Social Movements and Independent Institutions

Abstract

This article looks at the present state of the independent institutions and the systematic process by which they have been diluted. It further emphasises the need to build alternate cultural mode of protest.

Is the term ‘independent institution’ an oxymoron? Some would argue that an institutional structure removes any real ‘independence’. So how would ‘state institutions’ be developed so that they are truly ‘independent’ of the government? Will the executive not inevitably control all the institutions whose independence it is meant to protect? What are the safeguards to ensure that the institution, with all its powers, does not become an ally of the executive and aid the executive in its use of unbridled power? On the other hand, what prevents this institution from turning rogue and acting contrary to its purpose? What are the mechanisms or institutional arrangements that will ensure that it does not deviate from its own objectives or undermine other institutions? How does one ensure democratic accountability? Who will or should these institutions be accountable to? Perhaps at the core of these contradictions, lies the origin of the idea of checks and balances built into the basic structure of the Constitution of India. In fact, the ‘Constitutional status’ and protection given to some key independent institutions like the Supreme Court, the Election Commission and the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) was to ensure that these institutions were themselves made a part of the ‘basic structure’ of the constitution, and would be able to play a key role in protecting democracy.

There are also many statutory independent institutions that draw their status from a statute, and there are institutions of academia, expertise, research and enquiry that will never be able to carry out their task unless they are given freedom and independence to focus on their specific effort protected from partisan political considerations. Independent institutions are, therefore, of critical importance in a democratic framework. However, the principle of ‘independence’ and how it is defined are also contingent on the norm it seeks to establish, perpetuate and protect. The relevance of independent institutions for different sectors requires a nuanced understanding of the concept. In some cases, it could mean neutrality, such as those that are prevalent in our courts. In others, it exists to ensure constitutional guarantees and rights for the most marginalised, where neutrality is a hinderance to their mandate of countering inherent sociopolitical inequalities.

In order to answer these questions, we will try to engage with the various contexts in which these constitutional values and institutions come together, diverge and sometimes conflict with each other. In doing so, we hope to explore the potential of independent institutions to uphold the democratic values of the constitution.

The Indian Context

In a complex sociopolitical context like India, with a vast canvas of plurality and competing interests, the task of defining democracy beyond crude majoritarian calculations makes the role of independent institutions even more important and challenging. India was a country that faced a deep crisis at the time of its birth as a modern nation. The question of nationhood on the basis of religious identity, the pain of partition, communal violence and huge displacement raised fundamental questions that the Constituent Assembly sought to answer. But it was not just a secular constitution that the members had framed that helped overcome the immediate and deep crisis. It was also a deliberate and concerted effort by the leadership of the Indian independence/national movement that proactively sought to build fraternity and bring communities together. The fact that at the moment of independence, one of the tallest leaders was walking through riot-torn areas attempting to bring about communal harmony and that he was assassinated in the pursuit of that goal could not have been lost on the drafters of the constitution. The constitution was, therefore, an explicit, well-considered and well-articulated consensus about the idea of India. It is agonising to find India in a predicament now—when basic issues one thought resolved are reappearing to threaten communal harmony, secularism and basic constitutional norms. This predicament was, perhaps, most starkly evident in the COVID crisis that India experienced a few years ago.

The COVID Context

While not the first (and potentially not the last), the COVID pandemic was another crisis that has deepened some of our existing fault lines while even creating new ones. Two years after the onslaught of COVID, many of our lives have been fundamentally affected. Of course, the elderly and people with co-morbidities, especially people who had crossed their 70s, were directly affected by the virus. Some of us got very ill and almost died; many died. But COVID gave birth to many other spin-off ‘viruses’ that affected our economic, social and political commitments in negative ways. That period has increased inequality in society and authoritarianism in governance. Regressive social norms resurfaced and new ones developed, and all of these were encouraged by the ruling elite to isolate, stay at home and look the other way when millions were in the act of reverse migration caused by an arbitrary decision to close down factories and places of employment all over the country within 4 hours. It was also a time when independent democratic institutions (populated by elites who could ‘work from home’) were largely silent and inactive, and did not carry out their mandate of protecting the most vulnerable people. Independent regulatory institutions also did not proactively stand up against the authoritarianism that was justified by COVID. Nor did they demonstrate a commitment to values of equality and social justice by being a check against the arbitrary exercise of power, and the further concentration of wealth during this period, when people were confined to their homes, and public action was severely curtailed due to COVID protocols. So, it is a period that has offered us an opportunity to look at the robustness of the independent institutions of those who are empowered by their office, but give way to their personal biases of self-interest and survival.

The dilemma is that the failure of such institutions cannot lead to helplessness or cynicism about them. They are too important to the health of our democracy. We need to look at these independent institutions in the context of the Indian Constitution and the challenges we face to make them a living reality, or even protect them from being inverted and perverted. Perhaps there was a time when we thought that we were all protected by the Indian Constitution, and it was not radical enough. In fact, in the sixties, if one believed in the constitution, one was considered not radical enough. Now, we have realised that the Constituent Assembly Debates and Dr Ambedkar’s thoughts on the constitution need to be a primary focus of interest for all of us because the values and principles that are enshrined in the constitution are now, more than ever, relevant and pertinent. Wisdom and knowledge are interconnected. For the health of a democracy, we need a mix of ages and perspectives, even as we need to agree on a basic commitment to the principles we gave ourselves in the Preamble to the Indian Constitution. Democracy is not merely a set of procedures and structures for decision-making, but it is also a culture of practice that needs to permeate our professional and social lives and institutions. In the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS), collective decision-making has brought together the experience of the elder and the energy of the young, the common sense and basic knowledge of the worker and farmer activist, and the exposure of the ‘degree holding’ activist to produce the composite wisdom and management skills of the group, propelling action on the ground. As feminists, we must understand the importance of the adage and experience of the ‘personal always being political’. To really engage with how this works in practice and the relevance of this principle to social democracy, we turn (as always) to Ambedkar.

Ambedkar and the Need for Developing into a Social Democracy

As a society and polity, we need to understand the dialectic between the personal and the political, and the relevance of the ‘social’, (as explained by Dr Ambedkar) in the context of a social and political democracy. Speaking on the 26th of November 1949, his famous statement on the challenge India faced due to the reality of entrenched social and economic inequality was followed by a suggestion of building a ‘social democracy’ and not just a political democracy. He famously said:

We must make our political democracy a social democracy as well. Political democracy cannot last unless there lies at the base of it social democracy. What does social democracy mean? It means a way of life which recognises liberty, equality and fraternity as the principles of life. These principles of liberty, equality and fraternity are not to be treated as sperate items in a trinity. They form a union of trinity in the sense that to divorce one from the other is to defeat the very purpose of democracy. Liberty cannot be divorced from equality; equality cannot be divorced from liberty. Nor can liberty and equality be divorced from fraternity. Without equality, liberty would produce the supremacy of the few over the many. Equality without liberty would kill individual initiative. Without fraternity, liberty and equality could not become a natural course of things. It would require a constable to enforce them.

To explore this idea of social democracy that Ambedkar talks about, we must also bring together the personal and the political. When Ambedkar speaks of ‘a way of life’ that recognises liberty, equality and fraternity as principles that are not to be treated separately but form a union of three values in a Trinity, we need to apply this in the way we think about family, community and country. We cannot separate equality, liberty and fraternity any more than we can separate family from community and country. It is important, therefore, to understand that we live in a country where the deliberate choices we have made have both areas of contradiction and conflicting values. This has resulted in the creation of silos that are separated by intent and action, leading to our present condition where we are perpetually living in polarised conflict. Part of this conflict is due to the particular cultures within which social democracies operate.

The Culture of a Social Democracy

It is abundantly clear that our personal beliefs and our lifestyles are not separable from our work—even if we want to deny it. The reality of life is experienced both in theory and practice, and is often the foundation of what we often call a ‘way of life’. As an example, the MKSS is located in a mud hut in a small rural hamlet—that is the physical location. But the metaphysical message of that hut is that it is a constant reminder of people’s conditions. In some ways, it helps create a focus on the true nature of sociopolitical empowerment yet to happen. For 45 years now, that mud hut has been a home, an office, a commune, an ashram and a place of learning, planning, cooking and sleeping. There is nothing extraordinary to look at, but the efforts that have emanated from there certainly have been nothing short of extraordinary. For the MKSS, almost all its interactions in the area have had to do with concepts where the focus is on common property resources, commons and public goods, relating to issues like land, water and common lands as well as basic services like health, education, food, nutrition, employment and so on. Therefore, it has been important to situate those struggles within that mud hut—to live and fetch water every day from the well, to experience the microcosm of society through the simple act of drawing, carrying and drinking water from a matka carried home. Getting older has brought in factors that have argued for disengagement and for handing work responsibilities over to younger people who have to draw upon whatever strengths we might have to create a new composite way of life—but even this handing over is the reality of the struggle that is continuous.

As the MKSS worked to organise the poor, the marginalised and the peasants and workers of the area, it was inevitably for the realisation of these basic rights within a constitutional framework. Apart from leading to a constant exploration of what those constitutional rights meant for the marginalised at the level of their daily lives, it also meant grappling with the institutional framework that the constitution had set up for the realisation of these rights. In many cases, it required advocacy, campaign and struggle to make these very powerful but conceptual ideas a practiced reality. It also meant playing a role in the building of institutional mechanisms and independent institutions to help realise the rights. So, for instance, in both the Right to Information (RTI) and Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), the MKSS helped build a continuum from the Gram Sabha and the village streets to the Lok Sabha, where national legislation was enacted. The RTI had to have an independent commission to adjudicate and help enforce the law, the MGNREGA helped give people the right to work and to choose the assets they wanted. This has meant examining and unpacking the idea of the ‘public good’ in various fora.

Public Good

The questions that we must ask of ourselves when we engage with the notion of public good are: What should the elements of a public good be—Equal ownership? Common ownership (as in the idea of the commons with no single owner)? State ownership? These elements would also be affected by questions such as: how is it being used, who is using it and what is the price they are paying for what? What are the principles that influence or affect this use?

For a group like the MKSS that works with workers, farmers and the economically and socially marginalised, the essential element in the service and delivery of a public good is its accessibility to everybody. In constitutional terms, this means access with equality and fraternity for everybody. If something is not accessed by or accessible for the poor and marginalised, it ceases to be a public good. For us, the idea of the public good is intimately tied to access, the institution that helps in delivery and providing a remedy in case of violation—these are essential elements of the public good and essential services. In feudal societies, such as Rajasthan, there were many landless and nomadic communities who crafted their own norms for use of the commons (that no one else really cared about) and equal access to the marginalised lands they inhabited and used for survival. That particular ‘way of life’—now under threat—has allowed and guaranteed spaces for the struggles of marginalised communities for life, livelihood and right to all freedoms guaranteed in the constitution. These traditional ‘ways of life’ that provide equality of access to public spaces—an essential element of democracy—have repeatedly and throughout history been impinged upon by dominant communities, the power elite and the affluent. The means of doing are primarily private ownership and illegal feudal rights that usurp and destroy the commons as they acquire monetary value. There is, for instance, a lot of effort by dominant rich people to begin quarrying and mining operations in common lands.

Therefore, the lived practices of democratic action that are present in some traditional spaces, such as the way of life of marginalised communities, need codification and institutional support so that they are not set aside by those who dominate all ownership and control over natural resources. The ‘commons’, therefore, that we need to protect extends to the political promise of equality—of access and use—including the right to decide policy and law. Turning to our roots, therefore, is also to question the lived practices of universal access, equal ownership and community rights, such as those embodied in the idea of commons that are owned neither by the state nor private parties. The reason why we have to resist both is that the acquisition of the public good by the state is often at the behest of private capital using the discourse of ‘growth’ to destroy natural and common property resources—forests, rivers, beaches, pasture land and so on—as well as moving towards the privatisation of many public institutions, including those of education, health and many other social welfare institutions. Misuse of institutions of governance and the centralisation of power to control the wealth of natural resources without community consent and oversight, as well as the disappearing of spaces for use by people can only be countered by institutions, created for the purpose, functioning independently, legally and constitutionally. Public good from the people’s perspective, therefore, has to be defined in that context. However, this too is fraught with challenges.

While in practice, there is the importance of building independent institutions, there are also difficulties and there have always been challenges. MKSS, for example, is not registered as a society or a trust, but functions through crowd-funding. The raising of MKSS’s finances maybe on a monthly or an annual basis, depending upon who contributes. For organisations such as ours, it is the constitutional and institutional arrangements that matter most. We believe we are on par with the citizen and also need the larger independent statutory and constitutional institutions independence with power to check the rising arbitrary and authoritarian behaviour of governments. We need to think how institutions can be built so that they operate more effectively in a skewed democratic polity. So, there are contradictions and complexities in recognising the importance of institutions in defining and defending public goods.

Life of Contradictions

The most famous warning Dr Ambedkar gave about what could be the biggest challenge that India faced was economic and social inequality.

On the 26th of January 1950, we are going to enter into a life of contradictions. In politics we will have equality and in social and economic life we will have inequality. In Politics we will be recognising the principle of one man one vote and one vote one value. In our social and economic life, we shall, by reason of our social and economic structure, continue to deny the principle of one man one value. How long shall we continue to live this life of contradictions? How long shall we continue to deny equality in our social and economic life? If we continue to deny it for long, we will do so only by putting our political democracy in peril. We must remove this contradiction at the earliest possible moment or else those who suffer from inequality will blow up the structure of political democracy which this Assembly has so laboriously built up.

In contemporary India, which is so starkly unequal, even the fig leaf of public utterance—contradicted by inaction—has fallen off. There is no one person, one value in this country. There is not only discrimination of belonging to a religious minority but also on caste, region, gender and language. Economic inequality has further divided India so sharply that the Oxfam Inequality Report tells us how a tiny percentage of the population enjoys the majority of this country’s wealth. We thought that political equality of the vote, which we cling to with remarkable tenacity, would make us edge our way into other spheres. But the Election Commission has been compromised, and the amendment to the laws of citizenship further undermines the right to cast a vote. With so much riding on the election, the process has become hostage to money and majoritarian identities, so even the bare political framework of elections we took so much for granted is under threat. Under such circumstances, institutions like the Election Commission, the Human Rights Commission, Information Commission, the SC/ST Commission, the Women’s Commission and so on, with independence from the executive and the legislature, are important for oversight of different spheres of public policy, particularly when it comes to the contradictions in society and the search for equality. These commissions can also start to address a regressive culture that appears to have been politically encouraged as well.

Building Alternate Cultures

In today’s context, a version of cultural nationalism is perverting and compromising a range of secular and democratic ideals so central to our Constitution. In a democracy, culture as a ‘way of life’ cannot be drawn only from the ‘dominant’ view of one majoritarian social group. We need to, therefore, understand the importance of building a culture of social, economic and democratic practice. Independent institutions are mandated to work on the maintenance of these principles in practice, not only to ensure the implementation of policies but also to create a culture of practice. Independent institutions are critical to this process. This is because independent institutions with a particular focus on empowerment that can build a relationship of mutual development and trust can enable democratic practices that lead to the real empowerment of the citizen. In order to any ordinary citizen or social group that makes a demand for justice and redress, the structural inequalities that underlie each of these demands require the building of institutions—formal or otherwise, to help them make progress in changing policy discourse. Knowing that these institutionalisation processes are necessary, the nascent Indian state wisely set up institutions based on constitutional principles and made them independent of both executive and legislative power. However, the impunity granted and grabbed by the executive and legislature, allowed an elite capture of all the institutions of checks and balance. The arbitrary exercise of power has led to a series of serious disasters in governance and the delivery of basic services. This led to a number of social movements demanding transparency and accountability from public servants. Governance has to be unpacked, and the process of justice has to be tracked systematically, not just with laws and their implementation but through a culture of ‘democratic governance’ practice.

As is clear from the movement for RTI and the RTI Commission, the slogan that was raised, Hamara Paisa, Hamara Hisab/our money, our accounts’ moved the conversation within governing mechanisms from a culture of secrecy to a culture of openness and public accountability. While arbitrary power is being monitored and shies away from democratic principles while paying lip service, it is important for these forms of governance to be in strong synergy with the aspirations of the people. As people in Beawar told the first Chief Information Commissioner, Wajahat Habibullah, ‘We created your post so you could help the people. Your power comes from us, and you must protect the RTI, because that is why you are in that position’. These cultures that were being critiqued by the RTI movement were not just within the governance structure, but also within Indian culture as a whole. Traditionally, Indian society is intrinsically closed and secretive. Even a rang rez, a man who dyes fabric, keeps his formula a secret, and is unwilling to share the formula of the pucca vegetable dye. The secret only goes to his son, so the trade secret lives on as an old-fashioned ‘patent’. This secrecy of knowledge and profession is curious because in a village, nothing is secret. So, even within these cultures of secrecy, there are hidden cultures of openness and transparency.

It is in the service of proliferating these hidden cultures that more than 100 people have died using the RTI. While there are already between 40 and 60 lakh users in a year of the RTI, we are still relentlessly asking for more information. These relentless questions mean that those in governance are reminded over and over again that they are not beholden to the executive; they are beholden to the people. In fact, independent institutions, public institutions and consultative public policy, if allowed to function independently, are very important structural systems for ensuring that the government functions ethically, in a participatory manner, and with equality towards all. The reason that accountability and RTIs are important is because constant scrutiny creates also a culture of ethics, apart from the foundational notion that we have a right to ask questions.

Independent Institutions and Public Policy

In a structure where now all or any questioning of authority and dominant opinion is looked at with deep suspicion, the nature of independence itself is in question. Institutions built for oversight have also fallen victim to this onslaught. Democratic activists and activists share an acute sense of bewilderment and worry at the rapidly deteriorating political space, where the space for disagreement and dissent is disappearing. Many independent institutions have been allowed to fade away, and others have been interfered with in very basic ways so as to render them ineffective. A constitutional democracy is tottering behind a facade of false accolades of achievements and posturing. When genuine issues are articulated, those expressing the issues are targeted and brought under direct attack through lawfare, using the law against those fighting for the constitution.

Since independence, the dominant discourse and the stated intent, in spite of some major aberrations, have remained faithful to the values enshrined in the constitution, as so eloquently explained by Dr Ambedkar. When an emergency was imposed in 1975, these rights—that of free speech and expression—were the first to be curtailed. When these rights were curtailed, it made people aware of the vulnerability of the system, and the way in which fear was able to bring both silence and acquiescence. The people’s response that followed was in the form of a comprehensive electoral defeat of an authoritarian regime. Legal remedial action was taken through attempts to reinstate older values. The civil society response, amongst many others, was to try and create institutions and organisations to protect civil liberties and democratic rights, like the People’s Union for Civil Liberties and so on.

The cultural practice of rights and democracy in tandem with these institutions also creates space for the formulation of progressive policy and law. The period from 2004 to 2014 saw the emergence of people demanding that their representatives in legislatures carry their voices to frame policy and legislation. During this time, we were able to finally understand that the mechanics of democratic privilege and its institutions, movements and campaigns are essential factors that can help provide space for collective articulation for justice, public-government partnership and passage of pro-people laws and policies. It was also realised that to create these ‘social goods’, the role of independent institutions was indispensable. Engaging with a spectrum of welfare concerns such as health, education, the right to food, the right to work, and the right to information- independent institutions were necessary for monitoring, intervening in contested areas and delivering justice. Even as the 1975 emergency provided insights into this, we appear to have forgotten those lessons, and so we stand again today in an unstated emergency. There are many parallels; not insignificant among them is the current attack on opposition parties and their leadership, and critical civil society activists, as the 2024 polling dates get closer.

Although this unstated emergency still employs old techniques, it also deploys new mechanics of double speak, fake news, post-truth, manipulated research and the erasure of data or indices that are enabled by a pliant and far from independent media. The killing of thought, whether of difference, dissent or disagreement, goes much beyond a victim. It is an infringement on thought itself. It, needless to say, allows the free play of arbitrary, parochial, undemocratic and unconstitutional governance, and it does this by not listening to difference, dissent and disagreement to suppress logic, justice and rationality. At least during the 1975 emergency, the Indian Express printed a blank page with a black border, courageously publishing their dissent. Ramnath Goenka, famous for resisting press censorship, is still remembered for his acts of defiance and courage. At the present moment, the print media and, of course, the electronic media have been taken over by the corporate houses, which either support or acquiesce to the communal agenda. The multiplier effect of this cocktail of commercial interests and communal sympathisers also prevents the other critical issues of economically and socially marginalised communities from getting space.

As people’s independent campaigns lose their collective freedom to express and act, independent institutions also get compromised. We must not forget that as people’s rights wither, the rights of all independent commissions and councils become vulnerable to attack. It was an unstated combination of people and institutions guarding the right to freedom of expression and the demand for justice that empowered democracy. The media, commonly recognised as the fourth estate, has betrayed its democratic role. It has abdicated, in most part, its mandated supportive role to amplify the voices of ordinary citizens and institutions that were created for oversight. Because the freedom of expression is often the gateway to all freedoms, the deliberate attack on the media independence, the curtailing of the power of institutions and their debilitating functioning have been part of a strategy of destroying the rights to expression and dissent, supported and protected by constitutional structures. If equality is under attack, so is fraternity, which brings the marginalised together to form formations for struggle and seek the legal protection of these institutions. We need to realise that without values of fraternity, the nexus between capital, state and international power brokers cannot be broken. In fact, fraternity also means aligning oneself with the government; it is the foundational belief that both people and the government work together to ensure people’s welfare. In fact, people’s movements such as the Narmada Bachao Andolan have solidified that power gets redefined through the means of collective resistance, and therefore, song and theatre start to become very powerful political tools. In fact, the most astute of political messages are often songs that speak truth to power. Mohan ji, a Dalit activist and illiterate bard, once composed a song for the MKSS, of which he was a founder member, which goes ‘before the powerful used to kill us with a gun, now they kill us with a pen. It’s the rule of the dacoits, thieves. . .’ Other songs like ‘Main nahin manga’ help spread the message that it is the duty of the government to provide people’s rights. The power relationship, therefore, has to be reversed. So, policies made in Delhi should not go to the people for ratification. Instead, it is from the people who demanded the policy and came to Delhi for concurrence and support. This reversal is often supported by many commissions and institutions, such as the Schedule Caste Commission, the Human Rights Commission, the Women’s Commission, the Election Commission and so on. It would also be relevant and of particular importance today to recall the actions of the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) and the Human Rights Commission during and after the failure of the Gujarat Government in 2002 to respond to the crises in governance and be complicit in social/communal conflict. The CEC, James Lyndoh, responded to the voices of protest and refused to hold elections till the atmosphere was conducive. This reversal is easily seen in the way that courts introduced Public Interest Litigation (PIL) in the late 70s and early 80s, which made fundamental rights readily available to people and their violations liable to be prosecuted by the justice systems. With the introduction of the PIL, the court also created possibilities for progressive judges to come out of their isolation and pro-actively become an important part of the discourse on building a secular and just system.

The Potential of Independent Institutions

The campaigns for people’s laws established the need for detailed political education as both critical and relevant. Rights-based movements, laws and budgetary processes played an important role in helping form structures for educational processes for people, social movements, the media and the government. They built the discourse by communicating with people about democratic rights. At the time, it looked as if Indian democracy was turning an important corner, recognising the role of people’s participation in policy and legislation and extending the contours much beyond the narrow confines of ‘specialisation’, of the legislature and the executive and the growing band of ‘specialists’ and ‘technocrats’. It was a moment of democratic revelation and growth; it drew the interest of people from across the world to look at this new phenomenon of people’s politics coming together to engage with more traditional structures of party politics and to work together for change. They were curious to know how this relationship between the formal political battle for state power and the people’s struggles to establish rights of participation in processes of governance, thereby, redefining relationships of equality, knowledge, capability and competence. They wanted to know how this participatory democratic process originated and grew. There were a few central institutional processes that allowed for this synergy to emerge, and we are referring to a few here.

The Budget

The budget speech is not only one of the most important events as a marker of commitments being made, but it is also the culmination of one of the most secretive processes. Pre-budget consultations are one of the most one-sided interactions where the state listens very quietly, makes no commitment and does exactly what it wants to without any real prior dialogue. For this reason, the transparency of budgets and allocations has not made the kind of progress it should have in the RTI era. It will, however, require a shift from an exclusive technocratic vocabulary to a simple one. An attempt to look at budgets and analyse them made all the difference. For instance, in the experience of the MKSS, in its many ‘jansunwais’ (public hearings), people found engineering estimates the most difficult to handle, as they were in English and used measures of examination that were incomprehensible. For example, metric tonnes and so on, had to be changed into bags and trolleys of material used. However, a newer form of citizen engagement with the state as part of the post-budget consultations as conducted by the finance department and seen in Rajasthan is a beginning. People’s campaigns in the state, led by SR Abhiyan, have been able to put pressure on the government to build demand for post-budget meetings, where budget announcements related to people can be discussed and an early time frame can be put into place to ensure early implementation of budget announcements with social movement involvement. The last 2 years have seen mega meetings titled ‘Janata ka budget Jan Jan tak’ and followed this year with the formulation ‘Janta ka budget, Janta ke liye’. There is a demand for a comprehensible budget monitoring system that has made a previously inscrutable process more accessible to public intervention and action.

Public Audit, Social Audit and the Independence of Different Audit Processes

The recognition of public audit, or social audit, as a necessary process and structure for establishing access to basic services, and the ethics of governance owes its origin to the RTI movement. It also helped unpack the concept of ‘audit’, which is not understood at all by the common person, and brought it into the lexicon of people’s understanding of political empowerment and democratic accountability. While the CAG was initially resistant, it later understood that these audits helped to strengthen the process of oversight from the village up to parliament. In fact, in a meeting that was held in Shimla in 2010, the CAG told the gathering, ‘I don’t know why I had reservations about Social Audit? Now, I realise I know that every adult person in this country can be an auditor, through the social audit process.’ Social audit has grown to become a recognised audit process, and it has been part of many official campaigns, and it had very humble beginnings—emerging as it did from a people’s public hearing.

This is primarily because the social audit creates chains of social accountability all the way up the power hierarchies. Also, because any audit not only needs information (Jankari), but it also requires ‘Karyavahi’ (a guarantee of time-bound action), ‘Bhagidari’ (participation), as well as ‘Suraksha’ (protection). Only then can a ‘Janta ka Manch’ (people’s platform) be created, and over time, these six principles have now been institutionalised in the CAG Social Audit Standards, and the Official Social Accountability Committee has been constituted to draft the law. Once these structures or institutional mechanism are set in place, it is harder to dismantle them. The RTI is one such example. Even today, despite its greatest desire to rubbish everything, the Government of India has not been able to make significant changes to the Right to Information law. It is still a thorn in its side, and it is trying its best with the NREGA and the National Food Security Act.

These institutional processes also have virtuous cycles. As democratic cultures spread, people as ‘voters’ and as citizens begin to understand that an ethical democracy demands active participation and the diligent monitoring of its institutions and functioning. As people understand the importance of institutions, the functioning of government then can be critiqued—so people’s action and interaction are crucial for these institutions to work.

People’s Action and Interaction

During every fight to create independent institutions that protect people’s rights, the projected complexity of government machinery had to be unravelled and made recognisable and understandable to a cross-section of people across the board. It is clear that these governing institutions are supposed to act on behalf of the people; however, often the range of institutions themselves fall prey to manipulation by the executive or vested interests. Protecting the independence of these institutions, therefore, is a struggle. It is up to the empowered and ethical people in the system to respond to demands and calls. Social movements, from the ground up, were able to facilitate this process of pro-people by redefining the role of independent democratic institutions while acknowledging and incorporating parliamentary procedure.

These foundational steps have paved the way for other laws as well. For example, MKSS has been able to pressurise the government of Rajasthan for gig workers and the Social Security Board to determine who pays and who regulates them. MKSS has proposed that every transaction will be public and transparent, and over every transaction, there will be a cess, and that cess will have to be paid by the employer so that there are health and other guarantees for the worker. The rights-based laws, as an example and in specific, the demand for transparency and accountability shaped the argument that institutional independence requires the active participation and engagement of people. It also explains, to some extent, the reasons why there is this calculated attack to weaken these institutions, set up as a part of governance, to increase the accountability of the power elite. The idea that all this was done finally with the government, however reluctantly participating in the process, was astonishing, as much then as it is now. These efforts were no doubt difficult, but what took the matter further was, surprisingly, a larger commitment to democracy, despite political losses to some parties and leaders.

However, the present dispensation uses its political interest as the guiding principle, inverting all legitimate demands into bogeys of anti-nationalism and sedition, and institutions such as the courts have also played a role in this anti-democratic process as well. For example, it is telling that the courts have not played a more active role in defending fundamental rights and the right to freedom of expression since 2014. Even obvious assaults on minorities and those expressing dissent have not been the subject of legal cognisance.

Independence of Appointment Processes

Part of the problem is the way in which the appointment process for these independent institutions takes place. Often, important appointments or setting up of commissions must be a bipartisan decision. Yet we see increasingly that this is not the case. A case in point is the collegium for the Information Commission that has been used, wherein commissioners are appointed by the PM with the leader of the opposition and a cabinet minister. This is obviously far more partisan, as there is a 2:1 majority of the ruling party. We can easily predict the outcome—pliable commissioners have been appointed, resulting in pro-government decisions. Another example is the CAG. The office of the CAG is protected by the constitution, and the CAG can only be impeached. Yet, it is an appointment made exclusively by the executive, like that of the Chief Election Commissioner and the Election Commissioners. During the deliberations of the Drafting Committee of the Constitution, Babasaheb had very famously said,

I am of the opinion that this dignitary or officer is probably the most important officer in the Constitution of India. He is the one man who is going to see that the expenses voted by Parliament are not exceeded, or varied from what has been laid down by Parliament in the Appropriation Act. If this functionary is to carry out the duties—and his duties, I submit, are far more important than the duties even of the Judiciary—he should have been certainly as independent as the Judiciary.

It is a powerful, responsible institution that is independent and has responsibilities for the government’s financial health. It is an institution that has never really used its power fully, but today, it stands gagged and sidelined as never before. It stands exposed to pressure and overridden by the legislature passing laws, kept outside the purview of the CAG’s mandatory oversight. This has no doubt led to many anti-democratic moves. For example, even when the Election Commission initially made submissions against electoral bonds, the SC prevaricated and refused to stay the bonds. This has facilitated opaque donations to political parties. The process of donation brings in corruption and the control of political parties by corporate houses. We all know that the BJP (which brought this so-called reform) benefitted the most from such transactions. The commission also flagged the issue of laws being changed to allow political parties to receive contributions from foreign companies, which would ‘allow unchecked foreign funding of political parties in India which could lead to Indian policies being influenced by foreign companies’ (Indian Express, April 2019). The Election Commission did not pursue the issue, even while the SC kept the matter pending.

Regulatory and Research-oriented Commissions and Independent Bodies

Other commissions have also been affected. When the Planning Commission was abolished in 2016, it ceased to exist without a whimper. Activists have been strong critics of the commission, but have managed to engage with it on a range of issues. Members were also selected from academia and civil society, and the planning process was open and accountable to some extent. People had a platform to engage with and knew what was to happen in 5 years. It was a step towards transparency and accountability. Yet, it was done away without much public outcry.

Monitoring is a small aspect of what commissions do. The other aspect is that they facilitate information flow through the system that feeds into the Child Rights Commission, the Women’s Commission, the Human Rights Commission or some other commission, which then creates a virtuous cycle. If those commissions are corrupted, we have nothing. Other rights, such as the RTI, are also likely to be under attack because of the way in which they allow citizens to question the government and demand answers. A parallel attack on the role of free speech—expression and the right to know enshrined in the constitution—which has been an acknowledged mode of protecting civil liberties, has led to the incarceration of activists and other voices that have spoken truth to power. This is a planned process to destabilise democracy and constitutional values, not by directly curtailing fundamental rights or by the imposition of a constitutional emergency, but by indirect attacks on those rights by weakening institutions created to protect the ordinary citizen and by hollowing out rights in every entitlement and law that sought to empower people.

We face a huge challenge today. We need to decide what form the struggle must now take and what the goal posts are. What, in fact, are the faces of oppression in a technology-driven oligarchy where even party democracy has been short-changed? How do we bring our democracy closer to Ambedkar’s scope of delivering a democracy where there is both economic and social equality along with political equality? That is our challenge. And for that, we need to have a discourse. How do we build this discourse? We have to establish that there is a possibility of interaction, discussion and discourse. And this discourse, with all its anomalies, will only emerge when we all talk across sectors. But nobody in government today is as open to discussion as they used to be. There is a great problem getting people in power and authority to come to discuss anything because of the way the government is run today.

This lack of systems is also not coincidental. These attacks on governing institutions, on civil society and even on citizens are to destabilise democratic India. Can we indulge in public battles as we used to before? Can we sit in Jantar Mantar and say what we like without being incarcerated? Can we even sit in Jantar Mantar beyond 4 o’clock? They allow us between 10 and 4. And even that right was only at the behest of MKSS when it filed a writ in the Supreme Court. Without public space to protest and without public space to say anything, how are we going to be able to protect those institutions that we want to protect. This is because institutions need us as much as we need them to survive. Of course, none of this is a new argument. All of us are familiar with the challenges we face today—but what are we going to do about that? And are we going to have some way to monitor what is happening with our data and information? All that we say might sound like utopia. But it is best to remember the response to a reporter that Eduardo Galliano (the great Uruguayan political reporter and writer) gave to the question, What is the use of a utopia? Eduardo said, ‘There is use. When you walk, you see the horizon, maybe you know, you’ll never reach the horizon, but you still walk’.