Parliamentary Democracy In The Face Of Expanding Citizenship Claims In

India

A study of institutions as legacies of enduring political struggles succinctly capturing what

Ikenberry calls “critical junctures and developmental pathways” narrates a riveting saga of the

Indian Legislature as a critical pillar of its democratic set-up. Critical junctures encapsulate the

foundational processes of an institution due to which each country embarks on a specific

developmental path that for India was largely defined by an anti-colonial agenda. India chose a

path of democratic, representative government facilitated by the institution of a Parliament

palpably envisioned and designed as an adjunct to the struggles of representation that marked our

nationalist discourse. Though, a lot of ambivalence was expressed about seeking representation

in such institutions as perpetuating the alien empire, the nationalist discourse shaped in a way by

of organizations like the INC or the Sarvajanik Sabha that worked akin to the Parliament. These

organizations, argues Valerian Rodrigues1, not just propagated a civic culture of rights, debates,

critical reasoning but were schooled were future political leaders were nurtured. However,

institutions continue to evolve as a response to political maneuvering but are often constrained

by our past trajectories. Thus, the idea of one system replacing the other fails to capture this

continuity and preponderance of Institutions. The Parliamentary system in India was not an alien

concept but has been existent in our psyche since time immemorial. The ancient Indian scriptures

have mentioned instances of the presence of participatory form of government where people’s

bodies have even chosen their monarch/ king.

The traditional functionalist assumption re-iterates that if an institution continues to exist without

performing particular ‘expected’ roles, then it must be performing some other role useful in that

political system (Mezey 1983: 512). In line with this (unstated) assumption the paper argues that,

given the lackluster performance of the Parliament as the ‘decline thesis’ would have us believe,

it nevertheless has succeeded as a representative body and as a body politic accountable to the

citizenry as also deriving its pedigree from it. The paper begins with the premise that the Indian

parliament embodying a legacy of concrete historical process, embedded in and emanating from

1 Shankar, B. L., and Valerian Rodrigues. The Indian parliament: A democracy at work. New Delhi: Oxford

University Press, 2011.

the temporal social order of rising social citizenship stands testimony to the manner in which

legislative functioning has ceased to remain a scion of the elite. It is not just an institution

representing the people but also an articulation of their rising and transforming aspirations. And

this kaleidoscopic process has seen its due share of vicissitudes right from the time when

Parliament was a mere appendage to the executive to in its present constitutional form as a check

on the powers and authority of the executive. The paper begins by testifying the hypothesis that

the Legislature is a truly a representative, citizen’s institution by looking into its role as an

institution of accountability and oversight. Here the word accountability is used in a dual

sense: as an institution to hold the executive accountable and as an institution accountable to the

citizens that create it.

Parliament as an Institution of Accountability and Oversight:

1. Executive Accountability:

Executive accountability to the legislature is the basis of a parliamentary form of governance.

There exists an overlap between the Legislature and the executive juxtaposed with evidences of

Montesquieu’s separation of powers. The executive is derived from the legislature and is also

accountable to it which in turn is accountable to the people of the nation who create it. Thus, the

CoM’s collective responsibility to the legislature is systematically channelized into the

legislature’s responsibility towards the citizens. Thus, this overlap is not meant to erode the

autonomy of the parliament as an institution to oversee the functioning of the executive but to

create an omnipotent flow of obligations emanating from the state and directed towards the

people. This is the essence of our democratic ethos where in the relationship between the state

and citizens is defined and directed by the cannons of accountability, transparency, information

dissemination and rights of the people.

2. Parliament as the guardian of finances:

It also wouldn’t be a hyperbole to paint the Parliament as an epiphenomenal authority over the

state apparatus in matters of finance and budgetary provisions. Apart from holding the executive

responsible for all its expenditures and earnings by means of tabling an annual financial

statement each year, the Parliament seeks answerability by means of various Parliamentary

Committees who act as watchdogs. Parliamentary Committees are a group of experts who help

the Parliament execute its legislative business of superintending the executive established owing

to the enormity of the nuanced task and the presence of a deluge of such tasks to be performed

by a single Institution. The Committee on Estimates, Public Accounts Committee, Committee on

Public Undertakings and other departmental committees are designed for the purpose of

parliamentary oversight on government finances and act as the intellectual and analytical

bedrock of the legislature. And this system of checks and balances is enshrined in and validated

by the Law of the Land. There are specific provisions in the Constitution which uphold the

system of Parliamentary control over the finance.

(a) Article 265 provides that no tax shall be levied or collected except by authority of Law, a

legislative prerogative over taxation;

(b) Under Article 266, no expenditure can be incurred except with the authority of Legislature, a

legislative control over each item of expenditure; and

(c) Article 112 stipulates that the President shall, in respect of every financial year, cause to be

laid before Parliament, an Annual Financial Statement, an initiative of the executive in financial

matters.

(d) Article 151 of the Indian Constitution require the President to lay before the House the report

of the Comptroller and Auditor General who audits each of government’s expenditure which is

then subject to scrutiny by the Legislature on the precinct of each expenditure being within the

‘scope of the demand’. And this task is performed by the Public Accounts Committee. Each and

every penny spent from the public money of the consolidated fund is authorized by the

Legislature and is to be spent within the limits of parliamentary authorization and within the

scope of the sanctioned action. Moreover the jurisprudence of the PAC also extends to auditing

the accounts of public corporations and seeing that approved policy has been implemented with

maximum efficiency and no extravagance, or losses entailed. It is this added role that has made

the PAC’s observations critical to the functioning of public corporations. It is thus not a financial

but also an administrative regulator of the public corporations in some sense. These powers

endowed upon the Legislature have given it the leeway to bring the state agency to book for any

wrongful expenditure or unscrupulous deal. Since, 1967 the chairman of the PAC is elected from

the opposition, adding further to the democratic credentials. The PAC played a critical role in the

expose of the 2011 2G Spectrum Scam that jolted the political landscape in India and exposed

one of the biggest politico-corporate nexus. The controversy involved auction of telecom

licenses to bidders at an under-rated price and a breach of written procedures to transact

business. The CAG report pegged the loss at a whopping 1.76 lakh crores and it was the PAC

that drafted a report against the Telecom Minister. It is not without reason that the PAC is

regarded as the guardian of public money in our country. Even earlier in the late 1980’s, closely

linked to the Bofors deal was a report by the CAG that led to en masse resignation of members

of the House in protest against the deal which involved the purchase of guns from Sweden.

The Legislature has time and again stepped out from its conventional role of a law-making

agency to a trustworthy people’s institution, not only as a representative but also as a supplier of

information on state actions and policies. As Pierson puts it, historical institutionalism “stresses

that many of the contemporary implications of…temporal processes are embedded in

institutions—whether these be formal rules, policy structures, or norms” one important source of

change comes from the interactions of different institutional orders within a society, as “change

along one time line affects order along the others” (Orren & Skowronek 1994:321), that is, as

interactions and encounters among processes in different institutional realms open up

possibilities for political change.

3. Importance of Private member’s bill:

In the last couple of decades, the balancing role of the legislature has been further supplemented

by the growth of other statutory institutions like the CAG, CVC (Chief Vigilance Commission),

National Commission on Human Rights etc. It is noteworthy at this juncture to assert that the

legislature has evolved as a public platform for dissent, criticism, assessment, deliberation, and

sanction spearheaded by the direct elected representatives of the people. The beauty of the

Legislature lies; however, in how law-making is not just the domain of the Cabinet but also

extends to other members by means of Private member’s bills. In the Lok Sabha, every Friday,

two and half hours are dedicated to discussion on Private Member’s bills. These Bills have

essentially responded to provide for the due rights of citizens wherever an initiation to that effect

has been lacking from the state. For example, the Right of Transgenders Persons Bill that was

passed by the Upper House in 2014 or the Hindu Marriage Amendment Bill in 1956 that fortified

women’s claims over her property, or the Bill to report journalists reporting on the proceedings

of the House. However, there has been a mounting criticism that the Private Member’s Bill on

Transgenders came after a gap of 45 years. Also, even though many Private Bills are introduced

in the House, in the last two terms only 4% have been debated upon.

4. Motions of parliament:

Motions of Parliament are tools in the hands of legislature to hold the state answerable and also

provide information to its citizens. By means of a number of motions like the Adjournment

motion, Cut Motion, Calling Attention Motion etc., the Legislature has not only performed the

role of an evaluator and auditor of the government, but has also expressed people’s perceptions

and discontent with the state. The importance of Question hour as a very potent parliamentary

device for ensuring administrative accountability was highlighted by a question that brought to

light Mundhra scandal2 followed by the resignation of one of the ministers. The controversial

Bofors debate in 1989 led to the adjournment motion being passed eight times in a single day

thus letting the opposition use parliamentary tools as an effective mechanism to stage opposition

against the incumbents.

5. Changing social composition of the Parliament:

From its inception as an elite coterie of British educated lawyers, its members today are drawn

from a variety of social strata and occupations: CAN WE SEE THE SOCIAL COMPOSITION OF

THE PARLIAMENTARIANS TO SUBSTANTIATE THIS DATA AND PROVE THAT THE

WATERTIGHT COMPARMENTALIZATION BETWEEN THE ARISTOTELIAN ‘RULER’ AND

‘RULED’ HAS VIRTUALLY VANISHED? (ppt)

The project of socio-economic engineering that the Legislature embarked upon at its inception

was shaped by the greatest minds and silver-tongued debaters of that era. Dissent always had a

space in Parliamentary procedures but with changing notions of representation, diversity of the

Indian society has come to be reflected in our institutions.

2 Feroz Gandhi sourced the confidential correspondence between the then Finance Minister T.T. Krishnamachari and

his principal finance secretary, and raised a question in Parliament on the sale of 'fraudulent' shares to LIC by a Calcutta-based Marwari businessman named Haridas Mundhra.

Gender representation in parliament has also improved from about 22% in the first Lok Sabha to

about 44% in the Eighth Lok Sabha peaking to 46% in the thirteenth Lok Sabha. The scenario in

the Rajya Sabha is even better

Table 2: First-time MPs: Seventh and eighth Lok Sabhas versus the twelfth and

thirteenth Lok Sabhas

Year Lok Sabha Number of first-time

MPs

1980–1984 7 140

1984–1989 8 187

1998–1999 12 123

1999–2004 13 188

Lok Sabha: no more of fiefdom politics, the number of first time entrants to the Lok

Sabha has been very high ranging from 25-30% in the last two decades

6. Rajya Sabha as ensuring accountability:

Pierson’s (1996) notion of “gaps” and “lags” in policy processes that produce openings for

institutions to evolve in ways their designers did not anticipate put forward an interesting point in

the Indian context. The Rajya Sabha that was always seen as the second fiddle to the Lok Sabha

during the preponderance of a ruling regime in both the Houses began playing a critical role

against the majoritarianism of the Lok Sabha since 1969. As argued by Valerian Rodrigues,

though an electoral victory to the lower House may entitle a party to rule but may not entitle it to

govern unless and until the ruling power secures the interests of the state players or effectively

engage with gripping issues facing the nation. Loknath Mishra desribed the Rajya Sabha as “ a

sobering House, a reviewing House, a House standing for quality, and the members will be

exercising their rights to be heard on merits of what they say, for their sobriety and knowledge of

special problems…”. The quintessential requirement of a second chamber as garnering opinion

from public authority or eliciting responses from public bodies, to review, and hold the

governments responsible was envisaged by our Constituent Assembly. Then, it was also a

platform to articulate diversity and difference and to represent India as a “differentiated whole”

with each unit having its own issues and interests aligned with the larger national interest.

Sometimes institutions lying dormant are utilized to further ends after the entry of new players

with newer interests into the game of politics. For example, notwithstanding the sagacity and

perspicacity of our judiciary, it was not until a spate of PIL’s rocked the floor of the Courts that

the idea of judiciary stepping into an executive vacuum came to be realized. And the entry of

new players of social activists-cum-lawyers into the domain of governance as external variables

triggered this development invigorating a hitherto unresponsive chamber of the judicial

institution in India flowing directly from the people. It wouldn’t be wrong to conflate this

theoretical premise with the perceived and anticipated behavior of the Indian voters.

Psephologists, academicians alike have us believe that the Indian voter votes differently today

for national and state elections. Thus, given the articulation of the Indian polity, in the

foreseeable future the party composition of the two Houses will be markedly different thus one

acting as a check on the excesses of the other and thus aiding in its functions of accountability.

Diversity in Indian context is not just a matter of social ascription but a matter of social relations.

Inegalitarianism marks social relations in our heterogeneous society and the federal structures

may not be successful in portraying such overlapping claims, so there would be some groups like

religious or economic minority with zero representation had it not been for the Rajya Sabha

7. Standing Committees:

The standing committees of the Indian Parliament act as its GPS mechanism to steer clear of

making unjustified and wrongful laws and legislating in the correct direction keeping in mind the

essence of the Constitution. The Standing Committees with members from the Opposition and at

times to the deliberate exclusion of Ministers concerned provide expert reports on the Bills

tabled which is then put through a round of brainstorming discussions. The pre-legislative

consultation procedures deployed where-in the Bill is placed in public domain to warrant views

from the state governments, citizens and groups concerned have gone a long way to making

people-centric laws that are also in tandem with our federal structure. For instance, the Standing

Committee on Rural Development studying the Land Act in 2011 invited suggestions from the

general public, industry, farmers, NGO's, experts, Central Ministries, State Governments etc and

some of these were taken very seriously. The antiquated law of eminent domain and subsequent

interpretations that did not require the state to differentiate between acquisition for public

purpose or private company triggered off massive backlash from the tribals and rural citizens.

This concern was brought up in public consultations and found its way through the replacement

of the 1894 Act. Representatives of some of the social organizations and farmer organizations

informed the Committee that India is perhaps the only country where the State acquires land for

profit-making private and PPP enterprises. Representatives of Sangharsh (Ms. Medha Patekar

and others) submitted before the Committee that there should not be Government intervention in

PPP projects. The Act in its final form, though, did not completely override government

acquisition for PPP projects but did add a mandatory prior-informed consent clause. It will be

later seen in the due course of this paper how effective consultation is a manifestation of citizen’s

rights to participate, expanding its domain and also effectuating laws that dilute forms of

hierarchies that exist between the State and citizens.

The Citizenship Debate In India:

The philosophical roots of citizenship can be traced to the tradition of the Greek city-states,

where individuals were considered as political beings and citizenship as the capacity to govern

and be governed. The Republic of Rome, for instance, included heterogeneous population within

the citizenship fold by subjecting them to a set of governing rules and principles. Historically,

thus, two dominant traditions of citizenship and rights have evolved thereby leading us to two

distinct yet inter-related ways in which citizenship claims can be made. The civic republicanism

school focuses on civic virtues and gives us a legalistic claim to citizenship or a citizen’s identity

carved out in a formal-legal sense. The liberal citizenship paradigm focuses on individual

interests and rights giving us the substantive virtue of citizenship claims. Notwithstanding the

classical tradition that portends citizens as synonymous with egalitarian being, it is true only as

far as the legal sense of the term is concerned. Hierarchy in the form of class, caste, gender,

religion come into play by means of differential claims of each citizen to state apparatus and it is

this difference that determines their substantive citizenship claims. The way in which this power

equation (or that of powerlessness) comes to play while making claims upon the state could be

easily disregarded or belittled while making abstract universalized citizenship claims of

“closure” (Anupama Roy). Thus, ‘differentiated universalism’ taking into account variable

citizenship experience helps the modern state mitigate what Partha Chatterjee (1997)3 would call

“disturbed zones within citizenship”. Group-differentiated citizenship rights have again come

into the fore as India oscillates between a conception of individual rights fostered by liberalism

and capitalism and community rights overture by associates of multiculturalism. Will Kymlicka

(1995)4 notes that conflicts between group ideology and that of individual members within the

group or outside is best resolved by resorting to modus vivendi and intervention in any form will

not be justified unless and until there is an issue of gross human right violation. In India, group-

differentiated citizenship claims are a commonplace, howsoever, difficult they may be to realize

in a melting pot of cultures and ethnicities. Article 15 and 16 of the Indian constitution

recognizes diversity, and as contended by Valerian Rodrigues5, of two types i.e. difference

(religion, region, culture) and disadvantage (caste, class, gender).

“Encompassment” (Anupama Roy) works to resolve the contradiction between abstract

universalism and difference through the logic of a progressive opening up of democratic spaces

(Shylashri Shankar)6. Participatory decision-making in popular assemblies where citizens

contribute towards the governing process is one such democratic space and in the context of

India has been existent since time immemorial (in the form of sabhas and samitis and janapadas

of ancient India). Radical pluralists like Chantal Mouffe believe that a relation of ‘democratic

equivalence’ may be established through political participation and the articulation of difference.

And the civic republicanism path of citizenship treaded by India opened avenues for an active

citizenship to not only breed but also make significant strides in obtaining visible results. Though

acknowledging the applicability of group-differentiated citizenship in a country of myriad and

overlapping identities such as ours, the history of growth of citizenship’s universalistic claim and

the growth of social citizenship cannot be ignored. It should be noted here that universal

citizenship is not akin to some abstract notion of uniformity but relates to an inclusive citizenship

3 Chatterjee, Partha. "Beyond the nation? Or within?." Economic and Political Weekly (1997): 30-34.

4 Kymlicka, Will. Multicultural citizenship: A liberal theory of minority rights. Clarendon Press, 1995.

5 Shankar, B. L., and Valerian Rodrigues. "Profile of an Institution."

6 BOOK REVIEW: ANUPAMA ROY, MAPPING CITIZENSHIP IN INDIA (NEW DELHI:OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2010)

claims to equal basic rights and obligations. And the study of the growth of social citizenship

becomes clandestine for an evaluation of the changing state-citizen relationship in India, the saga

of which is potently held in the chambers of the Parliament in India.

T.H.Marshall (1950)7 traced the evolution of social citizenship to the breeding grounds for

social conflict and struggle created by the exclusionary and oppressive system of capitalism.

Social citizenship grew as a reaction to under-development perpetrated by the profit-making

enterprise of capitalism that benefited only a select-few. For Turner8(1986) said, the idea is that

social conditions and the nature of class struggle and conflict have a major impact on the speed

of formation and the characteristic feature of the modern capitalist society and in turn its citizen.

Barington Moore9 added to this when he saw democracy as the solution to bring in an inclusive

notion of citizenship. It is democratic modernization that expands the boundaries of civil society

to embrace citizens on an egalitarian basis and he does not consider this as necessarily

evolutionary and teleological. Citizenship is dominated by certain contingent relationships of a

class-nature. Turner combines Marshall’s idea of citizenship as a modernizing tendency along

with Moore’s idea of democracy to develop a historically grounded framework for

conceptualizing the development of a universalistic citizenship. Thus, the development and

modernization of any society can be seen as the struggle to establish citizenship rights of

egalitarian membership within a common community and where these struggles are successful,

they have an effect of destroying particularistic criteria for social value, so age, gender, and

ethnic identity no longer serve as principles of social exclusion (Turner, 1986). It is social

particularism, Turner argues, that becomes the site of popular struggles to challenge the

empirical inequalities existing in the economic market. Thus, if universal citizenship is the

criteria for modernization, then the route it follows, defines the nature of the society so formed

7 Marshall, Thomas H. Citizenship and social class. Vol. 11. Cambridge, 1950.

8 Turner, Bryan S., ed. Citizenship and social theory. Vol. 24. Sage, 1993.

9

Skocpol, T., & Somers, M. (1980). The uses of comparative history in macrosocial inquiry. Comparative studies in society and history, 22(02), 174-197.

Chicago

and if this involves social conflict then the nature of the struggle is crucial in shaping the kind of

modernization which societies ultimately acquire. In India, the nature of struggle for citizenship

has been anti-imperialist and anti-colonial in nature. This has had a phenomenal influence on not

only our foreign policy but our constitution which akin to Aristotle’s view is the determinant of

citizenship for a state. The growth of institutions of representation post-independence was a

result of this struggle. The history of citizenship is in part the history of the state or the

institutional framework within which citizenship can operate. The relationship between the

citizens is also political or contractual and not based on blood or kinship ties. Citizens are thus in

a political relationship with each other within the confines of the state.

The first wave of citizenship in India saw a transmogrification from Subject-hood to citizenship.

Colonial subject-hood was premised upon indirect association with and distance from the state, a

relationship of subservience of the people in front of the all-powerful patrimonial state. The

mandate of an alien government at that point in time was to necessarily centralize and reinforce a

coercive hold upon the subjects so to ensure its survival on the saddles of power. The nationalist

discourse culminating into freedom from the foreign yoke brought the question of citizenship as

a legal claim to territory and political jurisdictions, into the fore. To differentiate personhood

from citizenship, primarily concerned with residence or migration from the divided territory of

Pakistan, emerged a political conjecture pooh-poohing the shibboleths of subject-hood. Thus, as

Anumpama Roy (2008)10

contends, the problems of fixing identities came to be associated with

territoriality enframed in the problems of fixing territorial boundaries of the overarching nation-

state. The enigma of identification of citizens evolved in multifarious and at times convoluted

ways. There was however a wide-ranging consensus amongst academicians that the discourse

was highly inclusive and based on a broad spectrum entrée. While Anumpama Roy stressed on

the aspect of territorial belongingness with respect to ethno-cultural rather than socio-political

claims. Valerian Rodrigues (2005)11

focused on territorial location and associational belonging

but included the aspect of freedom to choose, to be heard and entitlements.

10

Roy, Anupama. "Between encompassment and closure The ‘migrant’and the citizen in

India." Contributions to Indian sociology 42.2 (2008): 219-248. 11

Rodrigues, Valerian. "Citizenship and the Indian constitution." Civil Society, Public Sphere and

Citizenship: Dialogues and Perceptions (2005): 209-235.

As the citizenship debate unfolded post the interregnum period between the Independence and

enactment of the Citizenship Act, the idea of choice played out in complex ways. The larger

agenda of forming a nation-state and a national identity of fortitude in response to the colonial

servitude was the basis of creation of this identity of citizens as a group of self-determining,

sovereign people owing allegiance to a certain ethno-cultural and territorial identity, also

encompassing several liminal categories in its fold. A study looking at various amendments to

the Citizenship Act of 1955 in 1986 and again in 2003 re-iterates a very inclusive, bold and

broad approach to citizenship highlighting aspects of choices and decisions to stay or migrate

from places to the territory of the Indian nation-state. It also wouldn’t be wrong to classify this

move as calculated inclusivity as birth, descent and parentage also became important

determining factors with ensuing amendments. Anupama Roy contends that these are not

manifestations of a continuous, irreversible, mechanical process but a deluge of events that

unfolds by ways of major historical decisions and choices. For instance, with the eastern border

remaining permeable for a considerable time post-independence, the people who migrated to the

state of Assam before 1966 and have been staying since then were given citizenship claims.

The 2011 amendment replaced overseas citizens of India with overseas Indian cardholders and

further expanded the criteria for entry in this category. With the new government coming into the

saddles of power and with diaspora diplomacy as an important ingredient of its foreign policy

concoction, the emphasis on differentiated citizenship claims both within and outside territorial

jurisdiction has assumed significance. The manner in which the 2015 ordinance was passed to

merge two categories of citizenship claims (Persons of Indian origin who enjoyed lower rights

than/ with Indian overseas citizens) and remove the mandated condition of 1 year of stay to

acclaim citizenship by registration or naturalization under special circumstances, narrate a tale in

itself. A tale of broad-spectrum, inclusive approach to bestowing citizenship rights to

acknowledge the boisterous achievements of Indians across the globe and imbuing them with a

sense of ‘Indian-ness’ as an identity vestige. The discourse on changing conceptions of

citizenship moving to and fro between the claims of inclusivity and compactness of a nation-state

is just one part of the citizenship story in India. On the other side of this coin is carved a tale of

changing state-citizen relationship in India.

The changing accounts of interaction between the state and citizens in India have manifested

itself in the successful creation of at least the idea of a welfare state committed to providing its

citizens basic economic and social resources. And closely intertwined with this is also the

process of a change in institutional design and outlook. The Parliament of India forms one such

important institution.

“The idea that citizenship is inherently egalitarian- having the capacity to extend and

deepen itself by bringing into its fold increasing number of people and changing its

content to meet the emergent needs-is emphasized by those who see citizenship as having

an inherent impetus towards universality”. (Marshall 1950; Turner 1986) 12

Hoffman(2004, pp.13-24) had used the term ‘momentum concept’ and in using which he meant

that the notion of citizenship is not a static once that can be encapsulated within a specific time

period but is something that creates a momentum with its internal logic and its demand of

egalitarianism and universality. He basically argued that the notion of citizenship is continually

changing and encompassing within its folds newer social groups and individuals. One can trace

back idea of citizenship to T.H.Marshall(1950,pp.25-78) 13

who claimed that the modern notion

of citizenship tends to 1. Equality or a ‘horizontal camaraderie’ as opposed to hierarchical

inequalities among members of the political community, and, 2. Integration, where the

expanding nature of citizenship brings to its folds the hitherto excluded groups and the

membership then translates into a sense of belonging to the community and a share in the

common value-system, culture and heritage. The emergence of the welfare state in the 90’s and

the inclusion of the demands of the marginalized in the popular political narratives, the rise of

Judiciary as a protector of citizen’s rights and the increasing space being accorded to the civil

society are all manifestations of ‘expanding notions of citizenship’(Anupama Roy). However, as

much as this change is premised on a rights-based discourse, it also requires significant citizen’s

participation coupled with political response and institutional amends.

12

Roy, Anupama ‘Mapping Citizenship in India’(2010) by Oxford University Press, New Delhi

13 Marshall, T.H ‘Citizenship and Social Class and Other Essays’ (1950) by Cambridge University Press, London

Nivedita Menon14

by means of tracing the history of rights in India has pointed out that

discursively focusing on rights as the essence of citizenship can have grave anti-democratic

consequences for a large number of people. By contrasting the abstract notion of citizenship with

another notion marked by gender, religion and other identities, she contends that the project of

communalism and secularism alike has been to mask differences from within and create a

universal citizenship paradigm. Taking back to the tumultuous history of the Uniform Civil Code

debate in India, she proves how gender discrimination has always been inherent in all secular

agendas as well. A 1994 judgement of the Allahabad High Court ruled that any divorce under

Sharia Law or Hindu Marriage Act will be null and void if against constitutional provisions thus

writing off as illegitimate verbal triple talaq. It is interesting here to note that the original case

did not pertain to the validity of the divorce but to separate rights to ownership of land of women

after separation from their husbands. This right then was denied to the woman in question on the

pretext of an invalid divorce. Consciously steering clear of a debate on women’s rights subsumed

under religious rights or constitutional rights (as that is altogether another area of discussion), the

lesson that one should draw from this example is to avoid the fallacy of excessive rights

discourse while defining citizenship. Thus, though rights are an important determinant of

citizenship claims, these are not the only determinants and fall flat if not supplemented with

active citizen’s participation not only in demanding for their rights, but also helping create

policies to be translated into such rights and providing for an extensive network to monitor and

evaluate. Vouching for rights, thus, just forms a part of the whole that catalyzes the expansion of

citizenship circles.

The Right to Information Act:

“Re-invented by the Rajasthan-based Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan, the social audit

has been institutionalised, in the 2000s, as a mode of implementation of some of the new

social and economic rights analysed by Jayal15

. Social audits recast the beneficiaries of

welfare policies—that is, the poor—as full-fledged citizens: this procedure asserts that

14

Menon, Nivedita. "State/Gender/Community: Citizenship in Contemporary India." Economic and

Political Weekly 33.5 (1998) 15

Jayal, Niraja Gopal (2013) Citizenship and its Discontents: An Indian History, Cambridge & London:

Harvard University Press, and New Delhi: Permanent Black, 376 pages

the poor are legitimate not only in laying claim to their rights, but also as monitors of the

action of the state. Thus social audits might be considered an important performance of

citizenship, in every sense of the term, in today’s India”

(Stéphanie Tawa Lama-Rewal)

The Right to Information Campaign spearheaded under the auspices of the Mazdoor Kisan

Shakti Sangathan in Rajsthan is a paragon of legislative feat achieved by a non-political people’s

movement comprising of socially-embedded, self-enfranchised and politically conscious citizens

of India. By looking at the narrative of this Act, one seeks to draw the changing relation between

the state and citizens, with increasing participation of the latter demanding accountability from

the former thus significantly bridging the gap between the ruler and the ruled.

Advocates of state accountability talk about its two types: vertical accountability i.e. the power

of the citizens through the ballot to hold the state accountable for its actions/inactions and

horizontal accountability which is the internal checks mechanism. With the failure of these two

forms of accountability, emerged another form that put the citizens by means of ‘discontent

mobilization’ into the helm of state-affairs. Greater spaces evolved where in the citizens could

directly participate in the state activities. Goetz and Jenkins (2001)16

refer to this new form of

citizen engagement as “hybrid” accountability. It has also been described as “co-governance”

(Ackerman 2004)17

, and have taken shape in the form of a people’s movement that began in a

small village of Rajasthan thereby culminating into a landmark law. The movement pushed for a

radical interpretation of the right to information within the state as a fundamental element of

citizens’ right to participate in governance processes (Jenkins and Goetz, 1999). It was not just a

struggle to empower oneself with information but a rejection of state patronage and thereby

redefining citizenship in terms of rights and revamping a state-citizen relationship where there

was only a one-sided flow of power. Norothy Devi, a common villager and now the Sarpanch

declared in a public hearing, “When I give a penny to my son to bring me something, I seek an

account. We as taxpayers provide finances for the state machinery, no body thus can deny us of

our rights to seek accounts from the state”. People hearings or direct participation of people in

16

Goetz, Anne Marie, and Rob Jenkins. "Hybrid forms of accountability: citizen engagement in institutions

of public-sector oversight in India." Public Management Review 3.3 (2001): 363-383. 17

Ackerman, John. "Co-governance for accountability: beyond “exit” and “voice”." World

Development 32.3 (2004): 447-463.

discussions apprehending massive leakages, corruption and nepotism in the use of drought relief

fund triggered this mass movement of the march of the people to the Panchayat office to ask for

documents. The roots of the RTI were thus entrenched and the coming into existence of a

National Commission on People’s Right to Information (NCPRI) was a structured and

institutionalized step ahead in the movement. The Indian bureaucracy, legislature and the

politicians that had hitherto been taking refuge under an archaic, colonial Official Secrets Act

had to finally succumb to this popular public demand to pass the Right to Information Act in

2005.

It is important here to note that “rights based legislation” such as this is not just a watershed

moment for any democracy to flourish but also puts a moral obligation upon the state towards its

citizens to not only facilitate their involvement in decision-making but also take their

accountability powers seriously. When it does put state in a powerful position to govern, it also

places power of answerability and sanctions upon the citizens. The flow of power then ceases to

be one way. Citizens’ in India also have responded enthusiastically to the Act, filing information

request on a regular basis. According to the estimates by the Commonwealth Human Rights

Initiative, as many as 4 million information requests were filed in 2012 alone. The people’s

movement that captured Indian bureaucracy’s ‘Passion for paper’ (Baviskar, 2007)18

in one part

of the country made majestic headways in pressing for a landmark judgement that could place

indomitable powers in the hands of the people. The grass root organizations and people’s groups

have used these very information obtained by means of filing an RTI to question state

malpractices or absenteeism in the form of Pad Yatras/ marches ( like the Jawabdehi Yatra or the

Accountability March led by MKSS recently to hold to test 100 days of governance by the

State). Their use of the Gandhian tools of Satyagraha : peaceful demonstrations, marches, street

plays disseminating information and fielding political satire, use of petitions and catchy slogans,

channelizing the media power sets them apart as a social movement. This social movement that

aims to catapult the citizens as a part of governance process also brings about the inclusion of

rural poor, tribals or small peasants into the citizenship fold. The reason being the ease with

which information is disseminated by means of songs and street plays, this sort of a struggle not

18

Aiyar, Yamini, and Michael Walton. "11. Rights, accountability and citizenship: India’s emerging welfare

state." Governance in Developing Asia: Public Service Delivery and Empowerment (2015): 260.

only resonates among the people but also provides them with a role they can play in the

movement. It is not only this shared experience of oppression that gives people their identity but

also a hope to collectively come out of the oppressed state that forges a relationship of equality

amongst the citizens. And when these citizens together put pressure upon the Legislature to

replace an outmoded law, the outcome of it leads to the creation of a law that undermines the

unquestioned authority of the state over its citizens. The flow diagram for this would be

something like this (show in the Presentation):

Common experience of oppression – social struggle- expanding circles of citizenship- legislative

input- institutional response to changing social relation- people-centric law as output- state-

citizenship relation based on accountability- institutional change

The first wave of citizenship had the consequence of abrogating the formal role of property

ownership in defining citizenship. However, women were significantly left out of this drive and

this created anomaly in them. The second wave of citizenship was social movement by women to

demand political and legal rights and this coupled with the capitalist needs to wave of gendered

roles in employment, had the effect of removing gender also as an exclusive feature for defining

citizenship. As a consequence, the third wave of citizenship saw a re-definition of age and

kinship ties within the family as a significant feature of the legal definition of citizenship. Social

legislation on children and the rights of the elderly can be regarded as a social provision for

citizenship rights. Turner says that the fourth wave of citizenship rights is brought about by

social movements which have the consequence of ascribing rights to nature and the environment.

The expanding notion of citizenship claims in the current capitalist paradigm can be understood

by referring to social movements and the long term consequence of these movements have been

to widen citizenship claims to embrace a ‘wider’ group of persons within its ambit.

The Right to Transparency and Fair Compensation in the Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation

and Resettlement Act 2013:

The second landmark Act that forms our unit of analysis of changing citizenship claims upon the

Legislature is the story of such a social movement or rather a struggle for protection of basic

fundamental rights threatened in the face of the development juggernaut. The Right to

Transparency and Fair Compensation in the Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement

Act 2013 was a culmination of a series of people’s struggles for an alternative course of

development and against the repressive colonial law of ‘eminent domain’. In India where it

wouldn’t be wrong to invoke Karl Polyani’s ‘Fictitious commodity’ (2005)19

to describe the

importance of land not only as an economic resource but also an emotional asset and cultural

entity. And the enterprise of crony capitalism had found in the State a partner to get access to this

inelastic, scarce commodity. The state by invoking the principle of ‘eminent domain’ and ‘public

purpose’ has time and again robbed people of their landholdings only to hand it over to the

industries. And the colonial Land Acquisition Act of 1894 legitimized the state’s action in

collusion with big businesses. Fernandes (2001) argued that the most comprehensive national

analysis of development- induced displacement in India has also shown a substantial increase

post-liberalization and that the concept of public-private partnership and SEZ affirmed the role

of the ‘state as the land broker’ for the capitalists or industrialists, setting the stage right for a

deluge of social movements to ensue and expand the idea of citizenship. The Narmada Bachao

Andolan, anti-Posco agitation, a few movements in the North East, the toppling for the left

government after three decades in West Bengal have all been symptomatic of this social struggle.

19

argument of land being a ‘fictitious commodity19

’ in the sense that it is not only non-reproducible and location-

specific but also because it is valued in a number of ways which makes it very difficult to be transacted even for an

exchange value

In the hierarchy of citizenship as traced by Upendra Baxi (2000; 2002)20

, one particular group

involves PAPs citizens that is the project-affected people who remain subjects of state policies of

lawless development. It is this group that figures in the discourse on land acquisition and the idea

of state-citizen relationship as defined by the legal provisions in the matter. It was the 2013 law

that included into the citizenship fold these categories of displaced persons mandating consent

from the people, and formulating an extensive rehabilitation and resettlement plan along with a

‘just’ compensation. The scope of this paper does not extend to analyzing the merits or de-merits

of this Act but it definitely is a leap forward in terms of its colonial residue. And there are at least

three provisions that make this Act a people’s act: ‘prior-informed consent’, ‘interested persons’

that recognized other functional and livelihood rights of man over land along with ownership

claims, and social cost-benefit analysis in the form of ‘Social Impact Assessment’. The

legislation not only re-iterated the formal equality of citizenship rights for the bourgeoisie and

peasant alike but also recognized the social-embedded rights of citizens to life with dignity and

social participation.

Arguing that social movements have struggled to weave difference into the abstract notion of

citizenship, Anupama Roy suggests that the universalism of citizenship can be made effective by

taking into account the specific needs of people belonging to groups that are disadvantaged by

the generalized application of common or uniform frameworks/standards of citizenship. The

struggle of the project-affected-people supported by the civil society organizations has been

precisely to take into account a ‘substantive notion of equality’21

while foisting upon them the

project of economic growth and development. It is interesting here to note that most of these

displacements take place in the fertile and mineral-rich tribal lands. And what essentially ensues

is a subversion of their cultural identities, as for them festivals, deities, customs hover around

land. This cultural repression is also a violation of their basic rights as citizens to practice their

culture and preserve it. However, as institutions embedded in social context as well as

20

Baxi, U. (2000). What Happens Next Is Up to You: Human Rights at Risks in Dams and Development. Am. U. Int'l

L. Rev., 16, 1507.

21 Substantive equality (Kapur and Crossman)- comparative disadvantage under existing unequal

conditions to be taken into consideration- a more complicated version of equality

enculturation of the people participating in it and responding to it, our Legislature has

successfully passed a number of laws like the Panchayat Extension to Schedule Areas, setting up

Tribal Advisory Committee and giving significant powers to the local authority to decide their

future course of development. The inclusion of tribals, which is a nuanced category in itself, as

full-fledged citizens is still a process in making but PAP’s have been accorded their due rights by

means of an extensive rehabilitation and resettlement doctrine. Of course, no rehabilitation is

completely just but does mitigate to a great deal the loss of social relations, kinship ties, and

economic depravities. The people’s movement today has not been so much against displacement

as has been for efficient resettlement and preferably In- situ rehabilitation, so as to preserve as

much as possible their cultural and social rights as citizens. At least for the slum upgradation

project in the metropolitan cities like Delhi, interventions by civil society members have coaxed

the DDA into providing for in-situ rehabilitation of slum dwellers. The PAP as an entrant into

the citizenship fold also has significant implications for all those who get affected by the project

irrespective of their ownership claims thus re-iterating the state’s obligation towards protecting

the livelihood and shelter of its citizens.

Conclusion:

Aristotle defined the citizen in the full sense as ‘one who has a share in the privileges of the rule’

(Barker, 1962)22

. Democracy had seen proponents of its obituary in India far before it came into

existence for the simple reason that Indians were not considered ‘educated’ or ‘civilized’ enough

to carry the baton forward. However, this ‘orientalism’ ignored the manner in which

representative democracy was ingrained in the political imagination of the Indians right from the

time they began struggling to overthrow the colonial empire. One of the very first demands of

the Congress at that point was greater representation for Indians. Institutions do not operate in

22 Barker, E. (1962). Politics of Aristotle. Retrieved from http://agris.fao.org/agris-

search/search.do?recordID=US201300596832

epistemological vacuum and require inputs and feedback from the socio-economic environment

they are situated in, also influencing the equations in the society. At the time of independence,

the institutional mandate of the Legislature required expertise to carve out laws that would

ensure India’s economic growth and put it on the global picture as a prominent player. But with

rising inequalities and resonating disillusionment, the Legislature responded with appropriate

laws. It has been a standing testimony to state-citizen relationship from the era of subject-hood to

the times of empowered citizenry. And since the well-being of a society is judged on the

parameter of its functioning institutions, the Legislature has never failed to hold up our societal

and cultural milieu. This is not to say that the Legislature has never faced crisis but to argue that

the institution has emerged stronger after each crisis. Though the Emergency of 1975 marked the

darkest chapter in the history of Indian democracy and was a severe blow to the Parliamentary

edifice, the democratic consciousness of representation couldn’t be uprooted. The commitment

to the sacrosanct Parliament purged out all excesses the Emergency had done like reverting the

order extending the term of the Parliament for six years, ordering privilege issues against Indira

Gandhi etc.

This paper made an attempt to understand the transition of the Parliament as a patronage of the

elite to the representative and constitutive of the masses commensurate the growth of social

citizenship in India. Citizenship not just understood as a means to attain access to rights but as

also a domain of horizontal solidarity glossing over multiple dimensions including agency,

identities, political response and actions of people themselves. The examples of various social

movements have also shown us that the form solidarity takes shapes the resulting State-Citizen

relationship and this form varies not just according to the ‘excluded’ or ‘included’ category of

people but also the extent to which they hope to transcend the ‘excluded’ status. For instance, the

manner in which the struggle for land rights ensued culminated in complete abrogation of the

state’s exclusive jurisdiction over land. It was the solidarity of people who had been denied their

right to life with dignity, was thus a reaction against perceived state superiority. Land ceased to

remain an unquestioned bastion of the state hands-in-glove with the privileged thus making the

hitherto superior position of the state rather ambiguous. However, the movement remained

highly dispersed across the country and thus the hope they harbored could sufficiently manage

the state to only push for an effective rehabilitation and resettlement package falling

considerably short of a policy for ‘zero eviction’*23

. On the other hand, the Right to Information

movement began as a struggle not against state excesses but as demand to get access to

documents of state expenditure from the taxpayer’s money. And because of the nature of

solidarity that was more to carve out a space for oneself in the realm of governance than a cry of

disillusionment, it resulted in a device that would go a long way to empower citizens as an

enterprise of state accountability.

The Parliament has also effectively undertaken the task of widening and deepening of democracy

by expanding its representation from diverse interests, deliberation and discussions to form

public policy abrogation parochial, sectarian interests. The Rajya Sabha as discussed has been

articulating regional interests and diverse citizenship claims. The kind of concerns and issues

raised in the Parliament also saw a marked shift from nationalist topics to issues of regional

importance. The victory of Beant Kaur (wife of one of the assassins of Indira Gandhi) from one

of the constituencies was an affirmation of how ostracization of criminal’s kin and kith was not a

norm in a country with a maturing civil society that was ready to choose the most competent to

represent themselves. The 11th

Lok Sabha had a feat of electing a member of the Opposition to

the post of the Speaker, P.A. Sangma, also the first tribal, the first Christian and also the

youngest ever speaker. In the recent years, the representation from mofussil and towns has also

increased. Institutionalists firmly argue that the strength and sustainability of a society is

determined by its institutions. The Indian Legislature is not without its share of problems but it

wouldn’t be wrong to state that as an institution that reflects the changing state-citizen

relationship and captures the expanding citizenship discourse, the Parliament has achieved

significant strides. How this institution of accountability and representation responds to the rising

social citizenship is somethings that needs to be seen and documented in greater detail in the

future.

23

* In cases where the people have a legitimate claim to the land either in terms of formal ownership or in terms of existential dependence.