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Faith in political parties eroding, says expert

LUCKNOW: With public faith in democratic institutions getting eroded fast, these are proving to be the weakest link in running a healthy and vibrant democracy in South Asian countries. Observing this, the noted political scientist and psephologist Yogendra Yadav said here on Thursday that the apparent loss of people’s faith in Parliament and political parties was matched by their growing faith in institutions like the judiciary and the Army.

Participating in the Akhilesh Mishra Memorial Symposium on “Democracy in South Asian countries – Challenges and prospects”, organised by the Academy of Research, Training and Human Action (ARTH) at Lucknow University, Mr. Yadav said a positive sign, though, was that politics is still a vibrant force in India and other South Asian countries.

He said politics was the biggest creative force in India in the 20th Century as it created economic interests, shaped partisan loyalties and invented social identities. Mass participation in the party political domain was a happy augury, he added.

Mr. Yadav said the experience of the last 60 years had shown that the spread of democracy had not been accompanied by an expansion of the idea of democracy: “in fact, the idea has shrunk”. A survey conducted in Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, India and Pakistan revealed that aspiration for democracy was high, he stated, and added, “Since the concept of democracy was borrowed from the West, a new manual has to be written for meeting the challenges.”

Prof. Girijesh Pant of Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, said the biggest challenge before democracy today was how to strike a balance between the rise in the economic growth rate and political decline.

He said the “knowledge economy” or the service sector today was the basis for development, contributing about 50 per cent to the global GDP, but it was also leading to structural changes. Elaborating, he said the 50 per cent growth rate in the service sector had led to a concomitant decline in the agriculture sector in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, manifested in the rural sector getting gradually detached from the national economy.

National Human Rights Commission adviser B. B. Pandey regretted that society had failed miserably to protect civil and political rights. “Democracy is based on the rule of law but this rule is hardly followed,” he said.

He commended the National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme, the Domestic Violence Act and the Right to Information Act.

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