Republic Day- Do we ‘agree to disagree’

It’s a murky, chilly , windy dawn to the eve of our sixty nineth Republic Day Anniversary. But that’s not how we ushered it in. We did it with great hope, self -assurance and swooning with the elixir of a hard won freedom. 

We alone among the scores of fledgling nations delivered from the womb of western colonialism grew, uninterruptedly , a nascent republic into a mature functional democracy. The labour pains in keeping diverse, disparate elements glued together and in keeping the national consciousness fertilised with lofty ideals of libertarian democracy, secularism, global fraternising.....have since long passed into history, a heritage that we can with just pride flaunt in the comity of nations.

However, civilisation is a palimpsest, one in which new thoughts, trends get overlain on the old ones. Take democracy itself - going back to the days of Vaishali ki Nagarbadhu, the Gan of Vaishali, or the ‘Republic’ construct  of Plato, or the Roman Senate to Putin’s Russia, Erdogan’s Turkey, Trump’s USA , or May’s GB .......all hallowed by the name of democracy. Which is it ? Yet there are a few common threads as in a palimpsest where some of the old writings remain visible and decipherable. So, on a democracy palimpsest what indelible imprint can we still read ? What ‘primordial’ elements of democracy continue to inform and define it ? 

The Republic Day affords an excellent occasion to pause and ponder. To me , the essence of any democratic system shorn of all its external trappings is an implicit and unquestioned understanding of the manner in which to disagree in political and in social life, in other words , how to ‘agree to disagree’ .

Disagreements resolved by brute force ; or obdurate refusal to reflect or accommodate other points of view and as a consequence thereof, imposition of one’s own views and thoughts on the rest ; chilling voices of dissent and stifling freedom of expression, aren’t agreeable ways of life in a democracy. 

That precludes mob lynching over handing ‘gau criminals’ to cops; denying eggs, the cheapest source of protein and nutrients, to growing children in mid-day meal for the reason the ruling elite believes in a vegan way of life ; ‘honour killing’ of young lovers for a ‘crime of birth’ - born in different castes and communities ; marauding vigilante groups with honorifics of ‘Anti-Romeo’, ‘Love Jihadist’, ‘Gau-Rakshak’ keeping surveillance over private life of citizens ; incarceration of some who dare lampoon, satirise, caricaturize or make cartoons or memes of netas that govts deem offensive because we are unwilling to shake off an ingrained patriarchal belief in ‘saintliness’ of elders and therefore, by implication in , “REX NON PO TEST PECCARE“ , King can do no wrong. Such carcinogenic cells debase our democracy. 

There is an equally important facet of this business of ‘agreeing to disagree’ in which our republic seems deficient in recent times. Agreeing to disagree isn’t synonymous with alienation. That is precisely what seems to be creeping upon us. Social groups and relationships are increasingly coalescing around common class, caste, work group, political beliefs ,even community, new sources of consanguinity. In politics too, a genre of ‘apartheid’ is sprouting, one party premises its consolidation of Hindu vote bank on marginalisation of minorities , another on a caste basis or yet another trumpets ethnic identity. All of It is undemocratic and unwholesome. 

We have come a long long way from suckling the republic to vibrant adulthood,built our economic sinews ,secured and fortified our frontiers. It is a young republic to which the twenty first century beckons and one capable of rising to its call. But only if we find our way to ‘agree to disagree’ . 

Vande Mataram

The ‘Poor’ ,whoever, are ‘blessed’ !

Political Economy comes a full circle . Mr Modi, at his mocking best , assured the opposition in Lok Sabha that he could never ever imagine abandoning MGNREGA “a living reminder of monumental failure of sixty years” to eradicate poverty. That was in 2016. Three years later, in 2019, in a move rhapsodised as a political masterstroke he announces jobs reservation for the poor , another genre of the very same policies that it derisively declaimed ‘povertarian’  ? 

After all, “ Povertarianism is any mindset, belief, or political philosophy which focuses on the lowest common denominator at the expense of the general or long term good.” 

Parties ride to power promising to end hunger, income inequalities and social tensions. Some strive to do it through state control of means of production and distribution of income, measures broadly termed as welfarism ; others go the libertarian way- freeing factors of production, entrepreneurship ,trade and markets from all controls, praying to God Almighty that sufficient incomes trickle down from economic activity to raise the general well-being of masses.

On the evidence of rising poverty in sinking Latin American economies where it had a free run libertarianism isn’t all that virtuous, and povertarianism the regime itself discounts. Initially, Modi Sarkar made libertarian noises but a Suit Boot Ki Sarkar fusillade muffled it. Modinomics then flirted with crony capitalism for a while before Rafale exploded. Now we are back to where we began in 2014 -the much maligned povertarianism in the run upto 2014 elections in new guises. 

That is but only the apparent trajectory. For the masses in these five years have seen neither much of libertarianism nor povertarianism, but only an intense ,inexorable and implacable advance of  “Votetarianism”- no-holds barred pursuit of stratagems that have the potential to positively influence voter preferences to the exclusion of all else in political economy.