Can Nagas evolve our own model of political governance?
In an interesting piece of news, which is significant in more ways than one, veteran anti-corruption activist Anna Hazare has revealed his plans for the 2014 general elections—to shortlist candidates for the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. His plan is to travel across the country, tell people to come up with candidates and pick the best out of them and then he will campaign for the candidates in the 2014 elections. While this is definitely something out of the box, yet how this idea will be put into practice within the context of the present political system, it is going to be quite interesting. Anna has also mentioned about the possibility of a ‘people's party’ emerging from these candidates. He also expects leadership would also emerge automatically from among these candidates. Whether the idea put forward by Anna will be practical and acceptable, one will have to wait and watch. However it is obvious that people in India are feeling disenchanted with the present set of status-quo, whether it is the corrupt leaders, political parties or the system. And perhaps it is this frustration among the people, which activist like Anna Hazare will want to make use of to offer some political alternative. It is in this context that we can perhaps revisit the discourse on western democracy and the flaws therein. We all agree that democracy has its problems, especially in the context of non-western developing societies who are still in a state of transition, Nagaland included. Any student of political science will tell you that to make democracy work successfully; there are certain conditions, which have to be met.
Firstly what we notice is that since the masses are mostly uneducated they lack the consciousness or the mind to comprehend the problems in their society or polity. They do not know the value of their votes and corrupt politicians end buy easily buying them off in exchange for their right—vote. That is why education and average literacy is important for democracy to work. Then, alertness of the people is essential condition without which the true idea of democracy cannot be realized. According to Bryce, “indolence and indifference on the part of the citizens are the two enemies of democracy”. Naga people clearly lack this virtue and a majority of us we are simply not interested in public affairs. This is only perpetuating incompetence and abuse of power by the few. Our failure to live up to the expectation of the democratic ideals should perhaps also make us conscious on the need to explore alternative ideas or processes, in tune with our culture and history. We can perhaps learn a thing or two from the Chinese. We have already mentioned in these columns about their system—which inculcates Chinese characteristics and based on their unique demand and need of the time.
The world could learn from China’s ‘political meritocracy’. It’s one party rule selects leaders based on ability and judgment. The idea is on selecting political leaders with ‘above-average ability to make morally informed political judgments’. It is often stated that in the post-World War II era, East Asian societies developed rapidly at least partly due to the sound decision-making of meritocratically selected political rulers. Perhaps the suggestion of Anna Hazare to identify the right candidates or even the oft repeated talk about Nagas going in for selection and not election, they all stem from the desire to improve upon the present state of affairs—where leaders are chosen on the basis of competitive elections and they are more likely to make decisions influenced by short-term political considerations that bear on their chances of getting re-elected. But we need to have leaders who care about the people’s interests and make decisions that consider the interests of all relevant stakeholders, including future generations. Clearly the emphasis is shifting to deliver good governance led by able and virtuous political leaders. Can Nagas evolve our own model of political governance?
