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This middle class influenced and infiltrated all aspects of Indian life, including the arts, cinema, literature, books and history. They selected their intellectuals and academic leaders. The government was criticised, but only for being less leftist. They captured the Planning Commissions and hundreds of other academies. They were essentially government-subsidised revolutionaries. The pinnacle of their achievement was the creation of the Jawaharlal Nehru University appropriately named where lal salaam and inquilab could be paraded as serious academic research in social sciences. It is not that the masses are dumb, but the law-makers are deaf. They talk about the supremacy of Parliament when the third leg of the Nehruvian tripod is about to collapse. There was significant dissent even in such places, but largely between the extreme Left and the moderate Left. But the 1980s and, especially the 1990s, were different periods. The fall of the Berlin Wall was a major marker on the side of ideology. Narasimha Rao understood history better than many historians. The economy opened up and a new middle class based on the service economy came in being. The share of the service sector moved to above 60 percent and its growth dictated the growth of the overall economy. Information technology (IT) became the new beacon for the middle class. Lets call them the software (SW) middle class. Even though IT still forms a small part of our service economy, the fact is it has replaced the public sector middle class. The red flag changed colour, with a tinge of saffron. Its aspirations are different. It includes not just the employed white collar worker; it also contains a huge mass of the self-employed. Their numbers could be upwards of 20 crore 200 million. The disconnect between this middle class and the elected representatives is very large, particularly at the local level. For instance, in Bangalore or Mumbai, corporators have no connect with them, whether in terms of language, dress or idiom. Most corporators are road contractors or hooch traders or lottery barons and the middle class is alienated from them. As for Parliament, who can deny that it has many members charged with criminal activities? The criticism that has been hurled against this new software middle class, which is largely with Anna Hazare, is that it does not fully understand our parliamentary system. Our Parliament is supreme and Anna is not an elected person, it is said. Sure, but even Manmohan Singh is not an elected person. He hasnt even been freely elected by the Congress Parliamentary Party. The Congress constitution was amended in May 2004 to give Sonia Gandhi the right to choose the partys PM, and she chose Manmohan Singh. The National Advisory Council is not an elected body but it formulates laws which are accepted by the government. Seen against this backdrop, the issue of being elected is treated as a joke by the middle class. The social contract of this middle class with a parliament that is supreme is over. It is time our parliamentarians both ruling and opposition realise this.
There is no point in asking why tribals and the poor are not at Ramlila Maidan. They simply cant afford to be there, or they will lose their daily earnings. But it is more than likely that the poor are with Anna because corruption affects the corporations and the richer sections less. They can afford to pay bribes and pass on the costs to their customers or employers. Corruption, for them, is thus just an irritating expense. For my flower vendor in Bangalore, though, a bribe is a hurtful expense. It can be as much as Rs 30 on a Rs 300 turnover. Arm-chair Leftists who do not understand much about the real India go on arguing about how big business is with Anna. Maybe so. But the poorer sections are more with him since he understands their hurt and loss and frozen anger at the governments minions and their daily dacoity at their expense. It is not that the masses are dumb, but the law-makers are deaf. They talk about the supremacy of Parliament when the third leg of the Nehruvian tripod is about to collapse. Are we in a position to deal with this? Are we going to mouth age-old slogans of the public sector middle classes of the 1960s or the new software middle classes? Is it possible to bring Parliament and other elected bodies in sync with the aspirations of the new middle classes? Despite all the exhortations of Lenin and Mao, it is the middle class which leads change in our country whether it was our independence struggle or the struggle against the emergency. If Parliament becomes irrelevant then it is a huge challenge for us to rework our institutions. That should be the focus now instead of the inane talk about how Parliament is supreme or the constitution is supreme or the people are supreme. Maybe, the time has come to ask ourselves whether the current parliamentary system has outlived its purpose. The author is professor at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore. Views are personal