Price of being referendumb

We are erring in taking a one-dimensional view of Brexit by limiting our concerns to its implications for financial markets. Its political fallout can be way more far-reaching and serious.

A postcard reading "Keep Calm and Carry On" sits in a rack outside a newsagent in London in 2016 | Photographer: Chris Ratcliffe | Bloomberg

In these angry times it challenges the very basis of the modern, democratic state evolved over the centuries. There is a fashionable new clamour for direct democracy. It includes, besides frequent referendums, right to recall, proportional representation and disempowering the establishment. It could only lead to anarchy. And no, I am not worried primarily about Arvind Kejriwal’s call for a referendum in Delhi to decide whether its “people” want full statehood or not. Fortunately, our Constitution does not provide for it, or we could very well have tested out the idea in Kashmir first. But there is a larger threat to the credibility of the modern state.

Direct vote is very much a European fixation. But it is the first time it has been employed to decide on a very vital issue but also on one involving a nation’s sovereign commitments. It was quaint – and cute – as long as referendums were limited to school curricula, some domestically contentious taxes, or ideas, though the recent Swiss vote banning the construction of any structures with minarets was pure majoritarianism, and insensitive if not racist. The Swiss may set the global standard in many areas of excellence, and quality of life. But remember, the loaded democracy gave its women the right to vote in only 1971, a full 12 years after its parliament had passed it. An all-male referendum had blocked it.

Bad ideas are more infectious than the flu virus. Already, the growing Dutch demand for a referendum on EU is adding to global uncertainty. Canada and Britain will both face fresh secessionist pressures in Quebec and Scotland. Similar centrifugal tendencies can spread to other, more complex and diverse nations. If a stable, credible, trusted elected government for a fixed period is the foundation on which modern democracy is built, the threat of frequent popular votes and unpredictable intervals will completely destroy it. It will render it impossible for any government to take tough decisions in what it sees to be the larger national interest, create public opinion in its support in the course of time, and then be tested at the polls at the appointed time. Democracy needs patience and accountability.

The beauty of democracy is that while the voters decide who would govern them, constitution, laws and fundamental principles have stability and impregnability so the vote doesn’t become an excuse for majoritarian excess.

Let’s apply this to India somewhat more radically. If Delhi holds a vote to give itself a full-fledged state’s powers, then what is to stop Tamil Nadu from voting to list itself under Article 370, or for Jammu and Kashmir to declare sovereignty – or in some moments of extreme anger like in the stone-pelting weeks of 2010 – “opting” for Pakistan? Vidarbha and Bundelkhand could declare themselves states and the rest of Uttar Pradesh could vote to deny them. Just as, since Delhi is the national capital, all of India would definitely now vote to restore it back to a full-fledged Union Territory of the past.

It is precisely to prevent instability due to popular mood swings that the authority of the state is firmly defined and established. The limitations are administered through non-partisan institutions, the courts, Election Commission, CAG, CIC and so on. But these are aimed at preventing a government from misusing its majority to victimise those who didn’t vote for it, or those whose votes don’t count.

Direct democracy has now emerged as the big liberal war cry. So here is a question: what would you prefer – a court verdict or a parliamentary amendment junks Section 377 of the IPC, or that it should be put to a vote? The Ramdev view may then win. Or a vote on building the temple in Ayodhya, abrogating Article 370, the Indus Water treaties, the Simla Accord and the Tashkent Declaration? And if all this looks tempting to one side, the resurgent and vocal Hindu nationalists, what about a similar national vote on restructuring the reservation policy? Such a vote would definitely take away the privilege upper-caste elites have conferred on themselves with the Supreme Court’s 50 per cent limit on all reservations. It leaves half of all spoils for the upper castes forming no more than 20 per cent of all population, the self-proclaimed permanent “meritocracy”. In the past 17 years (since Kargil) there have been five provocations when public opinion would have voted to go to war with Pakistan. At all all these junctures, governments took the prudent course ignoring public anger. Precisely as we would expect from people we trust to govern us for a finite term.

This absurdity can go on. A senior BJP MP sought a vote on Twitter on whether Raghuram Rajan should be given a second term and when the “electoral college”, of his own followers, voted overwhelming with a “no”. Another has similarly been holding a Twitter/social media poll on whether the cow should be declared our national animal in place of the tiger because, according to his pithy campaign pitch, “the cow feeds us, while the tiger eats us”. He is a senior minister in a BJP state government and I suppose the “public opinion” is voting overwhelmingly for the cow. The silly tiger won’t even know when it is dethroned.

With stalling global economies and rising unemployment there is an impatience with the old order. But anarchy is no solution. There is a new fascination with the past, especially with all the brilliant stuff the “ancients” did. The Roman emperors managed those circuses beautifully to sanctify their own decisions. But much has also been said about still more ancient times, especially in our own Vaishali (drive out of Muzaffarpur in Bihar and a signboard says Vaishali, the oldest democracy in the world welcomes you). In Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party manifesto, Vaishali of Lichchhavis is held out as a gold standard of direct democracy, where every decision was put to vote by a titular king.

Historians also tell us that economically richer but militarily weaker Vaishali was destroyed, and pillaged by the neighbouring Magadha whose armies massacred on while Vaishali debated whether, where and how to fight them. The king/state was a joke.

In sport we may snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. But we Indians have a unique weakness for snatching other people’s defeats. David Cameron has left his country and Europe down and shaken the world with this cowardice of using a referendum on a debate splitting his own party. The better course would have been to hold a vote within his party and if the majority wanted to “leave”, call a fresh election with that on the manifesto. He has now cut open the patient and fled from the operation theatre. This is an example to avoid, not emulate.

Postscript: Why was the code word to announce the success of Pokharan-1 in 1974 “Buddha is smiling”? My friend and former colleague Vinay Sitapati (look for his fine biography of P V Narasimha Rao, Half-Lion, next week) finds the answer in his research. It seems Raja Ramanna was also aware of the history of Vaishali’s destruction by Magadha. The legend is, Buddha was upset about it and thought the war could have been avoided if Vaishali too had deterrent military power rather than its so-called direct democracy so nobody would take hard decisions. “You can only have peace between equally strong or equally weak nations,” he is supposed to have said; that’s why Ramanna told Indira Gandhi “Buddha is smiling” as India had acquired its deterrence.