In Search of an Alternative Political Party

Kuldip Nayar has concluded his article ‘Where is the Vision?’ (Mainstream, June 30) with this paragarph: “The people’s dilemma is that both the national parties, the Congress and BJP, riven as they are with groupism and ambitions, do not qualify to lead the nation. How I wish there were some party, even though small, that had the vision to retrieve the country and take it forward!”

No doubt many other people in the country have the same feeling, but the question is: why after all these years we’ve not moved forward in this extremely important area of our democracy? Isn’t this a very big failure for our democracy?
Let’s see the situation this way. In the previous century our freedom fighters without any democratic rights confronted the most powerful imperialist force on earth. They had to function under the most draconian laws, they were living under the rule of the strongest colonial power, they could be jailed or even hanged for the ‘offence’ of merely loving their country. Despite this, millions of people parti-cipated in the freedom struggle at various levels and willingly made sacrifices of various kinds. Some of them scarificed their wealth, some of them scarificed their careers, some of them sacrificed their lives. Such great sacrifices were made by the non-violent component as well as the armed resistance component. Among the armed revolutionaries, it is significant that just a handful of persons in some cases succeeded not only in creating endless problems for the world’s biggest colonial power, but—what is even more important—in inspiring millions of other people to participate in the struggle for freedom. Such was the inspirational force of Shaheed Bhagat Singh, Chandrashekhar Azad, Khudiram Bose and others. In the non-violent movement too, millions of people made great sacrifices, willingly going to jail time and again, giving up their careers, facing lathis and rifles of policemen bravely without raising even a finger in counter-violence. This makes India’s freedom movement one of the most inspirational stories of peaceful protest movements in the world.

Thus we had such a glorious heritage from our freedom movement. But where have we gone from here? We have not been able to create a single political party which has a significant presence and about which it can be said, in the words of Kuldip Nayar, that “it has the vision to retrieve the country and take it forward”.
Millions of citizens in India’s democracy like to think of themselves as concerned citizens who are involved at various levels for causes of justice, equality, environment protection etc. But why have they not yet pooled in their energy to form a political party that can give genuine hope to our country and our people in these difficult times?

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IT is still not too late to make such an effort and so it is important to point out the essentials of such an effort to form an alternative political party.

Firstly, it should be a completely honest and transparent party. Each and every paisa should be accounted for—in terms of from where it was received and where it was spent. There cannot be any room for ‘anonymous donations’, ‘selling coupons’ or other such devices which are used to hide black money. Moreover, all accounts will be open to the public and as per the RTI procedures, any citizen should be able to examine or obtain photocopies of all accounts of this alternative political party. Similarly, personal finances and accounts of all important office-bearers will be completely transparent. No donation shall be accepted without a receipt. Any donation taken without the issue of a receipt will be treated as equivalent of corruption and invite punitive action. Big donations beyond an appropriate amount will simply not be accepted.

Any dependance on huge amounts of money will be discouraged by this alternative political party by spreading a culture of simplicity among its cadre and supporters. Efforts will be made to enlist as many part-time volunteers as possible. A modest honorarium will be paid to full-time party activists. The need for any huge centralised fund collection will be minimised by decentralising the party’s functioning as much as possible. For example, each district (or parlia-mentary constituency) unit can be financially autonomous and raise its own resources so that there is no dependence on huge centralised funds and illegal/black money transfers at the time of elections.

Each such unit can have a collective leader-ship of about 30 persons who will take important decisions after consulting ordinary members in a big way. It will be expected that candidates for various elections will be selected from this group of 30 persons and all elected representatives will submit regular reports of their work as elected representatives.

This political party will draw up a pro-gramme which is based on equality and justice at all levels (economic, social, gender etc.) with special provisions for all deprived (with emphasis on the most deprived) sections so that they can rise to levels of equality in the near future. All religions will get the same respect without any discrimination while the state will function in a secular way. Environment protec-tion at all levels will get very high priority and the sustainablity aspect of development will be emphasised. Highest priority will be accorded to meeting the basic needs of all people. Concerns of all forms of life—whether farm animals, domestic animals, wild life, aquatic life, birds and insects etc.—will be given importance in keeping with the principle that all forms of life on earth should be protected.

Efforts will be made to maintain peaceful and harmonious relationships with all other coun-tries, particularly the neighbouring countries. However, whenever necessary at the inter-national fora all forms of injustice and aggression will be opposed. All unjust treaties and inter-national organisations working in unjust ways will be opposed and attempts will be made in cooperation with other countries to explore alternatives. Highest priority will be given to climate change mitigation, disarmament and all global issues important for survival of life. All possible attempts will be made to solve internal disputes peacefully and provide equal demo-cratic rights to all citizens.

This is only a very broad framework of the possible programme of an alternative political party. A detailed programme can only be pre-pared by many well-qualified persons working in consultation with many other people at the grassroots. The reason for mentioning a very broad framework here is to indicate that such a programme of an alternative political party will be completely free of all vested interests will not hesitate to oppose injustices at the highest international levels with the support of the masses.

Basically we’ve to link up the grassroots task of fighting poverty and injustice and meeting the basic needs of all with the global challenges of climate change mitigation, disarmament, and world peace. Our alternative political party should have the necessary vision for this and it should be free from vested interests to trans-late this vision into action.

For immediate electoral gains such a political party will never sacrifice its basic principles. It will prefer to sit in the Opposition rather than sacrifice its basic principles. Thus such an alternative political party will be completely free from opportunism.

A lead can be taken by some eminent persons in this direction. The country really needs such an initiative.

The author is currently a Fellow at the Institute of Social Sciences, New Delhi.