22 January 2014, 06:15 PM IST
The possibility of a minister conducting vigilante night raids in residential areas should scare anyone who believes in individual freedom, privacy and segregated and defined roles for the legislature and the executive in Indian democracy. Yet, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) chose to defend the indefensible. It endorsed its law minister who went on a midnight raid and forced police to go along with him to arrest foreign nationals accused of prostitution and drug trafficking, in absolute disregard for his limitations as a minister.
Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal alienated some sections of media and the intellectual class of New Delhi by refusing to acknowledge him as an embarrassment to his party and government. The AAP also remained stuck in superficiality of incidents and failed to articulate the underlying administrative challenges that its Delhi ministers encountered. As a result, the real agenda of centre-state relations and corruption of an institution under a highly centralized system remained overshadowed by every trivial mistake of the AAP and more importantly, the method it employed to raise the issue.
First, the method. The Delhi government and the AAP were accused of indulging in disruptive and anarchic politics. Why? Because those in power should not protest on the streets; they should change the system from within and through legislative and judicial means and tools, perhaps old-style political tricks and gimmickry too. Since Delhi is not a full state and has limited legislative powers, the Kejriwal government could pursue the judicial option but at the huge risk of Indian intellectuals accusing it of handing over courts the power of judicial overreach and the power to take decisions that Parliament should. So in the absence of these two fundamental choices, we must ask if the recourse to protests was anarchy and outside the purview of the rights of states in the union.
Apart from the fact that the freedom to peaceful agitation is a constitutional right of every Indian citizen, India, since the 1950s, has allowed protests by even regional governments and ruling political parties and rightly so. Compared to the Delhi government protests the demands of which were modest, most of the post-independence protests in various states aimed bigger goals such as reorganization of states on linguistic and ethnic lines. From the protest movements for the creation of Andhra Pradesh, Haryana, Jharkhand etc. to the movements both for and against creation of Telangana, the state of India has allowed the idea of democratic protestation and even conceded to most of the demands made through these protests.
Therefore, protests by ruling political parties is not something that cannot be accommodated in Indian democracy. The AAP protests in Delhi, from a historical point of view, were completely legitimate. Though the elected chief minister and ministers could have joined the protests before and after their office hours, but working simultaneously from the protest site made their participation completely justified. It is to AAP's credit that it did not succumb to the comforts and luxuries of their offices and power and chose to come to the streets in harsh winter. Also, it is important to be inventive in nonviolent political methodology when mainstream methods fail. It is all the more necessary to be unorthodox in thinking and political method when issues are as grave as decadence of institutions.
Delhi police under the control of the central government is notoriously known for its brazen corruption, nexus with the union ministers and politicians and every crime syndicate functional in the capital city. It is therefore not surprising that the national capital region crime rates remain high and all chief ministers of Delhi including Sheila Dixit have demanded that Delhi police be made accountable to Delhi government and residents. In the last two decades, however, no political convention has helped to free Delhi police out of union home ministry's clutches. So when a chief minister along with his ministers come to the streets, public opinion is instantly mobilized and political pressure generated.
If the AAP did not have misplaced priorities, the government's protest could have yielded something more substantive than what was granted at the end of the protest. The AAP should have continued with the protest and not given up the opportunity to have a larger debate on police corruption and centre-state relations. In the union of India, power has been highly centralized. States have always remained subservient to the centre for their dues guaranteed by the constitution. As long as the territorial integrity of the union is not challenged, the constitution of India has provided a huge scope for decentralization. But it is precisely because of an over centralized structure and departure from federalism, that India has seen rise and growth of regional and identity politics and secessionist and violent movements. At the heart of the Delhi government protests too, was the issue of decentralization- greater autonomy for Delhi to make its institutions effective, transparent and accountable.
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