The Non-Compliant Citizen: Protests And Democracy
By Ranjita Mohanty
30 June, 2013
Countercurrents.org
In recent times the streets in many countries are abuzz with protesting voices of citizens. Ramlila Ground in Delhi, Tahrir Square in Cairo, Taksim Square in Istanbul have gained fame for providing the much desired ground for people to stand against their respective states. The streets in Brazil too have come to limelight as evident from the protests when the country is preparing for the grandeur of Soccer World Cup 2014. Khayelitsha, the biggest slum in Western Cape, South Africa, intermittently erupts into protest; most recently Cape Town international airport was on news because human waste was dumped there as a mark of protest against lack of sanitation facilities in the informal settlements.
The issues that have triggered these protests are of different nature in each country– corruption in India, social and economic inequalities in Egypt and Brazil, service delivery in South Africa and Brazil, growing authoritarianism in Turkey as also in Egypt. But what is common to these protests is the growing discontent among citizens against state policies and actions - lack of delivery of basic needs of housing, health, education; state embracing of neo- liberal economic policies that have created unemployment, put wealth in the hands of a few and widened the income gap; ruling elites engaging in high rates of corruption often at the cost of tax payers’ money; and last but not the least, growing authoritarianism as the state tries to regularise citizens lives including their private spaces - for example, women in Turkey are agitating against the three children norms. To sum up – it is the concentration of power and wealth in the hands of a few that has escalated to a point where it has given rise to a heightened sense of discontent and insecurity among citizens.
What is also emerging as common from these sites of protests is growing intolerance of the ruling governments to citizen demands. Such intolerance manifests in various forms- from indifference and refusal to engage with citizens as we saw in India during the anti-corruption campaign to use of violence against citizens as images from Turkey and Brazil tell us. This assumes particular concern because the governments in these countries are not authoritarian regimes but have come through popular support. In Egypt the protests continue even after the authoritarian regime is replaced by a regime that has been approved by citizens, but ironically the new regime is also engaged in ‘power grab’.
How well or badly the state responds to its citizens is a critical aspect of democracy. Does it engage with them? Does it listen to their voices? Does it open its own spaces for dialogues? As the above protests illustrate, the ruling governments have remained closed- they have shown indifference and arrogance by shrugging off the protests as trivial or handiwork of opponents and then have used force to silence the voice of protest. The image of police using tear gas on a lone woman in Taksim Square in Turkey and another image of police spraying pepper gas on a lone woman stranded on a lane in night in Rio, Brazil, have become iconic. These incidents reveal that not only the governments are not willing to engage with the citizens, but also that they do not hesitate to harm them physically. Even as the governments unleash violence either in anticipation of protest or as a last resort to deal with it, people are experimenting with sophisticated forms of non-violent protest. In this respect Taksim Sqaure is setting new examples – from mass yoga to standing alone silently for hours, and now the book club in the Square where people are standing and reading books. They are silent, but their silence has messages for the government, only if it cares to listen.
At the core of the problem lies the critical issue of lack of state accountability to its ordinary citizens. The pillar of democracy rests on the social contract between the state and its citizens, and accountability to citizens is an important aspect of that contract. To who else the state is accountable if not to its citizens?
Participatory democracy became a celebrated idea at the turn of the millennium. It envisaged the state to work with citizens to make development and democracy inclusive. It is rather ironic that merely after two decades protests have erupted against the state. Even when the state policies are popularised as participatory, concentration of power, authority and wealth among ruling elites and their allies continues as before. What has changed is that citizens have become more aware and demanding. And the state does not know how to handle them.
Neo-liberalism only made a façade of retreat of the state; it, in fact, gave rise to the fatal combination of state-market consolidation for power in a way that has alienated the ordinary citizens. The emerging economies of India, South Africa, Brazil as also Egypt which has witnessed economic growth in recent times have failed to re-distribute wealth. The police brutality to protests against neo-liberal growth is unprecedented in Indian history. The Special Economic Zones in Kalinganagar and Nandigram became killing fields where people protesting against the encroachment on their land were killed even when the protests were peaceful.
Democracy allows people space and freedom to protest. But the non-compliant citizen is an indicator that all is not well inside the otherwise democratic settling. If the governments in these countries want to have the trust of people, they must listen and engage; if they try to close that space, they will only be writing their own obituaries.
Ranjita Mohanty holds a doctorate in Sociology and combines research with activism. She divides her time between India and South Africa working as a research consultant and university researcher. Dr.Mohanty is a Fulbright Fellow and editor of two books, ‘Does civil society matter? Governance in contemporary India’ and, ‘Participatory citizenship: Issues of identity, exclusion, inclusion’. She can be contacted at - [email protected]
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