Barefoot Governance: A developmental tactic.

Barefoot Governance : A Developmental Tactic
I
Aristotle coined the term Politics in his treatise titled "Politics"(Gokhale, 2001). The study of politics has led to the evolution of reasoning and opinion making; so as to alter the way of human life governed and governable. Deliberating about the kind of electoral politics observed and practiced in India, we see a chain of 'vote for development' slogans inflicted on the audience by the practitioners of politics as a whole. The audience denotes the general adult population and the practitioners of politics are the representatives who stand for elections.

Electoral Politics in Bharat1 starts and ends with the people. The destiny engulfed and constricted in the audiences hands and minds, the ballet box rules while the practitioner of politics rues and strategizes2. Electoral politics in itself, is the means by which the common man, the "WE, THE PEOPLE" of our Preamble can rule, oppress, govern, ill-govern, subject, object, interfere, progress, regress, conform or emancipate themselves every 5 years.
The scope extends from the 552 members in the Lok Sabha and 245 in the Rajya Sabha to the over 1 billion of India's politically charged population.

II
Political institutions, parties, groups have dangled the ever-green branch of development in distinct shades of familiarity. Barefoot governance is one such leaf, which has come a long way to influence and catalyze emotions of the Indian electorate. It is not as new as claimed by Bunker Roy in his half-witted article in The Indian Express of August 26th, 2014, wherein he claims –
All ministers now have gone through average government schools. Some have never been to college. Many have experienced poverty, exploitation, injustice and discrimination at some point of time in their lives. It is truly the first barefoot government ever voted into power in independent India.(Roy, 2014)

The parameters of barefoot government are a lot more than specifying the background of the practitioners of politics or their socio-cultural settings. The unity that they represent is the nature of development that they all propose through the way they practice politics – barefoot, coated with mud and sweat, indigenous, son-of-the-soil politics3. And here is where development gets colored and filtered through the electoral procedures and specifications. Barefoot governance involves a coherent understanding of localized issues, languages, aspirations, concerns, victories and failures.
This basic understanding gives way to the question - To vote for practitioners rooted and originated indigenously or to vote for practitioners aware and informed exogenously?

III
April 1950 – the Representation of the People Act was passed by the first practitioners of (developmental) politics through the Parliament in Independent India. 176 million was the total size of the electorate, 85% of whom who were illiterate. The barefoot model was evident with
"The election campaign of 1951-52 was conducted through large public meetings, door-to-door canvassing, and the use of visual media. . ." (Guha, 2007)
The common man, the woman, the adult, the literate and the illiterate, the haves and the haves-not, the old and the young, the past and the future were all clubbed together by the practitioners of politics, who with their indigenous and effective origins requested and asked for votes.
Barefoot thus, meant the willingness to work and toil even while having bred in the elite institutions of Oxford and the likes. Bunker Roy has simplified the essence of barefoot governance; conclusively securing it only for practitioners of politics from a disadvantaged background without providing it the flexibility that the definition deserves4.
This was clearly not the case in the first general elections, wherein practitioners from all kinds of backgrounds came together to walk the path. Dr.Ambedkar, a Dalit who studied at the London School of Economics, was a political practitioner who worked for the oppressed classes and thus can be called a barefoot leader. Originating and walking from the seed of "barefoot" politics is very distinct from the other. The former requires the experience of originating while the latter speaks about the willingness to experience and work towards the transformation of collective experience.
Our democracy has been riddled with examples of how development – or the emergence of development has had a cyclonic effect on the paradigm shifts in the thinking of our people.
Let us analyze one such example.

IV
Rajiv Gandhi can be called the exogenous practitioner of barefoot politics. Two of his decisions stand out and distinctly claim history amongst the barefoot politics of India. The first is the decision of lowering the voting age to eighteen (1988) and the other is the constitutional amendment of the Panchayati Raj and Nagarpalika Bills (1989).
Now, the scope of development was different for different segments through these decisions. It struck at the very basic root of the Indian polity. It went straight inside people's imaginations, giving them power and making governance grass-root or rather barefoot. Development was used in both cases to represent the respective ideas and to reap rich electoral benefits. History speaks in a different tongue, even though using the crutches of development through the policies and amendments by Rajiv Gandhi, he couldn't save his government from losing the elections of November, 1989. Here, the people voted not for the branch of development but for something that they really recognized as true and indigenous. It didn't matter for them that legislations were duly deliberated only to sway them and influence them and coerce them.
Rajiv Gandhi in his speech for the constitutional amendment of the Panchayati Raj and Nagarpalika Bills stated "Our basic aim is to secure constitutional sanctity for democracy in the panchayats and nagarpalikas and devolution to them of adequate power and finances to ensure the people's participation in the development process"(Gandhi,1988)
Here he used the development yardstick to woo the audiences but as a practitioner he failed to experience it himself by walking on the path. Rajiv Gandhi tried to transform the developmental issue and made it a constitutionally adhered one, where he could propose and answer the questions that his audiences could evoke through the legislation.
He also stated ". . . The Panchayati Raj and Nagarpalika Bills will generate so many lakhs of elected grassroot representatives that the distance between the voters and his representative would be drastically reduced, the power brokers would be driven from the perches and grassroot problems would receive grassroot attention"(Gandhi, 1988)
Another aspect that he tried to establish was the dexterity through which the problems of the audiences could be solved. Barefoot governance quite literally was itself made to be an electoral decision, by giving the audiences the choice to vote for development through it or without it.
With this, he wanted to influence people into treating the exogenous practitioners of politics as equal and lateral to the indigenous barefoot practitioners.

V
Development as a model gift has been abused by the practitioners of politics. Barefoot governance has inadvertently made use of the "developmental plank" cited and used by the practitioners, thus changing and reshaping electoral dynamics5. The repercussions are many and the checks and balances of using development as a model are too few. Another example that we can take is the previous Congress-NCP government V.s BJP – Shiv sena alliance (not taking the divisions into account, the example is relevant).
Shiv sena has been extolling and influencing people through the development of the Marathi manoos or asmita in the regional politics of Maharashtra. BJP has been playing the politics of Hindutva and the 25 year old alliance together promotes the development of the idea and aspirations of the group Hindutva as a whole. This also is a form of using the term development, through the barefoot workers and regional practitioners of politics in Maharashtra. After the breakup in the BJP- Shiv Sena alliance, BJP was able to sustain its developmental model through its barefoot practitioners. Suhas Palshikar, a Political Science Professor and an academic practitioner of politics from Savitribai Phule Pune University has described this type of electoral politics as the "politics of converting Hindus to Hindutva"

VI
India's electoral politics cannot be swayed by just one set or type of governance. Barefoot governance though is an imperative form of association between people and the government, the way it has been implemented and observed in India has been half-hearted and selfish. Development cannot be constricted through just one narrow angle of progress, barefoot governance or power demands a lot more than that. Development can only be a result oriented gift and not the gift itself for the people. Electoral politics has been saturated by the stealth of force subjected behind development.
Development is a myth being manufactured and processed for electoral profit and thus barefoot governance becomes an instrument for it.

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Notes
Bharat is another term used as the official name for India in the Constitution of India, 1949. The majority of our population identifies with the term Bharat and not India, the electoral legacy is vested in their hands.
In the recent State assembly elections held in Maharashtra and Haryana, BJP won with majority seats of 124 and 47 respectively. Here, the ballot box ruled through the audiences and BJP (as the practitioner of politics) strategized and worked for its electoral victory.
Taking into account the kind of barefoot politics that the Shiv Sena has been practicing in Maharashtra since the formation of the State in 1960. It's totally centered on the son-of-the-soil politics, where it is practiced through different local shakha's (units) and the use (abuse?) of development is flanked around the Marathi community.
Bunker Roy has constricted the definition of barefoot governance without taking into account the various types of practitioners of politics that have emerged from under-privileged backgrounds but with privileged educational credentials.
The 2014 general elections and the Maharashtra and Haryana State elections contribute to the evident change in the electoral dynamics in India, with the decent of the Congress regime and the ascent of the BJP led saffron front. The development agenda was effectively and intelligently used by the BJP for its victory.

References
Constitution of India. (1949, Nov.). Retrieved Jan, 2015.
Gokhale. (2001). Modern Indian political thought. New Delhi, India: Vikas Pub. House Pvt.
Guha, R. (2007). The Biggest Gamble in History. In India after Gandhi: The history of the world's largest democracy (p. 137). New York: Ecco.
Palshikar, S. (2014, September 18). By converting Hindus to Hindutva. The Indian Express.
Panchayati raj. (2011). In R. Mukherjee (Ed.), The Great Speeches of Modern India (pp. 354-355). Random House India.
Roy, B. (2014, August 26). The barefoot government. The Indian Express.