In countries built exclusively on the rule of law, such things as democracy and equality measures are valid

In Sri Lanka, we have tried to impose democracy on a feudal citizenry

Those who get hammered most are the communities whose sensibilities and systems have been compromised, violated and forcibly broken down without justifiable cause or sufficiently insightful thinking

One fourth of the seats at this edition of the local council elections are set aside for women. The general consensus among people at the news seems to be… “Good! Finally!”   

While I laud their enthusiasm I must smile into my collar. I am going to tell you a tale that should give you some idea why I am amused. This is a story of that which is casual, commonplace. A story based on the application of human psychology and traditional sociology that I was fortunate enough to stumble upon during a decade spent traipsing around the country observing its ways and wiles, its means and methods, its systems and strategies.  

As we know, local councils, village committees and other such village level governance bodies are, to this day, saturated with men. In most, men made up the entire body. I used to casually wonder about the role of women in the charting of their own lives and in helping chart the lives of their communities in such a lopsided system of local government. That was, until I met a middle aged woman on the east coast just after the tsunami. It was a time when they were trying to rebuild their lives and reallocate common resources to speed up recovery. Since I do not have consent to use her name let us call her Kalya. I was trying to get a participatory rural assessment done and in our discussions, the issue of the lack of women in governance came up.  

She smiled and said “Don’t worry about us. We have our methods”. I sat up. Instantly alert.   

“Take this case now?” she continued. “Three days from now, our committee will meet. At this meeting they will decide whether a two-acre plot set aside for agriculture is going to be given to Shivasubramaniam or Ragunathan. Now, Ragu is a wheeler dealer and we knew he probably had our committee in his pocket. Shiva is a good farmer. When we women met at the well yesterday, including the wives of the committee members, we decided that we will not let Ragu have his way. Then we went home. Then the wives of the all-powerful committee told their respective husbands that they have a choice. They can either allocate the land to Shiva or they do not have to bother themselves angling with their wives for a bed game for the next three months”.   

I must have at least blinked twice if not looked downright skeptical because she laughed and said “We met again today at the well and the overwhelming vote of the men was ‘yes dear’, ‘of course darling’, ‘definitely love’”. A week later Kalya casually mentioned to me that Shiva had got the land with a 100% vote in his favour. She also mentioned in quiet satisfaction that an ineffectual Raghu was foaming at the mouth, unable to figure out what had gone wrong.   

Then she said something that I refuse to forget: “We are good. We know what we are doing. Men are dumb. They engage in power politics. We are smart. We engage in pillow politics. Much more effective”.

Those segregated rights cannot be effectively ensured in a country such as ours that lacks those four institutional fundamentals

I asked her if this was the case everywhere and she flashed back “Everywhere that women are not given a few seats on a committee or a council.” 

Slightly angry she went on “You see, the minute we get three or four seats on a committee of eleven, our men our empowered. Not our women”.   

I must have looked confused because she hastened to explain. “See, the great idiots of government believe they are doing us a favor because they have a mad idea that we are then part of the decision making process by being on the committees. The opposite happens. We are outshouted and outvoted because men are in the majority and pillow politics are no longer viable. If we try it under those circumstances, they simply turn around and tell us that we are now on the committee and that if we lose in committee votes we cannot hold that against them. To get things done the way women want things done, it is far better not to be in a minority in a democratic committee. It simply disempowers us. It is a foolish system. Instead of being part of the decision making process, the system makes sure we can never be a part of it”. True! Yikes!  

In countries built exclusively on the rule of law, such things as democracy and equality measures are valid. In those countries, four things work together to give everyone a fair shot at ownership of well-being, state building and development. Those are a) constitutional guarantees, b) access to legal relief, c) access to social institutions and d) trust in enforcement agencies. Let’s face it folks. Sri Lanka doesn’t have any of those available to the average citizen. They must rely on leveraging organically created social dynamics and societal torques to feel that they belong and that they are safe, secure, happy and can get things done. For many rural communities, these come from community stratagems. They do not come from women’s rights, youth rights, child rights or human rights. Those segregated rights cannot be effectively ensured in a country such as ours that lacks those four institutional fundamentals. Therefore, in the process of trying, with the best of intentions, to enforce segregated rights approaches, all that happens is that the community breaks apart at its seams and becomes essentially dysfunctional. Quite apart from making people feel secure, it makes them feel vulnerable.   

In Sri Lanka, we have tried to impose democracy on a feudal citizenry. On one side this has resulted in a confused society and on the other, as we have seen a national disaster of epic proportions in our decades long experiment with democracy. In the end, those who get hammered most are the communities whose sensibilities and systems have been compromised, violated and forcibly broken down without justifiable cause or sufficiently insightful thinking. If rights are so bloody important, then, we had better understand that the only right worth recognizing and protecting is the right of a community to decide how it will ensure its own societal equity. Statespersons should look very closely at those and then decide how they are going to create their laws accordingly. They must figure out how they can factor in community methods of assuring equity into the legislative mishmash.   

We met again today at the well and the overwhelming vote of the men was ‘yes dear’, ‘of course darling’, ‘definitely love

But how? No one has heard of such nonsense as “community rights”, right? That is because those types of rights are inconvenient to a reductionist world which has brought itself to its knees by insisting that one size fits all. In our systemic idea of the planet, we have picked up an import known as democracy and have tried to flog that to our people regardless of its viability or its capability to help, solve or strengthen our society. Such is the extent to which we have blindly bought into this that in many urban communities, we believe that democracy is truth regardless of the barrel full of evidence pointing to its executive disaster. If our women were to know better, they should be very wary of the casually perceived gains of having a minority presence on enacted bodies, put those in the balance with existing strengths and see which end tips up. Kalya would tell you that there are many ways to skin a cat and that the democratic knife is probably the dullest and most useless tool of them all.