1. Introduction
The
concepts of citizenship, democracy and governance are not new in human society,
but they are being constantly defined and re-defined in the light of
experience. While the concepts of citizenship and democracy date back to
antiquity and the origin of governance can be traced to the Renaissance period,
the French revolution of 1789 with its emphasis on liberty, equality and
fraternity charged them with revolutionary meaning. At a later conjuncture of
history -
in the era of decolonization in the mid-20th century - these concepts assumed a
new significance, creating a revolution of expectations in the new states that
came into being after prolonged anti-colonial movements. But since then these
terms have lost much of the charmed reverence that they commanded earlier. Many
of the promises held out by these magic words are ringing hollow as the gap
between people’s rising expectations and the actual performance of the state
representing these ideas is now wider than ever before. The deprivation of a
huge number of women, and poor and marginalized people of their citizen rights
and entitlement to basic services, the reduction of democracy to a mere
electoral game, the crisis of the state manifested in governance failures and a
propensity for bureaucratic centralization in the developing countries have
entailed a need to constantly re-evaluate the concepts of citizenship,
democracy and governance. It is now urgent to find ways to restore the whole
range of rights and entitlements associated with citizenship, to re-invigorate
democracy and to restructure governance in the light of felt needs and
experience. This need is paramount in the South Asia
region where the colonial legacy compounded with patriarchal and feudal values still
persists strongly and democratic institutions are yet to be rooted due to
continual military interventions and civil war in some countries. The divide of
gender, class, caste, ethnicity and such other factors also tend to obstruct
the development of citizenship, democracy and governance.
On
the other hand, the process of globalization based on neoliberal economy with
its various impacts has launched over the last few decades a new discourse in
which citizenship, democracy and governance rate high. Civil society has also
emerged as a dynamic and critical democratic force challenging the state and
the market. Composed of a matrix of various citizen groups, human rights
organizations, women’s movements, people’s organizations and the private
not-for-profit voluntary sector commonly known as non-Governmental
Organizations (NGOs), civil society strives to close the gap between democratic
ideals and actual democratic practices. These concurrent developments have now
provided a setting for critically analyzing the multidimensional aspects of
concepts like citizenship, democracy and governance in their complex
inter-relationships so that their full potential can be realized to the benefit
of human society, especially the poor and marginalized.
2. Aspects of citizenship
The
most common perception about citizenship is that it is the link between a
person and a state or association of states. Sometimes it is equated with
nationality which, however, has ethnic connotations. Citizenship is commonly
understood to give one the right to work and live in a country and to
participate in political life. One who does not have citizenship is usually
considered stateless.
The
history of citizenship is quite long as it stretches from the Greek city-states
to modern times. But a significant shift in the concept occurred during the
Renaissance when people transitioned from being subjects of a king or queen to
being citizens of a city and later to a nation-state. A citizen considered
himself subject to the city’s law and no longer remained content with having a
lower social status than the nobles. City dwellers thus sought to rise above a
subordinate social status and demanded a greater role in the form of
citizenship which gradually resulted in a set of rights and duties. The
discourse of French Revolution actually revolutionized the concept of
citizenship as the citizen was then liberated from subordination to the prince
or the priest, exercising the liberty of belief in matters of faith, demanding
from the state a system of public and secular education, and instead of obeying
the given laws actually participating in the social act of making the laws
whereby the state and society are to function. The development of citizenship is
thus an expansion of the rights and political participation of the citizen,
which has remained central to the concept in modern times.
However,
in this onward march the question of women’s citizenship remained unaddressed
for long periods of history. Amid the proclamation ‘We, the people’ in the United States
and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen in France, Mary Wollstonecraft
had to ask: what, then, is the gender of the citizen? Do women have the same
rights as men? The issue of women’s voting right emerged in the latter half of
the 19th century with the rise of sizeable women’s organizations in
some parts of Europe and North America though women all over the world had to
wait long to be voting citizens. It was only in the early 20th century
that women got their right to vote, first in New Zealand and then in the American State of Wyoming. However, by 1960 women gained this
right where elections were allowed except a few Islamic countries and Switzerland.
It
is also to be noted that notwithstanding the declaration ‘All men are created
equal’ in the founding document of the republic in the United States
in the late 18th century, slavery of Black Americans remained
constitutionally guaranteed there for nearly another century. Also, the legal
segregation of the white and non-white races in the United States ended only in the
mid-20th century.
Thus
the idea of citizenship is an evolving one, drawing on the outcome of various
struggles and experiments across the world. It is also organically linked to
the development of democracy which is all about participation, representation
and inclusion. Citizenship needs to be active and participatory which demands
that people of all sections and denominations meaningfully participate in the
decision-making process in an inclusive framework. Their right should be
constitutionally guaranteed and implemented through a truly democratic
structure of governance. As we have seen from our experience, people who are
excluded from the democratic process are actually disenfranchised from
democratic life. Active citizenship in the contemporary society therefore must
by definition mean working systematically towards more inclusive forms of
citizenship as well as more pluralistic expressions of it.
The
root cause of social exclusion is material poverty but there are other important
causes as well. In 1993 the Commission of European communities defined social exclusion as follows:
Social exclusion refers to the
multiple and changing factors resulting in people being excluded from the
normal exchanges, practices and rights of modern society. Poverty is one of the
most obvious factors, but social exclusion also refers to inadequate rights in
housing, education, health and access to services. It affects individuals and
groups … who are in some way subjects of discrimination and segregation; and it
emphasizes the weakness in social infrastructure and the risk of allowing a
two-tier society to become established by default.
It
is clear from the above how poverty, inadequate rights to basic services and
structural discrimination lead to segregation and impedes access to active and
engaged citizenship. Ralph Miliband rightly says, ‘there can be no true
citizenship without a rough equality of condition. Both individuals and groups are
actively excluded by social conditions and institutional procedures which deny
them some -
or, indeed all -
of the civil, political and social rights of citizenship’ (Marshal 1950).
Despite
many innovative efforts at poverty reduction in the developing countries over
the past decades, inequality and disparity in many of them are on the rise. The
rich-poor gap is widening fast and a huge number of people are being
marginalized everyday. Disparity and marginalization in South
Asia is an obvious fact due to complex national and international
economic processes, and social structures based on gender, caste, ethnicity and
religion. Those who are thus pushed down the economic ladder always find
themselves in a vulnerable state and cannot enjoy the citizen rights that they
are entitled to in a democratic polity. This happens most severely in the case of
poor women who suffer doubly.
In many societies particular castes or ethnic
groups are said to be lazy or indisciplined or irresponsible. Members of
minority religions are suspected of having conflicting loyalties to the state
and society. In the South asia region such identities are often used as a
basis for discrimination and as an obstacle to citizen rights. In Bangladesh
there is a democratic constitution that enshrines full citizen rights of all
people, but the constitutional provision of Islam as the state religion forms a
basis for discriminatory treatment to members of other religions and women of
all religions. This is not compatible with the principles of democratic
citizenship. In Sri Lanka
the perceived inequalities and disparities between the Tamil minority and
Sinhalese majority are a perennial source of tensions. Although India is
culturally diverse and has a long-standing tradition of a plural society,
today’s India
is facing a grave challenge to its constitutional commitment to citizen rights
with the rise of groups that seek to impose a singular Hindu identity on the
country. The dalits and other lower
classes in India have been facing constant humiliation and growing erosion of
their identity, dignity and sense of being part of greater society, the nation
and the state. This is a continued challenge to their citizenship despite all
the constitutional provisions to secure their rights. In Pakistan the Ahmadias
and other minority groups are being continuously battered by different Muslim
fundamentalist outfits. The Shia-Sunni conflict and conflicts between
various sunni groups are
also a perpetual threat to democratic citizenship because exclusion and
marginalization are a corollary of any kind of majoritarian assertion.
The
pretext of religion is being used against women almost all over South Asia to
keep them far away from the rights and benefits of citizenship. Structural
discrimination and violence against women also tend to severely curtail their
citizen rights. In south asian countries such discrimination and
violence against women are endemic. Child marriage, polygamy, divorce, fatwa, widow immolation, and honour
killing are some of these maladies subverting women’s status as full citizens
in this region.
Measures
to remedy the barriers to the development of citizenship in every country
require a set of coherent policies to be implemented efficiently. such policies should include actions to
redress people’s socio-economic exclusion; to ensure the political
participation of diverse ethnic, cultural and religious groups; to control the
assertion of any kind of religious majoritarianism and to ensure gender
equality. Also, there should be explicit efforts to build multiple and
complementary identities, which would generate a feeling of unity in diversity,
a ‘we’ feeling. The institutional and political space should then be open to
citizens in which it would be possible for them to identify with both their
country and their other identities. It would also be possible for them to
repose their trust in common institutions and participate in democratic
politics and the decision-making process.
3. Dimensions of Democracy
Probably
the most common definition of democracy is that it is government of the people,
by the people and for the people. This meaning was fully present in classical
Greek thought as demokratia, which is itself a composite of two words: demos,
for ‘people’ and kratos, meaning ‘rule’ even though in practice Greek
democracy denied slaves their citizen rights. Over the centuries the theory and
practice of democracy have evolved and diversified and people’s democratic
rights greatly expanded. The 20th century in particular has seen a massive
expansion of all kinds of right despite some formidable challenges being posed
to the advance of democracy.
Extensive
representation and inclusiveness of as many people and views as possible
translating into the functioning of a fair and just system are considered a
cornerstone of democracy. Checking unaccountable power and manipulation by the
few at the expense of the many is also regarded as one of its important
functions. These functions are generally done through elected representatives
who come up through free, transparent and fair elections. But this has also
given rise to a narrow institutional view of democracy limited to ballots and
elections. Many contemporary political commentators have championed this view.
Even an astute analyst like Samuel Huntington has observed that ‘Elections,
open, free and fair, are the essence of democracy, the inescapable sine qua
non.’ But this minimalist view of democracy has some serious limitations.
In
a society where inequality, disparity and exclusion are widespread the poorer
classes mostly find themselves busy with the struggle to survive. They are not
always politically organized and united due to their lack of access to
education and information. They do not usually have the benefit of their
constitutional rights as the ruling classes can manipulate those opportunities
in their own interest. Although women, the poor and other marginalized people
have their constitutional right to vote, this opportunity does not necessarily
translate into their empowerment. The elected representatives may compromise
the interest of people to serve their own interests. They are subject to
various pressures inherent in society, such as pressures from those who finance
their elections. These complex realities often undermine the effectiveness of
formal democracy based on public balloting.
It
can thus be argued that an effective democracy is not possible without
enhancing people’s political and economic capabilities. If the majority of
people lack social and economic security then their voting right or the right
to free speech does not automatically lead to an effective rule by the people.
In the same way, mere economic competence or equality without the formal
opportunities of a democratic system such as public balloting, the right to
free speech, a free media, the freedom of association etc cannot guarantee the
benefits of democracy. An effective democratic system therefore presupposes the
simultaneous development of all the opportunities and capabilities of people.
Amartya Sen has rightly seen an intimate connection between justice and
democracy, with some important shared features. Emphasizing people’s political and civil rights, he has advocated a shift
from the niti-oriented electoral understanding of democracy to
democratic nyaya which will promote
social justice and security.
In
today’s globalized world, there is a strong trend to confuse the cause of free
markets with the cause of democracy. But there is strong evidence that markets
subvert rather than promote the factors integral to the development of
democracy. Economic liberalization leads to a concentration of economic wealth in
the hands of a few and in political systems where money generates advantages,
it leads indirectly to the concentration of political power as well. Those who
have money and power tend to dominate the electoral system, leading to
distortions in the state and society. It is therefore urgent for both civil
society and the state to keep watch on this subversive potential of markets and
ensure that the poorer segments of people are not cornered and disenfranchised
through the processes of markets.
As
a political system democracy has been in place in most of the South Asian
countries but the region still has a long way to go to take the benefits of democracy
to millions of poor, women, marginalized and vulnerable people. The quest for
substantive democracy in the sense of social and economic security beyond a formal
one is an unending struggle facing those who nurture a vision of a
poverty-free, gender-just, secular and egalitarian society. Despite
considerable headway on the count of democracy in some South Asian countries,
the democratic deficit that is yet to be remedied has its roots in the
colonial, patriarchal and feudal legacy. In the late colonial era democracy was
conceded in South Asia in ways meant to extend
representation and promote economic growth without effecting any fundamental
change in the power relations. The guiding motive was to diffuse opposition and
protect elite authority. Although the Indian subcontinent became independent in
1947 with the hope of a democratic future, the hangovers from the old colonial
conception of representative politics and disciplinary institutions of state as
well as patriarchal and feudal structures and ideas persisted in the attempts
to build new societies. The current tendency of bureaucratic centralization,
continual military intervention in some countries, and state violence almost
all over South Asia is mostly a staggering
outcome of structural inequity and a lack of democratic norms in all spheres of
life ranging from the family to the state.
India, the
largest country in the region and its longest functioning democracy, has
definitely a better track record than its neighbours in sustaining the institutions
and practices of formal democracy. Parliament, judiciary, election commission
and such other institutions are quite viable and effective in India. But Pakistan and Bangladesh,
still vulnerable to open and disguised military interventions in politics with
a variation in degree, are struggling ahead with their frail democratic
institutions. Of course Bangladesh
is a little better off with its record of regular elections and improving
scenario of social development. The Sri Lankan state fought a war with the
Tamil Tigers for over two decades, resulting in a high incidence of civilian
casualties and human rights violation. Nepal, too, was engaged in a
decade-long civil war with Maoist guerillas until peace was reached in 2006.
The country has already abolished monarchy but it is yet to have a stable
political system and institutions in place.
Despite
a rapid advance on some counts of human development in some of the South Asian
countries, the overall picture of the region in this field leaves much to be desired.
The weakness of social policies on school education, basic healthcare, child
nutrition, essential land reform and gender equality reflects the inadequacy of
democratic governance. Corruption is widespread and discrimination and
structural violence against women are rampant in South
Asia though the picture varies from country to country.
Democracy
is still one of the most valuable achievements of humanity and the alternative
to democracy is autocracy and dictatorship. Democracy expands people’s choices
about how and by whom they are governed and thus stimulates the process of
human development through the principles of participation and accountability.
What needs to be done now is to widen and deepen democracy to promote
development and protect the freedom and dignity of all people. Building institutions
is a must but what is more important is to instill democratic values and norms
into all institutions of state and society. Family, the basic institution in
our society, is steeped in inequity and patriarchal values which are imbibed by
children, who, as adult citizens, carry such hierarchical values and norms into
state institutions, leading to a crisis in governance. A priority task today is
to effectively redress these iniquitous, patriarchal values and structures
persisting in all institutions. Radical reforms in the education system are
necessary for institutionalizing pro-women, pro-poor, humane values. Generating
tolerant values in society and recognizing the dignity of all citizens is also
a priority task. Inclusive and interactive political processes should be
brought into play so that divisive communal and fanatic thinking can be
subdued. There should be adequate safeguards for minority rights. To cultivate
a pluralist culture an active and energetic media, free not only from state
control but also from corporate and political pressures, should be in place.
National
governance in Bangladesh
is highly centralized and elitist. The government decision-making process
should be decentralized and made more inclusive. Democratization of local
governance is fundamental if it has to be effective in promoting good
governance. This would mean making space for wider people’s participation by
way of inclusion of women and marginalized people in the local government
bodies, and expansion of the role of local government in development.
Civil
society should play an increasingly stronger role as a force of resistance
against oppressive structures and exploitation and as a facilitating agent as
well. It should critically engage with the state to identify gaps and
inadequacies at the level of policy and implementation while at the same time
collaborating with the state in enhancing gender equality, poverty eradication
and development. If civil society can effectively contribute to its core
functions of mass awareness-raising, articulating people’s demands and
mobilizing them to claim their rights that will greatly help to advance the
cause of democracy.
4.
Governance
The
term ‘governance’ was used as a synonym for government since the 15th century.
However, in the 1980s, there was a shift in its meaning. From then the term has
generally come to mean the interactive role of a multiplicity of stakeholders
in the functioning of a state. The stakeholders in this sense include both
government and non-government partners such as the private sector and civil
society. This understanding of the private sector and civil society as partners
of the government is a change from the traditional notion of the private sector
and civil society playing a subordinate role. Thus the idea of governance
indicates a polycentric state where decisions are taken at multiple centres
through a process of interaction. The emphasis in this new paradigm is on a
departure from excessive government to increased governance which was
compatible with the global policy environment in the late 1980s.
Subsequently
the term good governance came into being as opposed to bad governance which was
identified by western donors as the main reason for the failure of massive aid
programmes in many developing countries. From the early 1990s good governance
has become an integral part of the development agenda sponsored by donors. It
has found its place among the routine conditionalities of the aid package
provided by them to the developing countries.
The
promotion of good governance has a connection with the rise of neoliberal
capitalism after the disintegration of the former socialist world. It was first
thought that a good governance package would be conducive to the transition of
East European socialist countries to capitalism. In 1990 the then French
President Francois Mitterrand and some other western leaders publicly presented
some ideas about good governance. They suggested to the donor countries that
the aid given to the developing countries should be tied to a package of good
governance. Then the donor countries and organizations reached a consensus on
some common parameters of good governance but the importance they gave to its constituent
elements varied according to their respective preferences. However, three
elements were common to the good governance package (i) a competitive market
economy, (ii) a well-managed state, and (iii) a democratic civil society. The
first condition implies that a developing country seeking to be well-governed
would have to open its market for unfettered investment and trade. The second
condition requires the state to transfer its economic enterprises to the
private sector due to the former’s management inefficiency. This condition also
includes a variety of elements such as the government’s accountability,
transparency, rule of law, human rights, freedom of speech, democracy,
political pluralism etc. The third condition emphasizes the need for a vibrant
civil society and a free media.
Despite
its avowed commitment to democracy, pluralism, freedom of speech etc, this
prescription shows no concern about economic pluralism and recognizes only one
economic system, that is, neoliberal capitalism. This over-emphasis on the free
market as a panacea for all ills in the state and society is neither compatible
with the principle of democratic pluralism nor does it help to rectify the
defects in the functioning of the market. Instead, by severely curtailing the
role of the state it seeks to subordinate the state to an all-powerful,
unbridled market and throw millions of poor people at its mercy. This
privileging of the free market has made a few hundred multinational corporations
(MNCs), which are based in the developed countries, control the whole world
economy. These MNCs are not accountable to any particular state or association
of states and there is no international convention or process to ensure their
transparency and accountability. They are accumulating huge profits, a share of
which goes to a small section of the population of the developing countries.
There has also been a rise of a new consumer middle class with considerable
purchasing power in these countries. But at the same time poverty, unemployment
and disparity are starkly on the rise all over the world.
This
is by no means conducive to good economic governance. A society afflicted by
poverty is bound to suffer from widespread injustice and discrimination in all
areas of life. Corruption in the developing countries has been a major concern
today. It is undeniable that corruption is a main hurdle to the development of
these countries. But it is also true that before the current wave of
globalization, corruption was limited mainly to some state organizations and
nowadays it has become rampant in society due to the expansion of a
profit-oriented, unbridled market system and the unethical competition between
different corporate lobbies to procure contracts from developing countries
through bribing policy-makers. However, a section of the upwardly mobile middle
class and government officials are the main beneficiaries of this corruption
boom. This has also had a negative impact on the efficiency of the government
bureaucracy which is responsible for the implementation of any good governance
package. The gap between government policies and implementation in all sectors
in many developing countries bears testimony to this.
Improvement
of governance is a must for poverty eradication and promoting sustainable
development in the developing countries. It is also an imperative from the
perspective of the Millennium Development Goals which provide a guideline for
change and improvement in the quality of life. For improved governance civil
society must play a proactive role. Civil society should complement the state
in its positive interventions on the one hand and try to curb the coercive role
of the state and restrain abuse of power through increased mobilization and
empowerment of people on the other. Reducing the role of the state is a common
good governance prescription given by donors. But actually the ‘retreat of the
state’ from the realm of popular entitlements, health, education, employment,
preservation of natural resources is a mere recipe for making poor people more
vulnerable and helpless. The state should be allowed to play its role in
providing basic services to people, with a deeper level of citizen
participation in governance.
In
fact the modern state obtained this mandate to provide for people when it was
separated from the Church in the late middle ages. This responsibility of the
state is more obligatory in agricultural countries like Bangladesh
where there has been little industrial growth and millions of poor people,
particularly women, still depend for their livelihood on a kind of subsistence
economy based on common resources like land, water, forest etc. Due to the
rapid growth of population and commercialization of common resources under the
impact of markets, this subsistence economy is being severely eroded, making a
huge number of women, ethnic communities and other segments of poor people more
helpless than before. Fulfillment of their basic needs now requires wider
public interventions. NGOs with their focus on women and their efficiency to
reach out directly to the poor can definitely play an important role in
supporting these vulnerable groups but the state’s role in service provision to
them should be enhanced rather than curtailed.
It
may be mentioned in this connection that the recent experience of the
structural Adjustment Participatory Review Initiative (SAPRI) carried out
across the world has proved that declining public investment in social sectors
are relegating the poor to another generation of poverty. The increased
impoverishment caused by structural adjustment sponsored by the World Bank and
the IMF has in a number of ways befallen women more than men. It is evident
that the public provision of essential services contributes to the reduction of
poverty while also reducing the pressure on the environment and additional
burdens on women. The state should therefore remain effectively functional to
maintain an environment in which women and poor people can live with their
entitlements and citizen rights.
Civil
society should also put pressure on the market to contain the process of
displacement, dispossession and inequity generated by its defective working. Well-designed
awareness-raising programmes implemented by civil society can go a long way
towards making poor people aware of their rights and entitlements to basic
services so that they can get mobilized to claim their rights. It may also be
considered whether the prevalent system of representative democracy can be
positively restructured so that people can effectively monitor the performance
of their elected representatives and government officials and exercise
continuous influence on them. Empowerment of poor women through organization
building and widening their access to resources and institutions is of course
an effective step in that direction. It may be pointed out in this context that
the question of governance nowadays is not limited to state institutions only,
it also includes social, political and market institutions and the inclusion of
women and poor people is one of the major indicators of governance.
Although
some women have risen to top political positions in some South Asian countries,
women’s overall place in the decision-making process in this region is still
very inadequate. As regards Bangladesh,
the process of political empowerment is extremely slow in spite of strong
constitutional mandates and a policy for advancement of women. There are quotas
for women in three critical sectors of governance: the parliament, the civil
service, and the local government but they are not very effective in
facilitating women’s representation and participation. There are now more women
in the reserved seats in the parliament than before but women members are still
chosen mostly on the basis of their party allegiance and family influence but
not on the basis of merit and qualifications. There is also a reluctance among
the political parties to nominate women for the general seats. The
representation of women in the civil service is still around 12% and this
meager representation is bottom heavy with most of the women in middle and
lower positions. Women can rarely rise to the highest administrative posts and
there are reports that they are often subjected to discrimination in matters of
promotion and posting. Although women’s representation in the local government
has slightly increased in recent years, it is still far from effective. Women
in local government also suffer from discriminatory treatment. Concerted
efforts are therefore necessary to enhance women’s quality representation in
these areas of governance. While the existing quotas and career development
opportunities for women needs to be increased, measures should be taken to create an appropriate environment
in which they can contribute effectively. At the same time, there should be a
greater emphasis on their overall empowerment process and on raising awareness
at all levels about women’s productive role in the state and society.
Conclusion
The
problems of citizenship, democracy and governance that are evident in today’s
world are mainly due to the growth-centred neoliberal vision of development which
entails a corrupt governance system that breeds poverty, inequality, exclusion
and marginalization. Whether in South Asia or
in other parts of the world, poverty and inequality are structural problems and
mere cosmetic reforms to maintain the status quo cannot go far in eradicating
them. Only a transformation of the existing system and structures geared
towards distributive justice can make citizenship, democracy and governance
genuinely pro-women, pro-poor and meaningful to the majority of people in the
world.
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