Power Sharing in Switzerland

Power Sharing in Switzerland

Wolf Linder, in his book, ‘Swiss Democracy: Possible Solutions to Conflict in Multicultural Societies,’ says, “… it seems that the real problems of integrating different ethnic minorities within the boundaries of existing nations have remained politically unresolved, despite promises of self-determination and democracy.”

“The Swiss were able to develop a type of democracy that favours – and enforces – political power-sharing between Protestants and Catholics, between the German-speaking majority and French-, Italian and Romansch-speaking minorities, and between organized employers and trade unions. This has led to social integration, peaceful conflict-resolution by negotiation, and national consensus amongst a once fragmented and inhomogeneous population.”

Linder continues, “Switzerland provides a model example (for a multi-cultural society) because of its enduring will to constitute an independent political nation based on the mutual respect of its minorities. It provides a model for finding political institutions and patterns of behaviour that enable peaceful conflict-resolution in a multi-cultural society. While the model cannot be copied in its entirety, some of its basic elements can be noted, adopted and used by others. Renouncing a ‘nation-state’ of one culture, one religion and one language was essential for the success of the Swiss model."[8] It is worth interjecting here that while the Swiss renounced the idea of creating one-culture, one-religion, one-language, nation-state long ago, here in India, we have a bunch of thugs that want to force us more than 150 and odd years behind where the Swiss are today, all for the sake of grabbing power and holding on to it perpetually! Linder goes on to add, "The option of political integration and democratic pluralism could be an alternative for today’s new nationalism. Elements of political power-sharing – such as federalism, proportional participation of minorities, law making by negotiations – can be helpful in any country that is faced with problems of multi-cultural conflict.”

Power-sharing as a way of life for the Swiss:

Power-sharing (social justice in Indian parlance), sometimes called, “consociational democracy”, via proportional representation of different segments of the society, not only in the government, but also in various economic, social and cultural organizations of the Swiss society appears to have become Swiss way of life. Wolf Linder says, “There is some flexibility in the system, however, in that over- or under-representation is allowed but is compensated for over time." Actually, Linder's assertion about 'flexibility' is indicative of how seriously the Swiss take the business of maintaining proportionality in all spheres of life. If and when they are forced to deviate from proportional representation due to unavailability of suitable candidates, they compensate for the same over a period of time, when a suitable candidate is available. It shows that they too use what we call "filling backlogs". Main difference is that they have reservation for the whole society, i.e., 100% reservation, without the force of law. On the other hand, we have, full reservation (primarily on paper only,) for SC/ST only, in some selected opportunities, and partial reservations (27% for a population of 40-45%) for OBCs. Our Supreme Court have illegally imposed a bar of 50% over total amount of reservation, so until that bar s somehow removed by our Parliament, we cannot make provisions for 100% reservation. We are having to fight constant battle for increasing the scope of reservation as well as for implementation of whatever has been granted to the deprived communities by law.

Linder goes on to say, " … Finally, proportional rule does not apply only to politics and positions in government. It is practiced in the organization of the economy, in social life and even in sports. This is true at least for linguistic proportional rule. As Jurg Steiner (1990) writes: ‘It is unimaginable that the executive committee of the Swiss Soccer Association would consist of German-speakers only’.” Here I would like to interject that in India, the electoral system that we have adopted (FPTP) does not allow proportional representation to all segments of the society. It is an inherently unfair system bent in favor of the stronger segments of the society. Weaker segments parties of support base less than 15-20% are severely underrepresented in legislative bodies, while the stronger communities that can garner more than 35-40% votes are catapulted to the helm of power with landslide majority. This must be changed if we truly want to equitably share power – we must dump FPTP in favor of suitably designed PR system for equitably sharing political power.

Power sharing in Swiss bureaucratic structure:

Linder further says, “We (Swiss) have a strongly enforced proportional rule that leads to political quotas. An unwritten rule says that two of the members of the Federal Council should be of French- and one of Italian-speaking origin, and over time, this has been observed. In federal commissions of experts, or in parliamentary committees, linguistic proportions are observed more than any other proportional rule. The consequences of this proportional or quota rule can thus have astonishing results for the fair representation of different cultural minorities.”[9] The table shown below is suggestive of quite a strict quota system used in Switzerland.

Proportional Representation of linguistic groups (percentages) in certain federal jobs in Switzerland:

RepresentationGermanFrenchItalian

Population (Swiss citizen only)74.520.14.0

Federal Administration:

All personnel76.515.45.2

Senior staff73.620.93.5

Top Management78.819.02.2

Expert Committees76.920.03.1

Presidents of committees

of the National Council76.020.03.1

In the above table, the sums of various rows do not seem to add to 100, as they should. This discrepancy may possibly be because the authors decided to ignore the statistics about Romansch speaking people on account of their small size – I do not know. I have simply copied the table from the book by Wolf Linder.

The above table should contribute towards debunking the myth that quota system leads to inefficiencies. With their highest standard of living, today nobody is “shining more”, and “feeling better”, than the Swiss. Nothing reduces efficiency more than various connivances that the “haves” perpetrate in order to continue their hegemony and to keep the “do not haves” from breaking their shackles of misery and despair. If the law is changed to disallow over-representation of any and all groups at all levels of power, the “haves” will have no room for conniving – their game of treachery and deceits will be over! In fact, then, we won’t have any “haves” and “do not haves”. For all positions of power we need “equi-distribution among various groups” first, relatively better competency within each of the groups after “equi-distribution among various groups” has been satisfied – after rights of groups have been accorded. Here is what Jurg Steiner has to say on “rights of groups”:

Not only individuals but groups have rights too

Jurg Steiner[10] says: “According to Swiss political thinking, not only individuals but groups have rights. French-speakers, for example, should have the right to be represented among the top army officers. When a French-speaking three-star general retires, the search for his replacement is practically limited to French-speakers. But what about a German-speaker who may be more qualified than the top French-speaking candidate? The former is indeed discriminated against on the basis of his language affiliation. This is the price that the Swiss are willing to pay for their system of power sharing. This price, however, should not be exaggerated. In the foregoing example, the highly qualified German-speaker simply has to wait until a three-star general of his own language retires. Sometimes, of course, bad luck may strike; no opening may occur when someone is the “ideal” age for a particular position.”

Consociational democracy, or power-sharing, which in India has come to be known as social justice, has to become Indian way of life, if we want to grow into a civilized, peace loving, fraternal and amicable society.

What all of the above authors are telling us is that if we want to make a rapid progress towards a modern country at peace with itself, we have to make social justice our way of life – incorporate social justice in all spheres of our lives! A Proportional Representation system of election is the most important tool for a genuine power sharing in the political arena. Use of an appropriately designed list-PR in primary elections appears to be the best way of moving towards that direction. The other tool of power sharing via reservation or quota system, which when loosely applied, are called affirmative action in the USA, is very much contingent upon genuine political power sharing, since political power is the prime mover of policies and actions – it (political power) is mother of all power. I keep mentioning the qualifier “genuine” because there are superficial and deceitful ways of power sharing that do not empower the weaker segments at all. Current system of reserving constituencies for SC/ST, and proposed for reservations for women, is a prime example of such a deceit and superficiality. The only way of “genuine” power sharing in the political arena can be achieved via reservation included within a suitably designed list-PR system of election. Such a system is the subject matter of the attached article: “Women’s Reservation”.

Regards,

Satinath

Re: [The Buddhist Circle] Crisis in Dalit movement [1 Attachment]

Friday, 16 July, 20103:38 AM

From: "Gail Omvedt" <>

To:

[Attachment(s) from Gail Omvedt included below]

The Khairlanji decision has been a real blow. It shows the backwardness and casteism in the judiciary. I would join in the protest!

I am attaching a copy of my recent "Durgabai Deshmukh Memorial Lecture" on "Caste in the Census" given on July 15 at India International Centre in Delhi. Mostly an elite crowd, but the hall was overflowing.

On Thu, Jul 15, 2010 at 5:09 PM, Mangesh Dahiwale <mangesh.dahiwale@ gmail.com> wrote:

Crisis in Dalit movement

In Khairlanji, on 26th September 2006, Surekha Bhotmange, her daughter, Priyanka and her two sons, were killed by a frenzied mob. In total four people were killed. They would have been just killed like any other killing. But before they were killed, the women were stripped naked, and humiliated and maybe raped (the evidence of which is very difficult to establish due to lapses in the postmortem procedure and reporting, but circumstantial evidences prove beyond doubt that their modesty was outraged as the bodies were found naked). One of the men (one among the two brothers) was blind. The mob didn’t spare even a blind and helpless person. The whole incidence did not get much press, and whatever it space it got in the newspapers whose front pages are adorned with scandals and gossips, painted this heinous incidence as just another scandalous murder by the mob.

Due to alertness of a few local activists, the case came into public after one month. And the demonstrations were held everywhere, not only in the state of Maharashtra, but also all over India, and world. Hundreds of peaceful demonstrations took place, which were suppressed by the violent and brutal police action. Thousands of people were baton by the Police and in some cases the peaceful demonstrators were branded as seditious and anti-national. Still hundreds of cases are pending in the court of law. For the first time in Indian history any case raised such a fury for justice, and this fire for justice was finally extinguished by the infamous judiciary in India, which instead of acting as the custodian and guardian of Justice favored the perpetrators by invoking the decision of the lower court.

The Dalits in India, who constitute almost a quarter of India’s population and five percent of the world’s population, are wondering about their fate after this infamous reversal of justice. What is their fault? Why is justice denied to them? Why they have to eat rats? Why do they have to clean human excreta? Why they are forced to the life of subordination? Why their humanity and dignity is snatched? How long will it take to end their plight? How long it will take to send their children to good schools?

There is a crisis in the Dalit movement. The movement that Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar started facing infinite series of hurdles is in crisis. The Dalits as it were are treated with tokenism, tokenism as a technique to blunt the movement of Dalits includes offering one post here and another post there, and in reality not doing anything to solve to solve the problem of caste discrimination and the practice of untouchability. The tokenism as a technique is not only used by the governments, but also by the established national and regional parties to just show that they care for Dalits, but in reality they do not do anything to end it.

The laws that are made in this country are also against the Dalits, even if they look effective on paper, they don’t do anything in reality to stop their plights. The example of this is infamous Prevention of Atrocities Act of 1989, which looks such a great social legislation on papers, but the conviction rate is less than half a percent. If this is not the mockery of the law, what else can it be!!

The Dalits in India are the poorest of the poor, and in some situations their condition is so pitiable that they have to eat rats to survive (The Mushahars). In several cases their condition is so pitiable that even the rats may be eating them.

The techniques that Babasaheb Ambedkar used need to be revisited. In Dalit community, there are people with varying mentalities, and some of the politicians act as the brokers, some people willingly sale the community interests for their private gains. This doesn’t mean that the majority of the Dalits do not want change or bring in revolution. This is very much evident in case of Khairlanji agitation during which thousands of people came on the streets to express their feelings and their willingness to work and sacrifice for the society.

As a technique to take the fight further, we have to try to reach to individuals of the community. We have to find means to reach the people through various media like pamphlets, emails, cell phones and new papers both our newspapers and mainstream newspapers.

The message can be simple.

We condemn the decision of the High Court to reduce punishment of the casteist perpetrators who massacred and raped mother and her daughter and her two sons.

We demand reopening of Khairlanji case.

We demand application of Atrocity act on the killers.

On the internet forums:

We can express our feelings through writing on our blogs, writing emails to as many people as possible.

Caste and the Census

By Gail Omvedt

Parliament has been in an uproar lately over an issue new to it: should caste be counted in the coming 2011 Census? Probably most of the elite had thought the issue was settled, after Law Minister Veerappa Moily had brought it up but had his demand refused. Silently, inevitably, the country seemed moving towards another “caste-blind” census. But it may not be so simple.

“See no caste, hear no caste, speak no caste.” The policy of the Indian elite towards the issue of caste has been that of the three monkeys: one of denial. It doesn’t exist; if it does it is not so bad; it should not be talked about, and those who do talk about it or try to act on it are the ones who are “casteist.” The entire onus is placed on the victims of the system trying to fight it. Responsibility for maintaining the system is hurled against those who are trying to change it.

Yet for years the British government asked questions about caste in the Census; though the issue became politicized (with some groups seeking and proclaiming new identities) it led to no really serious problems. Again, the United States asks about race in each of its censuses; and while race in the U.S. is as contentious an issue as caste in India, it has led to no great problems.

The fact is that to deal with an issue, one has to have information about it. Policies require understanding and analysis; pretending that caste doesn’t exist is perhaps the best way to perpetuate it. On one hand, there are numerous acts and regulations dealing with caste; on the other hand, there is a genuine dearth of information. There is no encouragement for studies of caste; indeed, the only sociology students who are at all encouraged to deal with the issue are an occasional student from subaltern caste background who is taught to write on his own people. But looking at the caste system as a system is not so often done. The National Sample Surveys, for example, have only recently started using the very broad (and often not very useful) categorization of “OBC”; but this pulls together a diverse, fragmented and hierarchically broad group of castes or jatis into one overall category. And Brahmans – those who, as sociologist Satish Deshpande has argued, “ride incognito in our social system” – are never looked at; all the “upper” castes together are lumped in the “other” group. There is almost no solid statistical data available about them.