mediative roles and more interested in becoming a law unto themselves, with an increasing dependence on the police and paramilitary forces on the one hand and local mafias and hired hoodlums on the other. Third, even the bearers of State power, viz. those in control of government (as distinct from the State), including the presumed supremos of power by virtue of their charisma and wide popular appeal, seem to be losing out, wielding an authority that is no longer based on their own power and volition, and increasingly becoming pawns in the hands of forces beyond their control. In large parts of rural India (as well as vast tracts of the growing cities and industrial conglomerations) government is on the decline, its mediating and ordering role being replaced by the direct rule of local landlords and hegemonical castes, the growing penetration of commercial interests into rural hinterlands and tribal habitats, the rise of ill-bred contractors to new managers of money power and the still more spectacular ascendancy of the newest of the nouveaux riches, the dealers in illicit liquor and gambling dens, all of this being protected and endorsed by a new breed of corrupt local politicians (or their henchmen), bureaucrats and policemen. Fourth, such a sharp decline in the rule of law and the authority of the governing elite has made secular power as such, and the State as its institutionalembodiment, vulnerable to new attacks from old forces that were thought to have been put on the defensive. Among these are the new fundamentalisms of religious sects giving rise to perversions of old civilizations such as the Vishwa

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Hindu Parishad, the newfound power of presumably “cultural” organizations like the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Jamaat-e-Islami, and the growing communalism within secular politics3 thanks to the desperate struggle for survival on the part of ruling individuals and cliques, all of this taking attention away from the politics of socio-economic transformation and gravely affecting both the institutional framework and the finer subtleties and decor of the political process. Alongside this backlash from the “grassroots” of society, as it were, are other new forces at work which also serve to undermine the autonomous political role of the State, or even its minimal role as mediator in social strife and convulsions, for the sake of a larger cohesion. Thus beneath the outer veneer of planned economic development there has emerged a new breed of highly connected middlemen and professionals (in the guise of liaison officers and management officials) who are contributing to the increasing alienation of public goods by private individuals4 as well as to the growing lumpenization of the production process under the impact of naked corruption and the open subversion of prevailing mechanisms of administrative and judicial control and accountability.5 Complementary to the massive increase in what is known as the “informal” or “unorganised” sector of the economy there is taking place a very rapid expansion of this criminal sector of the economy which is recording probably the highest rate of growth with no holds barred. Together the two processes have led to one consequence: alongside withdrawal from organised politics there is also taking place a withdrawal from the organised economy. While as a percentage of gross indicators this may not register in a big way (though I have serious doubts regarding the coverage of economic activities outside the formal sector in official statistics), its impact on the political process and on the role of the State is quite serious. In turn, it accentuates the growing vacuum in the structure of the State, reinforces the depoliticization of the people, increases their sense of insecurity and isolation, and makes them dependent on charismatic individuals (or causes them to look for a new saviour). With all this the role of the State in social transformation has become undermined, “development” has led to a striking dualism of the social order, and “democracy” has become the playground for growing corruption, criminalization, repression and intimidation for large masses of the people whose very survival is made to depend on their staying out of the political process and whose desperate economic state incapacitates them from entering the regular economic process as well. International Context These developments receive sustenance and support from and are indeed encouraged by the international system. All the pathologies touched upon above—the exclusion of millions of people from the organised economy and their acceptance of their impoverishment and destitution as both natural and inevitable, withdrawal of basic resources from the countryside, forcing those who lived by them to migrate to cities already full of filth and squalor,


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depoilticization of the public realm and the rise of techno-bureaucracies, an increase in both the range and intensity of coercion by the State—are spurred on by a new breed of entrepreneurs in the service of the global status quo which is undermining the role of the State even as it was earlier conceived by the national bourgeoisie. As the world capitalist system enters its terminal phase under the twin pincers of an unprecedented arms race and the unsatiated monster of technology bent on a new international division of labour that dispenses with an organised proletariat, the struggle over lifestyles and resources is entering its most desperate phase. Politically , this has led to the cooptation of Third World regimes and to arming them with enough flow of capital, technology and armaments to keep them and their modern middle-class base afloat and to protect them from social turmoil and the demands of large hordes of the poor and the destitute. In return, there is taking place a reverse transfer of natural resources and raw materials, of foodstuffs as well as of manufactured consumer goods that rely on labour-intensive and polluting technologies, all at continually depressed prices. There is also a determination to order and discipline the working classes in the Third World so that both the quantum and the structure of production are regulated to suit the requirements of world capitalism. These are the much denied “conditionalities” accompanying otherwise unjustified loans from the IMF and the World Bank, loans that are basically meant to bail out corrupt and incompetent regimes. The North-South rhetoric, the philosophy of self-reliance and de-linking, the resolutions on a new international order have all been mastered by this universal union of elites and affluent classes, cutting across nations and ideological pretences, and putting “alternative” strategies of basic needs, national self-reliance, minimum standards of health and nutrition for all, and increases in employment and participation in the production process into cold storage. 2. THE STRUGGLE FOR SURVIVAL The world scenario is beset by a gigantic battle for survival—survival of achieved lifestyles versus survival of sheer life, survival of corporate (economic and political) power structures versus survival of states and cultures in large parts of the Third World, survival of peace and dignity for millions versus survival of structures of dominance and monopoly for ruling elites. In such a world, highly defensive and increasingly desperate at both ends of the power rope, democratic politics must suffer a big dip, technocracy and the managers of strife replace popular politicians and the bulk of the people everywhere are asked to stay away from politics. It is in their own interest that they do so, they are told. Provided they do so and are not carried away by radicals of all types, their welfare and prosperity will be taken care of. Turbulence Are the people accepting such a withdrawal from the political process? Fortunately not. All over the world there is evidence of a turbulent consciousness among large sections of the deprived who had for long believed in both the

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grace of God and the grace of Caesar but have for some time now realized that there is no grace (or “compassion” or “mercy”) among the mighty and that only through struggle against them can anything be expected. In India this is particularly in evidence, arising partly out of the revolution in norms generated over decades by the adoption of a formally democratic polity in a society based for centuries on the principle of inequality, partly out of a shaken faith in the theology of development that successfully made its way into the thinking and belief systems of the people throughout the fifties and sixties, and partly out of the sheer weight and crushing experience of indignities, violence and deceit experienced by the poor and the dispossessed. All this was greatly reinforced by disillusionment with successive governments belonging to different parties throughout the seventies, in each of which a believing people had put its faith. There is discontent and despair in the air—still highly diffuse, fragmented and unorganised. But there is a growing awareness of rights, felt politically and expressed politically, and by and large still aimed at the State. Whenever a mechanism of mobilization has become available, this consciousness has found expression, often against very heavy odds, against a constellation of interests that are too powerful and complacent to shed (even share) the privileges. At bottom it is a consciousness against a paradigm of society that rests on deliberate indifference to the plight of the impoverished and destitute who are being driven to the threshold of starvation—by the logic of the paradigm itself. Failure of the System It is with respect to the latter that the failure not just of government but of organised political parties, trade unions and other traditional forms of opposition to the ruling elite lies. The crisis that we face in India is caused by the failure and default of the system, not merely of its governing structure. It is a system based on (a) a parliamentary democracy operating through party competition that is getting increasingly desperate and violent, (b) a mixed economy composed of a large state sector and a large corporate sector both of which have failed to generate opportunities for the people and have instead survived by draining resources from the countryside, (c) an agrarian and forest economy that has ceased to produce more food and has instead become pulverised by the onslaught of commercial interests and corrupt politics, and (d) a science and technology establishment so devoid of internal dynamism and so thoroughly dependent on imported ideas and technologies that even the initial euphoria of self-reliance has given way to the rhetoric of interdependence. All this is further buttressed by a military establishment that apart from making ever more new demands on the country’s resources is also increasingly called upon to perform police functions (spelling terror in some parts of the country). A press that is trying its best to intervene in a period of growing repression of the poor, ethnic minorities, women, and social activists who happen to be working among these strata, is in effect becoming a mechanism for diffusing discontent and preventing confrontation. It is a failure of the system in a much deeper way too. First, in the sense that the established instruments of the system—Parliament, the Planning Commis-


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sion, the executive—are simply unable to deal with a considerably changed agenda of tasks, to respond to people’s expectations or cope with a scenario of deepening conflict, violence and vandalism. Second, it is a failure that the established opponents of the ruling elite—opposition parties, trade unions, peasant organizations, left-wing intellectuals—cannot cope with. Third, it is a failure from which very large numbers of the people stand to benefit. As argued already, the middle class (which in absolute numbers is massive in India) has succeeded in utilizing the State to provide itself with a production base that can sustain its parasitic lifestyle; to this must be added the numerous lumpen elements that are finding employment in the lower rungs of an ever growing bureaucracy and in a political process that increasingly relies on mercenaries. Crisis of Theory Above all, the failure of the system is embedded in a crisis of theory. The liberal conception of the market being the arbiter of interests broke down long ago. The social democratic theory, based on the positive and benevolent role of the State and on a conception of welfare equity, is also of not much value in the absence of high growth rates and massive State surpluses (as well as of an honest and efficient State apparatus). Nor does the more radical stream of socialist thought, namely Marxism, provide a clear enough guide to action in a society the cutting edge of which is not a growing working class but a combination of stagnation in the rural economy and a technology that inhibits employment. These two together lead to a phenomenal growth in populations living on the margin, to a growth of civil strife and violence within the lower classes, and to an ecological devastation resulting in a withdrawal of traditional sources of sustenance and nutrition from the rural poor. Given the logic of depoliticization, local polarizations are prevented from aggregating into national and international ones. Theoretical models and ideological doctrines forged in another age and a different cultural location are of little use in a social and political context where poverty takes totally new forms and where the linkage between “progress” and “poverty” has become so organic and almost irreversible. Hence also the total irrelevance of all theories of participation. Indeed, as one reviews the overall scene one is struck by not only the steep decline in leadership and moral values but also by this poverty of theory as a guide to action. The result is an intellectual and moral vacuum which is then filled by populist rhetoric on the one hand (taking the place of theory), and coercion and corruption on the other (taking the place of politics). And charisma covers up the two so that there is hardly any sense of failure or crisis, at least among the ruling class. 3. THE POLITICAL AND IDEOLOGICAL CONTEXT OF NON-PARTY FORMATIONS This is the larger context in which we can discuss the broad theme of people’s movements and “grassroots” politics and, as a part thereof, the phenomenon of non-party political formations. To recapitulate and enlarge upon the argument

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already made, it is a context in which the engines of growth are in decline, the organised working class is not growing, the process of marginalization is spreading, technology is turning anti-people, development has become an instrument of the privileged class, and the State has lost its role as an agent of transformation, or even as a mediator in the affairs of civil society. It is a context of massive centralization of power and resources, centralization that does not stop at the national centre either and makes the nation state itself an abject onlooker and a client of a global “world order.”6 It is a context in which the party system (and the organised democratic process) and the regular bureaucracy are in a state of decline and are being replaced by a new set of actors and a new “order.” The new order is manned by a class of professional managers and experts in the art of injecting corruption in the organised sectors of the economy and the polity, on the one hand, and sets of hoodlums and fixers at the lower reaches of the economy and the polity, on the other. It is a context in which revolutionary parties too have been contained and in part coopted (as have most of the unions), in which the traditional fronts of radical action—the working-class movement and the militant peasantry led by left parties—are in deep crisis, in which there appears to be a growing hiatus between these parties and the lower classes, especially the very poor and the destitute who are not amenable to the received wisdom of left politics, and in which on the other hand there is taking place a massive backlash from established interests in the form of legislative measures aimed against the toiling classes7 and a steep rise in repression and terror perpetrated both by the State and by private vested interests.8 And all this takes place in the broader context of growing international pressures and “conditionalities” that herald an end to self-reliance and seek, on the one hand, to integrate the organised economy into the world market and, on the other hand, to remove millions of people from the economy by throwing them in the dustbins of history—impoverished, destitute, drained of their own resources9 and deprived of minimum requirements of health and nutrition,10 denied “entitlement” to food and water and shelter,11 in short an unwanted and dispensable lot whose fate seems to be “doomed.”12 A veritable scenario of Triage! The Role of “Grassroots” Activism It is with the plight of these rejects of society and of organised politics, as also ironically of revolutionary theory and received doctrines of all schools of thought, that the “grassroots” movements and non-party formations are concerned. They have to be seen as part of the democratic struggle at various levels, in a radically different social context than was posited both by the incrementalists and by the revolutionaries, at a point of history when existing institutions and the theoretical models on which they are based have run their course, when there is a search for new instruments of political action (the existing ones being in a state either of complacency or of weariness and exhaustion) and when a large vacuum in political space is emerging thanks to the decline in the role of the State and the virtual collapse of “government” in


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large parts of rural India. These grassroots movements are based on deep stirrings of consciousness, of an awareness of crisis that could conceivably be turned into a catalyst of new opportunities. They are to be seen as a response to the incapacity of the State to hold its various constituents in a framework of positive action, and as a response to the State’s growing refusal (not just inability) to deliver the goods and its increasingly repressive character. They are to be seen as attempts to open alternative political spaces outside the usual arenas of party and government (though not outside the State), new forms of organisation and struggle meant to rejuvenate the State and to make it once again an instrument of liberation from exploitative structures (both traditional and modern), in which the underprivileged and the poor are trapped. These grassroot movements are really to be seen as part of an attempt at redefining politics at a time of massive attempts at narrowing its range. Their sense of politics is different from electoral and legislative politics, which has relegated large sections of the people to being outside the process of power. They also involve a different basic conception of political activity as not being confined to capturing State power but being seen as a comprehensive process of intervening in the historical process. Redefining Politics Grassroots activism is an attempt at a redefinition of politics in another sense too, namely a redefinition of the content of politics. Issues and arenas of human activity that have not until now been seen as amenable to political action— people’s health, rights over forests and community resources, even deeply personal and primordial issues such as are involved in the struggle for women’s rights—are defined as political and provide arenas of struggle. In a number of grassroots movements launched by the non-traditional Left—Chipko, the miners’ struggle in Chhattisgarh, the Ryot Coolie Sangham in Andhra Pradesh, the Satyagraha led by the peasants movement in Kanakpura in Karnataka against the mining and export of granite, the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha—the struggle is not limited to economic and political demands but is extended to cover ecological, cultural and educational issues as well. Nor is it limited to the external enemy, as it includes a sustained and drawn-out campaign against more pervasive sources of economic and cultural ruin such as drunkenness, despoliation of the environment and insanitary habits, reminding one of the original conception of Swarajya as a struggle for liberation not just from alien rule but also from internal decay. In sum, the phenomenon of “grassroots” activism is to be seen as part of an attempt to kindle faith and energy in anti-establishment forces in a variety of settings at a time of general drift and loss of elan; also at a time when the suffering masses are found to be scared of confrontation with the status quo and are in fact likely to walk into the trap both of populist rhetoric in the modern sector and of authoritarian patriarchy and patrimony in the traditional arena, at a time of a need for people with will and creativity and a readiness to wage sustained struggle not just against a particular local tyrant but against the larger social system.

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New Roles Not everyone involved in popular movements sees it in this manner. Many of them are too preoccupied with immediate struggles to be able to think in wider terms, others are suspicious of both abstractions and aggregates, and in any case the conditions for concerted and consolidated action informed by an adequate theory are just not there. And yet there is enough evidence to suggest that underlying the micro movements is a search and restlessness for both a more adequate understanding of the forces at work and a more adequate response to them, a certain conviction that available ideologies are inadequate to provide these, and enough experience to know that the existing instruments of formal politics—parties, elections, even the Press and judiciary—cannot be expected to cope with the crisis they and those they work among are in. In one area after another where we in Lokayan have had dialogues with activists working among the dalits, the landless and bonded labour, the tribals and various other segments of the rural, poor that have been uprooted and forced to migrate to the cities, we found that none of the existing parties, including those that mouth radical slogans, really cared for these inchoate and unorganised and on the whole mute and suffering masses.13 Hence the need for a new genre of organisation and a new conception of political roles. It is to fill this need that the widespread phenomenon of non-party political formations (as distinct from non-political voluntary agencies working on various development schemes) has occurred. In part they are performing roles previously performed by government or by opposition parties and their front organizations (due largely to the abrogation of responsibility by the latter). In part they are performing new roles that have emerged in the new context of the human condition as described in this paper: a condition of profound marginalization of millions of people and the social and moral vacuum created by the indifference of the system to it. And in part they are providing new linkages with segments of people’s lives that had hitherto remained isolated and specialized—culture, gender and age, technology, ecology, health and nutrition, education and pedagogy—thus bringing into the political process issues that were hitherto left out. Finally, some (so far only a few) of them are also seeking to link experiments at micro and regional levels to the macro political situation, partly by similar struggles at so many micro points and partly by the sheer impact of example and will on wider public opinion. The more organised effort of joining up horizontally and vertically and building towards a more cohesive and comprehensive macro formation is, of course, not yet in sight despite being widely recognized. On the whole, though, it would be a mistake to think of these action groups, either logically or empirically, as one has thought of political parties. As I see it, their role is neither antagonistic nor complementary to the existing parties. It is a role at once more limited (in space or expanse) and more radical—noncompetitive with parties but taking up issues that parties have failed to or are unwilling to take up, coping with a large diversity of situations that governments and parties are unable to (or, again unwilling to) cope with, encompassing issues that arise from not merely local and national but also


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international forces at work. The individual effort itself is by and large expressed in micro terms but it deals with conditions that are caused by larger macro structures. The non-party formations are thus to be viewed as part of a larger movement for global transformation in which non-state actors on the one hand and non-territorial crystallizations on the other are emerging and playing new roles, taking up cudgels against imperialist forces (some of these too being non-State, e.g., the TNCs) in their new backlash against the forces of change. Global Struggle Interestingly, this struggle against new forms of global hegemony and exploitation is increasingly taking a back seat in the agenda of most governments of the Third World, as also of most political parties, including the parties of the Left (apart, of course, from passing resolutions). In point of fact, at any rate in India, when it comes to issues of international and foreign policy, these leftist parties have become extremely defensive and have in effect been coopted by the ruling party (thanks largely to the increasingly antirevolutionary policies of the Soviet Union and China). This role of struggling against global domination is performed less and less by governments and parties (the various “Internationals” have long lost their elan) and more and more by non-party, non-State actors, while the nation-states themselves are being sucked into the global status quo, including the world market—despite all the rhetoric of a new international order. This larger scenario of decline of the traditional arenas of progressive and revolutionary action—within the State system on the one hand and individual States on the other—provides the most relevant reason for the activities and organization of the non-party political process. There are signs of relenting and holding back if not of giving up, of exhaustion and defensiveness, of so many entities. Of States. Of parties. Of other party-like organisations. Of the organised economy. Of leadership. Of democratic institutions. Of NGOs and voluntary agencies operating outside the political process. And all this at a time when new waves of fanaticism and primitivism are on the upswing, when there is a basic crisis in the enterprise of knowledge, and the social sciences are in a state of total irrelevance, when there may not be an “end of ideology” but there looks like a stark vacuum of ideas among the traditional forums of intellectual ferment. The Challenge of Multidimensionality and Fragmentation The diffusion and fragmentation are not all born out of conflicts of ideas and personalities; they are in a way built into the very process of transformation. The traditional institutions of State and parties and voluntary agencies are unable to deal with it. Nor is there as yet great confidence that the non-party formations will succeed where others have failed. The problem is how to inject new energy and confidence in the very large array of the young and the concerned, how to rekindle the creative impulse which is bound to be there in an age of turmoil and stirred consciousness, with what vision and agenda to

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occupy the new spaces that are becoming available in this general state of exhaustion and drift and defeatism, and, above all, how to come forward with a new strategy of transformation at a time when it is clear that old-style revolutions are not on the cards, when instead of the working classes of the world uniting it is the world middle classes that are becoming conscious of their “interdependence,” when the production process as traditionally known has been almost wholly preempted by this class, and when the struggling masses are not an organised working class but a disorganised and “doomed” non-class. It has to be a strategy that builds from the here and now, empowers the people and inspires new confidence among the activists all the way along, so that they can discard old ideologies and work towards a new crystallization through the very process of struggle and survival. Mere survival calls for struggle. And any long drawn out and sustained struggle for a brighter future entails survival—of the people at large, of activists,14 of democratic institutions. It is a struggle to which not merely immediate targets but the much larger goal of sustaining and strengthening the democratic process and making it an instrument of the poor and the destitute is hitched. On it also depends the rejuvenation of mainstream structures, the transformation and politicization of the State and its liberation from the stranglehold of imperialism and, through all this, the realization of a truly indigenous and authentic culture that is rooted in the people of India. As D.L. Sheth has said in a recent paper of his,15 there was never any question of the “grassroots” character of the people; it is the forces that are uprooting them that one has to contend with. There is no ground for romanticism, or even for unguarded optimism in this regard. No one with any sense of realism and any sensitivity to the colossal power of the establishment can afford to be an optimist, either with regard to these movements or for any other transformative process at work. And yet one needs to recognize that something is going on, it is serious, it is genuine and it is taking place at so many places. That it is weak, fragmented, lacking in resources and infected by various kinds of personal, organizational and cognitive crises must be recognized. And recognizing both the promise and the problems, there is a need to recognize the important and urgent need to strengthen these and other relevant levers of transformation and survival,16 or at least not to weaken or dismiss them either out of ignorance and complacency or out of doctrinal intransigence and narrow definitions of the historical process. For what is called for, and is in some ways already underway, is a new genre of political activity carried out at so many levels and in so many settings, transcending conventional battle lines and firmly digging in, not fleeing from the scene of action as has happened with the traditional political parties, and without at the same time indulging in histrionics or waiting for charismatic messiahs (that are usually short-lived and leave behind a lot of debris). Other Formations Occasionally this effort may involve a combination of non-party and party-like organizations in dealing with a situation of growing despair and disenchantment with the status quo. Thus the movements for regional


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autonomy and decentralization intended to take the avenues of political participation closer to the people, to be carried out in an idiom and mode of communication and around issues that intimately relate to them, have taken the form of what are called “regional parties” which have dramatically emerged on the Indian scene of late. While it is too early to assess their significance, they do represent strong expressions of the will of the people and their rejection of the ruling establishment (not just in the region but nationally). The “regional” phenomena in India, combining in its force a rejection of the authoritariansim of the Centre, the dominance of the metropoles (and their imperial patrons), the cultural hegemony of bourgeois cosmopolitanism and the political economy of corruption unleashed by an elite unsure of itself, as also (though this perception is not yet there), the chauvinist drives of the dominant national elite, has to be understood as part of the larger democratic struggle. By insisting on taking the political fulcrum closer to the “grassroots” the regional formations have to be seen as providing local responses to national crises—in a way not unrelated to impulses that move the large variety of micro movements led by wholly non-party groups. The rationale and historical specificity of the non-party character of the latter is of course clear. All the same, given the political nature of these formations (unlike various development oriented voluntary bodies), they must take cognizance of other large and powerful upsurges that give expression both to mass discontent with the establishment and to a search for alternatives to it and, to the extent that they are asking for a reordering of the distribution of power in favour of the lower reaches of society, to the system as well. The upsurges in Assam and Jharkhand and the tribal North-East, in Andhra Pradesh, even in Kashmir (though of a different sort), and in states like West Bengal and Karnataka where parties that are otherwise “national” have decided to join forces in the demand for regional autonomy,17 all represent something that is churning at the bottom of society in a territorial and “nationality” sense though unfortunately still not in a social sense in any significant manner. The issues of language and culture and dignity and self-esteem that they raise, the emphasis on mass education, employment and ecology that they seem to place, above all the desire to wage battle against the drainage of power and resources from the localities to the centres that they represent—these are too important happenings in an otherwise highly centralized and oppressive and corrupt State to be ignored by the “grassroots” activists. Furthermore, these newest types of upsurge and political formations (there is considerable variety among them despite a common thrust) display two characteristics that make them relevant to the non-party activists: they stride across the party and non-party spaces, and thus provide a broader political space to the struggle for transformation. And they operate at levels between the actual “grassroots” and the national and international. It is the task of the activists working among the very poor and deprived to instil a social purpose in these new generation of party-like formations and to make them vehicles for classes and categories of people who have been deserted by both the government and the opposition. The key question of course is: Will the Telugu Desam and the newly astir National Conference, the leaders of Assam and

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Jharkhand movements and other proponents of “regionalism” and decentralization pave the way for greater participation of the people and consequent reversals of development policies and constitutional functioning, or will they too, like opposition parties so far, rise on the crest of mass discontent and then ignore them, or confine their efforts to merely forming united fronts of disparate groups merely to oust the ruling party? On the answer to this question will depend the response of non-party activists, though to an extent the answer depends on the activists too, especially on their ability to link horizontally with regional stirrings and to instill into them the need for fresh thinking on a series of policies affecting the mass of the people.18 The Micro-Macro Dynamic “Global problems, local solutions” is not a mere cliché. We know enough about the deep dualism of the world we live in to be able to say that there are no global solutions to global problems. As life—at personal, community and local political (national, sub-regional) levels—becomes uncertain, vulnerable and dangerous under the impact of forces beyond one’s control, the only redemption that may still be available (though even this may not work) will be to work out “local solutions” to “global problems.” And yet enough is said in this paper to suggest that those who work for local solutions are not bereft of a macro perspective, a global vision, and that the latter are by no means the monopoly of either the global intellectuals or the global managers of power. In fact, there is reason to think that the latter are becoming bereft of perspective and vision. Understood in this dynamic way, and in the specific cases of the politics of transformation, “macro” and “micro” are only differential expressions of the same process. Not polar opposites in some pyramidal structure but co-existing contexts in a mesh of variations and diversity, each autonomous and all interrelated. At what point in this vast space will the macro permutations take off is difficult to say. It could conceivably be only through the capture of state power, either by a “smashing” operation or by recourse to the ballot box. But these are not the only forms of affecting state power. Indeed in a period when it is sought to extend the arena of politics to ever new processes and contours, to limit the range of politics to representative institutions and the capture of state power (which in reality amounts to no more than succeeding one overthrown regime by another) is also to contribute to depoliticization which really means freezing the status quo, and unwillingly endorsing the growing demand of the world middle class to banish politics from the world. For what is involved is far more basic—a dogged confrontation between transformation and backlash, between the scenario of destitution and brutalization and the rise of new experiments, the sustained struggle for a better order and a gaining of critical spaces in the expanding horizon of the role of politics. It is a horizon that extends far and deep. All over the country there is a new wave of energy providing powerful portrayals of the human condition in films and theatre and art and literature, women everywhere taking up causes that are not limited to their own struggle for equality, young school and college boys and


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girls (till recently finding themselves rootless and alienated) marching for the rights of the tribals and the forest people. In all this, and a lot more, there is material for creating a new society and polity out of the ruins of the old, releasing new creative spaces for the people to come into their own and take charge of their lives. The challenge is how to sustain these new creative impulses and make them the harbingers of revolutionary change. History suggests that it is precisely in times when the struggling forces of change are pushed to the wall by the status quo either out of panic or in sheer self-defense that the will and the desire for change become heightened and the process of consciousness seeks organised expression. As existing organizations disintegrate or lose relevance, the self-activity of the people finds expression, spurred by new understandings of the historical process and new visions provided by some intervening individuals, be they intellectuals or young activists or a new breed of politicians. Such self-activity will start occurring essentially at “local” and regional sites and from there, given will and effort, reverberate throughout the wider political space. Theoretically this will call for a review of ideological positions that continue to locate “vested interests” in local situations and liberation from them in global distant processes—the State, technology, revolutionary vanguards. The relevant “macro” positions then would inhere in political entities that transcend both the very micro and the very global. We do not yet know what these entities will be, how far they will partake of State-like features and how far of new forms and content and style. These are questions pertinent to the discussion of both the non-party political formations and other emergent or likely forms; they are equally pertinent to the discussion or alternative approaches to the contemporary human condition, and to a consideration of the relationship between forms of organization and ideological content. A considerable agenda of theoretical research appears to be on the cards. NOTES 1

The latest catchword of populist economics in India has been the call for “organising the poor” from the pulpit of the Planning Commission. The dominant slogan of populist politics for about fifteen years now has been “Banish Poverty” (Garibi Hatao) for which a 20-point programme was drawn up in 1971 which has now been formally adopted by the Planning Commission, and all state governments—Congress or otherwise. 2 I have for a long time now argued that the sine qua non of a democratic order is the availability and spread of an intermediate structure between the government and the people. For a systematic treatment of the theme, see my Politics in India (New Delhi and Boston, 1970) where I develop the concept of intermediate aggregation as opposed to that of national aggregation as found in the structural-functionalist school of political science. For more recent treatments of this theme, see my “Rebuilding the State,” Seminar, Annual Number, January 1981, and “A Fragmented Nation,” Seminar, Annual Number, January 1983. 3 The term “communalism” in India connotes not positive but negative overtones. It refers to communal or religious bigotry and takes the form of extreme polarization, usually accompanied by violence and frenzy, and by and large fanned by fanatics among otherwise secular elements.

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See my “The Failure of a System: Politics as Private Enterprise,” The Times of India, April 10, 1974; and Arun Shourie, “Politics as Private Property,” in his Years of Janata Rule (New Delhi, 1980). This latter point was forcefully brought out at the UNRISD-Lokayan Workshop, December 1982, by Arvind Das. For a description of the present world order as a composite corporate structure made of TNCs on the one hand and the political structure of Trilateralism on the other, see my “Towards a Just World,” Alternatives 5 No. 1 (June 1979). The Government of India and various state governments have brought forward a series of repressive measures. The National Security Act (NSA) is the most notorious of these but there are many others: the Essential Services Maintenance Act (ESMA) which seeks to ban strikes in any industry or service that the Government declares as an essential service, the various amendments to the Industrial Disputes Act all designed to curtail the bargaining power of the working class, the Hospital and Other Institutions Act aimed at dissident professionals, and a proposed Forest Bill aimed against the ordinary forest people in need of firewood while not restricting commercial interests, and so on. Laws meant to curb and intimidate journalists and practitioners of performing arts have also been brought forward, e.g., in Binar and Tamilnadu, but have been momentarily withdrawn in the face of stiff resistance. For a detailed account of the repressive nature of the Indian State, see my Democracy and Fascism in India, (Delhi, Lokayan, 1981) a somewhat truncated version of which was published in Indian Express, November 29, 1981, under the title “Where are We Heading?” This includes land alienation under the impact of large “development” projects, large-scale felling of forests, the export of basic necessities for earning foreign exchange to pay for both goods and technology needed to sustain middle-class life-styles. See C. Gopalan’s inaugural speech delivered at the Annual Conference of the Indian Association of Population Studies in January 1983 and republished in Seminar No. 282 (Februray 1983). For a perceptive analysis of the absence of availability and “entitlement” to food resulting in conditions of slow starvation and death, see Amartya Sen, “Conflicts in Access to Food,” Twelfth Coromandal Lecture, New Delhi, December 13, 1982. See Kishore Saint, The Plight of the “Doomed ” and our Responsibility (Lokayan, 1983). See also D.L. Sheth, Grassroots Initiatives in India, available from Lokayan. One explanation of this could be that the organised left (viz. the communist parties) are still operating on a scale of priorities that is lacking in a sense of history. Still clinging to a theory of revolution based on the mobilization and consciousness of the organized working class, in turn based on an analysis of capitalism that derives its motive force from certain key industries that are capital-intensive and concentrated in urban areas, these parties have shown themselves to be incapable of dealing with the phenomena of abject poverty and extreme destitution in rural areas, the striking growth of the unorganised sector in the urban areas and the struggle for sheer survival of the “poorest of the poor.” It is here that the radical (non-party) action groups come in. Hence also the distrust and hostility of the parties towards them. Many of the activists operate under awesome conditions of not just political terror but even physical health and well-being. They have lost immunity to the hazards of living in scarcity ridden and disease-prone areas. To give only one example, in Bodh Gaya where the Chhatra Yuva Sangharsha Vahini consisting of dedicated youth (all below 25) have launched a long struggle against a local “mahant”-cum-landlord and have made common cause with the local harijans, malnutrition is rampant and almost every year there are two to three casualities among the activists. D.L. Sheth, Grassroots Initiatives in India, op. cit.

Praxis International 16

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On the whole theme of the dialectic of survival and transformation at various levels of global reality, see my “Survival in an Age of Transformation,” Conceptual Paper for the United Nations University Programme on Peace and Global Transformation, 1981. The paper has since been published in Gandhi Marg 4, Nos. 2 & 3 (May-June 1982); in Praxis International 2, No. 4 (January 1983); and (in an extended version) in Alternatives 9, No. 2 (March 1983). 17 The Congress (S) in Maharashtra is likely to follow suit. The more this happens and spreads in different parts of the country, the greater the opportunities for “grassroots” politics to influence the political process and the greater the likelihood of moving towards a federal structure of democratic functioning, still within the system no doubt, but changing the rules of the game in a manner that would enable actors below the State level to assert themselves. As this happens the “social sense” may also begin to inform the political process. On the argument for “grassroots” activists providing inputs into the mainstream political process, see my “Grassroots,” Seminar, Silver Jubilee Number (January 1984). 18 Earlier experience of “regional parties,” like Charan Singh’s party in U.P., the Ganatantra Parishad in Orissa but above all the DMK phenomenon in Tamilnadu and later the ALADMK with Mr. M. G. Ramachandran at the helm provides one with little confidence on this score. It is not necessary of course that the present generation of regional upsurge should turn out to be of the same type. This historical phase is quite different, in that the new formations are a response to a national situation. And they are not just parties but (at least some of them) movements. All the same, there is as yet no basis to say with any degree of confidence that the new regional parties will in fact become vehicles of transformation. If anything there is some evidence of the opposite kind. Thus Mr. N. T. Ramarao (NTR) of Andhra Pradesh, like MGR before him, is showing authoritarian tendencies as, for example (again reminiscent of MGR), in his recent call for stern action against so-called “extremists” for which he has also asked for Central assistance in the form of two more batallions of Central Reserve Police (CRP). There is an urgent need to instill new thinking and vision in the regional parties and movements, at least among those that are not so vulnerable to dominant patterns of thinking about politics and who are not prisoners of vested interests, even if the process of doing so appears difficult and at times tortuous. See my “Rethinking Centre State Relations,” Economic and Political Weekly, October 22, 1983, 1931-32.

Non Party Political process R. Kothari.pdf

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