If God has stated clearly that he has no place in politics, as Digamber clearly reported to us, and if our institutions are too infirm to stop defections, and if the party and electoral system facilitates such behaviour, and if national parties are the cause of this toxic politics, then what are we supposed to do? The answer is obvious. Shun national parties. Return to building the ‘two local party competitive system’.
I did not say return to local parties, i.e., the remnants of the old ones, but instead I used the word ‘build’ to suggest a new phase of local politics. All the old formations that currently exist are either leader dominated or too ideological and thus are unable to forge pragmatic but principled collaborations that would hammer out a common minimum programme. We need to imagine an all Goa local party system that, in organisational terms, connects the base with the top. This was done in Bhutan when the King encouraged the formation of a two-party system thereby producing a flourishing democracy. Bhutan has a population of about 7 lakhs which is less than Goa.
The hard work begins: The renewal of the two local party system, let us call it the MG 2.0 versus UG 2.0, requires us to have a model to follow. The UK party system is a good model. Here constituency units have a lot of power. Selection of candidates is done at the constituency level and cannot be parachuted from above by the party high command. Since there are a large number of Goans in the UK we can certainly get advice from them on how to build a constituency level parties. Such parties maintain active membership rolls, raises local resources, keeps the potential voter informed, select campaign themes, have regular meetings, etc. Ask Goans Keith Vaz and Suella Fernandes Braverman.
The BJP has adopted a similar organisational form but since its base is the communal RSS network of organisations, which are permanently hostile to others, because of their religion and ethnicity, we cannot adopt their model. The imagined Goa model has to be secular. Unless we accept this cosmopolitanism, and unless we acknowledge diversity as a founding principle of the 2.0 movement for rebuilding a two local party system, the national parties will kill us.
Having found a model to be followed, a party organisational form that connects the base with the top since every democracy needs parties comes the next stage of giving the model a material existence, i.e., taking it from the drawing board into the villages, talukas, and constituencies of Goa. Building parties is hard work. Gandhi transformed the Indian freedom movement from a debating club of the middle class into a mass organisation that won us our independence.
A Goa padyatra
That is why I have suggested the UK party model to be followed for the renewed local party system 2.0. The first step in this direction is to perform a Goan padyatra, not go to the darbars of Margao or Valpoi but to the villages and talukas of Goa. It worked in Andhra Pradesh when the TDP and YSR Congress began. It worked when Chandrashekar breathed new life into the Janata Party.
The objective is to reconnect with the people. Plan daily meetings in some tinto somewhere. This may look like the Bharat Jodo yatra, and the BJP will certainly malign it as such, but it is different since it is not individual led. It is a movement to create a constituency level party system in Goa. The padyatra would leave each constituency with a list of potential party workers, the real lovers of Goa, and local concerns.
In each constituency a secular cosmopolitan group can thereby be set up. There is so much talent in Goa, waiting to be recognised, not just of Goans with skills but also others who have made Goa their home. They count. They must be involved. Being only 1400 sq miles, Goa is a walkover. The padyatra can begin at Patradevi with an apology to the martyrs for the pathological state of Goan politics. Goa has had an idealist past, a history of resistance, as is evidenced in the fight against the colonial system. We must reconnect with this rich history. We could use the method of crowd funding, among Goans world-wide, to raise resources for this new political formation.
An agenda for Goa
We can begin by documenting the needs of each constituency identified during meetings which later, at a state level conference, can be made into a master plan for Goa. Junk the government’s master plan. We will, over time, have more expertise outside, than they have within. In our imagined system we also need to nurture dissent, create andolanjeevis, by creating RTI and PIL units in each constituency to keep the system alert. If we don’t dream now.
(Peter Ronald deSouza is the DD Kosambi visiting professor at
Goa University)