I. Globalisation and Democracy

One of the enduring myths associated with globalisation is that it deepens democracy. There are many more elected governments today in the Third World, we are told. Globalisation requires rule of law and enforcement of individual rights and liberties, it is argued. Indeed, capitalism continues to be identified, quite mistakenly, with democracy. But even in its limited bourgeois version, democracy is under assault everywhere due to globalisation. It is not long ago that globalisation went on a fast track with the declaration about the final triumph of democracy. But hardly a decade has passed and we can see erosion of democracy everywhere. Extension of the market has not come to mean automatic extension of the rule of law or democratic political control over the economy. Rather, under the weight of globalisation, democratic regimes themselves are fast losing their legitimacy and democratic politics itself is losing ground, in part due to rising popular sentiment against neo-liberal measures.

 II. The Erosion of Democracy

This erosion of democracy, and in a larger sense the sovereignty of the nation-state, takes place at many levels. At one level, the role of state is being whittled down by market. At another level, the state, especially the nation-state in the Third World, increasingly loses its sovereignty under assault from imperialist forces — not just from imperialist states but even from the MNCs. We see the strange spectacle of India, which has the ambition to be a nuclear-weapon state which not so long ago claimed to be a champion of the non-aligned world, grovelling before a multinational company like Enron. Opposition to imperialism had all along been a fundamental question of democracy in the Third World. In so far as globalisation is a somewhat benign expression for imperialism in its latest phase, democracy is the essence of anti-globalisation.

What is happening to the state in the Third World is not just erosion. At a different level, the bourgeois-democratic state undergoes a transformation. Its socalled democratic features are being curbed. But the state is simultaneously beefed up in terms of its draconian and arbitrary powers. Thus, in fact, the state emerges stronger and more authoritarian in certain respects. The democratic movements challenging various facets of globalisation are suppressed with an iron hand. Human right violations become the order of the day. Take the case of Chandrababu Naidu’s regime in Andhra Pradesh, which is supposed to have entered infotech age bypassing agrarian reforms and traditional industrialisation. The state is being hustled through a frenetic pace of liberalization and globalization by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and the World Bank even as about 350 naxalites, on an average, are being killed every year. There must be some essential connection between the two. Isn’t it?

The democratic features of the state are also eroded by the development of fascism feeding on fundamentalism and ultra-nationalism. The saffron fascism in India is not accidental. The rise and assertion of rightwing forces everywhere has been a general trend under globalisation. There seems to be a necessary link: rightwing politics has become a precondition for successful globalisation and to manage the resultant social crisis. History was witness, at certain junctures, to a continuum between democracy and fascism. Now we see a connection emerging between globalisation and fascism. In India we see the saffron fascists being the standard-bearers of globalisation too. The fascistic manœuvres to divide and divert the people from venting their anger against policies of globalisation are by now well known.

The erosion of democratic state takes diverse forms. Under the present-day democratic dispensation, vital questions of economic policy are decided by foreigners. The IMF, World Bank and WTO, acting as supra-national state institutions, have vastly cut into the discretionary and decision-making powers of the state. The WTO negotiations are conducted by bureaucrats with hardly any discussion in the Parliament and the elected representatives having any say. The Parliament is finally confronted with a draft agreement for approval on a take-it-or-leave-it basis where it can exercise very little discretion. The marginalisation of ministers and usurpation of the decision-making powers by a coterie in the PMO has become such a hot story these days making it to the magazine covers.

The electoral process, as we all know well, has been amply subverted by big and dirty money. The top-level functionaries of the elected governments offer themselves for sale at astonishingly cheap rates. Globalised money seeks not only a fat profit but also political influence. But it is not just the handiwork of a few crooks in business and politics. There is also a deeper and structural link between globalisation, militarisation and subversion of democracy. The scale of defense deals is mindboggling: Lockheed made history of sorts recently when it bagged the biggest ever $300 billion order for fighter planes. It is said that 60% of the US economy is dependent, directly or indirectly, on the military-industrial complex. Engaging in low-intensity conflict in the Third World in the era of globalisation is the official geopolitical-military doctrine of the Pentagon. The international military-industrial complex too has entered the race for globalisation looking for new markets. The Third World regimes, like that of India’s, look for a new escalation in arms race with their adversaries. The vested interests thus fuel militarisation, endangering peace and derailing development. High-level corruption is thus no longer an isolated issue. It is very much part of the globalisation process. And today it is yet another case of globalisation subverting democracy.

Under globalisation, political instability has become endemic in some Third World countries. India herself has witnessed five elections in twice as many years. Is this a sign of vibrant democracy or a deep-seated crisis? Governments change but there is continuity in neo-liberal policies. The entire polity - including its federal balance — is in an all-pervasive crisis. On the other hand, the burning problems of the people go on unresolved. Hence the crisis of democracy brought about by globalisation also causes depoliticisation, demoralisation and deep scepticism among the people — about the power of their own vote and the relevance of fast change of governments. Democratic rejuvenation requires a renewed vision and a new programme. The anti-globalisation unity provides the basis for such a new democracy.

 III. The Props and Palliatives

The sensitive proponents of globalisation recognise the crisis. The liberals too are aware of these problems. They are worried that globalisation de-legitimises democratic governments. They are thinking in terms of different palliatives to prop up democracy. Today there is an attempt at renewal of democracy and renewed mobilisation of democratic forces in a limited way to keep the forces of globalisation under check. The attitude of Western powers towards democracy is mixed and manipulative - there is a Mission Democracy to make selective interventions to destabilise inconvenient regimes and there is a greater accommodation of authoritarian and fascistic forces.

It is often said that the present crisis of democracy is ungovernability. Globalisation has caused a tremendous social churning in the Third World. The issues of global governance, in this sense, are also issues on which desperate bids are being made to establish democratic control over market forces and globalisation processes. But, in the ultimate analysis, the crisis and chaos of international capital underlies globalisation, which further intensifies this crisis and there seems to be no easy solution to this.

Many good-intentioned but unrealistic people take globalisation to be an unavoidable fact of life, call for critical engagement with it, and hope to grab something from within to help and empower the poor, and to prop up declining democracy. But these efforts meet with very limited success. It is assumed that under democracy the interests of the poor will partly get addressed because of the compulsions of electoral politics and pressure of public opinion. But these are times when populist measures are branded criminal and populism itself is equated with treason. Economy is sought to be “delinked” and “insulated” from “politics” so as to save it from the vicissitudes of democracy. This is the context for the Fiscal Responsibility Bill.

There are also efforts towards a programmatic rejig for a new social democracy. New attempts are on to work out a new framework of reforms, including targeted welfarism, micro-credit and so on. But the times are such that the original social democracy itself is turning to the right. Shifting to the right is, of course, called the “Third Way”! Still there are people who hope that democracy can be promoted as part of globalisation. Some learned men enlightened us that democracy prevented famines. But recent developments leave us wondering why it cannot prevent reduction in entitlement, stem unemployment growth and arrest the decline of income levels of the poor.

To say this is not to present a very bleak scenario and deride existing democracy, facing a serious threat as it is, in an extreme way. Rather it is only to forcefully stress the need for a new democracy.

 IV. For a New Democracy

We should fight against this erosion of existing democracy, okay. But more important is to fight for a new democracy.

A genuine democratic alternative poses the question of resistance to globalisation. Yesterday, Prof. Prabhat Patnaik made an apt remark that only a courageous political force can break out of the logic of globalisation. And he also rightly observed with dismay that even some progressive governments in India have been unable to do it. From where could such a political force derive such courage and strength? Perhaps only a profound radicalisation of workers and peasants could lend it such strength of defiance.

And Prof. Patnaik also correctly underlined the need to appropriate a redefined terrain of nationalism and nation-state to carry on the struggle against globalisation. Nehruvian nationhood and mixed economy are organically related. They can’t dump one and keep the other. And, in any case, going back to them is impossible now. Yet there is a need to articulate nationalism on a new basis. The saffron government meekly surrenders to the dictates of the US government. The World Bank has become our Yojana Bhavan. MNCs are calling the shots at the state level. It is a sin to talk of self-reliance. The saffron rulers stand totally exposed on swadeshi. A new democracy can really be radical only by incorporating a bold nationalism.

In what sense do we talk of New Democracy? The new democracy is all about thoroughgoing democratisation of the state. But democracy is not just a question concerning state or state form. It is very much a social question. It has more to do with who rule than how they rule. In India, the classes that have hitherto been wielding power have joined the globalisation bandwagon. Their interests have become an inalienable part of the interests of international capital. They have given up their last pretense of national self-reliance. They are succumbing to the slightest of imperialist pressure. On the other side, different popular classes are ranged against the forces of international capital and the domestic classes that act as their local props. These are the classes of workers, peasants, other toiling sections and small business people whose very survival is today threatened by globalisation. First and foremost, the New Democracy is about establishing their power. It is about thorough dismantling of the existing power structure.

When it comes to democratisation it is necessary to look beyond the existing institutions. Take for instance the judiciary. If in Narmada it is its shocking refusal to address the question of livelihood of the dam displaced, in Delhi it is a case a judicial cleansing of more than a lakh small industrial units and their workers. There are many who have chosen to work within the existing framework of legality and democracy, where do they go in appeal? On what else do they fall back? Today, it is futile to call for a “committed judiciary”. The Supreme Court has already made its “commitment” to globalisation amply clear repeatedly. Of course, the pressure of a massive popular movement might force it to change tack a bit. But it also time to think in terms of going beyond the existing institutions of democracy, to aim for a drastic and thorough overhaul of the existing system of democracy and reach out to those sections of society who have a stake and the strength to achieve this. True, these are days when the existing constitution has been subjected to review by fascists. Hence it is important to fight to preserve whatever democracy exists. But it is all the more necessary to go beyond preserving and reforming existing institutions of democracy.

The New Democracy is all about defying the socalled economic rationality and the logic of the market. It is about exercising the hegemony of the popular classes over the market and modulating international integration of the country’s economy in the interest of the people. In other words, it is about exercising popular and national control over international capital and the processes of globalisation.

The New Democracy is also about forging a coalition of various political forces of the popular classes - the Left, the democrats, the Greens, those fighting against caste and gender oppression, communities facing displacement and destruction in the name of development, and those fighting to preserve the positive cultural heritage and traditional knowledge systems and so on. From mainstream political forces to single-issue movements, they constitute a fascinating array of the anti-globalisation spectrum. Globalisation has already thrown up such new forces of democracy. There is also a surge in the struggles of the working class and the rural toilers. And then there is this ‘swarm’ of civil society organisations. There is thus a rainbow coalition already in the making against globalisation. The new democratic assertion should cover both the mainstream electoral arena as well as the non-electoral political process.

The new democracy is not just about coalition building on a pragmatic, short-term agenda. It is also a historic process of internal negotiation among various forces of democracy to shape, through people’s own experiences, an alternative and sustainable model of development. It is about a healthy theoretical dialogue between various visions of the alternative models. It is not about a trade-off between environmental concerns and development needs but arriving at an informed synthesis between the two. We have many vibrant single-issue movements against globalisation. However, no single-issue movement can afford to remain insular. For that matter, no issue remains ‘single’ for long. There is no irreconcilable conflict between the seemingly disparate issues of the ongoing rainbow democracy. And there are no contradictory issues that elude reconciliation in a larger democratic programme of transformation. And even the basic and long-pending issues of democracy of our society can only be posed anew and tackled through the contemporaneous anti-globalisation movement.

By forging a broadest possible anti-globalisation unity, the core of new democracy, all the participants in it stand to gain. The specific concerns stand to get a broader backing. The individual identities, far from getting smothered, stand to get strengthened. The issues at hand, and the challenges ahead, are far more important than individual reservations or apprehensions on coming together. The seven colours dazzle better as a rainbow by banding together.

Untrammelled globalisation, if it proceeds unchecked, will greatly undermine democracy and lead only to tyranny. But howsoever strong and inexorable the forces of globalisation might be, the might of the people would prove to be stronger.