Re-thinking Indian Democracy

Watching the news on Indian TV these last weeks as we collectively analyze the carnage in Mumbai leads to soul-searching in so many ways. It takes an effort to get over the shock and horror of the terror acts committed, to mourn the dead and honour the brave, but we need also to think deeply about what we have seen and heard and understand what India needs to do so that the nation can get back on track.

Everyone has to participate

The first step is that we need to take our nation back. Take it back from those to whom we have entrusted it for over 60 years, and give it to the people, all the citizens who deserve far, far better. Shake off the colonialism of the mind, the attitude that there is a “they” that is the government, that they are the “mai-baap” of us all and control our collective destiny. It is time for the second freedom struggle.

What does it mean to be free? Rabindranath Tagore defined it in terms of knowledge, unity, truth, striving for perfection and above all, holding our heads high at all times. Unfortunately, we have lost all of these in the political institutions we have created in the last sixty years. Not a single political party in the country practices transparency in its leadership, its internal organization or its accounts. The people have no knowledge of what really happens inside them, or inside the government. Steps like the Right To Information Act have given us some reactive oversight after the fact, but there is no proactive participation in decision making by the people.

Truth is usually the first casualty once a politician or an officer takes charge. Sometimes this is a strategic need, but in most cases it is used to hide something that pampers some interest that the public shouldn’t get to know about. Fortunately we have a courageous press that probes and reveals much more than those in power want us to know about. But truth shouldn’t be something we have to extract as if we were a nation of dentists, it should be offered up to us as the partners that we are in this undertaking, as our right. This means that not only should the press probe and discover, but every government agency should openly offer everything it knows to its citizens. We don’t want the sound bites of seasoned politicians, we want the hard facts from professionals who can participate in discussions that help us understand what is being done in our name. And be willing to change their plans based on our feedback.

In India we have a billion people who each day have to fight for survival, fight to get ahead and keep the place that they have carved for themselves. Everyone strives for perfection in their own way, but we see that many of those we have given privileged positions, to carry out the work that we have delegated to them, forget that they have to continually strive for perfection too. A position of power and responsibility in the public or private sector, in a corporation or a NGO or even in the family carries with it the expectation that the person holding the position is in a daily struggle to do a better job, anticipate what might go wrong, and help the nation succeed.

As a nation, each one of us has to hold our head high and look the politician, the officer, the manager, the organizer and the patriarch in the eye and demand competence and truth, action and participation, or ask them to abdicate and let someone better do the job. But this cannot be a one-way street: each of us have to do our part in taking this nation to greatness. For too long we have each considered our civic duty consists in paying our taxes and turning up to vote. We need to take part: this is how we do it.

Home and Around

Like everything else, it begins at home. We cannot be a great nation until each one of us takes care of the part that has been entrusted to us. Once we do that, we need to look outside our boundaries and see what help our neighbours need. Not just the neighbours who live in the adjoining flat, but those who live in the adjoining slum. Join or form a neighbourhood association and work together to improve the collective lives of all who live around you. Make sure that you reach out to the adjacent neighbourhoods and coordinate with them to make your part of the city or town secure, clean, with good roads and drinking water. Reach out to the incumbent politicians and local officers and make it clear to them who the boss is. Help them get rid of crime in the neighbourhood, and make sure that they are supportive. Else they will lose your support in the next election.

Prepare for disasters: not just terror attacks, but fire, heavy rain, earthquake or flood. Organize community meetings to get everyone involved, make sure that there are people trained in first aid, keep essential supplies, create maps/plans of your neighbourhood that would help in case of emergency and choose and train volunteers to organize a response should anything happen. Hold drills and refresher training from time to time. This is not just at home, but at work and in the school. Don’t wait for someone else to ensure your safety, do it yourself.

Once we have an involved citizenry looking after their homes, workplaces and neighbourhoods, we need to take the next step: we need to transform the existing government setup into something that is geared up to meet the people’s needs. The first step is to create elective posts of local representatives for each department that is directly concerned with the people. For example, at an annual general meeting of all the neighbour associations that fall under a police thana, two representatives should be chosen who have the right to supervise the actions of the police in these neighbourhoods. They would have the right to visit the lockup at any time of the day of night, accompany the police on any raids they make, and also help anyone in their neighbourhood with the police. In order to give them teeth, they need to have access to officers higher in the chain of command. Some remuneration has to be provided and some reimbursement for expenses, by the association and there should be a limit that no one can hold this position twice in succession.

Similar representatives should be chosen for water, public health, electricity, gas, roads, garbage etc and we need to make sure that procedures of these department recognize the supervision by these local citizens. By making the parts of the administration that interact directly with the people part of the community, and making the members of the community part of them we will improve efficiency, reduce corruption and ensure the right prioritization of resources that meets local needs. This will go a long way to making everyone’s immediate lives better. It will also make us all better citizens as we better understand what it takes to run a neighbourhood, a ward, and a part of a city.

For the larger units of administration like the entire city, district, state or the nation, other changes are needed to make them more responsive to the citizens and for the citizen to participate fully in their operations. But in the meantime, if the citizens use the neighbourhood groups to educate themselves about the issues faced in the larger units, discuss the pros and cons of the policy and legislation and invite participation in these deliberations from the elected representatives and political parties, they can participate more completely in the elections. Not base their votes on a little knowledge gleaned in the campaigning period, but through a better understanding of the issues and the players.

Gathering Intelligence and Working with the Community

There are calls now for new legislation to counter terror, for a centralised force to fight terror, to get politics and law and order out of the mix, and concentrate on this new enemy we have. These are all misguided attempts: the answer is to look within for the solution, to act locally, to understand how terror works and be able to detect it before the attack.

We will never conquer terror until we conquer smuggling. We will never conquer smuggling until we defeat drug dealers and petty crimes. We will never defeat drug dealers until we have a clean police force that focuses on really being a part of the neighbourhood and fighting all the types of crime that occurs. This will happen when the people work with the police, not fear them. This means that police must be professional, and paid well and trained well. Recruitment should be open and transparent and the feedback of the neighbourhood associations must be taken into account for appointment to the top posts. Instead of a colonial police that enforces the raj of the state or the local politician, we must have a police that is with the people. Then the people will be with the police.

People should feel encouraged to look to the police to solve their problems, and they will bring the intelligence that will stop terror. The newcomer to the locality, the theft of materials that may be used in bomb-making, the presence of arms and ammunition, are all sights that may be noticed, especially by those who live on the margins of our society. If they feel that reporting these things bring more trouble than it is worth, we will never have the intelligence that we need.

The same goes for the health services: unless the people trust that they will be helped, and not put in greater hardship, they will not go for treatment. This could delay the detection of a biological attack, as patterns of illness and outbreaks need to be correlated to understand if an attack is in progress.

The information and tips that the police get needs to be analysed centrally so each and every police person should use SMS to send in reports to their local thana, which are automatically relayed onto state and central servers for immediate correlation. This should be expanded to include health services, neighbourhood associations, the press and other sources so that enough data is available for correlation.

This is of course the place for the central forces: to analyse the intelligence in time, or when the terrorist has been stealthy enough, and when the warning signs are too many and confusing. A central agency can help in three ways. First of all, by correlating the information from all over the country, matching the patterns with information gained from other intelligence agencies, and applying the knowledge and experience of those who have been fighting terror for many years. Secondly, by training first responders in detecting and fighting terrorists and ensuring that they have the equipment and procedures that ensure they can work together with the central forces. Finally, the central forces can step into the breach to backup the local forces.

The final step is to appoint the spokesman. During these chaotic events when everyone is looking for information, there has to be an authoritative source that can reach out through the media, the internet, through localized SMS to inform the affected people and the rest of the country and even the world about what has happened and what action is being taken. It is at these times that keeping quiet does a lot of harm and allows rumours to circulate. Every city, every state and the centre should have a single source for information which has intimate knowledge of what is happening, but divulges only that part of it that wont harm operational activities, yet keep the right amount of information flowing. A quick initial briefing, and then hourly updates would not only keep morale up, but could be used to enlist the help of the people to apprehend the culprits.

The responses to the heart-rending events need to be thought through carefully. Lets us all work together to build a better India from the ashes of our naïveté, getting involved and participating in democracy.