Book review: Zoya Hasan,Agitation to Legislation: Negotiating Equity and Justice in India

Roughly fifty years after the Constituent Assembly had demoted social and economic rights to the status of non-justiciable Directive Principles of state policy, Parliament proceeded to upgrade some of these principles to legally enforceable rights (the right to free and compulsory elementary education became a part of Article 21 which grants the right to life). Prominent among these rights are the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005; the Food Security Act, 2013; the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009; Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights Act), 2006 and the Right to Information Act, 2005.

The enactment of legislation that granted social rights in the period 2004 to 2014 was enabled, Zoya Hasan argues, by complex factors: social movements and campaigns in civil society, positive interventions of the Supreme Court and the role played by the National Advisory Council (NAC) headed by Sonia Gandhi. The NAC composed of bureaucrats and activists bridged the gap between civil society and the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government led by the Congress Party. The two wider issues that the author addresses are: (a) the relationship between public protests/social mobilisation and policymaking and (b) how different sorts of campaigns and protests make different demands in the public domain.

Locating the rise of protest politics in the period that followed the decline of the Congress party, widespread economic and social inequality, concentration of wealth in a few hands, the rise of neoliberalism and the rollback of the Left agenda, Hasan suggests that questions of inequality were central to new movements and campaigns, even if the language of class and economic issues was missing (p. 5). Citizens could no longer rely on the state to ensure some degree of equity; they turned increasingly to civil society for the satisfaction of basic needs and redressal of grievances.

The author makes an important point. The turn to civil society in the late 1970s was prompted by the decline of political parties and concentration of power in an unresponsive state. The decline of the Congress system based on negotiations between ‘big men’ representing diverse interests within the party in 1967 paved the way for the declaration of Emergency by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s government in 1975 till 1977. People turned away from the state to the newly emerging sphere of citizen activism. A series of social movements and civil society organisations (CSOs) mounted a strong critique of state policies and offered alternatives.

By the first decade of the twenty-first century, Hasan points out, a number of progressive movements and CSOs were ready to work with the government. This point is of some interest to students of civil society. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, civil society was seen as an antidote to a power-hungry state and a profit-driven market. It was expected to keep a check on the state. This the CSOs could only do if they were autonomous of the state. However, in a short period of time governments began to reach out to non-governmental organisations and even fund them so that they could deliver services to citizens. These services normally fall within the provenance of the state. When civil society, which is expected to be autonomous, is funded by and partners the state in service delivery, such as health and education and when it formally joins the government as the NAC, is it still civil society? Hasan suggests that civil society in India stepped into an entirely new space, a middle ground between the government and the people when it began to partner the UPA government (p. 26) Doubts however remain. How can CSOs mount a critique of government policies when they officially become a part of the institution?

That apart, Hasan in this very interesting work traces in detail the biography of campaigns that resulted in the enactment of social policy. She points out the difference between campaigns for social goods and the anti-corruption campaign led by Anna Hazare. She concludes regretfully that the government failed to ensure women’s representation in Parliament despite popular pressure. She also focusses on the role played by the Supreme Court in enabling legislation on social rights.

This work is thought provoking because it throws up even more questions that it tries to resolve. First, in the first decade of the twenty-first century scholars began to wonder whether India would finally transit to a social democracy. India did not undergo a social revolution, but admittedly in the ten years of UPA rule (2004–2014) attention began to be paid to zones of poverty and ill being vide civil society interventions and court rulings. Today the wheel has turned full circle and we are forced to defend basic civil liberties which are under threat by the present government. Can we bracket off civil and political rights from social rights? Perhaps not. Civil society has to establish a relationship between different categories of rights, which is something that political theorists do.

Second, even as the judiciary and civil society began to throw light on the extent of poverty, hunger, malnutrition and illiteracy in India, the government lagged behind in the provision of education and health, employment and adequate remuneration for work. What is the point of asserting a right when the good to which people have a right is simply not there? Third, most campaigns for the delivery of social goods either originated from a Supreme Court decision, for example, the right to education campaign and the movement for the right to information, or succeeded in their objectives when the court intervened on the behalf of civil society. The Indian state has proved more responsive to court injunctions than to popular representations, compelling more and more groups to invoke judicial activism. Is civil society effective only when the highest court of the land supports initiatives? Is the relationship between civil society and the state mediated by the judiciary?

Lastly, the court fails to challenge structures of power and inequality when it defends social rights. It adopts a pro-active stance because the agenda of contemporary civil society mobilisation is self-limiting. Civil society makes no demand for a radical redistribution of resources, or for land reform that will shake up the system. The only case that demanded such restructuring, the Narmada Bachao Andolan, was given a negative verdict by the same court.

Still the ten-year period of UPA rule was a golden age for civil society activism as compared to today. A rights-based approach to well-being has been replaced by the enactment of social policy ‘from above’ in line with east Asian countries. This is not paralleled by civil society mobilisation. The status of citizens as bearers of rights has been subverted. They have been turned into consumers of goods provided by the state at will. We see the marginalisation of civil society both in the making of policy and in articulating dissent on policies that subvert the foundations of democracy. Hasan’s work allows us to understand how much we have fallen on the scale of democracy since the times of the UPA government.