The
need for a place to learn about democracy has wide and varied connotations. India
is diverse, plural and textured. It is also fragmented, divisive and divided - by
religion, caste, language, class and gender. Indian democracy encompasses a
multiplicity of ideas, structures and beliefs. The challenge to Indian
democracy is to keep this pluralism alive, while understanding and promoting
the strength of collective political action in the context of a modern Indian
Republic.
The
Indian Constitution has been an intelligent, courageous and successful attempt
to protect both these realities within a paradigm of rights and obligations. In
the last two decades, disregard of the principles enshrined in the Constitution
- the preamble, the Chapter on fundamental rights and the Directive Principles
of State Policy - has created the urgent need for political learning to make informed
choices in a democracy. The inability to make such choices has led to the distortion
of democracy from the grass root to parliament and national policy. The idea of
a School for Democracy, originated about two decades ago to address some of
these issues. The concept goes back to the Danish effort to take electoral democracy
to its citizens at the turn of the last century, in what they called Folk
Schools.
The
Indian public discourse on politics, economics and social responsibility began
to change in the last three decades, and what seemed a settled position on
political choices for a secular democratic India began to disintegrate and be
questioned. The public discourse that
followed major happenings – the persistent social persecution of dalits,
despite Constitutional protection, the emergency declared in 1975, the riots in
1984, communal violence stoked by playing on traditional prejudices in the
eighties, nineties and genocide and the
birth of extremist movements - provoked the need to understand the context of
contemporary politics once gain.
Struggles
could no longer be restricted to fighting poverty, but had to plan the protection
of Constitutional and other rights. These occurrences rudely woke up a class of
people who believed, that given the nature of our Constitution and obligations
of the ruling class to maintain its sanctity, such action would be contained or
countered. The people of India had largely taken political structures and their
performance for granted. Their trust, in retrospect, seems naive.
In
the hundreds of small and larger deliberations and analysis of the predicament
that Indian democracy found itself in, some broad trends emerged.
Repeatedly
and persistently three broad patterns of public responses brought this fact home.
The first was the response of people kept on the margins of the modern
political discourse, because of lack of access to formal learning and
structures of power. The second was those who have access to formal learning
but are denied better understanding either because curricula is too specialised
or because these learners are victims of an inadequate system. There is a third
group of people deliberately misinformed playing upon prejudices for acceptance.
These undermined and destroyed democratic action. An attempt to re-establish
rational discourse was perceived as the need of the day. That discourse
required a basic political understanding which went beyond immediate and
pressing concerns, to provide arguments to place in the public domain. The need
to follow questions and doubts to their logical end and to explain and argue
through issues takes time. Such reflection becomes the basis, and also sustains
enduring democratic action. This combination of factors defined the need for
structured learning for people to understand their own predicament and to have
the freedom to choose what and how they need to learn.
In
a pluralistic society there is bound to be asymmetrical and disparate perceptions
and aspirations for change. However in a democracy these differences have to be
balanced by a need to look for commonalities and connections, but in a manner in
which none of the constituent parts loses its integrity and strength. This
called for the creation of an unorthodox learning process which could absorb best
practices created for learning. Further, it must also provide space for redefining
issues and modes of dealing best with filling the gaps in understanding issues.
The need for such a school was often discussed. It was shelved because the
logistics of creating this space was daunting. Given the limitation of time and
the absence of extensive committed human resources, the idea remained an
abstraction.
In
a more specific sense, the School for Democracy is also an outgrowth of the
experience of people’s political mobilisation in rural Rajasthan in the last
three decades. During this period, movements have strived to enable ordinary
people to use democratic spaces to fight for their rights, including workers
and women’s rights, the right to information, the right to work and further on
to other rights. This experience has demonstrated that working women and men often
develop a sharp understanding of modern democracy more fully through collective
political action. They may have a more reliable understanding than professional
“thinkers” in this respect. Yet, they may lack specific information to make
informed choices to work with democratic
institutions. We have also learnt that a more holistic understanding requires dedicated
space and time for concentrated political education. The poor need this physical
and mental space to learn, which is not easy to access in their crowded lives.
Therefore, it was necessary for people working with issues of poverty to
collectively reflect upon the socio-political, economic and cultural context of
political action. For those engaged in discussion it was important to find
answers, so that their action is based on informed and deliberated choices.
As
non-party political processes gathered strength, the question of supportive
education for political action became an imperative issue, the need for which
was constantly felt. It arose because of a self expressed need of workers. For
example, though united through economic stress and deprivation they may very
often fail to see the linkages and connections between tradition and
oppression, or modern development agendas and infringement of democratic
rights. Arguments proffered in passing, fail to impact because of the parochial
and limited nature of poor people’s lives, where both educational and literacy
constraints are handicaps. This often resulted in their falling a prey to anti-democratic
processes and getting involved in action which is fundamentally self
destructive. This has never been more starkly visible than in the last three
decades in our country. People have been mobilised on issues like communalism,
which harms their unity. Workers rights and rights of ordinary citizens have
been systematically corroded, through an apparently “democratic” process, with
their acceptance!
This
is not merely the predicament of workers and poor people. The steady and now
almost complete infiltration of systems of schooling by unscientific and
regressive politics has left thousands of young people literate but uneducated.
Subjected to this unifocussed specialisation or doctrinaire ideology, a liberal understanding
necessary for pluralist India is lost, further undermining democratic
participation. Yet the arguments subtly and slyly worked into their young minds
have taken root. No one time intervention without proper and cogent understanding
is going to even begin the processes of re-education.
The
either / or, manner of presenting issues (such as TV panel discussions) which
aim at polarisation and sensationalism, and not engaging in discussion/dialogue
does not lead to understanding. It has further entrenched prejudices and quick
superficial judgements. There are always areas of grey and there is a
continuing need to form bridges for better comprehension of one’s political
dilemma. Even for those of us who have had the privilege of being born in
elitist homes and studied for 15, 18 or more years, there is little space in
the conventional system for stating our concerns.
That
is why the place of democratic learning is a school in the best possible
definition of the term. Placing it in the context of democracy provides the
widest range of choices for every group that wants to learn. The school will
therefore also have to provide space for developing and using effective tools
of political education for participatory democracy.
While
this is true of the poor, Indian democracy has met with new challenges as well
as new possibilities. Large sections of the population continue to be excluded
from democratic institutions and processes due to economic and social
disempowerment. Officially their ‘power’ is often restricted to only periodic
participation in elections. The quality of democracy has also been eroded by
the further spread of corruption, the growth of authoritarian nationalism, the
expansion of corporate power, increasing communalism, and related trends. Yet
there are also new possibilities for democratic practice, associated for
instance with the numbers of creative alternatives, such as revival of
panchayati raj institutions and the movements for rights based access to services
with a share in governance.
There
is no place where the citizen may go to study and perceive the nature of
democracy seen bottom up. Not merely in terms of elections as we said before,
but as a political idiom for justice, equality and greater participation in
governance. The School for Democracy hopes to contribute to the further
expansion of democratic space in India. By nurturing understanding of the
linkages between individual need and policy and governance, it hopes to check
authoritarian tendencies and trends.
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