For A Second Republic

Nandan Nilekani makes an important point in his timely article in the ToI today:

“I doubt many in Mumbai even know who the mayor of the city is. It's a largely ceremonial post. There was no powerful official representing Mumbai's city administration simply because the administration has no power to speak of. The responses in the immediate aftermath of the attacks orders to the police and military, evacuation operations flowed from above. An entire tier of government at the local level was non-existent.”


But why just Mumbai? There are no institutions of urban local self-government throughout India.

Indeed, as far as local self-government is concerned, our The State has always spoken of panchayati raj based on Gandhi’s vision of self-sufficient village republics. To this day, this is all that Mani Shankar Aiyar jabbers on about. But if we look for achievements, we see that all that panchayati raj has accomplished is the politicization of village life, converting millions of villagers into political clients of our The State.

Powerful Mayors of prosperous cities are never clients of The State. The Lord Mayors of London have always been among the richest men in the kingdom. The institution itself dates back to the early 12th century, and is older than the Magna Carta (1215 AD). Indeed, the then Lord Mayor of London was present at Runnymede when the hapless King John signed “the First Statute of the Realm.”

In modern terminology, the “principle of subsidiarity” is used to show how powers are best divided between the various tiers of government. However, the true meaning of the term goes a little deeper than that. It means that if society is in need of anything, it must first try the market. If businessmen cannot provide the good in question, society must then look towards private voluntary organizations and charities. Only when both these fail should government be called in – and that too, at the lowest level: the city, the town, the village. Then, if there are goods and services that this lowest tier of government cannot supply, these should fall upon higher levels. In India we need to strictly apply the principle of subsidiarity and redesign our government. We must invert the pyramid.

This calls for a New Constitution.

A Second Republic.

See my recent article on why we need a Second Republic here.