The claim that we are citizens, not subjects, that the exercise of state power receives popular authorisation through elections or public discussion, are half-truths. Our great discontent is that we are far from producing modes of governance we could freely accept. Not because we are a large, diverse, poor and illiterate society. Nor even because democratisation is inherently unsettling, producing in its politicisation of all social relations radical uncertainty about authority and identity. Rather, as Pratap Bhanu Mehta argues, the combination of persistent social inequality and a mistaken view of the state’s proper function and organisation debilitate the functioning of our modern democracy.
Mehta focuses on the psychic costs of inequality, a diminishing of the sense of self, for the privileged and marginalised alike, that impels us to debase ourselves before the powerful and dominate those less fortunate than us. Thus, most fierce battles are about dignity, and empowerment reduced to having power over others. Is this why the universal language of justice, rights and constitutionalism is so often a stratagem for individuals and groups to gain access to power, not an acknowledgement of the due claims of all? The last presupposes reciprocity, unlikely if the social distance between contending entities is large.
Examining the popularity of caste-based mobilisation, the tendency to swing between statism, free market and an empty moralism, Mehta stresses the need for restraint and careful institutional design to help choose between competing social goods. Merely appealing to democracy is unlikely to usher in well-being. One wishes our political class reads this elegant if dense monograph.
