Nepal and India…both fighting for democracy….

1 protestor dies and many more injured in pro-democracy protests in Nepal that has been going for some weeks now.

Yesterday West Bengal went to polls.

Spot the similarity…..

Yes, for one, both are about democracy.
One fighting for it, the other fighting to have a valid reason to cling to it…..

In the first case, it is about a people and a country who are chasing the dreams of democracy, of a concept called freedom. Nepal, that small Himalayan kingdom, which has suddenly imposed itself on the world, has been tantalizingly close to this dream for some time….it is a dream that has been thwarted time and time again, sometimes directly by the monarchy and sometimes by their own elected representatives. The Maoist insurgency was a direct result of this disillusionment. Today the Maoists control almost all the country and they have joined the pro-democracy agitators in demanding for the final push, i.e the toppling of monarchy (the Maoists have toned down their radical agendas for now…one thing at a time for them it seems)…..

A few years back, the Nepalese king was considered a God by most of the populace…..that ordinary people from all walks of life would take up arms against the king was considered almost impossible…but it has become a reality….all the more reason to believe that monarchy’s days are numbered….how the actual events shape, we will have to see (because lots of things must be at play, both within and external to Nepal)

Take the second case….

Simply put, it’s the battle between Marxists and Maoists…..

The longest running democratically elected Marxist state in the world went to polls yesterday (the first phase) under the shadow of guns, the guns belonging to the left-wing guerillas (the Maoists)….that the moist threats of poll boycott was taken all too seriously can be gauged by the fact that around 300 paramilitary divisions were brought in to ensure polls, complete with military choppers et al. For now, the voting went off peacefully with high voter turnout showing us two things – one, the Indian democracy ethos (read – voting) is indeed deep seated; two, the Maoists don’t have so much influence here to sway the voters….yet.



But there are things that concern me…..

Why do we need paramilitary in the first place? Just to see that the people can vote?…what happens after? Beyond the obvious that the paramilitary wont be there to protect the defenseless citizens if and when Maoists reprisals occur, isn’t it ironic that that for the Indian state, democracy has shrunk to the notion of free and fair polls (when that is possible?)….when the elected representative himself/herself is afraid to venture into the insurgency hit areas or at best travel in armed convoys (how much contact with people can you have anyway if you need bulletproof protection al the time?), what right do we have in exhorting the people to exercise their franchise? We praise them and then wash our hands off them. If we cannot protect them, and protecting means ensuring a violence-free, stress free life, not just protection from being murdered, what use are elections?

Seeing people turn up in large numbers gladdens our hearts and we remind ourselves that we are indeed a thriving democracy (though most of us…internet using, urbane Indians don’t vote…and we miss the irony often), yet we must know that almost 30% of the country (where the Naxals hold sway), many people have been cut off from this bi-annual or penta-annual voting democratic exercise either voluntarily or involuntarily. In either case, the Indian democratic state has failed them…..and dig a bit deeper, we would know that before Naxals cut these parts out of the reach of the Indian union, people in these parts too voted in large numbers…..just like in the three districts of West Bengal where voting took place yesterday.

What example do we offer to the Nepalese people? What do we say to them? That they are chasing a chimera? Or do we hope and pray that they find a democracy that goes much beyond vote-bank politics, that the democratic state that they set up will remember that they are democratic all along and not just in the months before election….

Its a tall order and perhaps a naïve idealistic dream especially when it is natural that the Maoists would want their pound of flesh after the common enemy is gone….but lets hope that they, the Maoists, realize that democracy may be flawed but its usually the best bet…..otherwise as Kafka said “all revolutions come and leave a bureaucracy behind…and that would be another blow to the idea of democracy, already embattled around the world.