Biswajit Roy - Dilemmas of Democracy and Its Friends: Appraisal of an Appraisal

How to resolve the dilemmas of the democrats when they are torn between their commitments to a popular regime and democratic principles? What are the pitfalls and advantages of continued moral and political obligations to a government that has born out of an anti-hegemony mass awakening but is fast becoming autocratic itself?

How to assess a maverick mass leader turned populist leader when h/she is pro-poor and anti-elite but also an epitome of intolerance, arrogance and paranoia? How far the 'good' economic policies make the 'bad' political practices tolerable? How long we should allow ourselves to remain in a catch-22 situation? To be precise--- how long the fear of return of the CPM's regimented rule and logic of TINA factors should continue to dictate the quandary of the conscientious friends of Bengali avatar of Joan of Ark when she has begun behaving like Caligula?

In the larger context of contemporary politics, are we destined to be the Sisyphus of late Bourgeoisie world where we would fight psychopathic dictators and totalitarian parties only to follow demagogues and benevolent authoritarians? Is it an opportunist and utopian idea to think of an independent civil society linked to non-partisan mass movements given the increasing fault-lines of the polarized polity and growing gulf between the elected representatives of all hues and their electors across the world and closer home too?  

These questions came to my mind after I have gone through A Bengali booklet titled Paribartan---Phire Dekha (Change-- looking back), published by the Friends of Democracy, a forum of civil society activists who had joined campaign for regime-change in Bengal quite actively and extended critical support to Mamata Banerjee government. The booklet is an appraisal of the two years of change of guard in Bengal. Edited by veteran educationist Asokendu Sengupta and leading human rights activist Sujato Bhadra, it offers a report card of the Trinamul dispensation on the implementation of its pre-poll promises.

The FOD and its prominent members have tried balanced judgments on the new government vis-à-vis their collective and individual expectations and hopes, some fulfilled and others belied. Sujato Bhadra, Bibhash Chakroborty and Bhanu Sarkar dealt more with democracy and human rights while others have focused primarily on their respective areas of expertise. They include Kalyan Rudra (water management), Asokendu Sengupta and Malabika Mitra (education), Debashis Bhattacharya (development in Junglemahal), Subrata Bagchi (Darjeeling Hills) Sanjoy Mukherjee (economy), Anindya Bhattacharya ( industry), Tushar Chakroborty (agriculture), Dr. Sidhartha Gupta (health), Rabin Mazumder( environment) and Kalyan Sengupta( employment). Ranabir Samaddar in an interview to Sivajipratim Basu also offered some new insights into post-Paribartan political churnings while calling the Trinamul as the party of 'small proprietors but not petty bourgeoisie'.

But I will limit myself to the FOD's overall evaluation and judgments related to democracy and human rights in this article, though other aspects are no less important.  But they deserve separate and elaborate examination. . read more:

Popular posts from this blog

Third degree torture used on Maruti workers: Rights body

Haruki Murakami: On seeing the 100% perfect girl one beautiful April morning

The Almond Trees by Albert Camus (1940)

Satyagraha - An answer to modern nihilism

Rudyard Kipling: critical essay by George Orwell (1942)

Three Versions of Judas: Jorge Luis Borges

Goodbye Sadiq al-Azm, lone Syrian Marxist against the Assad regime