The Art of Democratic Governance

- Nimal.C.Namboodiripad There are moments of truth in every one’s life. When you are suddenly the recipient of some startling revelation. Which forces you to do a major review of all that you have done in the short period of existence in this big, bad world. Now, this was one of them. When I was left to wonder whether I had done justice to whatever little education that was put at my disposal. Here I was standing in front of an assorted mish mash of youngsters who represented “the future of the country” trying to impart to them whatever knowledge I had on that complex subject called business and marketing. “What are the different types of democracy, sir?” The question came out of the blue. I am not sure whether I had mentioned the term at all during the discussions in class but being a good teacher I thought it required an attempt at an answer. Unfortunately at that point of time I could think of only two kinds of democracy. 1. The American Type: The fairly decentralised Federal one. With an elected president and

vice-president, who are controlled by the huge multinational corporations and whose main job is to act as a spokesman and give clearances for decisions taken by them and secondary role is act as the dirty middle aged man who seduces young interns/personal assistants.

2. The British Type: With the upper and lower houses of parliament, the prime minister elected from among the MPs and a supreme figurehead (in this case the monarch) who has no power at all to speak of.

When I ruminated on it a bit more, later, in the cool confines of the faculty chambers I thought the classification too simplistic. Even the Indian system although priding itself on imitating the British model to the letter has major differences with Her Highness being conspicuous by Her absence. All we have is a mere President, Yankee style. After elaborate and painful thought I came to the conclusion that it was my duty to go deeper into the subject, analyse it, classify the democracies of the world and disseminate it to my charges. Finally I decided to do it based on two parameters 1. according to structure 2. by the style of functioning. The following is my first tentative list: 1. Socialist Democratic Republic: Where the elected representatives have all the power

while the common man the perceived power. Which in fact can be defined as a democracy far the people, buy the people and off the people. Where all people are equal, but some are more equal than the others.

2. Communist Democracy: Where the government comes to power through a bloody revolution called elections and all the citizens are supposed to be equally poor and the whole wealth vested in the hands of a small amount of people called the government.

3. Secular democracy: Where there is no segregation based on religion or caste but the

country and the states are ruled by parties with such strange names as the Hindu Front and Muslim League.

4. Monarchial Democracy: Where there are hundreds of different parties but each of them has only members of the same family at the helm.

5. Apartheid Democracy: Where the minority party rules the country. And then tries to clamp down on the majority.

6. Autocratic Democracy: Where the people can elect their own choice from among a consideration set that totals one person or alternately the same person always manages to come to power by hook or crook and that person’s word is final on each and everything.

7. Surrogate Democracy: Where one set of people are elected to power by the common man but someone else literally controls the strings. And where the common man has no say in the governance.

8. Anarchical Democracy: Where might is right and where freedom means not that of speech and expression but of the freedom to take the law into one’s own hand and the freedom to kill.

9. Business Democracy: Where the state is supposed to be one big company/organisation and the Chief Minster the CEO of the land.

10. Reservation Democracy: Where the country/state is divided into different segments based on caste, religion or sex or even the type of crimes committed and each group given proportional representation on all matters be it governance, education or job. Of course those poor chappies who have only 0.16 or 0.25 representation will be left in the lurch always because the rounding off of the figures will ensure that they don’t have any share of the pie.

Now, there is the Kerala type of democracy which falls into none of these categories but is a mix and match of all that is relevant in these categories. There could be much more. Which I am sure will be revealed to me in due course of time. And which in turn I will let you know.