- India which is applauded as the world's largest democracy has the largest number of poor and destitute in any country, and
- China which has achieved, a steady rise in people's living standards and has also acquired the status of a world power has failed to develop democratic institutions and practices.
- It is also interesting to note that despite the absence of liberal democratic freedoms the West has a deep fascination with China which is reflected not only in the tourist inflow to China but also in the flow of foreign investment and government good will.
- Operation of democratic institutions such as free and fair elections, existence of competitive politics and dissent do not particularly attract either Western tourists or Western capital to India.
- On the contrary the geopolitics of South Asia has been governed by the US and other Western countries as compared by India's pre-eminent position and therefore they have followed by an large a policy of containment of India vis- a-vis its neighbours. The functioning democratic system of India has had little effect on their policy.
The experience of India and China have put the theory of democracy to a severe test. Two old questions need to be asked again about democracy. In addition, two new questions have to be raised.
- Do formal political institutions and practices constitute democracy or
- does it involve appropriate socio-economic conditions which enable citizens to exercise their political rights.
On this issue India scores poorly with nearly forty per cent of its people below what is statistically called a "poverty line". China has asserted that it is engaged in creating better living conditions for its people after overthrowing semicolonial and semifeudal domination. Today, however, this dichotomy between economic and political conditions of democracy is seriously questioned. Their mutual dependence is emphasised. Therefore both India and China have to achieve yet more conditions of democracy.
The two new issues arise from the great democratic upsurges of the past few decades, namely the social movements such as the women's movements, the environmental movement, the autonomy movement and the human rights movements.
- One question posed by them is to concretise freedom as freedom from multiple forms of domination so that freedom to realise the potentialities of the human being is advanced. Patriarchal domination continues substantially in all the countries of the world as evident from the deliberations at the Fourth World Congress of Women in Beijing and as documents in the 1995 Human Development Report. China and India have only marginal difference among them. As to ethnic self-determination there has not yet been a scientific measurement. But both the countries have fairly centralised regimes and both have regions manifesting popular discontent. The caste hierarchy and disabilities in India are targets of public attention and social action. There is no comparable social problem in China though new forms of social stratification have emerged in the recent years.
- The other issue is response of the modern state to these expanding democratic demands. All ruling elites would like to have an appearance of being popular and responsive to the demands of the various unprivileged groups. And they engage in innumerable measures of legitimation to create a climate of acceptability among the people. Thus the modern state is coercive, responsive and legitimative at the same time. For this purpose it has developed sophisticated systems of management of society, complex methods of propaganda and innovative techniques of manipulation. Today the technology of repression and the vast networks of communication allow the formal democracy to continue while the citizens remain helpless. There is a new authoritarianism in the modern societies including those of the West which make the basic notion of democracy nominal. The tragedy is that while failing on the scores of either political or socio-economic freedom both India and China have fast accumulated the resources of modern authoritarianism. These tools include modern capitalist preoccupation with consumerism promoted through advertisement. Sensate entertainment that commercialises culture in the global scale on the one hand and building up security forces of all kinds to suppress democratic movements on the other. It is this process which is strengthened by the forces of capitalist globalisation. The alliance of Western capitalists and the native elites has intervened to assimilate the rest of the third world into the Western model of capitalist political economy. The alternatives which the socialist revolutions and the anti-colonial struggles had presented have been defeated in course of the battles of the recent decades. The socialist experiments adopted the same economic goals as capitalist systems and failed to promote socialist democracy. The anticolonial struggles such as India's which centred on the comprehensive concept of Swaraj failed to institutionalise after Independence.
The contemporary approach of the Communist Party of China to democracy has three components.
- Firstly, the Chinese state has to continue to be a people's democratic dictatorship where freedoms are allowed within the stipulated terms defined by the Communist Party.
- Secondly, the basic economic and social conditions of life of citizens must continue to improve as material foundations of democracy.
- Third, institutions, law and processes of accountability must gradually evolve to enhance the quality of democracy. This perspective carries the class perspective into a new framework of promoting economic development. It has an element of power sharing vertically as well as horizontally especially accommodating the aspirations of minority nationalities.
Thus democracy is not an isolated principle or ideal. As a system of self determination it is part of an integrated perspective involving values of nationalism, social justice and people's welfare. Democracy is not a mere procedural arrangement of elections and judicial process. It is at the same time connected with socio-economic rights of people. It is this approach which has unfolded concretely in recent policy measures in China.
While the Chinese communist leaders reject the western approach to democracy they are sensitive to certain global trends which uphold democratic values and norms. They cannot ignore the fact that this century has been a century of great democratic upsurge. The anti-colonial struggles, social revolutions and new social movements together have expanded human consciousness and urges for freedom. All countries including the liberal democratic and industrialized countries of the West are restructuring their systems to promote women's rights, rights of minorities, indigenous people, cultural identities, socially oppressed groups such as dalits in India. Besides, institutional guarantees of justice, participatory decision-making and accountability are demanded all over the world. Whereas the western powers would claim to assimilate all these demands within the capitalist framework other voices seek new kinds of democratic transformation that facilitate multidimensional liberation in all parts of the world.
But such a model has its inherent contradictions. Market economy is considered a canon of liberal democracy in the age of capitalism. In China it may have achieved economic growth but has caused serious social inequalities. The social differentiation among classes is increasing both in rural and urban areas, between rich peasants and poor peasants in the countryside and business persons, managers and ordinary workers in the city. The problem of the unemployed, migrant workers and the floating population is a serious source of social instability and discontent in China.
Yet another source of tension in the polity is the new milieu of competition in profit-making. With autonomy available to enterprise managers they try all possible methods to obtain business contracts within the country as well as from foreign investors. This has led to corruption and criminalisation in large scale. Ideological commitment having receded, the cadres are out to fulfill economic targets in one way or the other. Since 1993 the Communist Party of China has launched a massive campaign to curb corruption with summary trials of corrupt officials and heavy punishments, in addition to making apeals in the name of socialist morality. But still the trend remains unabated.
The culture of consumerism has emerged as a dominant trend in contemporary China. The austerity and simplicity of the Mao era was given up as outdated and an economic constraint on market development. So production and sale of consumer goods was emphasised as a part of the new economic path. This brought into China western goods and services, western life style and cultural practices. The Special Economic Zones may have been a source of much profit-earning for the PRC, but they were also the channels for the introduction of corrupt practices including smuggling and prostitution. The Communist Party of China has from time to time attacked such "cultural decadence" and "spiritual pollution". But it has failed to restrain the tidal wave of westernised consumerism. Previous Page Contents of the Book Next Page
No comments:
Post a Comment