non party political process r. kothari.pdf

Praxis International 333

THE NON-PARTY POLITICAL PROCESS

Ranji Kothari

A sense of uncertainty seems to characterize both our approach to publicaffairs and our modes of thinking about them. Underlying it is a growingcontradiction between expectations born out of a given ideology, or doctrine, ortheorythe Theory of Progress, the Theory of Development, the Theory ofParticipationand what happens in reality. While all these are interrelated andwill be dealt with, the focus of this paper will be on the problem of participation,its changing context and growing paradoxes, and the emerging possibilities andthresholds of both theoretical concern and practical action. My analysis will bebased by and large on the Indian experience but is more widely applicable andwill be presented in general terms.

1. PARTICIPATION, DEVELOPMENT AND THE STATE

Participation is the crowning concept of the liberal paradigm of progress,equality and democracy. It is shared by a variety of occidental schools ofthought, including those avowedly opposed to Liberalism. It is only with thedawn of the age of mass politics, and still later with the entry into the globalpolitical process of poor, backward, societies, that its innate paradoxes andcontradictions came out into the open. With the advent of development as adoctrine of doing good to all, both academic and political interest in the value ofparticipation soared high. Until, by the end of the sixties, it became clear that toparticipate in development was a prerogative (of some) although proclaimed asa right (of all), and that it was in particular denied to the masses, the people,the poorin whose name development took place.

The Myth of Participation

The myth still persistsabove all among the masses themselves. It hasbeen propelled by two powerful streams of thought, populist politics andpopulist economics, one perfected as an art of arousing faith among the massesin their benefactors and the other developed as an expertise in legitimizing sucha faith. Both have co-existed with popular misery, degradation and destitution.Herein lies the central paradox: the greater the misery the greater the faith inpopulism. And the key slogan of populismwhether of populist politics or ofpopulist economicshas been participation.1

The more the economics of development, and the politics of development,are kept out of reach of the masses, the more the latter are asked to participatein them. For, they are told, it is for them that development takes place. Ifpoverty still persists or at times gets worse (a fact that is smartly woven into therhetoric of populism), it is because of extraneous factors intervening. Like

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corruption (a global phenomenon), lack of adequate capital (deliberatelydenied to us by world agencies), the price of oil and the world economicrecession, the arms race (again externally fanned) and of course the destabiliz-ing policies of outside powers. All this makes the task more difficult. But theruling elite is, we are told, determined to stand up to the challenge, keeppressing for more resources, more technology, more SDRs, both to stave off thepainful transition and to take the economy to a higher plateau ofperformancein productivity, in availability of goods and services, and in thewell-being and prosperity of the masses. If only the opposition would let usproceed, there would be fewer agitations and greater order. The politics are allright, the basic model is right, all we need is peoples cooperation and obedienceto the law (participation) and less conflict. Some would say (especially theeconomists): less politics.

Depoliticization

Here lies the second major paradox of this age of participation: an increase inthe intensity and volume of populist rhetoric which is, however, fashioned tode-politicize, in an increasing manner, the people, the development process,and indeed the operation of the political system itself, so that growing numbersof a powerless populace become marginalized both from the organised economyand from organised politics and become dependent on one or a few dominantindividuals and their authorized agentsthe techno-bureaucracy, the dadas,the skilled experts in communication and mass media. (As I will argue a littlelater, the opposition parties too are found to endorse the same political style: anincrease in populist appeal alongside a decline in the peoples role in politics.)

And yet the symbols of peoples participation are by no means given up;they have only been reduced to rituals of a plebiscitary democracythe Leadergoing out to the people at regular intervals, meeting them in the thousands,becoming one with them and asking for their loyalty and their votes, not somuch through party organisations or other institutional linkages with thepeople, but rather by personalised appeals and charismatic techniques instillingin more and more people a sense of threat to community, religion or nation.Here lies the third paradox of participation: the greater the withdrawal of powerfrom the people and from organizations representing them, the more direct therelationship between those in power and those out of it; and the more isolatedand marginalized and oppressed a people, the more dependent they become onthe centre of power. Participation gets translated into clienthood, small crumbsthrown off the national cake during (or just before) an election, and thepromise of more to come. Increasingly the poor and the helpless becometrapped in this closed pyramid of participation. With this, participationlikedevelopmentbecomes a legitimization of centralized governance, the dis-mantling of intermediate structures,2 a regime of law and order, and repression.

The Role of the State

These new mutations in meaning systems are directly related to the nature

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and role of the State in our times. Four interrelated processes are at work. First,the conception of autonomy of the State that was viewed as an instrument oftransformation (both by the elite that came to power after Independence and byradical groups) is under decline, in part simply due to the proven incapacity ofgovernments to perform, but in good part by deliberate design. The dominantelite, having used State intervention in the economic and social spheres for aquarter century after Independence and having developed a wide enoughproduction base for supporting their lifestyle and the surpluses needed forpolitical survival and manipulation, are seen to withdraw from an extended rolefor the State precisely at a time when such a role would have had to becomemore distributive and mass-oriented. Instead, the State is now perceived as anagent of technological modernization, with a view to catching up with thedeveloped world and emerging on world and regional maps as a strong State(hence the vast sums spent on armaments) rather than coping with the pressing,often desperate, needs and demands of the poor.

Second, in respect of the relationship between the State and civil society onefinds that in a period of economic stagnation and political instability (the formergrowing from the refusal of the ruling elite to expand the internal market whichwould require redistributive policies, the latter from the consequences thereof,resulting in mass discontent and turmoil) the coercive nature of the Stateincreases. There is a growing demand for unity and consensusnot in the formof an organic expression of civil society, but in the form of compliance withwhatever happens to be the ruling orthodoxy, dissent against which isconsidered illegitimate. And as this happens the political process becomeslimited to agents and emissaries who in the course of time become lessinterested in playing mediative roles and more interested in becoming a lawunto themselves, with an increasing dependence on the police and paramilitaryforces on the one hand and local mafias and hired hoodlums on the other.

Third, even the bearers of State power, viz. those in control of government (asdistinct from the State), including the presumed supremos of power by virtue oftheir charisma and wide popular appeal, seem to be losing out, wielding anauthority that is no longer based on their own power and volition, andincreasingly becoming pawns in the hands of forces beyond their control. Inlarge parts of rural India (as well as vast tracts of the growing cities andindustrial conglomerations) government is on the decline, its mediating andordering role being replaced by the direct rule of local landlords andhegemonical castes, the growing penetration of commercial interests into ruralhinterlands and tribal habitats, the rise of ill-bred contractors to new managersof money power and the still more spectacular ascendancy of the newest of thenouveaux riches, the dealers in illicit liquor and gambling dens, all of this beingprotected and endorsed by a new breed of corrupt local politicians (or theirhenchmen), bureaucrats and policemen.

Fourth, such a sharp decline in the rule of law and the authority of thegoverning elite has made secular power as such, and the State as its institutional-embodiment, vulnerable to new attacks from old forces that were thought tohave been put on the defensive. Among these are the new fundamentalisms ofreligious sects giving rise to perversions of old civilizations such as the Vishwa


Hindu Parishad, the newfound power of presumably cultural organizationslike the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Jamaat-e-Islami, and thegrowing communalism within secular politics3 thanks to the desperate strugglefor survival on the part of ruling individuals and cliques, all of this takingattention away from the politics of socio-economic transformation and gravelyaffecting both the institutional framework and the finer subtleties and decor ofthe political process.

Alongside this backlash from the grassroots of society, as it were, are othernew forces at work which also serve to undermine the autonomous political roleof the State, or even its minimal role as mediator in social strife and convulsions,for the sake of a larger cohesion. Thus beneath the outer veneer of plannedeconomic development there has emerged a new breed of highly connectedmiddlemen and professionals (in the guise of liaison officers and managementofficials) who are contributing to the increasing alienation of public goods byprivate individuals4 as well as to the growing lumpenization of the productionprocess under the impact of naked corruption and the open subversion ofprevailing mechanisms of administrative and judicial control andaccountability.5 Complementary to the massive increase in what is known as theinformal or unorganised sector of the economy there is taking place a veryrapid expansion of this criminal sector of the economy which is recordingprobably the highest rate of growth with no holds barred. Together the twoprocesses have led to one consequence: alongside withdrawal from organisedpolitics there is also taking place a withdrawal from the organised economy.While as a percentage of gross indicators this may not register in a big way(though I have serious doubts regarding the coverage of economic activitiesoutside the formal sector in official statistics), its impact on the political processand on the role of the State is quite serious. In turn, it accentuates the growingvacuum in the structure of the State, reinforces the depoliticization of thepeople, increases their sense of insecurity and isolation, and makes themdependent on charismatic individuals (or causes them to look for a newsaviour).

With all this the role of the State in social transformation has becomeundermined, development has led to a striking dualism of the social order,and democracy has become the playground for growing corruption, crimina-lization, repression and intimidation for large masses of the people whose verysurvival is made to depend on their staying out of the political process andwhose desperate economic state incapacitates them from entering the regulareconomic process as well.

International Context

These developments receive sustenance and support from and are indeedencouraged by the international system. All the pathologies touched uponabovethe exclusion of millions of people from the organised economy andtheir acceptance of their impoverishment and destitution as both natural andinevitable, withdrawal of basic resources from the countryside, forcing thosewho lived by them to migrate to cities already full of filth and squalor,


depoilticization of the public realm and the rise of techno-bureaucracies, anincrease in both the range and intensity of coercion by the Stateare spurredon by a new breed of entrepreneurs in the service of the global status quo which isundermining the role of the State even as it was earlier conceived by the nationalbourgeoisie. As the world capitalist system enters its terminal phase under thetwin pincers of an unprecedented arms race and the unsatiated monster oftechnology bent on a new international division of labour that dispenses with anorganised proletariat, the struggle over lifestyles and resources is entering itsmost desperate phase. Politically , this has led to the cooptation of Third Worldregimes and to arming them with enough flow of capital, technology andarmaments to keep them and their modern middle-class base afloat and toprotect them from social turmoil and the demands of large hordes of the poorand the destitute. In return, there is taking place a reverse transfer of naturalresources and raw materials, of foodstuffs as well as of manufactured consumergoods that rely on labour-intensive and polluting technologies, all at continuallydepressed prices. There is also a determination to order and discipline theworking classes in the Third World so that both the quantum and the structureof production are regulated to suit the requirements of world capitalism. Theseare the much denied conditionalities accompanying otherwise unjustifiedloans from the IMF and the World Bank, loans that are basically meant to bailout corrupt and incompetent regimes. The North-South rhetoric, the philoso-phy of self-reliance and de-linking, the resolutions on a new international orderhave all been mastered by this universal union of elites and affluent classes,cutting across nations and ideological pretences, and putting alternativestrategies of basic needs, national self-reliance, minimum standards of healthand nutrition for all, and increases in employment and participation in theproduction process into cold storage.

2. THE STRUGGLE FOR SURVIVAL

The world scenario is beset by a gigantic battle for survivalsurvival ofachieved lifestyles versus survival of sheer life, survival of corporate (economicand political) power structures versus survival of states and cultures in largeparts of the Third World, survival of peace and dignity for millions versussurvival of structures of dominance and monopoly for ruling elites. In such aworld, highly defensive and increasingly desperate at both ends of the powerrope, democratic politics must suffer a big dip, technocracy and the managersof strife replace popular politicians and the bulk of the people everywhere areasked to stay away from politics. It is in their own interest that they do so, theyare told. Provided they do so and are not carried away by radicals of all types,their welfare and prosperity will be taken care of.

Turbulence

Are the people accepting such a withdrawal from the political process?Fortunately not. All over the world there is evidence of a turbulent conscious-ness among large sections of the deprived who had for long believed in both the


grace of God and the grace of Caesar but have for some time now realized thatthere is no grace (or compassion or mercy) among the mighty and that onlythrough struggle against them can anything be expected. In India this isparticularly in evidence, arising partly out of the revolution in norms generatedover decades by the adoption of a formally democratic polity in a society basedfor centuries on the principle of inequality, partly out of a shaken faith in thetheology of development that successfully made its way into the thinking andbelief systems of the people throughout the fifties and sixties, and partly out ofthe sheer weight and crushing experience of indignities, violence and deceitexperienced by the poor and the dispossessed. All this was greatly reinforced bydisillusionment with successive governments belonging to different partiesthroughout the seventies, in each of which a believing people had put its faith.There is discontent and despair in the airstill highly diffuse, fragmented andunorganised. But there is a growing awareness of rights, felt politically andexpressed politically, and by and large still aimed at the State. Whenever amechanism of mobilization has become available, this consciousness has foundexpression, often against very heavy odds, against a constellation of intereststhat are too powerful and complacent to shed (even share) the privileges. Atbottom it is a consciousness against a paradigm of society that rests on deliberateindifference to the plight of the impoverished and destitute who are beingdriven to the threshold of starvationby the logic of the paradigm itself.

Failure of the System

It is with respect to the latter that the failure not just of government but oforganised political parties, trade unions and other traditional forms ofopposition to the ruling elite lies. The crisis that we face in India is caused by thefailure and default of the system, not merely of its governing structure. It is asystem based on (a) a parliamentary democracy operating through partycompetition that is getting increasingly desperate and violent, (b) a mixedeconomy composed of a large state sector and a large corporate sector both ofwhich have failed to generate opportunities for the people and have insteadsurvived by draining resources from the countryside, (c) an agrarian and foresteconomy that has ceased to produce more food and has instead becomepulverised by the onslaught of commercial interests and corrupt politics, and(d) a science and technology establishment so devoid of internal dynamism andso thoroughly dependent on imported ideas and technologies that even theinitial euphoria of self-reliance has given way to the rhetoric of interdepend-ence. All this is further buttressed by a military establishment that apart frommaking ever more new demands on the countrys resources is also increasinglycalled upon to perform police functions (spelling terror in some parts of thecountry). A press that is trying its best to intervene in a period of growingrepression of the poor, ethnic minorities, women, and social activists whohappen to be working among these strata, is in effect becoming a mechanism fordiffusing discontent and preventing confrontation.

It is a failure of the system in a much deeper way too. First, in the sense thatthe established instruments of the systemParliament, the Planning Commis-


sion, the executiveare simply unable to deal with a considerably changedagenda of tasks, to respond to peoples expectations or cope with a scenario ofdeepening conflict, violence and vandalism. Second, it is a failure that theestablished opponents of the ruling eliteopposition parties, trade unions,peasant organizations, left-wing intellectualscannot cope with. Third, it is afailure from which very large numbers of the people stand to benefit. As arguedalready, the middle class (which in absolute numbers is massive in India) hassucceeded in utilizing the State to provide itself with a production base that cansustain its parasitic lifestyle; to this must be added the numerous lumpenelements that are finding employment in the lower rungs of an ever growingbureaucracy and in a political process that increasingly relies on mercenaries.

Crisis of Theory

Above all, the failure of the system is embedded in a crisis of theory. Theliberal conception of the market being the arbiter of interests broke down longago. The social democratic theory, based on the positive and benevolent role ofthe State and on a conception of welfare equity, is also of not much value in theabsence of high growth rates and massive State surpluses (as well as of an honestand efficient State apparatus). Nor does the more radical stream of socialistthought, namely Marxism, provide a clear enough guide to action in a societythe cutting edge of which is not a growing working class but a combination ofstagnation in the rural economy and a technology that inhibits employment.These two together lead to a phenomenal growth in populations living on themargin, to a growth of civil strife and violence within the lower classes, and to anecological devastation resulting in a withdrawal of traditional sources ofsustenance and nutrition from the rural poor. Given the logic of depoliticiza-tion, local polarizations are prevented from aggregating into national andinternational ones. Theoretical models and ideological doctrines forged inanother age and a different cultural location are of little use in a social andpolitical context where poverty takes totally new forms and where the linkagebetween progress and poverty has become so organic and almostirreversible. Hence also the total irrelevance of all theories of participation.Indeed, as one reviews the overall scene one is struck by not only the steepdecline in leadership and moral values but also by this poverty of theory as aguide to action. The result is an intellectual and moral vacuum which is thenfilled by populist rhetoric on the one hand (taking the place of theory), andcoercion and corruption on the other (taking the place of politics). Andcharisma covers up the two so that there is hardly any sense of failure or crisis, atleast among the ruling class.

3. THE POLITICAL AND IDEOLOGICAL CONTEXT OF NON-PARTYFORMATIONS

This is the larger context in which we can discuss the broad theme of peoplesmovements and grassroots politics and, as a part thereof, the phenomenon ofnon-party political formations. To recapitulate and enlarge upon the argument


already made, it is a context in which the engines of growth are in decline, theorganised working class is not growing, the process of marginalization isspreading, technology is turning anti-people, development has become aninstrument of the privileged class, and the State has lost its role as an agent oftransformation, or even as a mediator in the affairs of civil society. It is a contextof massive centralization of power and resources, centralization that does notstop at the national centre either and makes the nation state itself an abjectonlooker and a client of a global world order.6

It is a context in which the party system (and the organised democraticprocess) and the regular bureaucracy are in a state of decline and are beingreplaced by a new set of actors and a new order. The new order is manned by aclass of professional managers and experts in the art of injecting corruption inthe organised sectors of the economy and the polity, on the one hand, and sets ofhoodlums and fixers at the lower reaches of the economy and the polity, on theother. It is a context in which revolutionary parties too have been contained andin part coopted (as have most of the unions), in which the traditional fronts ofradical actionthe working-class movement and the militant peasantry led byleft partiesare in deep crisis, in which there appears to be a growing hiatusbetween these parties and the lower classes, especially the very poor and thedestitute who are not amenable to the received wisdom of left politics, and inwhich on the other hand there is taking place a massive backlash fromestablished interests in the form of legislative measures aimed against the toilingclasses7 and a steep rise in repression and terror perpetrated both by the Stateand by private vested interests.8

And all this takes place in the broader context of growing internationalpressures and conditionalities that herald an end to self-reliance and seek, onthe one hand, to integrate the organised economy into the world market and, onthe other hand, to remove millions of people from the economy by throwingthem in the dustbins of historyimpoverished, destitute, drained of their ownresources9 and deprived of minimum requirements of health and nutrition,10denied entitlement to food and water and shelter,11 in short an unwanted anddispensable lot whose fate seems to be doomed.12 A veritable scenario ofTriage!

The Role of Grassroots Activism

It is with the plight of these rejects of society and of organised politics, as alsoironically of revolutionary theory and received doctrines of all schools ofthought, that the grassroots movements and non-party formations areconcerned. They have to be seen as part of the democratic struggle at variouslevels, in a radically different social context than was posited both by theincrementalists and by the revolutionaries, at a point of history when existinginstitutions and the theoretical models on which they are based have run theircourse, when there is a search for new instruments of political action (theexisting ones being in a state either of complacency or of weariness andexhaustion) and when a large vacuum in political space is emerging thanks tothe decline in the role of the State and the virtual collapse of government in


large parts of rural India. These grassroots movements are based on deepstirrings of consciousness, of an awareness of crisis that could conceivably beturned into a catalyst of new opportunities. They are to be seen as a response tothe incapacity of the State to hold its various constituents in a framework ofpositive action, and as a response to the States growing refusal (not justinability) to deliver the goods and its increasingly repressive character. They areto be seen as attempts to open alternative political spaces outside the usualarenas of party and government (though not outside the State), new forms oforganisation and struggle meant to rejuvenate the State and to make it onceagain an instrument of liberation from exploitative structures (both traditionaland modern), in which the underprivileged and the poor are trapped. Thesegrassroot movements are really to be seen as part of an attempt at redefiningpolitics at a time of massive attempts at narrowing its range. Their sense ofpolitics is different from electoral and legislative politics, which has relegatedlarge sections of the people to being outside the process of power. They alsoinvolve a different basic conception of political activity as not being confined tocapturing State power but being seen as a comprehensive process of interveningin the historical process.

Redefining Politics

Grassroots activism is an attempt at a redefinition of politics in another sensetoo, namely a redefinition of the content of politics. Issues and arenas of humanactivity that have not until now been seen as amenable to political actionpeoples health, rights over forests and community resources, even deeplypersonal and primordial issues such as are involved in the struggle for womensrightsare defined as political and provide arenas of struggle. In a number ofgrassroots movements launched by the non-traditional LeftChipko, theminers struggle in Chhattisgarh, the Ryot Coolie Sangham in Andhra Pradesh,the Satyagraha led by the peasants movement in Kanakpura in Karnatakaagainst the mining and export of granite, the Jharkhand Mukti Morchathestruggle is not limited to economic and political demands but is extended tocover ecological, cultural and educational issues as well. Nor is it limited to theexternal enemy, as it includes a sustained and drawn-out campaign againstmore pervasive sources of economic and cultural ruin such as drunkenness,despoliation of the environment and insanitary habits, reminding one of theoriginal conception of Swarajya as a struggle for liberation not just from alienrule but also from internal decay.

In sum, the phenomenon of grassroots activism is to be seen as part of anattempt to kindle faith and energy in anti-establishment forces in a variety ofsettings at a time of general drift and loss of elan; also at a time when thesuffering masses are found to be scared of confrontation with the status quo andare in fact likely to walk into the trap both of populist rhetoric in the modernsector and of authoritarian patriarchy and patrimony in the traditional arena, ata time of a need for people with will and creativity and a readiness to wagesustained struggle not just against a particular local tyrant but against the largersocial system.


New Roles

Not everyone involved in popular movements sees it in this manner. Many ofthem are too preoccupied with immediate struggles to be able to think in widerterms, others are suspicious of both abstractions and aggregates, and in any casethe conditions for concerted and consolidated action informed by an adequatetheory are just not there. And yet there is enough evidence to suggest thatunderlying the micro movements is a search and restlessness for both a moreadequate understanding of the forces at work and a more adequate response tothem, a certain conviction that available ideologies are inadequate to providethese, and enough experience to know that the existing instruments of formalpoliticsparties, elections, even the Press and judiciarycannot be expectedto cope with the crisis they and those they work among are in. In one area afteranother where we in Lokayan have had dialogues with activists working amongthe dalits, the landless and bonded labour, the tribals and various othersegments of the rural, poor that have been uprooted and forced to migrate to thecities, we found that none of the existing parties, including those that mouthradical slogans, really cared for these inchoate and unorganised and on thewhole mute and suffering masses.13 Hence the need for a new genre oforganisation and a new conception of political roles.

It is to fill this need that the widespread phenomenon of non-party politicalformations (as distinct from non-political voluntary agencies working onvarious development schemes) has occurred. In part they are performing rolespreviously performed by government or by opposition parties and their frontorganizations (due largely to the abrogation of responsibility by the latter). Inpart they are performing new roles that have emerged in the new context of thehuman condition as described in this paper: a condition of profoundmarginalization of millions of people and the social and moral vacuum createdby the indifference of the system to it. And in part they are providing newlinkages with segments of peoples lives that had hitherto remained isolatedand specializedculture, gender and age, technology, ecology, health andnutrition, education and pedagogythus bringing into the political processissues that were hitherto left out. Finally, some (so far only a few) of them arealso seeking to link experiments at micro and regional levels to the macropolitical situation, partly by similar struggles at so many micro points and partlyby the sheer impact of example and will on wider public opinion. The moreorganised effort of joining up horizontally and vertically and building towards amore cohesive and comprehensive macro formation is, of course, not yet insight despite being widely recognized.

On the whole, though, it would be a mistake to think of these action groups,either logically or empirically, as one has thought of political parties. As I see it,their role is neither antagonistic nor complementary to the existing parties. It isa role at once more limited (in space or expanse) and more radicalnon-competitive with parties but taking up issues that parties have failed to or areunwilling to take up, coping with a large diversity of situations thatgovernments and parties are unable to (or, again unwilling to) cope with,encompassing issues that arise from not merely local and national but also


international forces at work. The individual effort itself is by and largeexpressed in micro terms but it deals with conditions that are caused by largermacro structures. The non-party formations are thus to be viewed as part of alarger movement for global transformation in which non-state actors on the onehand and non-territorial crystallizations on the other are emerging and playingnew roles, taking up cudgels against imperialist forces (some of these too beingnon-State, e.g., the TNCs) in their new backlash against the forces of change.

Global Struggle

Interestingly, this struggle against new forms of global hegemony andexploitation is increasingly taking a back seat in the agenda of mostgovernments of the Third World, as also of most political parties, including theparties of the Left (apart, of course, from passing resolutions). In point of fact,at any rate in India, when it comes to issues of international and foreign policy,these leftist parties have become extremely defensive and have in effect beencoopted by the ruling party (thanks largely to the increasingly anti-revolutionary policies of the Soviet Union and China). This role of strugglingagainst global domination is performed less and less by governments and parties(the various Internationals have long lost their elan) and more and more bynon-party, non-State actors, while the nation-states themselves are beingsucked into the global status quo, including the world marketdespite all therhetoric of a new international order.

This larger scenario of decline of the traditional arenas of progressive andrevolutionary actionwithin the State system on the one hand and individualStates on the otherprovides the most relevant reason for the activities andorganization of the non-party political process. There are signs of relenting andholding back if not of giving up, of exhaustion and defensiveness, of so manyentities. Of States. Of parties. Of other party-like organisations. Of theorganised economy. Of leadership. Of democratic institutions. Of NGOs andvoluntary agencies operating outside the political process. And all this at a timewhen new waves of fanaticism and primitivism are on the upswing, when thereis a basic crisis in the enterprise of knowledge, and the social sciences are in astate of total irrelevance, when there may not be an end of ideology but therelooks like a stark vacuum of ideas among the traditional forums of intellectualferment.

The Challenge of Multidimensionality and Fragmentation

The diffusion and fragmentation are not all born out of conflicts of ideas andpersonalities; they are in a way built into the very process of transformation.The traditional institutions of State and parties and voluntary agencies areunable to deal with it. Nor is there as yet great confidence that the non-partyformations will succeed where others have failed. The problem is how to injectnew energy and confidence in the very large array of the young and theconcerned, how to rekindle the creative impulse which is bound to be there inan age of turmoil and stirred consciousness, with what vision and agenda to


occupy the new spaces that are becoming available in this general state ofexhaustion and drift and defeatism, and, above all, how to come forward with anew strategy of transformation at a time when it is clear that old-stylerevolutions are not on the cards, when instead of the working classes of theworld uniting it is the world middle classes that are becoming conscious of theirinterdependence, when the production process as traditionally known hasbeen almost wholly preempted by this class, and when the struggling masses arenot an organised working class but a disorganised and doomed non-class.

It has to be a strategy that builds from the here and now, empowers thepeople and inspires new confidence among the activists all the way along, sothat they can discard old ideologies and work towards a new crystallizationthrough the very process of struggle and survival. Mere survival calls forstruggle. And any long drawn out and sustained struggle for a brighter futureentails survivalof the people at large, of activists,14 of democratic institu-tions. It is a struggle to which not merely immediate targets but the much largergoal of sustaining and strengthening the democratic process and making it aninstrument of the poor and the destitute is hitched. On it also depends therejuvenation of mainstream structures, the transformation and politicization ofthe State and its liberation from the stranglehold of imperialism and, throughall this, the realization of a truly indigenous and authentic culture that is rootedin the people of India. As D.L. Sheth has said in a recent paper of his,15 therewas never any question of the grassroots character of the people; it is theforces that are uprooting them that one has to contend with.

There is no ground for romanticism, or even for unguarded optimism in thisregard. No one with any sense of realism and any sensitivity to the colossalpower of the establishment can afford to be an optimist, either with regard tothese movements or for any other transformative process at work. And yet oneneeds to recognize that something is going on, it is serious, it is genuine and it istaking place at so many places. That it is weak, fragmented, lacking in resourcesand infected by various kinds of personal, organizational and cognitive crisesmust be recognized. And recognizing both the promise and the problems, thereis a need to recognize the important and urgent need to strengthen these andother relevant levers of transformation and survival,16 or at least not to weakenor dismiss them either out of ignorance and complacency or out of doctrinalintransigence and narrow definitions of the historical process. For what is calledfor, and is in some ways already underway, is a new genre of political activitycarried out at so many levels and in so many settings, transcending conventionalbattle lines and firmly digging in, not fleeing from the scene of action as hashappened with the traditional political parties, and without at the same timeindulging in histrionics or waiting for charismatic messiahs (that are usuallyshort-lived and leave behind a lot of debris).

Other Formations

Occasionally this effort may involve a combination of non-party andparty-like organizations in dealing with a situation of growing despair anddisenchantment with the status quo. Thus the movements for regional


autonomy and decentralization intended to take the avenues of politicalparticipation closer to the people, to be carried out in an idiom and mode ofcommunication and around issues that intimately relate to them, have taken theform of what are called regional parties which have dramatically emerged onthe Indian scene of late. While it is too early to assess their significance, they dorepresent strong expressions of the will of the people and their rejection of theruling establishment (not just in the region but nationally). The regionalphenomena in India, combining in its force a rejection of the authoritariansimof the Centre, the dominance of the metropoles (and their imperial patrons), thecultural hegemony of bourgeois cosmopolitanism and the political economy ofcorruption unleashed by an elite unsure of itself, as also (though this perceptionis not yet there), the chauvinist drives of the dominant national elite, has to beunderstood as part of the larger democratic struggle. By insisting on taking thepolitical fulcrum closer to the grassroots the regional formations have to beseen as providing local responses to national crisesin a way not unrelated toimpulses that move the large variety of micro movements led by whollynon-party groups.

The rationale and historical specificity of the non-party character of the latteris of course clear. All the same, given the political nature of these formations(unlike various development oriented voluntary bodies), they must takecognizance of other large and powerful upsurges that give expression both tomass discontent with the establishment and to a search for alternatives to it and,to the extent that they are asking for a reordering of the distribution of power infavour of the lower reaches of society, to the system as well. The upsurges inAssam and Jharkhand and the tribal North-East, in Andhra Pradesh, even inKashmir (though of a different sort), and in states like West Bengal andKarnataka where parties that are otherwise national have decided to joinforces in the demand for regional autonomy,17 all represent something that ischurning at the bottom of society in a territorial and nationality sense thoughunfortunately still not in a social sense in any significant manner. The issues oflanguage and culture and dignity and self-esteem that they raise, the emphasison mass education, employment and ecology that they seem to place, above allthe desire to wage battle against the drainage of power and resources from thelocalities to the centres that they representthese are too important happen-ings in an otherwise highly centralized and oppressive and corrupt State to beignored by the grassroots activists.

Furthermore, these newest types of upsurge and political formations (there isconsiderable variety among them despite a common thrust) display twocharacteristics that make them relevant to the non-party activists: they strideacross the party and non-party spaces, and thus provide a broader politicalspace to the struggle for transformation. And they operate at levels between theactual grassroots and the national and international. It is the task of theactivists working among the very poor and deprived to instil a social purpose inthese new generation of party-like formations and to make them vehicles forclasses and categories of people who have been deserted by both thegovernment and the opposition. The key question of course is: Will the TeluguDesam and the newly astir National Conference, the leaders of Assam and


Jharkhand movements and other proponents of regionalism and decentra-lization pave the way for greater participation of the people and consequentreversals of development policies and constitutional functioning, or will theytoo, like opposition parties so far, rise on the crest of mass discontent and thenignore them, or confine their efforts to merely forming united fronts ofdisparate groups merely to oust the ruling party? On the answer to this questionwill depend the response of non-party activists, though to an extent the answerdepends on the activists too, especially on their ability to link horizontally withregional stirrings and to instill into them the need for fresh thinking on a seriesof policies affecting the mass of the people.18

The Micro-Macro Dynamic

Global problems, local solutions is not a mere clich. We know enoughabout the deep dualism of the world we live in to be able to say that there are noglobal solutions to global problems. As lifeat personal, community and localpolitical (national, sub-regional) levelsbecomes uncertain, vulnerable anddangerous under the impact of forces beyond ones control, the onlyredemption that may still be available (though even this may not work) will beto work out local solutions to global problems. And yet enough is said inthis paper to suggest that those who work for local solutions are not bereft of amacro perspective, a global vision, and that the latter are by no means themonopoly of either the global intellectuals or the global managers of power. Infact, there is reason to think that the latter are becoming bereft of perspectiveand vision.

Understood in this dynamic way, and in the specific cases of the politics oftransformation, macro and micro are only differential expressions of thesame process. Not polar opposites in some pyramidal structure but co-existingcontexts in a mesh of variations and diversity, each autonomous and allinterrelated. At what point in this vast space will the macro permutations takeoff is difficult to say. It could conceivably be only through the capture of statepower, either by a smashing operation or by recourse to the ballot box. Butthese are not the only forms of affecting state power. Indeed in a period when itis sought to extend the arena of politics to ever new processes and contours, tolimit the range of politics to representative institutions and the capture ofstate power (which in reality amounts to no more than succeeding oneoverthrown regime by another) is also to contribute to depoliticization whichreally means freezing the status quo, and unwillingly endorsing the growingdemand of the world middle class to banish politics from the world. For what isinvolved is far more basica dogged confrontation between transformationand backlash, between the scenario of destitution and brutalization and the riseof new experiments, the sustained struggle for a better order and a gaining ofcritical spaces in the expanding horizon of the role of politics.

It is a horizon that extends far and deep. All over the country there is a newwave of energy providing powerful portrayals of the human condition in filmsand theatre and art and literature, women everywhere taking up causes that arenot limited to their own struggle for equality, young school and college boys and


girls (till recently finding themselves rootless and alienated) marching for therights of the tribals and the forest people. In all this, and a lot more, there ismaterial for creating a new society and polity out of the ruins of the old,releasing new creative spaces for the people to come into their own and takecharge of their lives.

The challenge is how to sustain these new creative impulses and make themthe harbingers of revolutionary change. History suggests that it is precisely intimes when the struggling forces of change are pushed to the wall by the statusquo either out of panic or in sheer self-defense that the will and the desire forchange become heightened and the process of consciousness seeks organisedexpression. As existing organizations disintegrate or lose relevance, theself-activity of the people finds expression, spurred by new understandings ofthe historical process and new visions provided by some intervening indi-viduals, be they intellectuals or young activists or a new breed of politicians.Such self-activity will start occurring essentially at local and regional sites andfrom there, given will and effort, reverberate throughout the wider politicalspace.

Theoretically this will call for a review of ideological positions that continueto locate vested interests in local situations and liberation from them in globaldistant processesthe State, technology, revolutionary vanguards. Therelevant macro positions then would inhere in political entities that transcendboth the very micro and the very global. We do not yet know what these entitieswill be, how far they will partake of State-like features and how far of new formsand content and style. These are questions pertinent to the discussion of boththe non-party political formations and other emergent or likely forms; they areequally pertinent to the discussion or alternative approaches to the contempor-ary human condition, and to a consideration of the relationship between formsof organization and ideological content. A considerable agenda of theoreticalresearch appears to be on the cards.

NOTES

1 The latest catchword of populist economics in India has been the call for organising thepoor from the pulpit of the Planning Commission. The dominant slogan of populist politicsfor about fifteen years now has been Banish Poverty (Garibi Hatao) for which a 20-pointprogramme was drawn up in 1971 which has now been formally adopted by the PlanningCommission, and all state governmentsCongress or otherwise.

2 I have for a long time now argued that the sine qua non of a democratic order is the availabilityand spread of an intermediate structure between the government and the people. For asystematic treatment of the theme, see my Politics in India (New Delhi and Boston, 1970)where I develop the concept of intermediate aggregation as opposed to that of nationalaggregation as found in the structural-functionalist school of political science. For morerecent treatments of this theme, see my Rebuilding the State, Seminar, Annual Number,January 1981, and A Fragmented Nation, Seminar, Annual Number, January 1983.

3 The term communalism in India connotes not positive but negative overtones. It refers tocommunal or religious bigotry and takes the form of extreme polarization, usuallyaccompanied by violence and frenzy, and by and large fanned by fanatics among otherwisesecular elements.


4 See my The Failure of a System: Politics as Private Enterprise, The Times of India, April10, 1974; and Arun Shourie, Politics as Private Property, in his Years of Janata Rule (NewDelhi, 1980).

5 This latter point was forcefully brought out at the UNRISD-Lokayan Workshop,December 1982, by Arvind Das.

6 For a description of the present world order as a composite corporate structure made ofTNCs on the one hand and the political structure of Trilateralism on the other, see myTowards a Just World, Alternatives 5 No. 1 (June 1979).

7 The Government of India and various state governments have brought forward a series ofrepressive measures. The National Security Act (NSA) is the most notorious of these butthere are many others: the Essential Services Maintenance Act (ESMA) which seeks to banstrikes in any industry or service that the Government declares as an essential service, thevarious amendments to the Industrial Disputes Act all designed to curtail the bargainingpower of the working class, the Hospital and Other Institutions Act aimed at dissidentprofessionals, and a proposed Forest Bill aimed against the ordinary forest people in need offirewood while not restricting commercial interests, and so on. Laws meant to curb andintimidate journalists and practitioners of performing arts have also been brought forward,e.g., in Binar and Tamilnadu, but have been momentarily withdrawn in the face of stiffresistance.

8 For a detailed account of the repressive nature of the Indian State, see my Democracy andFascism in India, (Delhi, Lokayan, 1981) a somewhat truncated version of which waspublished in Indian Express, November 29, 1981, under the title Where are We Heading?

9 This includes land alienation under the impact of large development projects, large-scalefelling of forests, the export of basic necessities for earning foreign exchange to pay for bothgoods and technology needed to sustain middle-class life-styles.

10 See C. Gopalans inaugural speech delivered at the Annual Conference of the IndianAssociation of Population Studies in January 1983 and republished in Seminar No. 282(Februray 1983).

11 For a perceptive analysis of the absence of availability and entitlement to food resulting inconditions of slow starvation and death, see Amartya Sen, Conflicts in Access to Food,Twelfth Coromandal Lecture, New Delhi, December 13, 1982.

12 See Kishore Saint, The Plight of the Doomed and our Responsibility (Lokayan, 1983). Seealso D.L. Sheth, Grassroots Initiatives in India, available from Lokayan.

13 One explanation of this could be that the organised left (viz. the communist parties) are stilloperating on a scale of priorities that is lacking in a sense of history. Still clinging to a theoryof revolution based on the mobilization and consciousness of the organized working class, inturn based on an analysis of capitalism that derives its motive force from certain keyindustries that are capital-intensive and concentrated in urban areas, these parties haveshown themselves to be incapable of dealing with the phenomena of abject poverty andextreme destitution in rural areas, the striking growth of the unorganised sector in the urbanareas and the struggle for sheer survival of the poorest of the poor. It is here that the radical(non-party) action groups come in. Hence also the distrust and hostility of the partiestowards them.

14 Many of the activists operate under awesome conditions of not just political terror but evenphysical health and well-being. They have lost immunity to the hazards of living in scarcityridden and disease-prone areas. To give only one example, in Bodh Gaya where the ChhatraYuva Sangharsha Vahini consisting of dedicated youth (all below 25) have launched a longstruggle against a local mahant-cum-landlord and have made common cause with the localharijans, malnutrition is rampant and almost every year there are two to three casualitiesamong the activists.

15 D.L. Sheth, Grassroots Initiatives in India, op. cit.


16 On the whole theme of the dialectic of survival and transformation at various levels of globalreality, see my Survival in an Age of Transformation, Conceptual Paper for the UnitedNations University Programme on Peace and Global Transformation, 1981. The paper hassince been published in Gandhi Marg 4, Nos. 2 & 3 (May-June 1982); in Praxis International2, No. 4 (January 1983); and (in an extended version) in Alternatives 9, No. 2 (March 1983).

17 The Congress (S) in Maharashtra is likely to follow suit. The more this happens and spreadsin different parts of the country, the greater the opportunities for grassroots politics toinfluence the political process and the greater the likelihood of moving towards a federalstructure of democratic functioning, still within the system no doubt, but changing the rulesof the game in a manner that would enable actors below the State level to assert themselves.As this happens the social sense may also begin to inform the political process. On theargument for grassroots activists providing inputs into the mainstream political process,see my Grassroots, Seminar, Silver Jubilee Number (January 1984).

18 Earlier experience of regional parties, like Charan Singhs party in U.P., the GanatantraParishad in Orissa but above all the DMK phenomenon in Tamilnadu and later theALADMK with Mr. M. G. Ramachandran at the helm provides one with little confidence onthis score. It is not necessary of course that the present generation of regional upsurge shouldturn out to be of the same type. This historical phase is quite different, in that the newformations are a response to a national situation. And they are not just parties but (at leastsome of them) movements. All the same, there is as yet no basis to say with any degree ofconfidence that the new regional parties will in fact become vehicles of transformation. Ifanything there is some evidence of the opposite kind. Thus Mr. N. T. Ramarao (NTR) ofAndhra Pradesh, like MGR before him, is showing authoritarian tendencies as, for example(again reminiscent of MGR), in his recent call for stern action against so-called extremistsfor which he has also asked for Central assistance in the form of two more batallions ofCentral Reserve Police (CRP). There is an urgent need to instill new thinking and vision inthe regional parties and movements, at least among those that are not so vulnerable todominant patterns of thinking about politics and who are not prisoners of vested interests,even if the process of doing so appears difficult and at times tortuous. See my RethinkingCentre State Relations, Economic and Political Weekly, October 22, 1983, 1931-32.

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