'Indian democracy in a state of emergency'

MINORITY vs MAJORITY: What the Muslims were to the BJP, the Maoists are to the Congress, says Arundhati Roy.

          

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Karan Thapar: Hello and welcome to Devil's Advocate. In her latest series of essays, Arundhati Roy sounds deeply dismissive of the Indian democracy and perhaps supportive of the Maoist struggle. Why does she take these positions? That's the key issue I shall explore today with Arundhati Roy.

Let's start with your cynical view of Indian democracy. In your essays, you say the 'Beacon is fading,' you say it's being hollowed out and emptied of meaning, you say that Indian democracy no longer can be relied upon to deliver the justice and stability we dreamt it would. Why have you come to this conclusion?

Arundhati Roy: It is pretty obvious that in the last 60 years of our democracy what we have is a situation in which the poor are getting poorer and poorer, the rich are getting richer. I am not suggesting by this that we should go back to some older form of discredited despotic or colonial regime. I am trying to analyse what is the problem with democracy now. Why are the institutions of our democracy – the courts, media and Parliament – letting the people down? In a democracy, they are meant to act as checks and balances but actually they are serving as a cover to be as undemocratic as possible.

Karan Thapar: So you are suggesting two important things. Firstly, you are saying that the institutions of democracy have actually failed to act as checks and secondly, you are saying that the poor, who I presume are the vast majority of India, are not benefiting from Indian democracy sufficiently.

Arundhati Roy: Of course they have protection but the fact is that we are now in a situation of emergency. The human developmental index shows that more than 80 per cent of the people of India are living in conditions of extreme poverty. We have the world's most malnutritioned children. The Dalits and the Adivasis are living in conditions of famine by any world indicators when more than 50 per cent of them are malnutritioned.

Karan Thapar: So the state of India's dispossessed and poor is proof that Indian democracy has failed?

Arundhati Roy: It's proving that there is a structural violence. Mahasweta Devi (Magsaysay Award-winner Bengali novelist) said a few years ago in Frankfurt about the Indian democracy as a tapestry with parts of it as silken and parts of it tattered but it all holds together. Now, what has happened is that the silken parts have sequined and the tattered parts are torn and the poor are falling in. And the Indian state is following them with guns, with helicopter gunships. We are in crisis. We have an ecological crisis.

Karan Thapar: Let's pick up the issue of the poor that they are actually falling through the holes in the tapestry. How do you view the NREGA which was specifically designed to give relief and succour to the very poorest of the poor. Don't you believe that it has been effective?

Arundhati Roy: It's important, it's effectiveness is debatable. It is also working as a honeypot around which corrupt people have flocked and have tried their best to prevent it.

Karan Thapar: Are the failings so great that they undermine the essential core of NREGA?

Arundhati Roy: No, I am not critical of the Employment Guarantee Act but what I am saying is that it was passed in order to mitigate a structural dispossession that was going on. So we shouldn't confuse that mitigation with the structural problem.