Reinventing The Civil Society

Reinventing The Civil Society
*Saumitra Mohan

Any developed society needs an informed and educated citizenry imbibed with positive values. It also requires well-placed institutions in the form of strong-principled executive, legislative, judiciary and media led by creditable people but nothing would have any meaning sans a strong civil society where each derives sustenance from the other, feeding forward and backward in a healthy atmosphere.
Assertion of the civil society in India is a known fact today. Backed by a vibrant and conscientised media, the civil society is leading from the front and despite an atmosphere of doom and gloom around us, gives us hopes that all is not as bad as it appears. Be it politics, culture or any conceivable area of common concern, the civil society is supposed to play a positive-constructive role so as to keep the ethical balance in the society. It is indeed amazing that the overall pay-off stemming from the impact of the working of this not-so-monolithic civil society is still pretty positive despite its sundry constituents working at cross purposes. The reason therefor is not very difficult and remote.

Today anyone trying to adopt corrupt practices in business, commerce or elsewhere is sure to be caught, penalized and turned out of business sooner or later. And this happens because of the constructive functioning of the civil society. Tehelka expose and consequent many sting operations are reflections of this constructive functioning only. Actually the evolution of the Indian society and the working of the developmental processes in the aftermath of our hard-won Independence have so proceeded as to give rise to myriad interest groups and they are always multiplying. In fact, this is how a living society evolves and grows. These interest groups working in different areas of concern see to it that the other such groups or groups working in the same ‘issue area’ do not advance at their expense, by-passing the prescribed norms and rules of the game. So, the ensuing checks and balance ensures that every such interest group is in check and observes the rules of the game. For example, a group of people attempts to obtain a deal through unscrupulous means, there would always be an interest group which would try to expose it because of the loss it has suffered due to that practice. In fact, that is why getting onto the gravy train unscrupulously is becoming increasingly difficult today.

Now there is a catch. And the catch lies in the fact that these groups have found ingenuous ways to skirt and overcome sundry hindrances to their untrammelled dabbling in such unhealthy practices by forming cartels or coalition with similar groups. Here ‘you scratch my back-I shall scratch yours’ principle takes front seat whereby each one in the business benefits from some sort of give and take by shielding, screening, and supporting each other in times of crisis and that is why many of the ills, evils, or bad practices continue in society despite being known to all and sundry. But if Francis Fukuyama of ‘End of History’ fame is to be believed, then such an affair should more be seen as the sign of underdevelopment of a society which would be overcome sooner than later. As Fukuyama would have said, such societies continue to be mired in history which would take its own sweet time to eventuate itself as also because these societies have not yet resolved their ideological disputes like the West where end of history is an axiomatic truth today with the victory of liberalism over communism. The wisdom of Fukuyama thesis notwithstanding, the truth is that despite our societal-structural constraints and sometimes debilitating diversity, the Indian society has done reasonably well and continues to give hopes for the future. And one great reason for this continued hope is the sustained, positive leadership coming from the civil society. The way the Indian civil society has conducted itself lately and responded to the crises like the Kargil War or a Gujarat earthquake or the way it has been reacting to sundry negative developments (as also exemplified in the recent Jessica Lal Murder Case) through the informed tools of cooperative and collaborative protest give ample hopes for the shape of things to come.
But definitely all is not so hunky dory with this civil society as well. Spurred by the demonstration effect as experienced through the boom in the means of information and communication, there has taken place a revolution of rising expectations. And these expectations are from the state which often do not match the latter’s capacity to fulfill the same and when they find these expectations not being fulfilled, and then certain negative excrescences like corruption, separatism et al are experienced.

Any event or incident has its own dynamics, and unless we fathom the same, we won’t be going anywhere. As long as people are there, there would be issues with mobilisational value up for grab. A bandh or a strike is often led by the people who are usually members of an interest group, who have to keep their cadre mobilized, who have to keep re-asserting themselves from time to time, who immediately pounce upon any such issue with mobilisational value affecting good number of people and when all such factors affecting interests of so many people converge, you have a recipe ready for a bandh or a strike. A bandh, strike, arson or sabotage is only one of the means of expressing popular revulsion to press for corrective action. But it is important to realize the continued utility or futility of the means adopted. After all, how can you justify the acts of sabotage or vandalism during a protest or a strike, often in support of very justified demands? We have to realize that what we are destroying is our own national property created out of our own hard-earned money given as tax and if destroyed would again have to be rebuilt from the same money thereby preempting such money from going into newer areas for our own welfare, for the creation of new public goods.

Being the conscience keeper of the nation, the civil society has to outgrow its cynicism and imbibe a sense of responsibility often expected of the members of a developed society. In fact, even Gandhian ways of non-violent Satyagraha and civil disobedience have to be creatively and suitably modified to be relevant to our society. What one is trying to suggest here is that we should find new, innovative ways to express dissent and make demands in keeping with the genius of time and place.

In fact, there is said to be a silent majority in this country which not only remains muted about its own dissenting views but also remains silent about the negative roles of others. These people neither go out to vote nor make their presence felt in any way. They, thus, tolerate the wanton waywardness of the assertive minority. Hence, you have a somewhat despairing situation of doom and gloom all around and it is rightly said, you get what you deserve. So, these members of our civil society should wake up from their slumber, come forward, and should register their presence in more constructive and positive ways unlike they have done so far. When we would have done that, we would achieve yet another milestone in our march to be a developed country. The golden bird that India was would slowly but surely rise and spread its wings over the world firmament and regain its deserved place in the sun sooner than later.
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*Saumitra Mohan is an Indian Administrative Service officer presently working as Additional District Magistrate, Jalpaiguri, West Bengal.
Address for correspondence:
Saumitra Mohan, IAS, ADM, Office of the District Magistrate, Jalpaiguri-735101.
E-mail: saumitra_mohan@hotmail.com.
Phone: 09434242283/03561-230701/231108/231163. Fax: 03561-224811.