Team Anna's Demand For Referendum and Initiative Not So Practical

Who is sovereign (i.e. the greatest in status) in a democracy? Some would say the Parliament is; others would show faith is the supremacy of courts. Nay, it’s the people of a country that are all powerful and paramount in status. After all, people of a country accept to live under a rule and agree to be governed by guidelines decided by a constitution; they even keep the authority to change legislators (people who can make laws; for instance, parliamentarians) every fixed number of years (five in India). So the people are sovereign, beyond a doubt, immaterial of what any X-Y-Z politician says. End of the story? Not so soon.

Extra-constitutional forces, which also include Team Anna, may sometime think that they are the People. That’s a misguided and dangerous precedent. It was the same thinking which made Jinnah think that he represented all Muslims (even though he himself consumed ham and alcohol – great felonies in Islam), and that made India divide on religious lines. Such forces, however good-natured they may seem, must be abominated in no non-clear terms.

One of the greatest demands that Team Anna plans to make in the near future is to give the authority of legislation (power to make laws) to the people. No, they are not asking to send parliamentarians to Kala Pani. They have an important premise:

• Many-a-time, we see that parliamentarians might bring a law, which common people may not think is good enough (for example, a bill to deregulate diesel prices).
• Sometimes, we may want to have a law made, and parliamentarians, being real-smart people they are, may just choose to avoid that wish – due to their vested interests or any other reason. We saw a recent example: Lokpal Bill has not been passed.

What should common man do in either of these situations? Wait for five years? And then support independent candidates inclined to bring that law? But we know that fighting elections is a herculean task. It requires huge funds; it’s not possible for a Tom, Dick or Harry, to emerge victorious in elections purely on the basis of good intentions and great vision.

Such kind of paradox is not unique to our democracy. We know ours is an independent democracy, like most other countries in the world. In such a setup, people don’t make laws; instead their elected representatives do (such as parliamentarians). But, of course, elected representatives may have hidden agendas and their own ideology to further, or that of people and corporations who fund their elections. Many countries have devised an ingenious way to correct this conflict. There are two instruments to fix this:

Referendum: Under this, people show their displeasure for a government law or policy.

Initiative: Under this, people show their willingness to have a certain law passed by their elected representatives.

Both of these start in a similar way. There may be a pre-decided threshold of signatures from the entire population to bring into effect either of the two. So say, if a citizen thinks a given law is bad, (s)he must get signatures of say 1 per cent population to inform the government that the people want a revisiting of the law. The government may withdraw the law on its own, gauging public sentiment, or the next logical step would be to have the entire country vote on the proposal of that dissenting citizen. If in the end, a majority feels that the law is bad, it will be repealed. Similarly, citizens can have laws introduced.

Many countries do that. In fact, India is only one of the five democracies that have never used such an instrument. This is otherwise a very common practice in Switzerland, the state of California in the US and various Latin American countries (about 36 in total).

In 2000, when the Swiss Parliament introduced a law to privatize electricity sector, it drew sharp criticism from people of the country. A referendum was held, which led to the rejection of the law. Similar instances are abundant from not just Switzerland, but many other countries. In Uruguay, when the government decided to privatize water, people echoed their disdain; an initiative started by the citizens resulted in a law, which made the right to water a fundamental human right. The Uruguayans never let their government privatize mobile phone industry; the government repealed the law, even before the voting took place. Such examples are commonplace in Germany, Brazil and various other Latin American and European countries.

However, you must not write down India just because we don’t have such a provision. We have a unique distinction of being one of the few countries that gained independence from other countries, but didn’t slip into dictatorships and military rules after that.

There are some obvious challenges:

1. How to make a nation of 1.2 billion vote for every referendum and initiative? Information technology-based tools can be one way. But let’s be realistic. IT penetration in India is not that great at present. Why limit this exercise to rich and affluent only?
2. Who will ensure that people understand what is there in referendum and initiative (R&I)? We are not completely literate a country yet; the definition of literacy is the ability of a person to right his/her name. We still have cases where people win elections, in spite of their criminal records. So, educating people on policy issues is a big challenge. One way could be to structure the R&I language is simpler term.
3. What if R&I become funded by foreign hands and MNCs? That has happened in the US, where people are much better off. In 2006, two oil companies in the US contributed $34 million to defeat an initiative that mandated research on green energy for oil companies. We recently saw how protests on Koodankulam Nuclear Power Plant were found to have foreign influence. This would make us pawns of the rich nations; even China might be able to influence then, what with its massive reserves of foreign exchange. This would, clearly, enslave us yet again, rather than liberating.
4. Do you think laws against honor killing, dowry, communal violence, etc. would ever get passed, if there was a provision of R&I. Our case is a bit different. Our society has unique flaws of its own.

Without having these concerns addressed, it may be premature and rather dangerous to have the provisions of referendum and initiative. What may look great may not always be great after all.