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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Will of which people?

Will of which people?

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published Published on Jan 28, 2012   modified Modified on Jan 28, 2012
-The Indian Express

His vision for fighting corruption was a law that threatened to subvert every institution. Now Anna Hazare has couched his Republic Day appeal for yet another law in a woolly-headed — in fact, bizarre — rendition of Gandhianism. The urge for direct democracy that ran through his appeal for supreme power for gram sabhas is one that’s being increasingly iterated in various mobilisations for democratic reform. To this end, he demanded the setting up of a “referendum commission”, along the lines of the Election Commission, presumably so that every legislative initiative would bear the stamp of popular approval.

It would be pointless to pick issue with Hazare and ask whether such a scheme would render legislatures irrelevant. Hazare’s coterie would surely be game to offer its services. Instead, the extremist views espoused by Hazare provide a welcome background to consider the task before our legislatures as envisaged in the Constitution. In one of the last sittings of the Constituent Assembly, its president, Rajendra Prasad, explained how the architecture of government, at the Centre and in the states, has been so designed that every level of it “will rest on the will of the people which will be expressed from day to day through their representatives in the legislatures and, occasionally directly by them at the time of the general elections”. The episodic calls for direct democracy, the idea that every law must clear a popular vote, foresee an upending of this system — something, significantly, President Pratibha Patil cautioned against in her address on the eve of this Republic Day.

In such calls for direct endorsement lies not just a blueprint for the status quo — the law in India has been a vital instrument for social reform, a way of surmounting prejudices and barriers on account of gender, caste, religion, race, region, disability. In such calls lies the pathway out of democracy. Democracy is the art of mediating differences and working through crises, it’s the process of persuading through debate and reform. Crucial for this is a robust legislature, whose members are elected by the people — but whose popular election, in an enlightened project of crowd-sourcing, gives them the mandate to do what is right, even if that course turns out to be less than popular. Their guide is not individual whim, as hinted in Hazare’s facile argument, but the institutional framework of checks and balances set out in the Constitution. That document is a living text, and reforms need to be incorporated in its guiding spirit — because that Constitution is the only thing that guarantees the aam admi basic freedoms.

The Indian Express, 28 January, 2012, http://www.indianexpress.com/news/will-of-which-people/904701/


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