Syed Mazahir Husain
What is decay and how political decay today is leading towards a catastrophe that is unimaginable for the present and coming generations.
India holds the world’s largest electorate. The electoral process also influences people to participate in electing their representatives in large numbers. However, there is a question about what influences a voter to cast her vote. The question is simply about the issues, the precise issues on which people vote and elect.
Democracy upholds the values which give people a chance to choose their representative at the very local level and issues that are of local concern. In the wake of this in actuality, democracy is becoming totalitarian and elections are becoming a “one man show”, where issues which are inherent to the philosophy of sustainable development like health, education, and livelihood are neglected and further remain to just simple rhetoric in election campaigns.
Another important determinant of this decay is the indifference of the middle class towards such issues. On one side we have enormous disparity in terms of resource distribution both tangible and intangible and on the other we have a rise of militant religious nationalism constantly diverging the middle class from asking issues for their well-being.
The type of subordination of power by a common person in any given political domain today is totally based on some transcendental or invisible force. The political representation based on what I call as a social contract of exchange, where a person who can represent a group is the person who is able to influence others to gravitate towards favouring him. This favour is guided by how the leader establishes the contract of social exchange within the group that he needs favour from.
The story starts from when evolution of human species jumped a far more complex leap than any other species around them. This ‘leap’ was having a “memory”. As soon as humans started memorising things they began to act and interact with people based on the experiences of the past. Human nature at the same time is constituted; it is not good or bad. It is about the past histories, of past struggles, of past defeats and victories, of hierarchy. This exchange of some abstract entity formed the concept of legitimacy which can be traced back to the parting of human species from their primates.
This led to the drive: to be individual, to acquire capital and the definition of individualism which is based totally on a non-communitarian way guiding the civilizations.
The results of this can be seen at various social levels in India, the Varna system and its individuality as a trickling effect on every marginalised group to be an individual entity and practice individuality and further define and marginalise more groups is what can be a good example of this complex social organisation. This also is one of the prominent reasons for the decaying of politics in this country.
India is not independent in its form; it is in actuality a systemic decay of systems. Institutions like religion can be a good example of this correlation of the systemic decay of systems. The rise of right wing militarist forces is one such contemporary development of 20th century. The coercion provided by these layers of institutions combined with the only motive to be economically productive and profiteering is making values of these institutions ill equipped to eradicate inequality.
The present situation is not just about inequality in terms of human economic, social, cultural, political deprivation and disparity; it also is of degradation of the very concrete object of human satisfaction; “the environment”. Politics does determine it or not is a debate, but international agreements or even for that matter state policies are a proof of this relationship of politics with these institutions.
The rise of religious fundamentalism is one phenomenon which can illustrate my point. That whenever people are excluded they have no other option but to seek divine refuge radically, that much radically that it creates spaces for religious fundamentalism to grow. The ruling class of the country is putting people into hallucination by imparting such polarising thoughts. The actual issues of doing politics is thus diverted towards more abstract issues of eating habits, of cultural preservation, religious identities and so on. The resultant of all these things is a departure towards a theocratic state which cannot exist in the plural public domain of India.
The decline is also aggravated by the so-called welfare measures by corporates (here corporate refers to group of people) just to mitigate the harmful effects of the present capitalist system. The problem here is simply this, as citizens we have taken a firm stand on welfare measures as an alternate to the present system. However, this is what precisely is utopian.
Utopian in the sense that it diverts us from sustainable questioning on structural issues, thus making us part to the same process of being productive with more or less the same harmful effect on environment and to ourselves.
The precise nature of ideology in a post ideological world makes us unable to understand the contemporary discourses; nevertheless one must look it analytically to arrive at a more radical rational argument. At the same time one must keep in mind that the 20th century communism is not an answer as an alternate to the present capitalist system. A microscopic minority within this microscopic minority are able to understand the contemporary need of anti-thesis within Marxist school. The constant coercion within is making it difficult to understand and profess it. The 20th century communism itself failed to a great extent and precisely is not answer to the rotten capitalist system around the globe and especially in the so called developing nations like India.
I want to assert on acknowledging that change is not about a transformation of democracy, change should be about transformation of human nature, so that people are capable of democracy and till then one must blindfolded, “watch the decay”.
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