Region: Awaiting the people’s move

All over Southasia, people suffer under autocracies and anarchies. Then they rise, in swellings called people's movements. Of course, these movements are not in themselves enough, as has become clear from the continuing confusion in Nepal a year and a half after the People's Movement of April 2006 overthrew King Gyanendra. But when a movement is real, as Nepal's was, it gives society the energy required to overcome the hopelessness and disillusionment that inevitably seep in on the long road to peace and democracy. A people's movement provides the mass base, the mandate of the people, which cows down extremists on both the right and left, and which provides energy for civil society and political parties to continue in the task of institutionalising peace, representation and pluralism. A people's movement does not kill its own children, as a revolution is liable to. It is a force that is much more moderate, but crucially mass-based.

Burma, Pakistan and West Bengal – different entities at various stages of democracy and un-democracy – have, over the last few months, provided examples of peoples attempting to rise as one, in order to wrest back control of their political affairs. For the most part, these hopes have been dashed, at least temporarily. The Burmese last rose up in 1988, when the people were subsequently crushed by the same junta that today wields power from the new capital of Naypyidaw. During the course of this past August and September, the country's monks led protests that were once again brutally crushed.

One thing was different this time around: there was tremendous international interest in the goings-on in Burma. The worldwide coverage of these events, from television to radio to the Internet, was backed by the powerful moral presence of Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest, as well as the special interest of United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. But none of this was enough to allow for the monks' protests to spark into a larger movement. Instead, the power of the junta – in part bolstered by the steadfast support it receives in the name of geo-strategic and economic interest from India, China and ASEAN – was enough to snuff out the flame of liberty in Rangoon, Mandalay, Pakokku.

Flickering panos
Pakistan, meanwhile, did not have an Aung San Suu Kyi to serve as the public rallying force. The protests there coalesced around the personality of Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry – ejected from his post, reinstated by his fellow judges, only once again to have his services 'terminated' on 3 November by a general about to transform into a civilian president. The Supreme Court Bar Association jumped into the fray, led by its chief, the jurist-politician Aitzaz Ahsan. Together with the judges, lawyers and human-rights activists, journalists fought the declaration of state of emergency and the imposition of the Provisional Constitutional Order by Pervez Musharraf.

For a while, it seemed that a people's movement might well spark in Pakistan, the panos of liberty having been kept alive by civil society, in the hope that the political parties would generate the mass participation required for a true countrywide uprising. Only such an uprising could shake off the death grip of the military over society, as well as the myriad vested interests it has spawned in the Centre and in the provinces, in bureaucracy and in business. In Nepal, it was the civil society that had kept the movement going on low burn until the political parties finally decided – and were able – to collaborate with the Maoists for a peaceful uprising. In that instance, this allowed for the final 19 days that washed away the army-backed Gyanendra regime.

Over in Pakistan, the political parties thought it better to compromise than to confront, as discussed in several articles in this issue of Himal. The wily Musharraf – already elected president by the earlier, rubber-stamp assembly – brought forward the date for elections to 8 January, knowing that doing so would place the political parties in a quandary. He was right. Already weakened by several years in exile and assorted cases slapped against them, Benazir Bhutto and Mian Nawaz Sharif then decided to go for elections. In one stroke, their decision confirmed President Musharraf on his throne, and the plethora of un-democratic decisions that he had taken with him into the presidential mansion.

To be sure, things were not as clear in Pakistan as in Nepal, where there was one 'enemy', in the face of the royal regime, against whom the people could unite. Pakistan, on the other hand, is a country enmeshed in the 'war on terror', and inevitably affected by the long reach of Washington, DC. The single-mindedness of the people was also disturbed by the Taliban-impacted NWFP, as well as the disturbances in Balochistan, and the sudden violence in Swat, where helicopter gun-ships target the citizenry. Likewise, the ugly face of Shia-Sunni sectarianism is never far away, nor are the incipient tensions between various communities and between the provinces.

Nonetheless, the country's political parties certainly do have an ability to draw the crowds, as was proven by Bhutto's triumphant return on 18 October. And yet, both her Pakistan People's Party and Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League (N) lost their momentum when the Bhutto welcome rally got converted, late at night, into a macabre massacre, leaving around 150 dead and scores wounded. For all those reasons, in Pakistan the political parties were not able to pick up the torch of liberty held out by civil society. They decided to make the best of a bad situation by agreeing to go in for elections.

Rot and stasis
Across the expanse of the Subcontinent from Pakistan, in West Bengal, yet another people's movement was attempting to gather steam. The Communist Party of India (Marxist) has a lot going for it, having moderated its radicalism, brought stability to West Bengal, and helping in the development of a social-democratic rather than 'communist' state. But 30 years is a long time to rule continuously and that too without competition, and even an outsider could predict the rot that would – and did – set in. Indeed, the system of the CPM seems to have lost touch with the ground, and with its original people-friendly moorings.

Nandigram and Singur, where the Calcutta government sought to provide land for an automobile industry and a special economic zone respectively, have all too quickly become the metaphors for disconnected state administration and political class, as is explored in detail in special coverage in this issue. This phenomenon, existing at the national and provincial levels all over Southasia, has arisen in sharp profile in West Bengal, perhaps because the expectations for the CPM were so much higher than for other parties when it comes to people's protection.

West Bengal has seen an uprising of modest proportions, but the control of the CPM over the structures of state, as well as the nature of the Indian state (democratic and yet centralised) has meant that this too will not get converted into a mass uprising anytime soon.

It may be a simplistic notion, but representative and inclusive democracy, as well as the ability of the people to throw out despots and political parties in stasis, goes to the very heart of the idea of governance. In some exceptional cases, a graduated evolution into a democratic state may well happen, but elsewhere, the frustration and insufficiencies remain bottled up. Our understanding is that, most of the time, the consolidation of democracy requires the fillip of a people's movement. Nepal experienced it, Burma was stifled, Pakistan is still in the struggle – and West Bengal will probably have to experiment with some other form within the nation state of an un-federated India.

Stop Press! Nepal
As Himal went to press, the seven-party alliance that presently runs Nepal came up with a formula that brings the Maoists back to the government; nominally declares a republic; adjusts the format for the elections to the Constituent Assembly; and agrees to have a new-improved style of government.

The elections, which had been earlier set for 22 November, were scuttled when the Maoists got cold feet about a possible rout. It was also true, however, that the Maoist leadership was under pressure from its ranks for lack of progress on various fronts, such as the 'integration' of its former fighters, compensation for victims of the 'people's war' , and the establishment of a commission on Nepal's disappeared. What seems to have happened, with a commitment from the other parties to activate work on these fronts, is a realisation dawning among the Maoist leadership that there is no way to go but elections.

And so, with some face-saving and genuine compromise deals, it was agreed that the election format would not be 'full-proportional', as demanded by the CPN (Maoist), but a mixed format with 42 percent for first-past-the-post seats and 58 percent election by proportional representation. On the matter of the monarchy – whose end the Maoists need to insist on in order to maintain their revolutionary image – as had long been agreed upon by the parties in the ruling alliance, the Interim Parliament was to declare Nepal a 'federal democratic republic', subject to 'implementation' by the elected Constituent Assembly.

Outside the Interim Parliament, the representatives of the agitating indigenous groups remain sceptical about the willingness and ability of the seven parties to actually deliver the elections, now slated for early April 2008. The wild card in all of this is the districts of the eastern Tarai plains, where the absence of state mechanisms and the evaporation of politics have created conditions of violent anarchy. The restoration of consensus rule in Kathmandu and the announcement of elections will resolve half of the problems in the Tarai. For the rest, the national-level political leaders of Nepal must focus on reviving politics, by traveling widely, reassuring the populace and challenging the militancy.