Get elected, get going

My previous three columns discussed the issue of civil society and law-making in general and in particular in India. This one concludes my argument.
The Anna Hazare movement has claimed that the elected government is “not listening to the voice of the people”. It may be argued that the mass mobilisation witnessed in the streets, or in the Ramlila Maidan in Delhi, behind Annaji’s demands, point to a disconnect between the government and popular sentiment on the Lokpal issue. But that does not mean, in a functioning democracy, that laws can be dictated by crowds in the streets. Their views can influence or ignite parliamentary debate, but in our democracy, parliamentary debate is essential, since only elected MPs can make laws. Our Parliament is a representative microcosm of the nation. Its members have been elected as representatives by the people, and in our system the government is derived from among them. To allow any unelected group, however virtuous and idealistic its members may be, to substitute its will, through demonstrations and fasts, for that of Parliament would be an assault on the very foundations of our republic and our Constitution.
In our democracy, there is an efficient, well-tried and constitutional law-making system in place. It is hardly perfect, but as Bismarck remarked more than a century ago, “If you like laws and sausages, you should never watch either one being made”. Nonetheless, the important point is that nobody is excluded from having an influence, or bringing their point of view to bear, on this process, and as I explained in my previous column, the parliamentary procedures provide sufficient scope for considering and incorporating all shades of public opinion in the law. One is entitled to start doubting the motives of those who insist that a text drafted outside this process should be adopted in toto and made into law by Parliament, without giving scope for the usual examination of its administrative, financial and constitutional implications.
And yet, it is true that in a dynamic and responsive polity like ours, extra-constitutional pressures simply cannot be ignored. The most famous example of moral pressure outside Parliament causing an executive to bend was in 1952, when Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s government reversed its position and constituted a States Reorganisation Commission in response to a fast-unto-death by the Gandhian leader Potti Sriramulu, who fasted to demand the creation of linguistic states and died in the process. That commission’s report led to the redrawing of India’s administrative and federal map in 1956.
But exceptions often prove the rule, as the cliché goes, and the rule remains that law-making in this country is connected to civil society through the process of consultation and debate by people’s representatives elected through democratic elections. The demand that “civil society” ought to be allowed to write certain laws goes far beyond a mere challenge of the constitutional provisions; it also obfuscates the core issue of representation. Elections are not easy: Lok Sabha MPs know this from personal experience. Their claim to represent the people, whose votes they have campaigned for and won, cannot be lightly disregarded in favour of those who are not willing or able to take the essential first step of achieving a representative position through victory in an election. The notion that the ability to mobilise a crowd on the streets, or attract the television cameras to a cause, is enough to supplant the results of democratic elections, only betrays contempt for the democratic rights of the people. Those who do so are in effect advocating a dictatorship of the unelected, an oligarchy of the wise, something never agreed to by the learned and visionary founding fathers of this nation, who had unhesitatingly reposed their faith in the electoral wisdom of the ordinary masses of this land.
I might add, on a personal note, that I too had previously engaged with public issues as a member of “civil society” — making statements and speeches to middle-class and elite forums, appearing on television, publishing articles and books. But when the opportunity presented itself for me to enter politics, I had no doubt that the right thing for me to do was to contest elections to Parliament. It was only by doing this that I felt I could truly claim to have earned the right to represent the people. If members of “civil society” want to have a determinant voice in law-making, what they need to do is to organise themselves politically and not merely agitationally, contest elections and come into Parliament — where they can write and pass the laws they are currently trying to dictate from the street. Though I appreciate their burning passion to rid the nation of corruption, they have not earned the right to oblige the government to give them exactly what they want. For that, they would have to wait till the next election to obtain enough seats in Parliament to pass the bills they want.
Laws emerge from a political process that is itself reflective of our society. Parliamentarians are in that sense themselves products of civil society, but of course Indian democracy is much more than Parliament. Our thriving free media, our contentious civil society forums, our energetic human rights groups, and the repeated spectacle of our remarkable general elections, are all vital elements of India’s successful management of a democratic polity. It adds to India’s “soft power” and influence in the world when its nongovernmental organisations actively defend human rights, promote environmentalism, fight injustice.
It is a vital asset that the Indian press is free, lively, irreverent, disdainful of sacred cows. But to confuse the respective roles of Parliament and these civil society institutions will only undermine our democracy.
There is no doubt that the current votaries of “civil society” are adopting an unconstitutional method to get their way on the so-called Jan Lokpal Bill. They would like to call it extra-constitutional. But there is a thin line separating the two, and they are on the wrong side of it.

The writer is a member of Parliament from Kerala’s Thiruvananthapuram constituency