The many faces of Civil Society…..Vandita Mishra
It’s a concept that defies definition. Vandita Mishra explores the varied forms civil society has taken over the years, and how it’s still not clear who qualifies as a member
It’s a concept that defies definition. Vandita Mishra explores the varied forms civil society has taken over the years, and how it’s still not clear who qualifies as a member
Rewind and tune in to the national conversation since Anna Hazare went on fast for the Lokpal bill in the first week of April, and the impression is inescapable: Its address may vary, from Jantar Mantar to the television studio and fleetingly at Ramlila Maidan in between, but Civil Society is here. It will take on the Political Class and/or Government on behalf of you and me.
That impression of coherence across neatly drawn battle lines is misleading. It hides the sheer number of different stories that have been told about civil society in our country from different locales and at different moments in time. It papers over the wide diversity of views and deep ambivalence that continue to imbue and surround the expression today.
Andre Beteille, Professor Emeritus of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics, relates an anecdote to illustrate the confusion that besets a concept that at its widest straddles the entire space between individual and the state. In the late 80s, when he was called to speak to a ginger group in the sociology department at the London School of Economics on civil society, Beteille recalls giving a thoroughly scholarly talk about tribes of India. They were absolutely bewildered, he chuckles. But I didnt know what they wanted of me.
The confusion persists. In a newspaper article in the wake of Annas fast, Beteille posed the question: Is there any kind of objective criterion, other than recognition by the media, which enables us to decide who is and who is not a member of civil society?
ROOTS
Analytically, civil society has a long history, and not all the connotations associated with it have been as positive as its current usage would suggest. The German expression used by both Hegel and Marx, for instance, was Burgerlichegesellschaft, translated as either civil society or bourgeois society. For either, bourgeois society was not the highest form of historical development.
In India, a strand of scholarly discussion of the 1920s portrayed society as one where the principal modes of authority and legitimacy lay outside the formal political structures. India was seen to be an association of associations based on ethnicity and kinship. This was not a happy picture for everyone. For Ambedkar, when democracy came to India, it was only a top dressing on an Indian soil which is essentially undemocratic. That undemocratic soil was civil society, Beteille points out, even if it was not called by that name.
In the general optimism about the state in the aftermath of Independence, it was thought that it could play an important part in the regeneration of society. But this story soon began to change, and a deep disenchantment set in with the state and its institutions, climaxing in the late 70s.
GATES OPEN
Post-Emergency, an earlier Gandhian tradition of scepticism of formal institutions was revived under the leadership of JP. The JP movement opened up the gates of civil society in India as a perceptible presence, in terms of scale and leadership, says D L Sheth, sociologist at the CSDS, who was the founder director of Lokayan, an influential project on Development, Decentralisation and Democracy that began in 1980 to evolve a systematic critique of the established models of development and the state.
So far, the discussion of non-state actors had mainly featured voluntary organisations and NGOs with a focus on development. Now, there was talk of non-party political formations or the NPPF. One of the aims, recalls Harsh Sethi, who edited the Lokayan bulletin from 1984-1989, was to question whether the distinction between the political and developmental holds. And to rescue the idea of politics from a preoccupation with parties and elections.
The organised Left was quick to sense the danger to itself. One has to cut through the pseudo-radical, academic jargon of the NPPF advocates to expose the core of their pernicious anti-Marxist ideology. The glorification of micro-level grass-roots action groups is to counterpose them to the macro-level Communist Party, wrote the CPMs Prakash Karat in an essay in The Marxist, April-June 1984.
The story took another turn in the mid-1990s when several developments affected the way civil society was viewed by itself and others. The liberalising state had opened up new spaces for non-state groups claiming to act in the universal interest. Opposition to globalisation brought many of them together on common political platforms. Earlier, the breakdown of the USSR and the successful challenge posed to the authoritarian state by groups like Solidarity in Eastern Europe had encouraged greater funding of many movement groups in developing societies by the West. There was a new institutionalisation and professionalisation of these groups.
Ashwini Ray, academic and founding secretary of the Peoples Union for Civil Liberties and Democratic Rights (PUCL&DR) formed during the Emergency, is nostalgic about the civil society that was. At that time, we were fighting for lost but worthwhile causes. All political parties hated us. Our major breakthrough came in 1982 when Justice Bhagwati recognised the PUDRs locus standi to fight for minimum wages for labourers and the PIL was born…. Today, civil society is an attractive career option… a mixed bag, he says.
MODERN PUZZLE
To be sure, as the expression gains new currency at the present moment, there are more questions than answers. For instance, is Ramdev civil society? Are the RSS and the VHP? For Beteille, Civil society requires the separation of open and secular institutions from the institution of kinship and religion, although it does not require the exclusion of the latter from society as a whole. That framework would rule out Ramdev and the RSS making any direct contribution to civil society.
There is ambivalence on the other side of the secular-communal divide too. Is the National Advisory Council, a collection of individuals who have been labelled ardently secular, counted in civil society? No, says NAC member and activist Harsh Mander, who believes that civil society is defined by civic action that is non-state, not for profit, and not within the formal political system. The NAC, he says, is an advisory group, among others set up by government, with a specific mandate. Incidentally, Mander would include the RSS in civil society. Because some of the strongest and most powerful civic action has been by the RSS and its offshoots.
DIVIDING LINE
So where exactly, and just how sharp or blunt, must the line be drawn? And does it rule out any civil society involvement with political parties? Where would that leave someone like Jayaprakash Narayan, who wears more than one hat? Narayan founded the Lok Satta as a non-political accountability forum 15 years ago, and more recently also founded a political party of the same name, contested an election and became an MLA. Of course I am civil society, he says. All this confusion has come about because we have started looking at politics and parties as ignoble, immoral and corrupt. This hatred is disastrous, a recipe for fascism.
In the past, there have been moments when the lines between parties/government and civil society have sharpened and others when they have become more fluid, recalls Harsh Sethi. When Indira Gandhi returned to power in 1980, for instance, she set up the Kudal Commission, allegedly to conduct a witch-hunt against NGOs. But when her son Rajiv became prime minister, he appointed Sanjit (Bunker) Roy of the Social Work and Research Centre (SWRC)-Tilonia as adviser to the Planning Commission. The pendulum swung again in 1989-1990, recalls Sethi, when L C Jain and Rajni Kothari, both Planning Commission members, sat outside its doors to join Medha Patkars protest on the Narmada dam. It was always a messy game with grey areas, says Sethi. In the end, it is about trust and legitimacy, he says.
ACCOUNTABILITY
Today, with trust in politics and government widely perceived to be at a low ebb, the lines between civil society and the political class/government have sharpened once more. But there is something new about civil society at this moment, says Pratap Bhanu Mehta, president of the Centre for Policy Research. Implicitly, there is a claim that it acts to represent the people, not just to produce accountability. That is a new and question-begging claim, he says, because for good or for ill, politics is the only process by which we can decide the representation claim. Mehta also sees as worrisome the non-negotiability of the demands put forward in the name of civil society today If you dont agree, I go on fast.
Gurpreet Mahajan, professor, Centre for Political Studies at JNU, who has written on the career of the concept of civil society, is concerned about what she sees as the assumption of an interest-free homogeneous civil society and the centrality it gives to a notion of moral authority that is impatient with differences.
Salman Khursheed, Union minister and key member of the joint drafting committee for the Lokpal Bill, says what worries him most is the fact that civil society is outside the sphere of the regulators. Maybe that is a good thing. But then there should be self-regulation, some transparency of funding and interests. If civil society is to play a major role, as it seems to be doing today with the support of the new media, they cant keep asking for accountability of the state and not have accountability of their own.
On the other side of the fence, Sheth dismisses the criticism. Today all arguments against civil society stem from a celebration of executive power, he says. It is the reaction to Anna, he says, and the stonewalling by government that has homogenised civil society as a single entity with an address at Jantar Mantar.
Nandini Sundar, activist and sociologist at the Delhi School of Economics, questions everyones claim to represent the people today, including the elected governments, arguing that the criteria for measuring public support are themselves contentious and that laws must ultimately be tested by whether they fulfil the constitutional ideals of equality, liberty, secularism and transparency.
Yet even Sundar is uncomfortable with the solutions bandied by civil society. Paradoxically, all the solutions suggested by civil society invoke an expansion of government bureaucracy. Each bill, the Lokpal included, envisions a separate authority, she says. A similar unease could be spreading in other bastions of support for civil society campaigns: that a problematic faith in centralisation promoted by the sarkar in the early 70s seems to be staging a comeback ironically, this time in civil society.
Away from the scalding confrontations and neat certitudes in TV studios, a more nuanced debate on civil society, its role and responsibility, its power and limits, is afoot.
Chequered History
19th century
Not all descriptions of civil society have been flatering. The German expression used by both Hegel and Marx, Burgerlichegesellschaft, translates not only as civil society but also as bourgeois society.
1970s
Post-Emergency, JP movement opens gates of civil society in India as a perceptible presence. PUCL&DR, formed during Emergency, fights for lost but worthwhile causes.
1980s
Lokayan project takes definition of non-state actors beyond voluntary organisations and NGOs, to non-party political formations or NPPF. The Left finds NPPF anti-Marxist.
Allies/Rivals
In 1980, Indira Gandhi sets up Kudal Commission, allegedly to conduct a witch-hunt against NGOs.
Years later, Rajiv Gandhi appoints Sanjit (Bunker) Roy of SWRC- Tilonia as adviser to Planning Commission.
In 1989-1990, L C Jain and Rajni Kothari, both members of the Planning Commission, join Medha Patkars protest on the Narmada dam.
1990s
Opposition to globalisation brings non-state groups in India on common political platforms. In the West, breakdown of USSR encourages funding of many movement groups.
NOW
Lines between civil society and political class/government sharper than ever, with trust in politics and government at a low.