At a time when more and more people are feeling that governance has touched a new low in India, Professor Dipankar Gupta, a preeminent sociologist of our times, offers a unique diagnosis and an ambitious remedy. In his latest work, Revolution from Above: India’s Future and the Citizen Elite (Rainlight Rupa), his principal aim “is to demonstrate that it is not by elections alone that democracy prospers. It requires active interventions to take democracy forward and that push can happen only from the above”. Thus, what is needed to take India out of the current morass is “an elite of calling” – “people of substance, training, foresight and, most of all, willingness to forsake their immediate class interests for a social good”.

Of course, as an idea it is not new, but the book traces it through history and draws lessons from it for a potential national agenda. When Governance Now met Professor Gupta for a chat about his latest work, he enthusiastically discussed a whole range of idea emerging from his lifelong research on Indian society. The meeting thus ended up becoming an impromptu master-class on Democracy and its Discontents.

Edited excerpts from the interview:

Citizen elite: isn’t the notion anti-democratic?

No, it is not. The idea that in democracy policy initiatives are inspired from the grassroots – that is what is contested. Several policy moves are initiated by the citizen elite. For example, take the ban on child labour. It wasn’t demanded by labourers in Britain where it was first being debated. Or banning untouchability, which was Mahatma Gandhi’s initiative. There was no social cry to abolish untouchability at that time.

[Among such policy initiatives that should now come from the citizen elite] universal health and universal education – these two issues are very important for creating a strong middle class (I am talking of the social middle class, not the one by consumption standards). The trouble today is, the middle class depends on patronage. If you want good education for your children, you send them to a good private school. Almost everywhere in Europe where universal health, education and urban policy exist – these three things nearly always happen because of the citizen elite.

Notably, the push for universal health and education more often than not comes when the country is poor, not when it is rich. That builds the middle class. Universal health and education creates quality. The move from rural to urban – urbanisation – creates the middle class. Urban areas are free of traditional ties, and are not governed by traditions which are often anti-fraternity in nature.

Will you please explain what is meant by universal health and universal education that you are stressing?

In health and education, the better-off class goes to the private sector, and then there are welfare schemes and facilities for the poor. I can send my children to a private school; I can go to a private hospital. But that is not good. What is needed is a common pool and everybody has a stake in it, only then the quality of delivery improves.

We can make a lot of noise, though we are small in number as even politicians come from this class. This class can influence policies.

My father, like most people of his generation – he would have been 93 today – went to a village school, and he learnt English, Bangla and mathematics well. By my time, government schools and hospitals had begun to collapse. I went to a private school. There was a time when not only AIIMS but also Safdarjung Hospital was known for quality, but by the 1960s-70s, they began to collapse.

Along with the need for universal policies, you also stress the need for “an understanding of ... the constraints that certain sections of people have to face”. Isn’t that paradoxical?

No. Consider scheduled castes that faced deprivation for centuries. So, the state has to ensure they are part of the whole. As [the British sociologist] TH Marshall said, citizenship confers the status of equality to all citizens as a rock-solid foundation, on which structures of inequality can then be built. People are then free to pursue what is best for them and to the extent to which they would like to.  [Structures of inequality then refer only to differences in individual initiatives.] This can only come from universal health/education.

Would you consider the food security legislation as a universaling move?

It is a very crass thing. The right-wing sees socialism in it, but there is nothing of the sort. It is very low level politics. The whole left and right division that is often touted by many is actually a bogey.

The question is whether you are citizenship-oriented or market-oriented. And these two attitudes are not at odds but the citizen has to come first.

In Canada, you can go to a [private] doctor, swipe a card and the state will pay for you. The better doctor gets more business. The service is the same, at the same price, for all citizens. That is real public-private partnership. Delivery is the key. Are we delivering? It does not matter how you deliver [through the market or improved public infrastructure], what matters is that every citizen must get equal service.

To what extent would this preference for universal health/education go parallel to the critique of neoliberal, market-friendly policies?

Why should people go to the private school or hospital? Europe has robust public services. In England, the NHS (National Health Service) does a fantastic job. It is just propaganda that the American model [of privatised services] is efficient – India cannot afford it.

But our politics is not able to envision this alternative. Ours is a ‘politics of the given’ [politics of the limited options of here and now]. You vote only for existing things, right? This is where the citizen elite can play a role. They can “make people realise that aspirations for the future are grander than the needs of the present”.

In Europe, Sweden is the best case, (where) such a change was led by people who were not poor, not representative of the masses.

Would this not invite the charge of elitism, as if masses don’t know what’s good for them?

I know it will invite the charge of elitism, but finally it is up to the masses, through elections to endorse or reject a policy and those who forwarded it. Nehru was a citizen elite, but he submitted himself to elections.

After the partition, Delhi’s population swelled about three times in less than a year. Lakhs of refugees came to this city. Delhi was full of anger and hatred in those days and Nehru spoke of secularism and yet the Congress went on to win from Delhi for 20 years. Nehru was promising a future, he spoke of nation-building and ‘temples of modern India’ and so on. With that goodwill, he could also push for the Hindu Code Bill. He could also question the word ‘Muslim’ in the title of Aligarh Muslim University just as he questioned the word ‘Hindu’ in the Banaras Hindu University.

Think of Gandhi: the whole idea of nonviolence was against the mood of those times, and yet he never compromised on nonviolence. He compromised on many things but not on nonviolence. He used his credibility elsewhere [for example, as a leader of the freedom struggle] to pressure the society [on progressive steps like abolishing untouchability].

By the end of 1950s democracy suddenly stopped and it became a game of numbers. When the Cold War started around 1954, democracy took a beating in the fight between capitalism and communism. It led to the coalescence of religion and politics in the US, which was not the case there earlier.
After 1990, India embraced the American idea of free enterprise and democracy became secondary. After that, everything was evaluated in terms of economic returns. Investment in education takes 20 years to make an impact on GDP.

In this situation, each of us is trying to maximise his or her position – I as a professor, you as a journalist and so on. There are sectional elites but no citizen elite.

We seem to have many stellar examples of the citizen elite in the pre-independence era but not after.

After independence, we had Nehru and the makers of the constitution. They came up with, for example, reservations for scheduled castes – a very good idea that was spoiled by politics. Reservations aimed at widening fraternity, not to create special interest groups.

But Nehru had many faults too. He didn’t think of universal health and education. Nehru knew Europe well, so one wonders why he didn’t learn from it. But in those days Europe was not a model. It is a model today in hindsight. That way, we have a great advantage today: we can learn from history – not imitate but learn selectively.

That is the lead the citizen elite can take. It is not an anti-democracy idea; it is a very strong pro-democracy idea. When I talk about it to my friends in political parties including very senior leaders, they say, ‘It sounds good but what about elections?’ I say it makes sense even in elections … offering dreams. Dreams are realisable.

Till the 1970s, people who used to go abroad for studies usually came back, like Gandhi. Why? India was an exciting place, there was a dream. Now they don’t come back, unless it is to take advantage of commerce. It is surprising how many little children today want to be garment exporters when they grow up. Now, is that a dream?

Returning to the question of the citizen elite post independence: for example, Jayaprakash Narayan or Anna Hazare?

I would not count them as citizen elite. JP was a frustrated politician. Look at the policies the Janata Party brought in when they came to power. Vinoba Bhave won’t make it either.

As for Anna Hazare and the Aam Aadmi Party: when it all began I was impressed. I saw people from all classes – villagers, middle classes, women, all – coming out in support. I had never seen that happen in Delhi before. It was an anti-corruption agitation. It was a reaction, a genuine reaction, but not a policy. What they demanded was the citizen’s charter. [That was a positive.]

However, when Anna Hazare broke his fast and said political leaders should be like him, gave his own example, I suddenly lost all my faith in him. One second changed everything. I was supporting a movement, not idolising this man who turned out to be so egotistical. This thought, perhaps unconsciously, struck many people. The talk of right to recall/reject was meaningless; the best part of the movement was the demand for the citizen’s charter. They completely forgot that. They got a kick in having enemies in high places, not friends in low places.

They had an opportunity to become the citizen elite.

As the next elections approach, a sizeable section has high hopes from Narendra Modi. Your views in the context of this discussion?

Modi has looked after what he inherited and where he was weak, he has remained weak. When he came to power, barely 180-odd villages in Gujarat were yet to get electricity, which he delivered. But he made no impact where Gujarat was weak: in health, education, maternal/infant mortality rate and so on. If you are such a well-to-do state, why do you rank so low on these parameters?

But, yes, once I thought he was a riot specialist but he is an administrator too, he has looked after his shop. He has promised the moon to some selected industrialists and also delivered it to some of them individually. And they matter a lot. They are influential, get public coverage, advertise in the media, hence their voice is heard.

In early July, the supreme court gave a series of verdicts that aim to clean up politics. Is that an institutional counterpart to your concept? Can it work in the long run?

There is a vacuum, but judges cannot fill it because the move has to come from politicians, from the executive. If you are convicted you can’t fight elections: nothing wrong there. But political will is most important. The judiciary cannot keep slapping contempt notices to the entire political class.

The judiciary sometimes does things beyond its domain, but there is room for it because the government is not active. Yet, the judiciary cannot make new policies and therefore it cannot play the role of the citizen elite.

Then where is the hope in the present scenario?

Such people were making a difference in Europe and North America till the early 1950s, but  after the Cold War when capitalism won, the markets won, their impact suddenly dwindled. However, democracy is now asserting itself in Egypt, Turkey, Brazil... There are chances of the same happening in India. A churning is now taking place. This was not the case. The past 50 years or so had made democracy a second priority. Now the state is being made accountable in these movements. Let us hope something concrete comes out of all this and we get governments that deliver to citizens services that they deserve as citizens.