Biswajit Roy - Dilemmas of Democracy and Its Friends: Appraisal of an Appraisal
How to resolve the dilemmas of the democrats when they are torn between their commitments to a popular regime and democratic principles? What are the pitfalls and advantages of continued moral and political obligations to a government that has born out of an anti-hegemony mass awakening but is fast becoming autocratic itself?
How to assess a maverick mass
leader turned populist leader when h/she is pro-poor and anti-elite but also an
epitome of intolerance, arrogance and paranoia? How far the 'good' economic
policies make the 'bad' political practices tolerable? How long we should allow
ourselves to remain in a catch-22 situation? To be precise--- how long the fear
of return of the CPM's regimented rule and logic of TINA factors should
continue to dictate the quandary of the conscientious friends of Bengali avatar
of Joan of Ark when she has begun behaving like Caligula?
In the larger context of
contemporary politics, are we destined to be the Sisyphus of late Bourgeoisie
world where we would fight psychopathic dictators and totalitarian parties only
to follow demagogues and benevolent authoritarians? Is it an opportunist and
utopian idea to think of an independent civil society linked to non-partisan
mass movements given the increasing fault-lines of the polarized polity and
growing gulf between the elected representatives of all hues and their electors
across the world and closer home too?
These questions came to my mind
after I have gone through A Bengali booklet titled Paribartan---Phire Dekha
(Change-- looking back), published by the Friends of Democracy, a forum of
civil society activists who had joined campaign for regime-change in Bengal
quite actively and extended critical support to Mamata Banerjee government. The
booklet is an appraisal of the two years of change of guard in Bengal. Edited
by veteran educationist Asokendu Sengupta and leading human rights activist
Sujato Bhadra, it offers a report card of the Trinamul dispensation on the
implementation of its pre-poll promises.
The FOD and its prominent
members have tried balanced judgments on the new government vis-à-vis their
collective and individual expectations and hopes, some fulfilled and others
belied. Sujato Bhadra, Bibhash Chakroborty and Bhanu Sarkar dealt more with
democracy and human rights while others have focused primarily on their
respective areas of expertise. They include Kalyan Rudra (water
management), Asokendu Sengupta and Malabika Mitra (education), Debashis
Bhattacharya (development in Junglemahal), Subrata Bagchi (Darjeeling Hills)
Sanjoy Mukherjee (economy), Anindya Bhattacharya ( industry), Tushar Chakroborty
(agriculture), Dr. Sidhartha Gupta (health), Rabin Mazumder( environment) and
Kalyan Sengupta( employment). Ranabir Samaddar in an interview to Sivajipratim
Basu also offered some new insights into post-Paribartan
political churnings while calling the Trinamul as the party of 'small
proprietors but not petty bourgeoisie'.
But I will limit myself to the
FOD's overall evaluation and judgments related to democracy and human rights in
this article, though other aspects are no less important. But they
deserve separate and elaborate examination. . read more:
