'Democracy is Not Just About Elections'

The New Indian Express: Chennai: Tuesday, 05 August 2014.

Stressing that participatory democracy was the need of the hour in the country, R Balasubramaniam, former member of Karnataka Lokayukta and founder of Swami Vivekananda Youth Movement,  said that accountability of elected representatives would come about only  with citizen participation.

Balasubramaniam, a former member of Anna Hazare’s Anti-Corruption Movement, was delivering a lecture on ‘Making democracy work’, at the Rajiv Gandhi National Institute of Youth Development on its Sriperumbudur campus on Monday.

“Democracy is not only about elections. We need to have the spirit of questioning in democracy. We complain about facilities, but how many of us have actually written to the Member of Parliament (MP) or MLA  concerned about our grievances,” he said, describing India as a “noisy, yet unhealthy democracy”.

The Mysore-based activist and policy advisor who works with tribals, said that the Right to Information Act (RTI) was an effective tool to reduce the information assymetry in the system. It gave the power back to people and should be used more often, he added.

Criticising urban citizens for not going out and voting, he said that it was easier to inspire rural people. “The degree of selfishness is directly proportional to urbanisation,” he said.

Students of the institute, which offers courses in policy research, administration, etc., were impressed by Balasubramaniam’s TAP mantra, an acronym for Transparency, Accountability and Participation.

However, Balasubramaniam sounded a word of caution to the students saying that criticism of elected representatives and government servants should be driven by solid evidence and not just emotion.