There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life/is bound in shallows and in miseries
On such a full sea are we now afloat/And we must take the current when it serves
Or lose our ventures.
Thus spoke Brutus in Shakespeare’s immortal Julius Caesar (Act IV Scene III). The context of this reflective dialogue was his decision to participate in the assassination attempt on Caesar, not because Brutus did not love him, but because he loved honour and adored Rome more. A country, he realised, was in great danger under a popular leader. He confronted a difficult dilemma, love for his friend or love for his country. He chose his country. Mark Anthony gave him a hero’s burial. In his funeral speech Anthony said that Brutus was a worthy man, whereas other conspirators assassinated Caesar for petty ends, Brutus did so for the common good.
The anxiety with which Brutus viewed the popularity of Caesar resonated for times to come. A popular leader can do as he wills to general acclaim and accolades. Institutions are diminished, elected ministers are rendered invisible, and the political public disappears in the shadow of charismatic appeal. What remains is a mob reduced to hysteria by every act of the leader. This was the phenomenon that Shakespeare’s plays are based on writes Stephen Greenblatt in her book Tyrant. Shakespeare’s “plays probe the psychological mechanisms that lead a nation to abandon its ideals and even its self-interest.”
Fortunately today, we do not live in ancient Rome where assassination was the only way of removing a leader who is far too popular. We have elections.
Elections are significant moments in the biography of democratic nations. Of course democracy is not only about elections. Democracy is of value because it is the only form of government that can secure freedom, equality and justice – the staples of a good society. This is secured by limits placed on power. People are ruled by a constitution rather than the arbitrary will of one individual, our status as citizens and as human beings is protected by a charter of fundamental rights, power is limited by a complex of checks and balances, and elected leaders are accountable for acts of omission and commission to citizens. This is the backdrop to elections where parties compete for votes in the electoral market place.
In the complicated election schedule of 2024, some of us have already voted while some of us are yet to vote. We will exercise our franchise in a society where every pillar of democracy: the rule of law, independence of regulatory institutions, civil liberties, protection for weaker sections, especially minorities, executive responsibility to the Parliament, and a vigilant media and civil society, has been relentlessly demolished. We will go to vote in a society where our fellow citizens have been ceaselessly targeted on the basis of religion. The rich world of democracy has been stripped bare and we are left with only our vote. Yet the vote is a powerful weapon that can be used to vote out a party that has introduced ugliness in our political discourse and practices. We have the option to vote for a party that speaks of the need to prioritise the majority of Indians who have been marginalised from the politics of redistribution and that of recognition.
It is not clear what the Bharatiya Janata Party’s manifesto is about, mainly because it has been reduced to guarantees in Modi’s name, and political speeches that lampoon the Congress manifesto. We have to admit that the manifesto of the Congress party is sharply phrased. It holds a pleasant surprise – an allowance for homemakers. This is something feminists have been demanding for long. The Congress has promised training and a stipend for young people entering the job market in public enterprises and the private sector, 50% percent reservations for women in the public sector, Rs 1 lakh per annum in grants to women, workers and farmers, and representation of marginalised people in business, government and high-end jobs.
“Guarantees” of a social income and recognition of the marginalised are a refreshing departure from rhetoric that boasts of the munificence of the great leader. Yet there is something lacking. The Congress has hesitated from walking the last mile to equality via the route of redistribution. In his public speeches, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi talks of the yawning gap between the super-rich and the super-poor because of lack of resources. Why cannot the party of Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, who wanted to bring about social transformation in a deeply hierarchical and unequal society, speak of equality? Why cannot we as the political public begin to speak of our putative obligation to secure to our fellow citizens a life that is worth living?
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Take poverty for instance. Even though the government has neither released data on people who live below the poverty line or even told us what the poverty line is, it insistently stalks our daily lives as we, who are neither rich nor poor, drive past crude hovels that cluster in shanty towns. We see people sleeping on the streets of the national capital in peak summer and winter, in the monsoon, and during storms. We are surrounded by little children, women holding babies and men displaying their diseased limbs as they beg for a pittance at traffic lights. This should be more than enough proof for hardened skeptics who believe the bombast of leaders that so many Indians have been lifted from poverty. Witness the irony. If the prime minister speaks of distributing free rations to 83 crore Indians, these must be the very people who are unable to earn their daily bread. What greater evidence of poverty do we need?
But it is not enough to speak of poverty in the abstract. Poverty, as countless scholars have recognised, is relational. It is the product of what the great German philosopher Wilhelm Fredrik Hegel called ‘the system of needs’ in civil society; that is the economy. Logically, if the economic ordering of society is responsible for poverty and ill-being, then we are obliged to remedy wrongs inflicted upon the poor. This constitutes a basic element of justice: if I suddenly halt my car while driving on a busy road without proper signals and cause an accident, then I am responsible for the damage done to cars behind mine. But if my car is stationary at a traffic light and someone bangs into it, the responsibility is that of the driver who has caused the accident. They are obliged to compensate me. We owe those who our society has relegated to the margins of history, socially discriminated against, deprived of access to resources that would have enable them to live a good life and stripped them of the right to voice as distinct from the vote. Those who have benefited from history owe those who have lost out. This is a basic condition of a good society.
We owe fellow citizens because we are part of a society that has created and recreated poverty. We must amend wrongs done to the poor. The wealthy must be prepared to accept progressive taxation, a system where citizens pay more taxes as their incomes go up. This is the least we owe to our own people who live below a standard of life that is distinctly human, provided the government uses these taxes for wellbeing and not for advertising their own achievements.
Just doling out money to the disadvantaged does not work in the long run. It takes the pressure off the government to create jobs. Besides the transformation of an individual into a recipient of doles withers her self-confidence as a citizen who has rights upon the state. Grants of money certainly will not contribute to the making of social democracy, because dictators are also ready to give free rations in personalized bags and put money into their bank accounts. Further, a generic right to work is of enormous significance. Labour is, as Marx had famously said, the self-expression of man. Therefore, there is need to legislate the right to work. This is the attribute of a social democratic state that aims to secure well-being of citizens. Inequality cannot be overcome only by the grant of some funds. If it requires progressive taxation on the one hand; it involves the grant of the generic right to work to every citizen.
Progressive taxation that institutionally redistributes resources can be justified to the political public. We are bound to our fellow citizens. We live in the same nation, we respect the constitution, salute the national flag, stand up for the national anthem, and are subject to the same laws. In this political community every citizen should possess equal moral and political worth. This community of equals has to be created and nurtured through political intervention.
Finally, does our obligation to others stop at the grant of a minimum social income? Should all of us not be moving together towards a society where people can live fulfilling lives instead of surviving on the bare minimum? Casting a vote for the right party that will set us on the path of equality is the beginning of a battle for a new India, where we can move together towards a shimmering future where little children do not beg at traffic lights, and where young kids do not have to scrabble elbow deep in rubbish bins for scraps. The vote is the only democratic tool we are left with. Let us not waste it on NOTA or in voting for a party that simply cannot spell what is arguably the most magnificent gift that democracy has given us – equality. Elections have come as a tide in our affairs, this tide must be taken at the flood.
Neera Chandhoke was a professor of political science at Delhi University