Right rules for India’s democracy

The science of ‘complex self-adaptive systems’ provides pertinent insights to guide us as we struggle to democratically frame enforceable rules and laws, says Arun Maira The Economic Times Thursday, April 13, 2006

India’s complex, evolving democracy needs to find the minimal critical rules for good governance in several areas. ‘Offices of profit’ is only one. Affirmative action and reservations is another. Urban management to accommodate the interests of various stakeholders a third. Rural land use for development a fourth. And other areas also. A dialogue amongst the many stakeholders and political parties is necessary to get to the heart of these issues, to find the essential principles of good governance, and to distil the minimal critical rules that will serve the best interests of our democratic society. The effective conduct of this dialogue, so that all points of view can be heard and respected and agreement reached and honoured, is the essence of good democracy: not merely the conduct of elections, no matter how fair and frequent they may be. Elections are an enabling condition for democracy but not its be-all and end-all, whereas effective dialogue is democracy’s life-blood — a lesson the world would have been reminded of after the fiasco in Iraq.

WE HAVE to find the platforms in India for an effective dialogue, and the means to facilitate it. Parliament, as Mr Raja said, seems ineffective for this purpose at present. Seminars and conferences organised by business associations and other agencies on such subjects barely scratch the surface. They are generally a collection of monologues, not dialogues amongst participants, with speeches from the high table, a few questions from the floor, tea and out. ‘The Big Fight’, ‘Face the Music’, and such TV shows have more bite. But they are too biased towards entertainment to keep viewers away from the remote because they need their advertisers. Perhaps we could leave it to the governments of the day, at the Centre and in the states, to convene such dialogues. Or some credible civil society organisations could take the lead in areas they are concerned with. Whoever does so, some core insights from Complexity science and from universal experience with dialogue must be respected. I would list six critical rules.

• First, ‘requisite variety’ — the presence of diversity together — is an essential requirement for healthy evolution of complex, self-adaptive systems. Therefore representatives of all stakeholders must be present in the dialogue, even though it may make it more difficult to arrive at consensus easily.
• Second, effective dialogue requires that the representatives chosen be individuals who are capable of listening to others, not those given to repeating and defending their own points only.
• Third, the participants must be committed to stay with the dialogue, and not dip in and out at their convenience.
• Fourth, the dialogue should be conducted on the basis that there will be no winners and losers — either everyone wins or everyone loses.
• Fifth, the easy way out to a (shallow) consensus, that of settling on the lowest common denominators will not be adopted. Instead, through deep questioning, listening, and searching, the highest common factors will be found. Because these are indeed the minimal critical rules the system, with all its diversity needs.
• And sixth, the process of dialogue must be expertly facilitated.

This may sound like harder work than marching in and out of the well of the House or making speeches at seminars. But this is what the healthy evolution of our democratic country requires. And surely the futures of a billion people in our evolving country deserve at least this much from people who care and who aspire to lead. Also We must improve the quality of public debate