May 05, 2004 04:03 PM
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(Updated May 05, 2004 04:19 PM)
I have just read this Classic play by George Bernard Shaw, Apple cart, 1929, and I guess I read it at the right time and am writing a review on it at the right time. What's so special about this time, you may ask. It's Election time!!! As the news portals, newspapers and magazines say ''the fate of 1 billion people is going to be decided by this voting exercise''; But Shaw would beg to differ (had he been alive today) and so would I, at least partly.
Sometimes I just wonder do we really have a democratic government in India? Or is it, as Shaw portrayed it for England, a plutocracy? Does one really need to be educated and skilled at politics to be a politician here? It is generally said that to be assured of a ''seat'' one just has to make a lot of money. The rest follows. And I quote from Apple cart,
''Besides, the conflict is not really between royalty and democracy. It is between both and plutocracy, which, having destroyed the royal power by frank force under democratic pretexts, has bought and swallowed democracy. Money talks: money prints: money broadcasts: money reigns...''
Shaw's plea is that untrammelled democracy is as bad as monarchy. If there's no watchdog to mend it, it degenerates into plutocracy. Democrcay is then mere an illusion. And Shaw has rightly compared democracy with a big balloon.
''I am going to ask you to begin our study of Democracy by considering it first as a big balloon, filled with gas or hot air, and sent up so that you shall be kept looking up at the sky whilst other people are picking your pockets. When the balloon comes down to earth every five years or so you are invited to get into the basket if you can throw out one of the people who are sitting tightly in it; but as you can afford neither the time nor the money, and there are forty millions of you and hardly room for six hundred in the basket, the balloon goes up again with much the same lot in it and leaves you where you were before. I think you will admit that the balloon as an image of Democracy corresponds to the parliamentary facts.''
His example of a democratic village is also very thought provoking. My comments are in parentheses (()).
''Let me invent a primitive example of democratic choice. It is always best to take imaginary examples: they offend nobody. Imagine then that we are the inhabitants of a village. We have to elect somebody for the office of postman. There are several
candidates; but one stands out conspicuously, because he has frequently treated us at the public-house, has subscribed a shilling to our little flower show, has a kind word for the children when he passes, and is a victim of oppression by the squire because his late father was one of our most successful poachers.(Does this remind you of someone in contemporary Indian politics?)We elect him triumphantly; and he is duly installed, uniformed, provided with a red bicycle, and given a batch of letters to deliver. As his motive in seeking the post has been pure ambition, he has not thought much beforehand about his duties; and it now occurs to him for the first time that he cannot read. So he hires a boy to come round with him and read the addresses. The boy conceals himself in the lane whilst the postman delivers the letters at the house, takes the Christmas boxes, and gets the whole credit of the transaction. In course of time he dies with a high reputation for efficiency in the discharge of his duties; and we elect another equally illiterate successor on similar grounds. But by this time the boy has grown up and become an institution. He presents himself to the new postman as an established and indispensable feature of the postal system, and finally becomes recognized and paid by the village as such.
Here you have the perfect image of a popularly elected Cabinet Minister and the Civil Service department over which he presides. It may work very well; for our postman, though illiterate, may be a very capable fellow; and the boy who reads the addresses for him may be quite incapable of doing anything more. But this does not always happen. Whether it happens or not, the system is not a democratic reality: it is a democratic illusion.
The boy, when he has ability to take advantage of the situation, is the master of the man. The person elected to do the work is not really doing it: he is a popular humbug who is merely doing what a permanent official tells him to do. That is how it comes about that we are now governed by a Civil Service which has such enormous power that its regulations are taking the place of the laws of England, though some of them are made for the convenience of the officials without the slightest regard to the convenience or even the rights of the public. And how are our Civil Servants selected? Mostly by an educational test which nobody but an expensively schooled youth can pass, thus making the most powerful and effective part of our government an irresponsible class government.''
And this is what we have in India! Upper Class government, totally ignorant of woes of our poor farmers, continues to favor MNCs and big corporates through it policies and keeps us, the people who so faithfully work for them, in glaring ''shine'' so that we too may not be able to see those in the dark. I am, by no means, doing any anti-BJP campaigning here. Congress is no better choice. Under Congress rule, we all were in the dark. Now, at least a few fortunate folks, who know how to use computers or other machinery, bathe in the warm shine reflected off liberty's face. What you say? After all, where does the money for our national highways come from?
Shaw has proposed a solution to this difficulty. He suggests we have a constitutional monarch who has limited powers. He will act as a watchdog for our popularly elected ministers. Shaw believes that our ministers sometimes make policies that are detrimental to national progress; not because they are corrupt individuals; but because they are in the grips of industrialists who may use press to throw them down from power. But the constitutional monarch needn't fear from such plutocrats. He would be able to say, (to his ministers)
''I have no elections to fear; and if any newspaper magnate dares offend me, that magnate's fashionable wife and marriageable daughters will soon make him understand that the King's displeasure is still a sentence of social death within range of St James's Palace. Think of the things you dare not do! the persons you dare not offend! Well, a king with a little courage may tackle them for you. Responsibilities which would break your backs may still be borne on a king's shoulders. But he must be a king, not a puppet. You would be responsible for a puppet: remember that. But whilst you continue to support me as a separate and independent estate of the realm, I am your scapegoat: you get the credit of all our popular legislation whilst you put the odium of all our resistance to ignorant popular clamor on me. ''
This play has truly some very deep insights to democracy and moral values. I urge you to read it, especially the prologue. Being a Classic play, it may freely downloaded from websites such as:
https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300431h.html (No access from US)
https://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/pgaus/ebooks03/0300431.zip
https://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/pgaus/ebooks03/0300431.txt
https://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/aut/shaw_gb.html
