HOW TO PLACE THE CITIZEN BACK IN DEMOCRACY

Indian democracy has become a clichéd arena committed to the bureaucracy of continuity. To make it more diverse, we should talk about policy in playful, accessible terms

- SHIV VISVANATHAN

One of the most dangerous things Indian democracy could do is dabble in the politics of clichés. Democracy as a system can outlay conformity, habit and everydayness. But cliché represents a collective hardening of thought that gets more heartless over time. Cliché, which derives from repeatedness of print, disowns orality as a mode of thinking. Indian democracy, because it disowns orality, has become a failure of memory.

Cliché is a global habit—as mediocrity, it has combined with authoritarianism worldwide. We can see examples in US's Donald Trump, Russia's Vladimir Putin, Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and even our PM Narendra Modi. The combination of mediocrity and majoritarianism leads to grim prospects of authoritarianism.

One party we hoped would challenge it was the Aam Aadmi Party. It sensed the primordialism and immediacy of protest. One could see it in Anna Hazare's dramatics. However, over time, AAP has become committed to the bureaucracy of continuity and competence. What was supposed to be a meeting place for eccentrics and dissenters became one for professionals and bureaucrats.

AAP today behaves like any other party. As a result, it has lost its sense of charisma, a possibility of creating innovative and dissenting spaces. Delhi would have seen something beyond Lutyens' Delhi, but AAP failed to keep its promise.

Indian politics is at a standstill today. Hysteria becomes a substitute for political dynamism and family decline, an equivalent of institutional decline. There is a third point we must emphasize beyond mediocrity and authoritarianism: the very thinking of parties has turned fuddy and repetitive.