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The Rediff Interview/Era Sezhiyan

'Democracy has not failed in India, we have failed democracy'

Era Sezhiyan was one of the first members of the organising committee set up by Jayaprakash Narayan, which eventually resulted in the formation of the Janata Party. After the Janata Party disintegrated, Sezhiyan became one of the founders of the Janata Dal. When Ramakrishna Hegde was thrown out of the Dal by then prime minister H D Deve Gowda, Sezhiyan also resigned and helped Hegde form the Lok Shakti.

Speaking to Sezhiyan, the Lok Shakti vice-president, you get the distinct feeling that he does not belong to the current generation of politicians. His ideas are different, his language different, his outlook different. He sounds more like the ideal politician we all read and hear about in textbooks. While other politicians talk of numbers and power games, he talks of discipline and sincerity.

As the Lok Shakti gears up for the assembly election due in Karnataka in November this year, Sezhiyan spoke to Shobha Warrier about the party's decision to project Hegde as its chief ministerial candidate and continue its alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party. He also analysed in an unbiased manner the performance of the BJP at the Centre. An excerpt:

It was recently reported that the president of Lok Shakti's Tamil Nadu unit walked away with all your members and joined the Tamil Maanila Congress. What impact will it have on your party?

Nothing. It is his claim and it is not true.

But he said 30,000 members are with him.

I am not annoyed or deterred by this person going away. In fact, we took action against him. It was brought to my notice that he was collaborating with the TMC for the past four months and wanted to merge with that party as president of the Tamil Nadu Lok Shakti. So we decided to take action against him. Soon after the disciplinary action, he formed another party and joined the TMC.

This is a free country and anybody can form a party here. Probably we have more parties than leaders! But to uphold the dignity and morality of a public person, he should have handed over what was given to him by the party. He has not done that.

You have often spoken of the deterioration that has crept into the political system. Is this a reflection of that deterioration?

Yes. Nowadays, instead of working for the party, parties are asked to work for individuals. Instead of parties producing leaders, leaders are producing parties. Do you know around 500 parties are registered with the Election Commission? It has become very easy to start a party in India. These days, parties do not try to focus the attention of the people on their principles and objectives; they try to impress them through some individuals.

Former chief election commissioner T N Seshan once suggested we could restrict the number of parties by eliminating those that score the least number of votes in elections.

I do not know what he said. But my own assessment is that the top 5 or 6 national parties always score 90% of the votes and seats. If they had not clashed with one another, the percentage of votes scored by them would have been higher.

The regional parties will have an impact only in the regional elections. For example, if you take Tamil Nadu, the DMK [Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam] and the ADMK [Anna DMK]are the most powerful parties, but in the national elections, the national parties have a better hold on the electorate.

But why should we have so many parties? Is it not creating confusion in the minds of the people?

Eventually it is a political question. You cannot legalise solutions to political mandates. People have to give a judgement. Just because a man starts a party, I don't think people will vote for him. How many parties have come out of the Congress? How many parties have come out of the Communist Party? How many parties have come out of the DMK? In course of time, the fringe parties will be wiped away. I feel at the national level, it will take some more time to reach the two-party system. At present, the dominance of a single party at the state level or at the national level has to be ruled out. It will only be a coalition of parties.

But how long will this coalition politics continue? It is giving an impression of instability to the government.

We have to bear in mind that in a multi-lingual, multi-cultural country like India, different regions have their own identities. Therefore, every party becomes a coalition of individuals. But now the identities of the partners have become quite open, quite transparent. Instead of one party with a coalition of partners inside, it has become a coalition of partners outside the party. There is nothing wrong in that. If you take countries like Germany, Italy, etc, you see coalition governments.

But in India, we hear different voices from a single coalition.

It is true. For a coalition government to succeed, the coalition should be made before the election, not after.

The BJP-led coalition was made before the election. But we still hear frequent bickering, several voices and opinions.

This is also true. This kind of indiscipline in the partners should not be there. I don't agree with the present functioning of the coalition where each partner feels free to say anything. The parties still have to learn one thing -- discipline. When you become a member of a party, you surrender some fundamental rights, and that is the basic freedom to express yourself. You can express yourself inside the party, but once the party takes a decision, you are bound by it. What does the word 'party' mean'? It means you become a 'part' of the 'party'.

Another problem with the present coalition is that all 12 members did not join the Cabinet, which is not advisable. If the members who aired their views in public were part of the Cabinet, this would not have happened. Because most of the decisions are taken in the Cabinet and some of them cannot be discussed outside. And they may not have the time to discuss them too.

Take, for example, the telephone rates. It is a Cabinet decision and nobody can discuss it outside before. So a party that is not a member of the Cabinet may feel bewildered when the decision is made public. I feel supporting a coalition from outside does not go well with the spirit of coalitions.

The AIADMK is a part of the Cabinet, yet party leader J Jayalalitha publicly attacks the BJP.

That is not a correct attitude. If this had happened to her government, would she have tolerated it? I am not worried about individuals. I am worried about the trend.

'The party system has given way to a personality cult.
It is a dangerous trend.'

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