Post on 20-Aug-2018
Parliamentary Democracy In The Face Of Expanding Citizenship Claims In
India
A study of institutions as legacies of enduring political struggles succinctly capturing what
Ikenberry calls “critical junctures and developmental pathways” narrates a riveting saga of the
Indian Legislature as a critical pillar of its democratic set-up. Critical junctures encapsulate the
foundational processes of an institution due to which each country embarks on a specific
developmental path that for India was largely defined by an anti-colonial agenda. India chose a
path of democratic, representative government facilitated by the institution of a Parliament
palpably envisioned and designed as an adjunct to the struggles of representation that marked our
nationalist discourse. Though, a lot of ambivalence was expressed about seeking representation
in such institutions as perpetuating the alien empire, the nationalist discourse shaped in a way by
of organizations like the INC or the Sarvajanik Sabha that worked akin to the Parliament. These
organizations, argues Valerian Rodrigues1, not just propagated a civic culture of rights, debates,
critical reasoning but were schooled were future political leaders were nurtured. However,
institutions continue to evolve as a response to political maneuvering but are often constrained
by our past trajectories. Thus, the idea of one system replacing the other fails to capture this
continuity and preponderance of Institutions. The Parliamentary system in India was not an alien
concept but has been existent in our psyche since time immemorial. The ancient Indian scriptures
have mentioned instances of the presence of participatory form of government where people’s
bodies have even chosen their monarch/ king.
The traditional functionalist assumption re-iterates that if an institution continues to exist without
performing particular ‘expected’ roles, then it must be performing some other role useful in that
political system (Mezey 1983: 512). In line with this (unstated) assumption the paper argues that,
given the lackluster performance of the Parliament as the ‘decline thesis’ would have us believe,
it nevertheless has succeeded as a representative body and as a body politic accountable to the
citizenry as also deriving its pedigree from it. The paper begins with the premise that the Indian
parliament embodying a legacy of concrete historical process, embedded in and emanating from
1 Shankar, B. L., and Valerian Rodrigues. The Indian parliament: A democracy at work. New Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 2011.
the temporal social order of rising social citizenship stands testimony to the manner in which
legislative functioning has ceased to remain a scion of the elite. It is not just an institution
representing the people but also an articulation of their rising and transforming aspirations. And
this kaleidoscopic process has seen its due share of vicissitudes right from the time when
Parliament was a mere appendage to the executive to in its present constitutional form as a check
on the powers and authority of the executive. The paper begins by testifying the hypothesis that
the Legislature is a truly a representative, citizen’s institution by looking into its role as an
institution of accountability and oversight. Here the word accountability is used in a dual
sense: as an institution to hold the executive accountable and as an institution accountable to the
citizens that create it.
Parliament as an Institution of Accountability and Oversight:
1. Executive Accountability:
Executive accountability to the legislature is the basis of a parliamentary form of governance.
There exists an overlap between the Legislature and the executive juxtaposed with evidences of
Montesquieu’s separation of powers. The executive is derived from the legislature and is also
accountable to it which in turn is accountable to the people of the nation who create it. Thus, the
CoM’s collective responsibility to the legislature is systematically channelized into the
legislature’s responsibility towards the citizens. Thus, this overlap is not meant to erode the
autonomy of the parliament as an institution to oversee the functioning of the executive but to
create an omnipotent flow of obligations emanating from the state and directed towards the
people. This is the essence of our democratic ethos where in the relationship between the state
and citizens is defined and directed by the cannons of accountability, transparency, information
dissemination and rights of the people.
2. Parliament as the guardian of finances:
It also wouldn’t be a hyperbole to paint the Parliament as an epiphenomenal authority over the
state apparatus in matters of finance and budgetary provisions. Apart from holding the executive
responsible for all its expenditures and earnings by means of tabling an annual financial
statement each year, the Parliament seeks answerability by means of various Parliamentary
Committees who act as watchdogs. Parliamentary Committees are a group of experts who help
the Parliament execute its legislative business of superintending the executive established owing
to the enormity of the nuanced task and the presence of a deluge of such tasks to be performed
by a single Institution. The Committee on Estimates, Public Accounts Committee, Committee on
Public Undertakings and other departmental committees are designed for the purpose of
parliamentary oversight on government finances and act as the intellectual and analytical
bedrock of the legislature. And this system of checks and balances is enshrined in and validated
by the Law of the Land. There are specific provisions in the Constitution which uphold the
system of Parliamentary control over the finance.
(a) Article 265 provides that no tax shall be levied or collected except by authority of Law, a
legislative prerogative over taxation;
(b) Under Article 266, no expenditure can be incurred except with the authority of Legislature, a
legislative control over each item of expenditure; and
(c) Article 112 stipulates that the President shall, in respect of every financial year, cause to be
laid before Parliament, an Annual Financial Statement, an initiative of the executive in financial
matters.
(d) Article 151 of the Indian Constitution require the President to lay before the House the report
of the Comptroller and Auditor General who audits each of government’s expenditure which is
then subject to scrutiny by the Legislature on the precinct of each expenditure being within the
‘scope of the demand’. And this task is performed by the Public Accounts Committee. Each and
every penny spent from the public money of the consolidated fund is authorized by the
Legislature and is to be spent within the limits of parliamentary authorization and within the
scope of the sanctioned action. Moreover the jurisprudence of the PAC also extends to auditing
the accounts of public corporations and seeing that approved policy has been implemented with
maximum efficiency and no extravagance, or losses entailed. It is this added role that has made
the PAC’s observations critical to the functioning of public corporations. It is thus not a financial
but also an administrative regulator of the public corporations in some sense. These powers
endowed upon the Legislature have given it the leeway to bring the state agency to book for any
wrongful expenditure or unscrupulous deal. Since, 1967 the chairman of the PAC is elected from
the opposition, adding further to the democratic credentials. The PAC played a critical role in the
expose of the 2011 2G Spectrum Scam that jolted the political landscape in India and exposed
one of the biggest politico-corporate nexus. The controversy involved auction of telecom
licenses to bidders at an under-rated price and a breach of written procedures to transact
business. The CAG report pegged the loss at a whopping 1.76 lakh crores and it was the PAC
that drafted a report against the Telecom Minister. It is not without reason that the PAC is
regarded as the guardian of public money in our country. Even earlier in the late 1980’s, closely
linked to the Bofors deal was a report by the CAG that led to en masse resignation of members
of the House in protest against the deal which involved the purchase of guns from Sweden.
The Legislature has time and again stepped out from its conventional role of a law-making
agency to a trustworthy people’s institution, not only as a representative but also as a supplier of
information on state actions and policies. As Pierson puts it, historical institutionalism “stresses
that many of the contemporary implications of…temporal processes are embedded in
institutions—whether these be formal rules, policy structures, or norms” one important source of
change comes from the interactions of different institutional orders within a society, as “change
along one time line affects order along the others” (Orren & Skowronek 1994:321), that is, as
interactions and encounters among processes in different institutional realms open up
possibilities for political change.
3. Importance of Private member’s bill:
In the last couple of decades, the balancing role of the legislature has been further supplemented
by the growth of other statutory institutions like the CAG, CVC (Chief Vigilance Commission),
National Commission on Human Rights etc. It is noteworthy at this juncture to assert that the
legislature has evolved as a public platform for dissent, criticism, assessment, deliberation, and
sanction spearheaded by the direct elected representatives of the people. The beauty of the
Legislature lies; however, in how law-making is not just the domain of the Cabinet but also
extends to other members by means of Private member’s bills. In the Lok Sabha, every Friday,
two and half hours are dedicated to discussion on Private Member’s bills. These Bills have
essentially responded to provide for the due rights of citizens wherever an initiation to that effect
has been lacking from the state. For example, the Right of Transgenders Persons Bill that was
passed by the Upper House in 2014 or the Hindu Marriage Amendment Bill in 1956 that fortified
women’s claims over her property, or the Bill to report journalists reporting on the proceedings
of the House. However, there has been a mounting criticism that the Private Member’s Bill on
Transgenders came after a gap of 45 years. Also, even though many Private Bills are introduced
in the House, in the last two terms only 4% have been debated upon.
4. Motions of parliament:
Motions of Parliament are tools in the hands of legislature to hold the state answerable and also
provide information to its citizens. By means of a number of motions like the Adjournment
motion, Cut Motion, Calling Attention Motion etc., the Legislature has not only performed the
role of an evaluator and auditor of the government, but has also expressed people’s perceptions
and discontent with the state. The importance of Question hour as a very potent parliamentary
device for ensuring administrative accountability was highlighted by a question that brought to
light Mundhra scandal2 followed by the resignation of one of the ministers. The controversial
Bofors debate in 1989 led to the adjournment motion being passed eight times in a single day
thus letting the opposition use parliamentary tools as an effective mechanism to stage opposition
against the incumbents.
5. Changing social composition of the Parliament:
From its inception as an elite coterie of British educated lawyers, its members today are drawn
from a variety of social strata and occupations: CAN WE SEE THE SOCIAL COMPOSITION OF
THE PARLIAMENTARIANS TO SUBSTANTIATE THIS DATA AND PROVE THAT THE
WATERTIGHT COMPARMENTALIZATION BETWEEN THE ARISTOTELIAN ‘RULER’ AND
‘RULED’ HAS VIRTUALLY VANISHED? (ppt)
The project of socio-economic engineering that the Legislature embarked upon at its inception
was shaped by the greatest minds and silver-tongued debaters of that era. Dissent always had a
space in Parliamentary procedures but with changing notions of representation, diversity of the
Indian society has come to be reflected in our institutions.
2 Feroz Gandhi sourced the confidential correspondence between the then Finance Minister T.T. Krishnamachari and
his principal finance secretary, and raised a question in Parliament on the sale of 'fraudulent' shares to LIC by a Calcutta-based Marwari businessman named Haridas Mundhra.
Gender representation in parliament has also improved from about 22% in the first Lok Sabha to
about 44% in the Eighth Lok Sabha peaking to 46% in the thirteenth Lok Sabha. The scenario in
the Rajya Sabha is even better
Table 2: First-time MPs: Seventh and eighth Lok Sabhas versus the twelfth and
thirteenth Lok Sabhas
Year Lok Sabha Number of first-time
MPs
1980–1984 7 140
1984–1989 8 187
1998–1999 12 123
1999–2004 13 188
Lok Sabha: no more of fiefdom politics, the number of first time entrants to the Lok
Sabha has been very high ranging from 25-30% in the last two decades
6. Rajya Sabha as ensuring accountability:
Pierson’s (1996) notion of “gaps” and “lags” in policy processes that produce openings for
institutions to evolve in ways their designers did not anticipate put forward an interesting point in
the Indian context. The Rajya Sabha that was always seen as the second fiddle to the Lok Sabha
during the preponderance of a ruling regime in both the Houses began playing a critical role
against the majoritarianism of the Lok Sabha since 1969. As argued by Valerian Rodrigues,
though an electoral victory to the lower House may entitle a party to rule but may not entitle it to
govern unless and until the ruling power secures the interests of the state players or effectively
engage with gripping issues facing the nation. Loknath Mishra desribed the Rajya Sabha as “ a
sobering House, a reviewing House, a House standing for quality, and the members will be
exercising their rights to be heard on merits of what they say, for their sobriety and knowledge of
special problems…”. The quintessential requirement of a second chamber as garnering opinion
from public authority or eliciting responses from public bodies, to review, and hold the
governments responsible was envisaged by our Constituent Assembly. Then, it was also a
platform to articulate diversity and difference and to represent India as a “differentiated whole”
with each unit having its own issues and interests aligned with the larger national interest.
Sometimes institutions lying dormant are utilized to further ends after the entry of new players
with newer interests into the game of politics. For example, notwithstanding the sagacity and
perspicacity of our judiciary, it was not until a spate of PIL’s rocked the floor of the Courts that
the idea of judiciary stepping into an executive vacuum came to be realized. And the entry of
new players of social activists-cum-lawyers into the domain of governance as external variables
triggered this development invigorating a hitherto unresponsive chamber of the judicial
institution in India flowing directly from the people. It wouldn’t be wrong to conflate this
theoretical premise with the perceived and anticipated behavior of the Indian voters.
Psephologists, academicians alike have us believe that the Indian voter votes differently today
for national and state elections. Thus, given the articulation of the Indian polity, in the
foreseeable future the party composition of the two Houses will be markedly different thus one
acting as a check on the excesses of the other and thus aiding in its functions of accountability.
Diversity in Indian context is not just a matter of social ascription but a matter of social relations.
Inegalitarianism marks social relations in our heterogeneous society and the federal structures
may not be successful in portraying such overlapping claims, so there would be some groups like
religious or economic minority with zero representation had it not been for the Rajya Sabha
7. Standing Committees:
The standing committees of the Indian Parliament act as its GPS mechanism to steer clear of
making unjustified and wrongful laws and legislating in the correct direction keeping in mind the
essence of the Constitution. The Standing Committees with members from the Opposition and at
times to the deliberate exclusion of Ministers concerned provide expert reports on the Bills
tabled which is then put through a round of brainstorming discussions. The pre-legislative
consultation procedures deployed where-in the Bill is placed in public domain to warrant views
from the state governments, citizens and groups concerned have gone a long way to making
people-centric laws that are also in tandem with our federal structure. For instance, the Standing
Committee on Rural Development studying the Land Act in 2011 invited suggestions from the
general public, industry, farmers, NGO's, experts, Central Ministries, State Governments etc and
some of these were taken very seriously. The antiquated law of eminent domain and subsequent
interpretations that did not require the state to differentiate between acquisition for public
purpose or private company triggered off massive backlash from the tribals and rural citizens.
This concern was brought up in public consultations and found its way through the replacement
of the 1894 Act. Representatives of some of the social organizations and farmer organizations
informed the Committee that India is perhaps the only country where the State acquires land for
profit-making private and PPP enterprises. Representatives of Sangharsh (Ms. Medha Patekar
and others) submitted before the Committee that there should not be Government intervention in
PPP projects. The Act in its final form, though, did not completely override government
acquisition for PPP projects but did add a mandatory prior-informed consent clause. It will be
later seen in the due course of this paper how effective consultation is a manifestation of citizen’s
rights to participate, expanding its domain and also effectuating laws that dilute forms of
hierarchies that exist between the State and citizens.
The Citizenship Debate In India:
The philosophical roots of citizenship can be traced to the tradition of the Greek city-states,
where individuals were considered as political beings and citizenship as the capacity to govern
and be governed. The Republic of Rome, for instance, included heterogeneous population within
the citizenship fold by subjecting them to a set of governing rules and principles. Historically,
thus, two dominant traditions of citizenship and rights have evolved thereby leading us to two
distinct yet inter-related ways in which citizenship claims can be made. The civic republicanism
school focuses on civic virtues and gives us a legalistic claim to citizenship or a citizen’s identity
carved out in a formal-legal sense. The liberal citizenship paradigm focuses on individual
interests and rights giving us the substantive virtue of citizenship claims. Notwithstanding the
classical tradition that portends citizens as synonymous with egalitarian being, it is true only as
far as the legal sense of the term is concerned. Hierarchy in the form of class, caste, gender,
religion come into play by means of differential claims of each citizen to state apparatus and it is
this difference that determines their substantive citizenship claims. The way in which this power
equation (or that of powerlessness) comes to play while making claims upon the state could be
easily disregarded or belittled while making abstract universalized citizenship claims of
“closure” (Anupama Roy). Thus, ‘differentiated universalism’ taking into account variable
citizenship experience helps the modern state mitigate what Partha Chatterjee (1997)3 would call
“disturbed zones within citizenship”. Group-differentiated citizenship rights have again come
into the fore as India oscillates between a conception of individual rights fostered by liberalism
and capitalism and community rights overture by associates of multiculturalism. Will Kymlicka
(1995)4 notes that conflicts between group ideology and that of individual members within the
group or outside is best resolved by resorting to modus vivendi and intervention in any form will
not be justified unless and until there is an issue of gross human right violation. In India, group-
differentiated citizenship claims are a commonplace, howsoever, difficult they may be to realize
in a melting pot of cultures and ethnicities. Article 15 and 16 of the Indian constitution
recognizes diversity, and as contended by Valerian Rodrigues5, of two types i.e. difference
(religion, region, culture) and disadvantage (caste, class, gender).
“Encompassment” (Anupama Roy) works to resolve the contradiction between abstract
universalism and difference through the logic of a progressive opening up of democratic spaces
(Shylashri Shankar)6. Participatory decision-making in popular assemblies where citizens
contribute towards the governing process is one such democratic space and in the context of
India has been existent since time immemorial (in the form of sabhas and samitis and janapadas
of ancient India). Radical pluralists like Chantal Mouffe believe that a relation of ‘democratic
equivalence’ may be established through political participation and the articulation of difference.
And the civic republicanism path of citizenship treaded by India opened avenues for an active
citizenship to not only breed but also make significant strides in obtaining visible results. Though
acknowledging the applicability of group-differentiated citizenship in a country of myriad and
overlapping identities such as ours, the history of growth of citizenship’s universalistic claim and
the growth of social citizenship cannot be ignored. It should be noted here that universal
citizenship is not akin to some abstract notion of uniformity but relates to an inclusive citizenship
3 Chatterjee, Partha. "Beyond the nation? Or within?." Economic and Political Weekly (1997): 30-34.
4 Kymlicka, Will. Multicultural citizenship: A liberal theory of minority rights. Clarendon Press, 1995.
5 Shankar, B. L., and Valerian Rodrigues. "Profile of an Institution."
6 BOOK REVIEW: ANUPAMA ROY, MAPPING CITIZENSHIP IN INDIA (NEW DELHI:OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2010)
claims to equal basic rights and obligations. And the study of the growth of social citizenship
becomes clandestine for an evaluation of the changing state-citizen relationship in India, the saga
of which is potently held in the chambers of the Parliament in India.
T.H.Marshall (1950)7 traced the evolution of social citizenship to the breeding grounds for
social conflict and struggle created by the exclusionary and oppressive system of capitalism.
Social citizenship grew as a reaction to under-development perpetrated by the profit-making
enterprise of capitalism that benefited only a select-few. For Turner8(1986) said, the idea is that
social conditions and the nature of class struggle and conflict have a major impact on the speed
of formation and the characteristic feature of the modern capitalist society and in turn its citizen.
Barington Moore9 added to this when he saw democracy as the solution to bring in an inclusive
notion of citizenship. It is democratic modernization that expands the boundaries of civil society
to embrace citizens on an egalitarian basis and he does not consider this as necessarily
evolutionary and teleological. Citizenship is dominated by certain contingent relationships of a
class-nature. Turner combines Marshall’s idea of citizenship as a modernizing tendency along
with Moore’s idea of democracy to develop a historically grounded framework for
conceptualizing the development of a universalistic citizenship. Thus, the development and
modernization of any society can be seen as the struggle to establish citizenship rights of
egalitarian membership within a common community and where these struggles are successful,
they have an effect of destroying particularistic criteria for social value, so age, gender, and
ethnic identity no longer serve as principles of social exclusion (Turner, 1986). It is social
particularism, Turner argues, that becomes the site of popular struggles to challenge the
empirical inequalities existing in the economic market. Thus, if universal citizenship is the
criteria for modernization, then the route it follows, defines the nature of the society so formed
7 Marshall, Thomas H. Citizenship and social class. Vol. 11. Cambridge, 1950.
8 Turner, Bryan S., ed. Citizenship and social theory. Vol. 24. Sage, 1993.
9
Skocpol, T., & Somers, M. (1980). The uses of comparative history in macrosocial inquiry. Comparative studies in society and history, 22(02), 174-197.
Chicago
and if this involves social conflict then the nature of the struggle is crucial in shaping the kind of
modernization which societies ultimately acquire. In India, the nature of struggle for citizenship
has been anti-imperialist and anti-colonial in nature. This has had a phenomenal influence on not
only our foreign policy but our constitution which akin to Aristotle’s view is the determinant of
citizenship for a state. The growth of institutions of representation post-independence was a
result of this struggle. The history of citizenship is in part the history of the state or the
institutional framework within which citizenship can operate. The relationship between the
citizens is also political or contractual and not based on blood or kinship ties. Citizens are thus in
a political relationship with each other within the confines of the state.
The first wave of citizenship in India saw a transmogrification from Subject-hood to citizenship.
Colonial subject-hood was premised upon indirect association with and distance from the state, a
relationship of subservience of the people in front of the all-powerful patrimonial state. The
mandate of an alien government at that point in time was to necessarily centralize and reinforce a
coercive hold upon the subjects so to ensure its survival on the saddles of power. The nationalist
discourse culminating into freedom from the foreign yoke brought the question of citizenship as
a legal claim to territory and political jurisdictions, into the fore. To differentiate personhood
from citizenship, primarily concerned with residence or migration from the divided territory of
Pakistan, emerged a political conjecture pooh-poohing the shibboleths of subject-hood. Thus, as
Anumpama Roy (2008)10
contends, the problems of fixing identities came to be associated with
territoriality enframed in the problems of fixing territorial boundaries of the overarching nation-
state. The enigma of identification of citizens evolved in multifarious and at times convoluted
ways. There was however a wide-ranging consensus amongst academicians that the discourse
was highly inclusive and based on a broad spectrum entrée. While Anumpama Roy stressed on
the aspect of territorial belongingness with respect to ethno-cultural rather than socio-political
claims. Valerian Rodrigues (2005)11
focused on territorial location and associational belonging
but included the aspect of freedom to choose, to be heard and entitlements.
10
Roy, Anupama. "Between encompassment and closure The ‘migrant’and the citizen in
India." Contributions to Indian sociology 42.2 (2008): 219-248. 11
Rodrigues, Valerian. "Citizenship and the Indian constitution." Civil Society, Public Sphere and
Citizenship: Dialogues and Perceptions (2005): 209-235.
As the citizenship debate unfolded post the interregnum period between the Independence and
enactment of the Citizenship Act, the idea of choice played out in complex ways. The larger
agenda of forming a nation-state and a national identity of fortitude in response to the colonial
servitude was the basis of creation of this identity of citizens as a group of self-determining,
sovereign people owing allegiance to a certain ethno-cultural and territorial identity, also
encompassing several liminal categories in its fold. A study looking at various amendments to
the Citizenship Act of 1955 in 1986 and again in 2003 re-iterates a very inclusive, bold and
broad approach to citizenship highlighting aspects of choices and decisions to stay or migrate
from places to the territory of the Indian nation-state. It also wouldn’t be wrong to classify this
move as calculated inclusivity as birth, descent and parentage also became important
determining factors with ensuing amendments. Anupama Roy contends that these are not
manifestations of a continuous, irreversible, mechanical process but a deluge of events that
unfolds by ways of major historical decisions and choices. For instance, with the eastern border
remaining permeable for a considerable time post-independence, the people who migrated to the
state of Assam before 1966 and have been staying since then were given citizenship claims.
The 2011 amendment replaced overseas citizens of India with overseas Indian cardholders and
further expanded the criteria for entry in this category. With the new government coming into the
saddles of power and with diaspora diplomacy as an important ingredient of its foreign policy
concoction, the emphasis on differentiated citizenship claims both within and outside territorial
jurisdiction has assumed significance. The manner in which the 2015 ordinance was passed to
merge two categories of citizenship claims (Persons of Indian origin who enjoyed lower rights
than/ with Indian overseas citizens) and remove the mandated condition of 1 year of stay to
acclaim citizenship by registration or naturalization under special circumstances, narrate a tale in
itself. A tale of broad-spectrum, inclusive approach to bestowing citizenship rights to
acknowledge the boisterous achievements of Indians across the globe and imbuing them with a
sense of ‘Indian-ness’ as an identity vestige. The discourse on changing conceptions of
citizenship moving to and fro between the claims of inclusivity and compactness of a nation-state
is just one part of the citizenship story in India. On the other side of this coin is carved a tale of
changing state-citizen relationship in India.
The changing accounts of interaction between the state and citizens in India have manifested
itself in the successful creation of at least the idea of a welfare state committed to providing its
citizens basic economic and social resources. And closely intertwined with this is also the
process of a change in institutional design and outlook. The Parliament of India forms one such
important institution.
“The idea that citizenship is inherently egalitarian- having the capacity to extend and
deepen itself by bringing into its fold increasing number of people and changing its
content to meet the emergent needs-is emphasized by those who see citizenship as having
an inherent impetus towards universality”. (Marshall 1950; Turner 1986) 12
Hoffman(2004, pp.13-24) had used the term ‘momentum concept’ and in using which he meant
that the notion of citizenship is not a static once that can be encapsulated within a specific time
period but is something that creates a momentum with its internal logic and its demand of
egalitarianism and universality. He basically argued that the notion of citizenship is continually
changing and encompassing within its folds newer social groups and individuals. One can trace
back idea of citizenship to T.H.Marshall(1950,pp.25-78) 13
who claimed that the modern notion
of citizenship tends to 1. Equality or a ‘horizontal camaraderie’ as opposed to hierarchical
inequalities among members of the political community, and, 2. Integration, where the
expanding nature of citizenship brings to its folds the hitherto excluded groups and the
membership then translates into a sense of belonging to the community and a share in the
common value-system, culture and heritage. The emergence of the welfare state in the 90’s and
the inclusion of the demands of the marginalized in the popular political narratives, the rise of
Judiciary as a protector of citizen’s rights and the increasing space being accorded to the civil
society are all manifestations of ‘expanding notions of citizenship’(Anupama Roy). However, as
much as this change is premised on a rights-based discourse, it also requires significant citizen’s
participation coupled with political response and institutional amends.
12
Roy, Anupama ‘Mapping Citizenship in India’(2010) by Oxford University Press, New Delhi
13 Marshall, T.H ‘Citizenship and Social Class and Other Essays’ (1950) by Cambridge University Press, London
Nivedita Menon14
by means of tracing the history of rights in India has pointed out that
discursively focusing on rights as the essence of citizenship can have grave anti-democratic
consequences for a large number of people. By contrasting the abstract notion of citizenship with
another notion marked by gender, religion and other identities, she contends that the project of
communalism and secularism alike has been to mask differences from within and create a
universal citizenship paradigm. Taking back to the tumultuous history of the Uniform Civil Code
debate in India, she proves how gender discrimination has always been inherent in all secular
agendas as well. A 1994 judgement of the Allahabad High Court ruled that any divorce under
Sharia Law or Hindu Marriage Act will be null and void if against constitutional provisions thus
writing off as illegitimate verbal triple talaq. It is interesting here to note that the original case
did not pertain to the validity of the divorce but to separate rights to ownership of land of women
after separation from their husbands. This right then was denied to the woman in question on the
pretext of an invalid divorce. Consciously steering clear of a debate on women’s rights subsumed
under religious rights or constitutional rights (as that is altogether another area of discussion), the
lesson that one should draw from this example is to avoid the fallacy of excessive rights
discourse while defining citizenship. Thus, though rights are an important determinant of
citizenship claims, these are not the only determinants and fall flat if not supplemented with
active citizen’s participation not only in demanding for their rights, but also helping create
policies to be translated into such rights and providing for an extensive network to monitor and
evaluate. Vouching for rights, thus, just forms a part of the whole that catalyzes the expansion of
citizenship circles.
The Right to Information Act:
“Re-invented by the Rajasthan-based Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan, the social audit
has been institutionalised, in the 2000s, as a mode of implementation of some of the new
social and economic rights analysed by Jayal15
. Social audits recast the beneficiaries of
welfare policies—that is, the poor—as full-fledged citizens: this procedure asserts that
14
Menon, Nivedita. "State/Gender/Community: Citizenship in Contemporary India." Economic and
Political Weekly 33.5 (1998) 15
Jayal, Niraja Gopal (2013) Citizenship and its Discontents: An Indian History, Cambridge & London:
Harvard University Press, and New Delhi: Permanent Black, 376 pages
the poor are legitimate not only in laying claim to their rights, but also as monitors of the
action of the state. Thus social audits might be considered an important performance of
citizenship, in every sense of the term, in today’s India”
(Stéphanie Tawa Lama-Rewal)
The Right to Information Campaign spearheaded under the auspices of the Mazdoor Kisan
Shakti Sangathan in Rajsthan is a paragon of legislative feat achieved by a non-political people’s
movement comprising of socially-embedded, self-enfranchised and politically conscious citizens
of India. By looking at the narrative of this Act, one seeks to draw the changing relation between
the state and citizens, with increasing participation of the latter demanding accountability from
the former thus significantly bridging the gap between the ruler and the ruled.
Advocates of state accountability talk about its two types: vertical accountability i.e. the power
of the citizens through the ballot to hold the state accountable for its actions/inactions and
horizontal accountability which is the internal checks mechanism. With the failure of these two
forms of accountability, emerged another form that put the citizens by means of ‘discontent
mobilization’ into the helm of state-affairs. Greater spaces evolved where in the citizens could
directly participate in the state activities. Goetz and Jenkins (2001)16
refer to this new form of
citizen engagement as “hybrid” accountability. It has also been described as “co-governance”
(Ackerman 2004)17
, and have taken shape in the form of a people’s movement that began in a
small village of Rajasthan thereby culminating into a landmark law. The movement pushed for a
radical interpretation of the right to information within the state as a fundamental element of
citizens’ right to participate in governance processes (Jenkins and Goetz, 1999). It was not just a
struggle to empower oneself with information but a rejection of state patronage and thereby
redefining citizenship in terms of rights and revamping a state-citizen relationship where there
was only a one-sided flow of power. Norothy Devi, a common villager and now the Sarpanch
declared in a public hearing, “When I give a penny to my son to bring me something, I seek an
account. We as taxpayers provide finances for the state machinery, no body thus can deny us of
our rights to seek accounts from the state”. People hearings or direct participation of people in
16
Goetz, Anne Marie, and Rob Jenkins. "Hybrid forms of accountability: citizen engagement in institutions
of public-sector oversight in India." Public Management Review 3.3 (2001): 363-383. 17
Ackerman, John. "Co-governance for accountability: beyond “exit” and “voice”." World
Development 32.3 (2004): 447-463.
discussions apprehending massive leakages, corruption and nepotism in the use of drought relief
fund triggered this mass movement of the march of the people to the Panchayat office to ask for
documents. The roots of the RTI were thus entrenched and the coming into existence of a
National Commission on People’s Right to Information (NCPRI) was a structured and
institutionalized step ahead in the movement. The Indian bureaucracy, legislature and the
politicians that had hitherto been taking refuge under an archaic, colonial Official Secrets Act
had to finally succumb to this popular public demand to pass the Right to Information Act in
2005.
It is important here to note that “rights based legislation” such as this is not just a watershed
moment for any democracy to flourish but also puts a moral obligation upon the state towards its
citizens to not only facilitate their involvement in decision-making but also take their
accountability powers seriously. When it does put state in a powerful position to govern, it also
places power of answerability and sanctions upon the citizens. The flow of power then ceases to
be one way. Citizens’ in India also have responded enthusiastically to the Act, filing information
request on a regular basis. According to the estimates by the Commonwealth Human Rights
Initiative, as many as 4 million information requests were filed in 2012 alone. The people’s
movement that captured Indian bureaucracy’s ‘Passion for paper’ (Baviskar, 2007)18
in one part
of the country made majestic headways in pressing for a landmark judgement that could place
indomitable powers in the hands of the people. The grass root organizations and people’s groups
have used these very information obtained by means of filing an RTI to question state
malpractices or absenteeism in the form of Pad Yatras/ marches ( like the Jawabdehi Yatra or the
Accountability March led by MKSS recently to hold to test 100 days of governance by the
State). Their use of the Gandhian tools of Satyagraha : peaceful demonstrations, marches, street
plays disseminating information and fielding political satire, use of petitions and catchy slogans,
channelizing the media power sets them apart as a social movement. This social movement that
aims to catapult the citizens as a part of governance process also brings about the inclusion of
rural poor, tribals or small peasants into the citizenship fold. The reason being the ease with
which information is disseminated by means of songs and street plays, this sort of a struggle not
18
Aiyar, Yamini, and Michael Walton. "11. Rights, accountability and citizenship: India’s emerging welfare
state." Governance in Developing Asia: Public Service Delivery and Empowerment (2015): 260.
only resonates among the people but also provides them with a role they can play in the
movement. It is not only this shared experience of oppression that gives people their identity but
also a hope to collectively come out of the oppressed state that forges a relationship of equality
amongst the citizens. And when these citizens together put pressure upon the Legislature to
replace an outmoded law, the outcome of it leads to the creation of a law that undermines the
unquestioned authority of the state over its citizens. The flow diagram for this would be
something like this (show in the Presentation):
Common experience of oppression – social struggle- expanding circles of citizenship- legislative
input- institutional response to changing social relation- people-centric law as output- state-
citizenship relation based on accountability- institutional change
The first wave of citizenship had the consequence of abrogating the formal role of property
ownership in defining citizenship. However, women were significantly left out of this drive and
this created anomaly in them. The second wave of citizenship was social movement by women to
demand political and legal rights and this coupled with the capitalist needs to wave of gendered
roles in employment, had the effect of removing gender also as an exclusive feature for defining
citizenship. As a consequence, the third wave of citizenship saw a re-definition of age and
kinship ties within the family as a significant feature of the legal definition of citizenship. Social
legislation on children and the rights of the elderly can be regarded as a social provision for
citizenship rights. Turner says that the fourth wave of citizenship rights is brought about by
social movements which have the consequence of ascribing rights to nature and the environment.
The expanding notion of citizenship claims in the current capitalist paradigm can be understood
by referring to social movements and the long term consequence of these movements have been
to widen citizenship claims to embrace a ‘wider’ group of persons within its ambit.
The Right to Transparency and Fair Compensation in the Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation
and Resettlement Act 2013:
The second landmark Act that forms our unit of analysis of changing citizenship claims upon the
Legislature is the story of such a social movement or rather a struggle for protection of basic
fundamental rights threatened in the face of the development juggernaut. The Right to
Transparency and Fair Compensation in the Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement
Act 2013 was a culmination of a series of people’s struggles for an alternative course of
development and against the repressive colonial law of ‘eminent domain’. In India where it
wouldn’t be wrong to invoke Karl Polyani’s ‘Fictitious commodity’ (2005)19
to describe the
importance of land not only as an economic resource but also an emotional asset and cultural
entity. And the enterprise of crony capitalism had found in the State a partner to get access to this
inelastic, scarce commodity. The state by invoking the principle of ‘eminent domain’ and ‘public
purpose’ has time and again robbed people of their landholdings only to hand it over to the
industries. And the colonial Land Acquisition Act of 1894 legitimized the state’s action in
collusion with big businesses. Fernandes (2001) argued that the most comprehensive national
analysis of development- induced displacement in India has also shown a substantial increase
post-liberalization and that the concept of public-private partnership and SEZ affirmed the role
of the ‘state as the land broker’ for the capitalists or industrialists, setting the stage right for a
deluge of social movements to ensue and expand the idea of citizenship. The Narmada Bachao
Andolan, anti-Posco agitation, a few movements in the North East, the toppling for the left
government after three decades in West Bengal have all been symptomatic of this social struggle.
19
argument of land being a ‘fictitious commodity19
’ in the sense that it is not only non-reproducible and location-
specific but also because it is valued in a number of ways which makes it very difficult to be transacted even for an
exchange value
In the hierarchy of citizenship as traced by Upendra Baxi (2000; 2002)20
, one particular group
involves PAPs citizens that is the project-affected people who remain subjects of state policies of
lawless development. It is this group that figures in the discourse on land acquisition and the idea
of state-citizen relationship as defined by the legal provisions in the matter. It was the 2013 law
that included into the citizenship fold these categories of displaced persons mandating consent
from the people, and formulating an extensive rehabilitation and resettlement plan along with a
‘just’ compensation. The scope of this paper does not extend to analyzing the merits or de-merits
of this Act but it definitely is a leap forward in terms of its colonial residue. And there are at least
three provisions that make this Act a people’s act: ‘prior-informed consent’, ‘interested persons’
that recognized other functional and livelihood rights of man over land along with ownership
claims, and social cost-benefit analysis in the form of ‘Social Impact Assessment’. The
legislation not only re-iterated the formal equality of citizenship rights for the bourgeoisie and
peasant alike but also recognized the social-embedded rights of citizens to life with dignity and
social participation.
Arguing that social movements have struggled to weave difference into the abstract notion of
citizenship, Anupama Roy suggests that the universalism of citizenship can be made effective by
taking into account the specific needs of people belonging to groups that are disadvantaged by
the generalized application of common or uniform frameworks/standards of citizenship. The
struggle of the project-affected-people supported by the civil society organizations has been
precisely to take into account a ‘substantive notion of equality’21
while foisting upon them the
project of economic growth and development. It is interesting here to note that most of these
displacements take place in the fertile and mineral-rich tribal lands. And what essentially ensues
is a subversion of their cultural identities, as for them festivals, deities, customs hover around
land. This cultural repression is also a violation of their basic rights as citizens to practice their
culture and preserve it. However, as institutions embedded in social context as well as
20
Baxi, U. (2000). What Happens Next Is Up to You: Human Rights at Risks in Dams and Development. Am. U. Int'l
L. Rev., 16, 1507.
21 Substantive equality (Kapur and Crossman)- comparative disadvantage under existing unequal
conditions to be taken into consideration- a more complicated version of equality
enculturation of the people participating in it and responding to it, our Legislature has
successfully passed a number of laws like the Panchayat Extension to Schedule Areas, setting up
Tribal Advisory Committee and giving significant powers to the local authority to decide their
future course of development. The inclusion of tribals, which is a nuanced category in itself, as
full-fledged citizens is still a process in making but PAP’s have been accorded their due rights by
means of an extensive rehabilitation and resettlement doctrine. Of course, no rehabilitation is
completely just but does mitigate to a great deal the loss of social relations, kinship ties, and
economic depravities. The people’s movement today has not been so much against displacement
as has been for efficient resettlement and preferably In- situ rehabilitation, so as to preserve as
much as possible their cultural and social rights as citizens. At least for the slum upgradation
project in the metropolitan cities like Delhi, interventions by civil society members have coaxed
the DDA into providing for in-situ rehabilitation of slum dwellers. The PAP as an entrant into
the citizenship fold also has significant implications for all those who get affected by the project
irrespective of their ownership claims thus re-iterating the state’s obligation towards protecting
the livelihood and shelter of its citizens.
Conclusion:
Aristotle defined the citizen in the full sense as ‘one who has a share in the privileges of the rule’
(Barker, 1962)22
. Democracy had seen proponents of its obituary in India far before it came into
existence for the simple reason that Indians were not considered ‘educated’ or ‘civilized’ enough
to carry the baton forward. However, this ‘orientalism’ ignored the manner in which
representative democracy was ingrained in the political imagination of the Indians right from the
time they began struggling to overthrow the colonial empire. One of the very first demands of
the Congress at that point was greater representation for Indians. Institutions do not operate in
22 Barker, E. (1962). Politics of Aristotle. Retrieved from http://agris.fao.org/agris-
search/search.do?recordID=US201300596832
epistemological vacuum and require inputs and feedback from the socio-economic environment
they are situated in, also influencing the equations in the society. At the time of independence,
the institutional mandate of the Legislature required expertise to carve out laws that would
ensure India’s economic growth and put it on the global picture as a prominent player. But with
rising inequalities and resonating disillusionment, the Legislature responded with appropriate
laws. It has been a standing testimony to state-citizen relationship from the era of subject-hood to
the times of empowered citizenry. And since the well-being of a society is judged on the
parameter of its functioning institutions, the Legislature has never failed to hold up our societal
and cultural milieu. This is not to say that the Legislature has never faced crisis but to argue that
the institution has emerged stronger after each crisis. Though the Emergency of 1975 marked the
darkest chapter in the history of Indian democracy and was a severe blow to the Parliamentary
edifice, the democratic consciousness of representation couldn’t be uprooted. The commitment
to the sacrosanct Parliament purged out all excesses the Emergency had done like reverting the
order extending the term of the Parliament for six years, ordering privilege issues against Indira
Gandhi etc.
This paper made an attempt to understand the transition of the Parliament as a patronage of the
elite to the representative and constitutive of the masses commensurate the growth of social
citizenship in India. Citizenship not just understood as a means to attain access to rights but as
also a domain of horizontal solidarity glossing over multiple dimensions including agency,
identities, political response and actions of people themselves. The examples of various social
movements have also shown us that the form solidarity takes shapes the resulting State-Citizen
relationship and this form varies not just according to the ‘excluded’ or ‘included’ category of
people but also the extent to which they hope to transcend the ‘excluded’ status. For instance, the
manner in which the struggle for land rights ensued culminated in complete abrogation of the
state’s exclusive jurisdiction over land. It was the solidarity of people who had been denied their
right to life with dignity, was thus a reaction against perceived state superiority. Land ceased to
remain an unquestioned bastion of the state hands-in-glove with the privileged thus making the
hitherto superior position of the state rather ambiguous. However, the movement remained
highly dispersed across the country and thus the hope they harbored could sufficiently manage
the state to only push for an effective rehabilitation and resettlement package falling
considerably short of a policy for ‘zero eviction’*23
. On the other hand, the Right to Information
movement began as a struggle not against state excesses but as demand to get access to
documents of state expenditure from the taxpayer’s money. And because of the nature of
solidarity that was more to carve out a space for oneself in the realm of governance than a cry of
disillusionment, it resulted in a device that would go a long way to empower citizens as an
enterprise of state accountability.
The Parliament has also effectively undertaken the task of widening and deepening of democracy
by expanding its representation from diverse interests, deliberation and discussions to form
public policy abrogation parochial, sectarian interests. The Rajya Sabha as discussed has been
articulating regional interests and diverse citizenship claims. The kind of concerns and issues
raised in the Parliament also saw a marked shift from nationalist topics to issues of regional
importance. The victory of Beant Kaur (wife of one of the assassins of Indira Gandhi) from one
of the constituencies was an affirmation of how ostracization of criminal’s kin and kith was not a
norm in a country with a maturing civil society that was ready to choose the most competent to
represent themselves. The 11th
Lok Sabha had a feat of electing a member of the Opposition to
the post of the Speaker, P.A. Sangma, also the first tribal, the first Christian and also the
youngest ever speaker. In the recent years, the representation from mofussil and towns has also
increased. Institutionalists firmly argue that the strength and sustainability of a society is
determined by its institutions. The Indian Legislature is not without its share of problems but it
wouldn’t be wrong to state that as an institution that reflects the changing state-citizen
relationship and captures the expanding citizenship discourse, the Parliament has achieved
significant strides. How this institution of accountability and representation responds to the rising
social citizenship is somethings that needs to be seen and documented in greater detail in the
future.
23
* In cases where the people have a legitimate claim to the land either in terms of formal ownership or in terms of existential dependence.