Books

REPRESENTING INDIA: Ethnic Diversity and the Governance of Public Institutions by Niraja Gopal Jayal. Palgrave Macmillan, Houndmills, England, 2006.

FEW issues generate as much passion as the relationship between various types of diversity and representative opportunities in the governance of the public sector. Nowhere is this truer than in India. At one level, the project of the founders of our republic was the creation of a society whose citizens shared a strong sense of national identity despite cultural diversity. Their idea of India was of the nation state as intrinsically diverse and plural, not one privileging any particular heritable characteristic – be it race, caste, religion, language or ethnicity. Yet both the Constitution and subsequent legislations, even while foregrounding the conception of universalistic citizenship, recognized the need to accommodate the particulars (the claims of minorities and disadvantaged groups) on the grounds of protection or compensation for disadvantage rather than a belief that these were distinctive interests that needed special representation in the political system – a simultaneous commitment to communities and to equal citizenship.

Unsurprisingly, more so in both a diverse and hierarchical society, the actual working out of laws, procedures and schemes to alter background conditions of differentially placed groups so as to promote effective equal opportunity has been vigorously contested, with every group at different points of time claiming discrimination. This is as true for different schemes of reservation, protection of minority rights, deciding on personal laws and so on, to even fiscal and redistributive measures designed to benefit specific groups/communities.

Central to the debate on the management of diversity is our understanding of representation in a democratic society. Today, in the age of universal adult franchise, universally defined rights of political citizenship are widely viewed as insufficient guarantees of the representation of ascriptively defined social groups. It appears that a vast number of our political interlocutors believe not only that every community needs representation, but that a community needs to speak for itself and its interests if its potential is to be realized. Further, that only members of a particular community are capable of expressing the interests of, and working for the good of, the community and that no one else can do it. This runs completely counter to the classic liberal position, best exemplified in Edmund Burke’s Address to the Electors of Bristol in 1774:

‘Your representative owes to you, not his industry only, but his judgement; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.

‘Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors, from different and hostile interests; which interests each must maintain, as an agent and advocate, against other agents and advocates; but… is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole; where, not local purposes, not local prejudices ought to guide, but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole.’

Clearly neither view is without problems, for representation presumes an identity between the representative and the represented. But more than the dispute between the mandate (the idea that the representative is antecedently bound by the mandate of her/his constituents) and independence, is the fact that not only are groups/communities howsoever defined internally differentiated, but that each individual carries multiple identities. So can any representative ever fully represent the constituents? Further, in designing the architecture of representation, are we looking for a politics of presence or of ideas, though neither are pure positions. More sharply, any worthwhile exercise of assessment must, therefore, look not just for the presence of different segments, but equally whether the final outcome serves to enhance the capabilities of those being assisted, i.e., we must account for the fact that representation by itself does not guarantee fair outcomes.

It is to the credit of Niraja Jayal that in examining the experience of representation in the Indian context – by looking at the constitutional framework, institutional designs, laws and policies, and the political process – she has provided a level of clarity that is unusual. Read carefully, because this is a dense monograph, it can help the interested to ground their analysis on sound empirical basis and thus re-examine their favoured positions. The book may appear to cover known ground to the India specialists, but even for them, the bringing together of scattered data and writing is a boon. The data provided on the social composition of the Parliament, the Cabinet, the high- command of political parties – particularly post-Mandal – immensely enriches our understanding of the political process as we better comprehend why the erstwhile catch-all/national parties appear to be losing out to formations with sharper particularistic appeals. It is, for instance, instructive that prior to Purno Sangma, India never had a scheduled tribe politician occupy a cabinet position. More positive is the fact that the number of scheduled caste members in Parliament exceeds the number of reserved constituencies. Unfortunately, despite the political churning of recent decades, the key decision-making forums of the national parties still continue to be dominated by the old guard, drawn essentially from privileged social segments. Possibly, it will also help us understand why the current phase of coalitional politics – a coming together of national/regional/caste-based formations – is more about government formation than enhancing representativeness.

Overall, the five empirical chapters of the book – Mapping Diversity; Managing Diversity: Institutions, Policies and Politics; Promoting Diversity and Protecting the Vulnerable; Negotiating Diversity: Parties and the Electoral System; and Representing Diversity in Institutions of Governance – substantially succeed in clearing the air and enabling the reader to come to an independent conclusion on the worth-whileness of our efforts in managing diversity.

In a sense, the conclusions are not surprising. We learn that our institutions of the public sector are insufficiently representative of religious minorities, scheduled castes and tribes. And though the latter two enjoy constitutionally mandated reservation in both the bureaucracy and legislature, the substantive policy outcomes remain vitiated. The most disturbing conclusion is that the combination of our policies and politics has contributed to an enhanced mobilization and conflict along lines of community and caste, such that even the hitherto privileged are today demanding reservation.

Where the book disappoints is in failing to go beyond the data on social origins and, even if only speculatively, explore why our mix of design and policies has contributed to the growth of particularistic politics. Could we, as a nation, have tried something else? Why is it that our public policy debate is so averse to analyzing outcomes so that we continue to peddle policies that we know will not work. True, such was not the mandate of the project for which this book was written. But then, from Niraja Gopal Jayal, it is not unreasonable to expect more.

Harsh Sethi

 

RESERVATIONS FOR WOMEN edited by Meena Dhanda. Women Unlimited, New Delhi, 2008.

THE arrival of the discourse of reservations in the 1990s marked a certain maturing of Indian democracy. Simultaneously it also marked a maturing of the politics of women’s movement in India. For a long time, the politics of Indian women was seen as shaping essentially outside electoral processes and mainstream politics. Scholars working on women’s studies as well as activists in the women’s movement criticized mainstream social sciences and political commentators for not ‘seeing’ women engaged in spontaneous protests, one time actions and many support functions in their political roles.

This understanding of women’s politics drastically changed when the movement itself joined the state-sponsored agenda of women’s empowerment and supported and celebrated the demand to extend reservations to women in higher-level political office. The politics of reservations, for the first time, exposed the women’s movement to the ‘rough house of politics’. It complicated the agenda for women’s politics and raised a number of theoretical and political-strategic issues for public consideration.

The recent book, Reservations for Women edited by Meena Dhanda and published as a part of the series on Issues in Contemporary Indian Feminism (series editor – Rajeshwari Sunder Rajan), is a neat and careful documentation of some of the complex issues involved in the debate. The book not only brings together some of the key writings about women’s reservation, presenting the riddle of reservations in all its aspects, it also raises further questions that need to be resolved in order to construct a politically sensitive gender discourse. At both levels, the book is an appropriate and timely addition to the literature on the subject.

The book is divided in four parts. The first part traces the historical background of the debate, beginning with the nationalist movement and capturing the early formulations of the women’s question in the context of arrival of democratic politics based on adult franchise. In her long essay about ‘reservations and the women’s movement in 20th century India’, Mary John argues for the need to understand the multi-strand history of reservations in the pre- and post-independence period and the deep imprint it has left on our political common sense and conceptual vocabularies, while developing the contemporary discourse on women’s reservations. The essay points to the historically posited complex and often conflictual relationships between the social and political, viz. between women’s rights and political claims of minorities and the untouchables and how they have influenced the shaping of the women’s movement up to the present.

The second part of the book discusses various theoretical issues linked with the question of women’s representation in the public sphere. Dhanda examines the question of what it means to ‘engender’ democratic political participation and to act in solidarity with women. In the three other essays in this section, Phillips, Rai and Shah and Gandhi discuss the effectiveness of the quota policy at both the theoretical and practical-political level, opening up a range of issues related to notions of citizenship, representation and the subject of women’s politics. Menon’s essay on feminism and the women’s reservation bill tries to contextualize these concerns and also takes up the issue of identity politics as she tries to ‘problematise’ the terms of discourse used in the debate over reservations.

Despite the essentially inconclusive nature of these theoretical issues, the course of politics in India and especially the state’s hasty appropriation of the movement’s agenda, has forced women’s politics to resolve the issue of quotas at immediate/strategic levels. This has further complicated the nature of debate and resulted in strange ideological and political alignments among women’s groups.

The fourth and final section of the book, in its documentation of the various alternatives to the women’s reservation bill, brings out only one aspect of these strategic considerations. The other, a more political strategic attempt to simultaneously negotiate caste and gender rights in the established political framework is, however, inadequately covered in the book. For instance, the first part of the book presents a summary overview of public positions of major women’s organizations of the 1930s over issues related to women’s representation. Perhaps, a similar overview of positions of the main political agencies of the 1990s could have been included not only as documentary evidence, but also to provide a feel of the raw politics that shape issues in the present context.

The extension of reservations to women in political office at the local level now makes it possible to assess the role of women as policy-makers in a more realistic, empirical manner and theorize on that basis. A number of studies were conducted in the last fifteen years to assess the work of women representatives in the panchayati raj system. The third section of the present book presents a slice of this assessment. It is now accepted that the evidence in this respect is mixed and the performance of women representatives is influenced both by the overall political context at the local/regional level and also by the presence of women’s movement in the area. In addition, the section points to an interesting development in the field of women’s studies, as the discipline moves towards more empirical, quantitative, technical exercises for understanding the layered nature of gender reality.

The riddles of the reservation discourse, as presented in the book, clearly point to the need for a more nuanced, more realistic understanding of the gender situation and of the political context that shapes the gender situation in complex ways. Possibly this explains a few slips in the book – references to Manohar Joshi as a BJP leader or assumptions linking Shiv Sena’s electoral loss in Maharashtra to the use of abusive language against women by its leaders, unmindful of the fact that the Shiv Sena actually enjoys more support among women.

Rajeshwari Deshpande

 

SHORT ON DEMOCRACY: Issues Facing Indian Political Parties edited by Arvind Sivaramakrishnan. ImprintOne, Gurgaon, 2007.

NEARLY all significant functions in a representative democracy – from selection of candidates to mobilization of people, articulation and aggregation of interests to passing of necessary legislation and holding government accountable – are carried out through political parties. The wellbeing of democracy, therefore, depends a great deal on the structure and working of political parties. Just as a doctor checks the pulse to determine our wellness factor, an examination of political parties indicates the health of a democracy.

The ten contributors, a mix of academics and journalists, to this captivatingly titled volume, Short on Democracy edited by Arvind Sivaramakrishnan attempt such an exercise in the Indian context. The parties examined include the Congress, Bahujan Samaj Party, Bharatiya Janata Party, Samajwadi Party and the Dravidian parties, among others. Their judgement is straightforward as the first half of the title of the book suggests, the performance of political parties leaves much to be desired. Most political parties lack both internal structure and democracy, have no clear ideology, rarely address the concerns of a majority of the population and are more concerned with targeting patronage than discussing policy in any depth. Their grave diagnosis is unlikely to surprise either the observer or participant in Indian politics.

The diagnosis, however, could have been better served had the introduction laid down a more cogent framework for analysis as also looked at the aspect of party system transition. This would not only have provided a lens for examination for subsequent essays but also saved them from repetition. A framework would have enabled a more systematic analysis and helped the cause of comparison and measurement.

Despite literature on party politics telling us that political parties are multifaceted entities, most essays in this volume limit their analysis to the obvious. Personality and its influence on the functioning of parties have by far received most attention with three essays almost completely devoted to this facet. While Krishna Ananth attempts to understand the Samajwadi Party through Mulayam Singh, Neena Vyas focuses exclusively on the personality cult in Indian politics. Similarly, C. Laxmanan’s essay on fan clubs and politics of Tamil Nadu, though interesting, uses the same marker for analysis. Issues like recruitment, candidate selection, campaigning, party finances and policy formulation could have received greater systematic consideration.

If governance is important, as one can infer from the introduction, then the dimension of party in government deserved more attention, more so when representative government is so often equated with party government. Zoya Hasan’s essay on the transformation of the Congress refers to the party in government dimension when she argues that the revival of the party was the ‘result of a recognition of a more active role for the state’ (p. 96). Radhika Desai’s, ‘Forward March of Hindutva Halted’, originally written in the context of the 2004 elections, also makes ample references to the party in government thesis and its impact. Given that most parties discussed in the volume have had a shot at governing, the essays could have gone beyond the conventional party-organization and party-society dimensions and included aspects of party in government among the issues facing Indian political parties. This would have provided a better vantage point for a comparative analysis.

Sudha Pai’s study of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in Uttar Pradesh stands out as she highlights an interesting paradox. The BSP, despite all its failings and weaknesses, has contributed to the deepening of democracy. Its creative use of identity politics has given Dalits self-respect and dignity and enabled a movement against the domination by upper castes. Pai, however, concludes that the BSP cannot take the social revolution to its logical conclusion because of its weaknesses. This conclusion opens space for new research. How does the BSP act in government? A counterfactual would also be interesting at this point. Would the deepening have been possible if the BSP had been ‘well-organized’?

The book acknowledges that it has missed out on the Left parties and has also given inadequate attention to party financing. It also points out that a future project analyzing other parties, including the Left, is under consideration. In this light it may be noted that the current party-organization and party-society line may then prove inadequate. A critical analysis of the Left should necessarily focus on the party in government dimension more than anything else. Similarly, the issue of party finances merits closer scrutiny.

While it is recognized that there has been a transition to a multi-party system, it is also necessary to situate parties in this changing dynamic. What relationships do parties enter into and how do they manage their relationships? These are questions that deserve more serious engagement to make sense of both contemporary party and political dynamics.

On the production side, a more vigilant and patient copyediting would certainly have helped given the many typos (cf., p. 55, 88, 95, 189). Similarly, the essay by Neena Vyas ends rather abruptly and C. Laxmanan’s piece is disjointed at places. Greater care would have significantly enhanced the value of the volume.

Nevertheless, the book under review undoubtedly highlights issues of serious concern and shows that for building a healthier democracy, political parties must change their ways of functioning given the important role they play. The book serves as a ready reckoner of the many evils that plague political parties, and could provide a valuable starting point for effecting reform. At the same time, it is a useful read for students of political parties, democracy and those interested in contemporary Indian politics.

Kailash K.K.

 

BEHENJI: A Political Biography of Mayawati by Ajoy Bose. Penguin/Viking, Delhi, 2008.

THE most commendable thing that can be said for this work is that at last we have a book about one of the most intriguing Indian political figures of the day. As the title suggests, Behenji is a narrative of the public persona of Mayawati. It is a useful introduction for those insufficiently familiar with Mayawati’s situation in the politics of Uttar Pradesh and her significance within national politics. For the informed political reader, however, this book offers little in the way of revelation, whether analytical or narrative.

The very first sentence of the book establishes (or so we are justified in believing), that in Behenji we are in the company of one of those rare definitive biographies which forge and form the figure of its subject for an expectant public: ‘The Mayawati story has many dimensions. It is an amazing personal saga of an otherwise nondescript Dalit woman driven by relentless ambition to become one of India’s most powerful leaders.’

A few pages later the many dimensions begin to tire and an intellectual fatigue creeps into the book. The bane of any biographer, a creation of exclusivity for their subject, comes into play as early as on page four, except that under scrutiny, the argument slips.

‘The fact that she does not quite belong to the political mainstream is underlined by Mayawati’s dogged rejection of the debate of secularism versus communalism, which has dominated Indian politics over the past two decades.’

By making this the axiom of his thesis, that Mayawati is different, an imponderable, and beats classification as a species or sub-species of the political genus, Bose attempts a bold leap. He falls flat because if it was her uniqueness he was aspiring to create, the ‘secular-communal debate’ was the wrong terrain to navigate. With the exception of Lalu Prasad Yadav and Mulayam Singh Yadav, all provincial parties have remained detached from the secular-communal dialect. It is by no means a position adopted by Mayawati alone.

Furthermore, she has, like her peers across India, caressed this ‘debate’, whenever an opportunity suggested itself. Mainstream Indian politics in the last two decades has been dominated by three contentions, not just the ‘secular-communal debate’. How can we discount the significance of the politics of the economy and the politics of caste? All political parties, Mayawati included, have been participants in one, if not all three, of these flows within mainstream national politics.

Particular attention is paid to the relationship between Kanshi Ram’s prophet-like status and Mayawati’s own role as disciple. This unfortunately ignores the fact, as Achin Vanaik had pointed out that, ‘Dalit consciousness-raising movements have a much longer history than the more recent flexing of independent Dalit political power.’¹ Rather than placing Mayawati as a catalyst within the already existing sphere of Dalit politics, Behenji constantly tries to persuade us that Dalit political assertion, empowerment and its national trajectory are a new phenomenon, a creation of Mayawati, who at one point in the book is described, ‘on a cycle with her pigtail flying, scouring the dusty mud paths of the Uttar Pradesh countryside.’

Another passage from the Introduction is enough to demolish the claim that this is an objective study. Sample this for example: ‘As the country’s most successful Dalit leader, overshadowing even Babasaheb Ambedkar, she has indeed given unprecedented political profile and clout to a community crushed under social prejudice stretching back millennia…’

Even with the burden of a flawed theme at the beginning, Behenji does seek to break new ground, intermittently. One domain that very few students of political narrative have devoted much research to is the politics of iconic creativity within Dalit society. Bose attempts this and establishes its significance in relation to other poignant themes like the networks of political mobilization within Dalit politics such as BAMCEF and DS4 that led to the subsequent creation of the BSP and their very real threat to the political hegemony of the north Indian upper castes within the RSS and Congress party.

Unfortunately while the author constructs a literary Temple of Dalit Worthies he spends too much time worshipping at the icons, rather than in revealing the construct.

The second section of the book, a veritable ‘Mayawati guide’ (as the author himself refers to it) is more reminiscent of a defence brief in which the client (Mayawati) is represented by a lawyer (the author). One of the recurrent accusations against the current Chief Minister of U.P has been her penchant for transferring bureaucrats and government officers, ‘at her whim and fancy’. After a lengthy appraisal of her record at this exercise the author merely states, ‘…the record of other chief ministers in the state is similar.’

Similarly, charges of bureaucratic and political nepotism are dismissed saying, ‘Mayawati was certainly not the first or only chief minister in the state to manipulate the administration for her own ends.’

On the matter of seizing public land for herself, Bose supplies another vindication asserting that the case, ‘…is similar to that of former Chief Minister Mulayam Singh who did the same…’

Nor does his defence cease. On the issue of her huge personal fortune Ajay Bose concludes that: ‘Condemnation of Mayawati’s (sic) vast wealth and lavish spending must be tempered with the recognition of the general absence of any kind of moral code in Indian politics when it comes to money… There are innumerable political leaders who…also have extraordinarily deep pockets.’

As if it’s all right then.

Correspondingly, critiques of Mayawati offered by Dalit intellectuals that focus on real issues are set upon by the author in a manner reminiscent of some of Mayawati’s own vehement reactions to criticism within the U.P. assembly. Bose cites Santosh Mehrotra of the Planning Commission who uses human development indices to show the plight of UP’s Dalits in relation to their counterparts in Tamil Nadu. The indications are as revealing as they are shocking. Nonetheless for the author: ‘Statistical surveys and detached academic studies, in their anxiety to map the terrible living conditions of the oppressed group from under a microscope, often lose sight of the fact that they are individuals with raw emotions coursing through their psyche. This is particularly true for Dalits, who have been browbeaten and demoralized for many centuries.’

Needless to say, the beating of brows and demoralization has not been limited to Dalits in UP alone, surely. Why then does Behenji and general contemporary narratives on Dalit politics dwell on the theme of political victimhood as if it were the preserve of the Dalits of UP? Dalits in Tamil Nadu have done better despite the same disadvantages as their counterparts in UP possibly because of better political leadership. Incidentally hyperbolic flourishes that describe Dalits in India as living ‘on the edge of Indian society like beasts in the wilderness’ or indeed as ‘living like animals’ do not find any resonance in this rendition of Mayawati’s life.

Finally, if there is anything of merit in this work on Mayawati’s life, it is the attention to detail, albeit in a stylized journalism, of her rapport or lack of it with some key persona of UP politics, in particular her relations with Mulayam Singh Yadav and Kalyan Singh. It is in this aspect of her life that Bose’s book renders a respectably clear picture of very complex dynamics in the labyrinthine corridors of UP politics.

Unfortunately the book ends in the speculative style of hack-lit. In the last chapter titled, ‘Prime Minister Mayawati?’, Bose ponders on the possibilities of Mayawati’s chances of becoming prime minister. He suggests that her chances are strengthened because she is, ‘a favourite of the Sangh Parivar’ and enjoys a strong support from the RSS in particular because of her creation of the Dalit-Brahmin alliance. On the very same page the author also asserts that the BSP will attract a large section of the Muslim vote. Perhaps this inherent contradiction will be lost to the post-modern compulsions of social engineering. The last sentence of the book, ‘It is perhaps just a matter of time before she does become the prime minister of the country,’ is the final, general banality the reader is subjected to.

Yusuf Ansari

 

1. Achin Vanaik, The Furies of Indian Communalism: Religion, Modernity and Secularization, Verso, 1997.