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condition for making citizen participation work. So, in the absence of those
institutions, it would be even harder, but having those institutions have been helpful in
a way to push for more spaces for citizens.
I would sort of go by that.
As we were discussing during the tea time that if you take one indicator of
citizen participation, if it’s a voting percentage, about 65% of all the registered voter
consistently participate in the general election. And in the rural areas, the percentage
is higher compared to urban areas.
What do we do then, if those institutional spaces are not working as desired or
as expected? I think the role of intermediary civil society organizations, intermediary
citizen associations are the role to play. Luckily, in India, we have a vibrant civil
society organization across state, across society. Many of them are involved in
facilitating citizen participation and pushing local governance institutions, state
institutions to create more spaces for that. So, one absolute condition for practicing
democracy would be presence of active strong vibrant intermediary civil society
organizations.
So, I would say that while State creates space but prime movers need to be
within the civil society for more spaces. But then also a question that we should ask
is that how deliberative is our society culturally. And how do we discuss? It’s good
to hear from our young friends from universities and colleges that you are having
mock cabinet, mock parliament. Excellent. But that does not provide a holistic
citizenship education. It only provides the idea about the institutional form of
democracy and institutions. The practice is that how we practice democracy in
everyday life. And we run a campaign called Youth, Democracy. The tag line is that
democracy in everyday life. Now just to give you one example, if there is a soccer
match, and two fellows got into conflict, how do you resolve that conflict? If there is
a conflict between brother and sister within the family, how do you resolve that
conflict? If there’s a conflict between your neighbor and you, how do you resolve
that conflict? To me, the culture of democracy comes from the everyday practice.
But then the institutions are required where the society is deeply divided, such as
ours.
Our Indian society is divided across caste, across gender, ethnicity, economic
classes. There you need institutions to arbitrate and mediate those differences.
Many times our identity becomes very parochial. So, I’m a male, upper class. So,
those identities come before identity as an Indian. I would operate from a higher
class Brahmin identity before I become Indian. So, to me, the citizenship has two
aspects. One is relationship we service state which is kind of legal definition of
citizenship. I hold a passport. I hold certain legal documents which is kind of identity
documents. And being an Indian citizen, I might have some certain obligations
towards the State. ª£¸²£ª±¡¡²¥¸h¡¢h¢µÈ
