The wide vision of the LSE India Summit
2016 launched by the LSE South Asia Centre programmed a powerful down-to-earth
kick start with a comprehensive bird’s eye view of global power by Srdja
Popovic (reviewed in Herald Café) on the opening night, January 28, 2016. The
next two days branched out into four Difficult Dialogues and eight panel
discussions labelled Dialogue Derivatives, running parallel at the
International Centre Goa and Cidade de Goa with buses shuttling people and
ideas as the cross currents of ideas created an amazing intellectual vibrancy.
Difficult Dialogue 2 featured Professor
Craig Calhoun, Director and President of LSE, as
Moderator with a gender balanced panel of six distinguished contributors. The
ideas flew across the auditorium as the people on stage and those on the floor
opened the topic and let it bleed.
Can Civil Society exist independent of a
Political Party? Or is it essential that the two shells are interconnected? And
that we establish the interconnections between the two shells? The problem is
that the boundaries are blurred and the battle rages on. There is no public
debate. In fact, there is a reluctance to establish a dialogue. When people
draw their ethical roots from religion, civil societies are convinced that they
are inspired to do good – and they won’t listen. Self righteousness and self
importance take the upper hand. In this context, a daring comment popped up:
these types of civil societies are no different from terrorists. They won’t
budge their ground. An ugly truth? So how do we turn them around? Dignity is
the external face of the inner shell. So how do we give civil society what it
wants?
Politics can dance on the surface only when
strongly supported by a civil society. What is a political party? Each party
has a perk which they cling to. Elections are the only process that brings
people together to interconnect with the political shell. And at these times,
civil society is governed by the local ‘gunda’ who coerces or persuades voters
who can be bought for as low as Rs 100.
Two panellists averred that we seem to have
arrived at the moment when these interconnections have snapped. The other four
panellists were shocked by their
standpoint and preferred to continue believing that the ability of
politics to connect the inner and outer shell is still alive. The arguments
favoured the opinion that these interconnections existed before Independence
and did not disappear after Independence, even in a slow death.
Democracy is a long-term project and a
tedious process. Having scattered the pieces in the jigsaw, how do we put it
all together? What should we do as a civil society? We need education to create
a dialogue. This has not gone far nor deep enough. Why isn’t civil society
knocking on the door of public university? In a normative sense, why isn’t the
idea of students as a mobilisation entity in place?
Politics continues to be an arena for hope,
so much energy is dissipated in small victories and continued struggle. So what
is the solution? We need to communicate, to connect, to open a meaningful
dialogue. And yes, it is indeed a difficult dialogue.
