Mani Shankar Aiyar

When I speak of freedom, I am reminded of Mahatma Gandhi’s words in Young India, the weekly journal he published. He said: “I shall work for an India in which the poorest shall feel that it is their country, in whose making they have an effective voice.”

Sixty-six years after Independence, I do not believe we have succeeded in making the poorest feel either that it is their nation or in ensuring they have an effective voice in nation-building. By using the same administrative system that our colonial masters have used to rule us for promoting development and poverty alleviation at the grassroots, we have gravely undermined Mahatma Gandhi’s dream for independent India. Instead, in their country, the poor of India who constitute three quarters of the population, have been treated as beggars with begging bowls, hoping the local administration will put a tiny slice into their begging bowls.

Even after 66 years, we haven’t empowered the poor. What we have in India now is the most selfish middle class that the country has ever seen. Back during the time of freedom, the middle class espoused and represented the values of the freedom movement.

The entire attention now is on the professional requirement to exploit and cheat people to earn high dividends. The focus has changed from the socialist view to market view further to undermine the value system on which we got our independence.

The tragedy is that we have not given the people an effective voice in nation-building. Yes, of course, 66 years of democracy have ensured that it is the broad masses who determine every five years who will rule the country. But in between, it is the classes who determine how the country will be run and for whom. Those whom Gandhiji called the “dumb millions” still remain the dumb millions without an effective voice because of the blatant flouting of the Constitutional provisions related to panchayati raj.

It is only in the gram sabhas and the panchayats that the people have a sense of the nation belonging to them or of their having an effective voice in nation building. Therefore, I hope the Prime Minister from the ramparts of the Red Fort will extend due cognizance to the civil importance of the panchayati raj institutions in promoting “inclusive governance”.

How this is to be done has been extensively detailed in the five-volume 1,500-page report of the expert committee on panchayati raj that I had the honour to chair. The recent flurry of activity in all central ministries concerned, at the instance of the Prime Minister, encourages one to believe that the coming year could be the breakthrough year in our translating independence for the country into freedom for our people.

As a six-year old child, I remember joining the crowd outside Parliament House where I was also a witness to our tryst with destiny. In that sense, I can also claim to be a midnight’s child. However, later when I went to a boarding school, we would join the celebrations in the school, which were more ritualised.

But the most memorable Independence Day celebration that I attended was in 1963, when I came back from Cambridge. Just a year before, in 1962, we had suffered a military defeat in the hands of the Chinese in the Sino-Indian war. Also it turned out to be Panditji’s last address to the nation from the ramparts of Red Fort. I remember that I took a bus from what is now Kasturba Gandhi Marg to the Red Fort. On my way, I heard the loudspeakers playing Lata Mangeshkar’s Aye mere watan ke logon. And the nation was affirming its tryst with destiny notwithstanding that it was probably the worst moment as an independent nation.

But gradually, participating in every Independence Day celebrations has become very ritualised. The real thrill has been missing. Probably, it happens with every country.

As told to Sonia Sarkar

Mani Shankar Aiyer is a Rajya Sabha MP, and a former Union minister of Panchayati Raj and Union Cabinet minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas.