A fundamental question: What is democracy and how does it function?

On the face of it, the question that I have posed seems totally stupid.  Isn't it obvious in this day and age that democracy's definition and its operation are obvious?  Pardon me, I don't mind admitting to being a bit dense, but to me there is nothing very obvious about the definition of democracy or the ways in which it operates.  This post should have been made a few days ago, but then due to ill health, I was not able to do so.  But sometimes things do work out for the better if they are delayed and this is one of those instances.  By the time I finish writing this piece, it may become an exposition of the theoretical concerns of democracy, but those concerns are very much relevant to our everyday lives.

So let me start with the trigger that got me thinking on these lines, after all thoughts have some trigger or the other, I am sure you agree with me about this.  Yet again this post will be a reaction to the rhetoric of the separate Telangana case. I know that I have said that I do not want to post about this subject and I still mean it.  However, I am not averse to and will not be averse to invoking incidents or comments pertaining to the issue to explore larger questions about politics; be they at the national level or the international level.  The Telangana Political Joint Action Committee or T-JAC as it is popularly called, has been claiming that there is a strong sentiment for separate statehood in the Telangana region and therefore bowing to the will of the people, the Government of India should carve out a separate Telangana state.  This is what the TRS has been saying consistently and at one point the BJP joined this school of thought as did legislators from the Congress party and the Telugu Desam party, hailing from the region.  There have been threats of resignation from their posts and all that in support of the popular sentiment that is supposedly prevalent.

Now let me take the opportunity to refresh your memories about two politicians; Mr. Chandra Babu Naidu, the President of the TDP and Mr. Jaganmohan Reddy, the founder of the YSR Congress.  In the past both made it very clear that they stood for an undivided Andhra Pradesh.  In fact, Jaganmohan Reddy's father, the late YS Rajashekhar Reddy too stood for keeping the Andhra Pradesh state as it is.  The indecisiveness of the Congress party over the issue has fuelled the TDP and the YSR Congress into action in preparation for the next election whether in 2014 or before that due to some breakdown of the administrative machinery.  Once the games of election politics started a few things have changed.  Naidu steadfastly claims that Telangana and Andhra are his two eyes and that he is not anti-Telangana.  Jagan Reddy is maintaining a deafening silence over the issue despite grave provocation from his detractors.  He has been concentrating on his tactical "Odarpu Yatra" (a tour purportedly to commiserate with the people of the state who are still reeling from the shock of his father's untimely demise) to build his own mass base as a leader in his own right.  From two different vantage points, Naidu and Reddy have now been espousing the cause of the farmers in Andhra Pradesh.

To say that the espousal of the cause of the farmers is an electoral gambit is stating the obvious.  Electoral politics by their very nature demand that political parties and their leaders be in touch with their constituents.  Irrespective of the next election in Andhra Pradesh being mid-term or on schedule, it is increasingly clear that the separate Telangana is not happening before that.  This much has been acknowledged by the TRS and by the T-JAC's Chairman.  They have indicated that this may be one issue on which the next elections will be fought.  Therefore, the TRS and the T-JAC have claimed that neither Naidu nor Jagan Reddy will be allowed to tour the districts of Telangana by the people of Telangana since they stand against separate statehood for the region.  Some of the leaders of the TRS and the T-JAC had even dared the two leaders to come to Telangana.  Unsurprisingly both leaders picked up the gauntlet.  Unsurprisingly nobody except for a few members of the TRS did anything untoward.  Naidu travelled through in peace and Jagan fasted for a couple of days in Armoor (a small but affluent town in which I grew up for a while). If the opponents came from the cadres of the TRS, the supporters of both Naidu and Reddy came from the cadres of their respective parties.  For the common people it was life as usual with the now regular minor disturbances to demonstrate that something is happening throwing life a little of gear.

So what does this tell us about democracy?  It tells us that democracy is actually a surrogate for plutocracy, where the rich in order to control society and become richer still co-opt or coerce other sections of the populations in to their scheme of things by promising the earth, sky, moon and the stars.  While touring Telangana and addressing the press, Chandra Babu Naidu stunningly said that there would have been no separate Telangana movement or a party called TRS if he had not denied a cabinet portfolio to K. Chandrashekhar Rao.  I say it is stunning because while this well known all along, the admission from Naidu himself is tantamount to the admission of his guilt in bringing the politics of the state to this rather than concentrating upon developmental activity.  Unwittingly Naidu took credit for what, for once, was actually to be credited to him!!! Jaganmohan Reddy maintained a stoic silence about anything other than the farmer issue since that was what brought his father to power as Chief Minister.  By saying that the farmers of the state were in a state of neglect, the young Mr. Reddy has unwittingly accepted that what his father did for the farmers of the state (he was Chief Minister for 5 years) was nothing substantial and did not change their lives in anyway. Politicians apparently pay lip service to those sections of society that are in distress and chalk out a strategy much like a macro-marketing strategy to draw the votes of those in distress.  So in India, democracy is a plutocracy of people who become legislators by hook sometimes and by crook oftentimes but claim to have the legitimate support of the people.

So is this peculiar to India then?  The answer will be an emphatic no.  The answer is so emphatic not because I have any first hand experience of politics in other countries but because I have studied the evolution of modern day democracy.  The Greeks equated democracy to mob rule, it was only in the modern capitalist period that democracy found some respect.  The champions of modern capitalism such as John Locke and Adam Smith were also champions of democracy, but they never believed in or advocated the concept of Universal Suffrage or Universal Adult Franchise.  What they had advocated was a democratic plutocracy in which only the propertied and the rich would have any rights and say in decision making for society.  It is for this reason that they advocated concepts of free markets and limited governments.  Over the years, some sections from the mobs that the Greek political philosophers feared, were able to find their way into the process of democracy.  Once such people find entry into the democratic process, they lose no time in dissociating themselves from the mobs to which they once belonged and aspire to be plutocrats.  Therefore, theorists such as Hamza Alavi and Samir Amin are right when they say that politicians constitute a separate class much like the traditional intellectuals (to borrow a term from Antonio Gramsci) think of themselves as a distinct class.  The difference is that intellectuals play around with words and concepts and feel gratified if somebody notices what they say (they do not do anything, and I know I am implicating myself here even though I don't see myself as an intellectual in anyway) while the politicians find economic and financial gratification; something that is far more tangible.  People's aspirations incidental to this grander scheme of politicians and some benefits that sometimes get passed on to some people are also incidental and just by products of the games that politicians play.  To conclude then, democracy is not will of the people, democracy is not fairness, democracy is not justice, democracy is not empowerment of all; modern democracy is just a new name, a legitimation for plutocracy and the furtherance of the agendas of the rich, be they individuals or corporations.

P.S:  Not proof read.  Please excuse errors.