Crowdsourcing Governance Reform
I just came upon this article in PopSci proclaiming that "Iceland's Citizens Are Writing Its New Constitution Online" thanks to a friend who shared the link on Facebook.
Without getting into the whole issue all over again, of Anna Hazare's fast demanding active participation of civil society in drafting the Lok Pal Bill, I just want to make a point here in this post: in a democracy sovereignty ultimately lies with the People -- beyond the Constitution or Parliament. Iceland's bold experiment is testimony to this simple fact. And this point begs to be made, flying as it does in the face of criticism to the effect that citizens' active (and "official") participation in changing the law of the land: (a) is unconstitutional (b) subverts Parliamentary processes (c) undermines our democratic institutions.
Perhaps it is time to recognize that in today's day and age (relevant zeitgeist: increasing empowerment of common citizens) a purely representative democracy is unsustainable if it does not conflate at least some elements of participatory democracy. Some burning issues just cannot wait till the next elections, especially if the average citizen strongly feels that the establishment and its political processes have failed to deliver clean governance. Clearly, such is the case when it comes to the twin issues of graft and capital flight in the Indian context -- the Government in office has failed to check these chronic maladies over the years (even worse, its officials are suspected to be perpetrators of the same crimes themselves) and the main Opposition party has failed to correct that failure (even worse, is suspected to more or less equally guilty).
I sincerely hope our Indian think-tanks (who are wont to quote Dr. Ambedkar's quip about the "Grammar of Anarchy" at the drop of a hat these days) sit up and take note of the precedent set by Iceland, without bringing up feckless counter-arguments like: "Oh but you can't do that here because only the elite in India have access to the Internet" or "Oh but you can't do that here because the Indian public lacks maturity". We can definitely replicate Iceland's experiment in India (especially considering the urgency of the need to reform our antiquated and obsolete legal and regulatory framework). We have the technology, we have the intellectual capital (what the heck -- we export that stuff!) and we have the maturity too. We can do it, and we must do it. I just hope we will!
Post Script
Excerpt from an article by Vivek Dehejia in the Atlantic that I just came across, via @lpolgreen on twitter -
There is one crucial missing link in India's otherwise thriving and robust democracy, the absence of which will complicate the country's political response to this economic problem: principled, motivated political parties. There is no party in Indian politics that could genuinely build a reform-oriented agenda crossing the country's left-right political divide. Rather, each of the major, viable parties is what political scientists call a brokerage party. As American commentator David Frum defined them, they are "a political entity without fixed principles or policies that exploits the power of the central state to bribe or bully incompatible constituencies to join together to share the spoils of government." No party such as this will be able to responsibly solve the problems of corruption and inequality.
