Relevance: GS Paper II
Introduction
The modern democratic state, armed with technologies of surveillance and control, possesses the kind of power that has ocsphere that stands between the individual and the omnipresent and omnipotent state is civil society.
Role of civil society
- In a civil society, individuals come together in webs of associational life.
- Associations have the capacity to challenge the brute power of the state through petitions, protests, dharnas and ultimately judicial activism.
- Given unresponsive political parties, citizens can access centres of power and privilege only through a vibrant civil society.
- Civil society is, of course, a plural sphere, and all manners of associations find space for themselves here, from football clubs to reading groups to film fan societies.
- Civil liberty and/or human rights activists are lawyers, academics, journalists and public minded citizens of India.
- What matters is their very human concern for the poor and the disadvantaged, the dispossessed and the vulnerable. What matters is that civil society activists protect the moral conscience of our society.
Emergence of civil society in India
- Civil liberty and human rights groups are an essential precondition for human well-being.
- Some Indian citizens were randomly and arbitrarily imprisoned during the Emergency (1975-77) and the fundamental rights of others were truncated.
- It is, therefore, not surprising that in the aftermath of the Emergency, the civil liberties movement made a dramatic appearance on to the scene of Indian politics.
- The movement which developed into, or acted in concert with, the human rights movement took on an extremely significant task, that of protecting the fundamental right to life and liberty granted by the Indian Constitution.
- These organisations have carefully documented the causes and the triggers of communal and caste violence, and established an excellent archive on the abuse of power by governments.
- And above all, they have protected the rights of vulnerable sections of our own people, the Adivasis, the Dalits and Muslims.
Importance of civil society in democracy
- Their role is crucial for democracy because sometimes governments openly defy ethics and morality or become indifferent to the plight of millions of its citizens.
- Today there are few organisations that articulate the right not to be lynched, or who struggle for the right to life and liberty. Human rights activists are among these few organisations.
- They have courageously taken on the challenge posed by corporates, a ruthless state and its venal police, and the cadres of right-wing organisations that specialise in violence.
Conclusion
Revolutions only happen when the government directly and unashamedly exercises brute power. They do not happen in countries which possess civil societies, for here projects of domination and resistance can be played out. Citizens just do not need to revolt. Is there a lesson our rulers need to learn from this piece of profound wisdom?
