Democracy rules

The Shiv Sena is being asked by the Election Commission to stand up and declare itself democratic in word and deed. There are two good reas...

The Shiv Sena is being asked by the Election Commission to stand up and declare itself democratic in word and deed. There are two good reasons why the Sena should be eager to comply. One is for the sake of principle and the other is self-interest. Its reservations about holding party elections are difficult to understand. Ever since T. N. Seshan first raised the subject in 1994, its leaders have stalled. In the intervening period Seshan and his successors managed to prevail on all political parties, including the Congress and the Janata Dal, to complete party polls.

The Sena remains the sole exception to a rule the whole political spectrum has embraced. Now, after two years of inconclusive discussions, the commission appears to have run out of patience judging by the language of G.V.G. Krishnamurty’s latest letter. Although the commission is entirely right to insist that the Sena observes what is now a universally applicable and necessary rule, it is a mystery why it is trying to force the issue just a few weeks to the poll campaign. Apart from giving the Sena the opportunity to pose as a martyr, it is not practical at this late stage to expect it to amend its party constitution and hold elections. If the best the commission aims to get is a loosely-worded promise to reform, that would not be worth the effort.

False pride would seem to lie behind the Sena’s reluctance to change its ways. Bal Thackeray certainly cannot be in any doubt that he would be voted back as supreme boss and that his wishes would largely prevail in the choice of other office-bearers. But his party has grown too large to be managed successfully by a dictator-for-life and power dispersed more widely within the party in an orderly fashion is better than unplanned disruptions. The Sainiks are bound to ask why democracy is taboo within the party when everyone down to gram sabhas have it. The national allies Thackery seeks will be more comfortable with a democratic Sena.

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The Shiv Sena-led government of Maharashtra has invited the election commission’s wrath on another count. Chief Minister Manohar Joshi knows as well as everyone else in the country there will be elections to the Lok Sabha in February. It does not need the formal announcement of poll dates for the rules to come into force. Among the new programmes announced by Joshi last week are a hike in minimum wages for 80 lakh agricultural workers and free tenements for 20 lakh residents of condemned buildings in Mumbai.

The first comes after a delay of two years, the second against the advice of an expert committee. Joshi could not have thought seriously that his populist tactics would get past the Election Commission. So, the cynical calculation is that, as in the past, announcements without further action are enough to sweeten the popular mood in Maharashtra. The Sena did remarkably well in Assembly polls by declaring that 40 lakh slumdwellers would get free housing which, two and a half years later, is still a distant dream. New expectations are being raised again, regardless of codes of conduct and the government’s straitened financial circumstances. The only snag is the people themselves. As the list of unkept promises grows so will public scepticism.