State of Democracy in South Asia

DIALOGUE ON DEMOCRACY AND HUMAN SECURITY

Sri Lanka, Colombo
Dates: 24^th November, 2004
Venue: Hotel Saint Martin Limited, Chittagong

The Dialogue began with Prof. Jayadeva Uyangoda explaining the context against which it was being held. He also described the format of the dialogue that sought to facilitate open discussion rather than making pre-arranged presentations.

Prof. Peter R deSouza (Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), Delhi): After Jayadeva Uyangoda’s brief presentation and the introduction of participants, Peter deSouza explained what he termed as the ‘imagination’ of the SDSA (State of Democracy in South Asia) project and the place of the Dialogue in the overall project. He said, “It is an important part of the study because it provides a connection between different perspectives, knowledge universes and cross sections of perspectives concerning the democratic experience in South Asia. Fourteen dialogues have already been conducted in South Asia – four in India, three in Sri Lanka, three in Pakistan, two in Nepal and one in Bangladesh”. Prof. deSouza also explained that the Dialogue on Human Security sought to:

Ms. Sakuntala Kadirgamar-Rajasingham (International-IDEA, Stockholm): Sakuntala Kadirgamar then explained the role of IDEA in the Dialogue process and briefed the participants about the human security dialogue she attended in Bangladesh.

Rajeevan (a journalist attached to the newspaper Thinakkural): began the discussion by mentioning two dimensions of insecurity that he had been experiencing in Colombo. Firstly, as a Tamil and a member of an ethnic minority, he has experienced both fear and insecurity while living in Colombo. He asserted that in the context of Sri Lanka’s ethnic conflict, members of the minority communities face a specific kind of insecurity that the members of the majority community do not encounter. The second concern he expressed was professional insecurity as a journalist when journalists face threats from the politicians.

Sanjaya (a University teacher): inquired why is it that people were beginning to prefer dictatorial/authoritarian regimes to democracy. He said he had often noticed in Sri Lanka a nostalgia for the authoritarian regime of the former President Premadasa. Sanjaya wandered whether this yearning for authoritarianism had anything to do with intense social conflict and the anxieties of security that those conflicts have generated in Sri Lanka. He also noted that the social bases for this tendency have varied. Among the urban middle classes, efficiency in service delivery is often associated with a desire for authoritarianism.

Muttiah (a journalist): pointed out that journalists belonging to minority ethnic communities faced many limitations in exercising the freedom of expression. He also claimed that Tamil journalists practice their profession with a sense of fear that their Sinhalese and Muslim counterparts might not encounter. He related a personal experience where after taking part in a radio discussion on current politics, he received threats from a politician. Muttiah pointed out that the sources of such threats were both state and non-state political actors.

Mohammed Fazil (a political activist from the Eastern Province): Joining the discussion on the question of minority rights in a majoritarian polity, he pointed out that at the heart of the human security issue of the minorities in Sri Lanka has been the violation of minority rights by the state. He particularly referred to the citizenship and official language legislation in Sri Lanka in 1958 and 1956 that denied equality to ethnic and linguistic minorities while at the same time ensuring the majority’s rights and privileges. Educational policies followed by the successive governments in the post-independence period benefited the majority ethnic community while denying the minorities equal opportunities for education and employment provided by the state. In his view, Tamil nationalism was a reaction to the majoritarian denial of minority rights.

He also pointed out that the Tamil nationalist struggle did not specifically aim at securing Muslim minority rights, although the Tamil nationalists sought to represent the Muslim community on the basis of a common linguistic identity of the two minority communities. However, the civil war between the Sri Lankan state and the Tamil militant movements made the Muslim community victims of violence. The civil war threatened the human security of the Muslim community living in the Northern and Eastern provinces. He said, “They have been forcibly evicted from their homes. Thousands of Muslim families have been internally displaced. They have lost their livelihoods. A separate Muslim political party was formed in the late 1980s to spearhead a democratic struggle for the rights of the Muslim community. The human security problem of the Muslim community is intimately linked to the civil war in Sri Lanka. Even under the cease-fire agreement between the LTTE and the government of Sri Lanka, the security of the Muslim community is not properly addressed. Muslim people have a genuine fear about the possibility of a peace agreement between the government and the LTTE at the expense of the Muslim community. They feel excluded from the peace process, although the leader of the Muslim Congress took part in the peace talks as a member of the government’s delegation. What the Muslim people are looking for is separate Muslim participation at the peace talks so that a peace settlement will have a tripartite character involving the Sinhalese, Tamil and Muslim representatives”.

Fazil pointed out that in the Eastern province, democracy has functioned with the help of violence. He cited the example of violence, arson and murder that had occurred during the elections.

Fazil also brought to attention the human security situation that exists at present in the Eastern province, particularly after the split of the LTTE. The LTTE’s Eastern military commander, Colonel Karuna, broke away from the LTTE in early 2003 and this split led to internecine killings by the two factions. Fazil pointed out that in this context the human security question in the Eastern province had assumed a new character. “Now Tamils are killing the Tamils”. Fazil concluded his intervention by making the point that the conflicts in Sri Lanka required democratic solutions that could also guarantee human security of all communities.

Joslin Punchiheva (a woman social activist from rural Mahiyanganaya in the North-Central part of the country): spoke of personal insecurity experienced by the rural people in a context of widespread crime. She said that in the district where she came from, robbery and rape was rampant. According to her story, the police did not take action to prevent crime or assist the victims of violent crime. “In the countryside, people live in fear. When the law and order machinery is inactive, victims of crimes do not even go to the police stations to seek redress”.

Gnanawati (from Hambantota): also brought to the attention of the Dialogue that the personal safety of people in the deep South has been at risk due to the spread of crime and the inaction of the police. She pointed out that criminal gangs, who have access to modern firearms, are leading the new wave of crime in the Hambantota district. In some instances, the criminal gangs have eliminated entire families. She pointed out that a new under world has emerged in the rural areas and the gangs in the underworld enjoy political patronage as well as police protection.

Deena Dayalu (a management consultant in the plantation sector): joined the discussion focussing on the insecurity experienced by the Tamil workers in the plantation sector. He pointed out that even though the citizenship issue of the Tamil plantation workers had been resolved, the plantation management tends to keep these workers under subjugation. He said what the Tamil plantation workers were now experiencing was managerial and social oppression. In his intervention, Deena Dayalu linked the theme of human security to the issue of social exclusion of the Tamil plantation youth who have limited employment rights and opportunities. He pointed that the plantation Tamil youth are particularly subjected to police harassment because of their minority ethnic identity. “The police harassment occurs when the police check their identity cards”.

Deena Dayalu also described how the plantation Tamils as a marginalized ethnic minority has been subjected to violence even in situations of democracy in action. She said, “At elections, Sinhalese politicians and their agents have often harassed plantation Tamils, often preventing them from voting. In some instances, their identity cards were forcibly taken away the day before the election so that they could not exercise their voting right. The conflict between the Tamil plantation workers and the Sinhalese villagers has led to violence”. In a recent incident which Deena Dayalu cited, over 500 houses of the plantatio workers had been set on fire in a conflict with the Sinhalese villagers. “In these conflicts, almost as a rule the plantation workers do not get the police protection since the police officers, who are predominantly Sinhalese, take the side of the Sinhalese villagers”.

Rameez Abdullah (a political activist from Amparai in the Eastern Province): critiqued Sri Lanka’s electoral system as undemocratic. He pointed out that the existing system of Proportional Representation (PR) has led to malpractices, electoral violence and corruption. He was particularly critical of the National List system available under Sri Lanka’s PR in which people who had no links with the community were appointed to parliament merely because they had close personal connections with the party leadership. He suggested that an electoral system that breeds corruption is an anomaly in democracy.

Rameez also pointed out how violence has become a regular occurrence in the electoral politics in the Eastern province. “At the last parliamentary election held in April 2004, armed gangs had invaded polling centres to disrupt the voting process”. He proposed that in order to ensure democratic rights of the people, the political system needed to be re-structured. “Human rights is the shield that can protect the people”.

Concerning human security in the Northern and Eastern provinces, Rameez said that there has been a proliferation of firearms. “When guns have fallen silent as a result of the cease-fire agreement, there is now a lucrative business in firearms. This is also linked to a new wave of political killings in the Eastern Province. In certain areas, for example Samanthurai, people are afraid to go out in the evening because of killings. People do not know who these killers are. They can be the police, the army, the LTTE, or armed gangs”.

Patrick Fernando (a political activist from Colombo): reiterated how the parliamentary democratic process in Sri Lanka had excluded the minorities. He pointed out that it was the armed struggle of the Tamils that has given them some recognition. He said, “Even then there is little willingness on the part of the government to grant the minorities their rights. The government instead is attempting to politically split the minority communities, and create dissention among the Tamils, Muslims and plantation Tamils. No government recognises the status of equality of the ethnic minorities. The Plantation Tamils are particularly subjected to harassment and violence. In Ratnapura, Deniyaya and Kegalle, there have been regular incidents of violence, including murder and rape, against Tamil plantation workers carried out by gangs from the villages. Police do not take any action to protect these Tamil plantation workers. Minority communities have been compelled to resort to non-democratic methods to win their democratic rights”.

As Patrick pointed out, the peculiar way in which the democratic system functions compelled people in the villages to join the ruling party and to accept its power and authority even to get the normal government services. This has led to a decline in the public trust in the democratic process.

Mr. Ismail (a university teacher from the Eastern Province): mentioned how even under conditions of cease-fire, there has emerged a new wave of violence and political murder in the East. Even university teachers have been subjected to such violence. He linked this new wave of violence to the recent split occurred within the LTTE.

Prof. Peter R deSouza (Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), Delhi): Prof. deSouza intervened at this stage to say that two major themes had so far emerged in the Dialogue that he found quite puzzling. They were:

Chandrakumara (an NGO worker in Colombo): expressed the view that people tend to see ‘security’ as individual personal security and not as collective security. He also pointed out that marginalisation has taken place in Sri Lanka not only in relation to the ethnic minorities, but also the rural communities of the ethnic majority living in the periphery of the country.

Dinesh Keerthinanda: In the post-lunch session, the discussion sifted to the question: Is less democracy a suitable response to the infirmities of democracy? This shift was prompted by the intervention made by Dinesh Keerthinanda that in Sri Lankan society that has also been a distinct clamour for ‘ a little bit of authoritarianism.’ His point was that because of the limitation of the democratic process, particularly because violence has become closely identified with electoral democracy, people have been disillusioned with democracy as a whole. He also asked whether democracy was not responsible for Sri Lanka’s ethnic conflict. His point was that democratic politics had allowed demagogic nationalist mobilization that had prevented ethnic accommodation.

Himali Jinadasa (of the Peace Secretariat in Colombo): responded to Dinesh saying that the value system of the people was more important than the system of governance. She argued that democratic value education is crucial for bringing back the public trust in the democratic process.

Prof. Peter R deSouza (Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), Delhi): Peter de Souza joined the discussion at this stage pointing out that for the institutions of governance to maintain public faith, the institutions should also work well. “For institutions to work well, they should have a value framework. Democratic governance should be a value-driven process. While recognizing that the level of public trust on the political institutions in South Asia is low, it is necessary to create new cites for dialogue so that the questions of democratic values and political institutions is discussed through public participation”.

Udaya (civil society activist): intervened to say that democracy was not a single idea, but one with multiple spaces. “There are democracies at various levels, democracy at the level of the family, media, the state etc”. Udaya made the point that the private sector and the private media had been violating democracy to a great deal. “Media is dominated by the merchant capital”.

Mohammed Fazil (a political activist from the Eastern Province): Mohammed Fazal returned to the theme of discrimination that the youth and the ethnic minorities have experienced under Sri Lanka’s democracy. He referred to the Presidential Commission on the Youth Unrest, appointed in 1990 soon after the second JVP youth insurgency of 1987-1990. The Commission’s Report had highlighted the discrimination suffered by the rural youth. Fazal pointed out that the Muslim youth in the Eastern province encounter a specific kind of discrimination, by the state and the Tamil domination of politics in the region. “They fear that after a peace settlement between the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE, the Muslims will be compelled to live under Tamil domination”. Fazal pleaded for what may be called a ‘non-discriminatory democracy’.

Prof. Jayadeva Uyangoda (Social Scientists’ Association): Jayadeva intervened at this stage of the dialogue to point out that the discussion so far has highlighted the need for fresh democratic imaginations, shifting the practices of democracy from discrimination to non-discrimination, and from exclusion of people and communities to an empowering and inclusivist democracy. “The richness of the discussion is that it had has been moving in the direction of arguing for both broadening and deepening of democracy”.

Sanjaya (a University teacher): At this stage, Sanjaya returned to the theme of the middle-class desire for authoritarianism. He queried how fresh democratic imagination is possible when there was such a longing for un-democracy among critical segments of the population.

Patrick Fernando (a political activist from Colombo): Patrick responded to Sanjaya’s query by saying that explanations can largely be found in the nature of the Sri Lankan state. Patrick argued, “The Sri Lankan state is still a Sinhalese-dominated, centralised and patriarchal one. There is also caste-ism in state-society relations. These are structures that are deeply embedded in the political and social relations. Whoever who tries to change these structures are pushed away from democracy, because there is tension between social-political structures and the capacity of democracy to change those structures”.

Raghunathan (from Jaffna): intervened by saying that a political culture of democracy was essential to maintain democracy as a normative framework as well as a guide to practice.

Muttiah (a journalist): Mutiah drew attention to the shortcomings of the existing electoral system in providing representation to regional or local minorities. “Many minority communities, including the Sinhalese in the Eastern province, do not get representation. He pointed out that non-territorial minorities do not get adequate representation either. Without representation how could the minorities enjoy democracy or security?” Muttiah suggested that useful lessons could be learned from the Belgium constitutional model.

Chitra (of the Women and Media Collective): mentioned that in the North and East, the right to return of the internally displaced people had been repeatedly violated. Their economic survival and security was at constant risk.

Krishnaswamy (a trade unionist from Badulla): drew attention to the denial of group rights of the Plantation Tamil community. He also said that the emphasis on national security has particularly resulted in the violation of individual rights of citizens belonging to the minority communities. He said that the problems in the plantation sector were as serious as the problems in the Tamil North. Conditions of the life of plantation workers continue to remain primitive with no significant improvement in housing, welfare, security and mobility.

Rajeevan (a journalist attached to the newspaper Thinakkural): Rajeevan shifted the focus of discussion to the impact of globalisation on human security, arguing that globalization had generated a deep sense of insecurity among the workers. There was pressure on the government by the foreign investors to change the labour legislation, doing away with the provisions of job security that the workers had enjoyed.

Muttiah (a journalist): Mutiah made the point that globalization had weakened the local entrepreneurial class.

Daya (a women social activist from Hambantota): pointed out that globalisation had adversely impacted the rural farmers. “There is a widening income deficit among the agricultural producers, because of the rising cost of production. Rural moneylenders had benefited from this crisis. Globalisation had undermined the economic security of the rural poor and the farmers”.

Chitra (of the Women and Media Collective): Chitra, remarked how poverty and insecurity had been increasing among the rural poor.

Joslin Punchiheva (a woman social activist from rural Mahiyanganaya in the North-Central part of the country): On the theme of poverty and insecurity, Joslin Punchihewa said, “The aboriginal Vedda community living in the interior of the Badulla district have been living in grinding poverty. Their traditional forest habitats have been reduced in size and resources and they have been losing their traditional means of livelihood, mainly hunting, gathering and highland cultivation. Both the central government and local government institutions showed no interest in their welfare. Their cultural rights as a community have also been violated”.

Dr. Ismail (an academic from the South Eastern University): critiqued the existing system of school education arguing that the curricula and text books were not designed to promote inter-community understanding and integration. Rather the system of school education has promoted misunderstanding among communities. [Sri Lanka’s school textbooks are prepared by the government’s Ministry of Education. They usually contain the Sinhalese nationalist perspectives on the Sri Lankan society, history and culture.] Dr. Ismail also pointed out how globalisation had led to the humane cultural values among the people. He argued that globalisation had encouraged migration and human smuggling within and outside the country. Migration had led to disintegration of families and communities.

Himali Jinadasa (of the Peace Secretariat in Colombo): intervened to say that technology and communication was not being used to promote inter-community understanding. In her view, technology has been used primarily as a commercial space, and not as a cultural space.

Dinesh Keerthinanda: Presenting a strong cultural critique of globalisation, Dinesh Keerthinanda asserted that globalisation had promoted commercial values. He specifically referred to TV advertising that promote commercial, patriarchal and consumerist values. He was particularly critical of TV advertising that ridiculed human disabilities like speech defects.

Mohammed Waseem (from Kalmunai of the Eastern province): drew the attention to the security problems faced by the Internally Displaced People (IDPs) in the North and East. The IDPs were temporarily settled in welfare camps and they were totally dependent on assistance given by the government and aid agencies. “Their right to return is not honoured by the government. There were also conflicts between the IDPs and the local communities. They felt discrimination in the most acute form. Inside the IDP camps, the security of women and children was regularly violated”.

Udaya Tennakoon (a civil society activist): argued for widening the domain of democracy. To do that, he said, “we must step outside the state”. Udaya argued for non-state space for a ‘non-state democracy.’ He also pointed out that the NGOs should become social movements, if they were to be effective agencies of non-state democracy.

Chandrakumara (an NGO worker in Colombo): Chandrakumara drew attention to the problems of insecurity in the agrarian countryside in the Dry Zone districts where the government established peasant resettlement schemes a few decades ago. Among the problems of the youth there is the unavailability of land and employment, particularly to the second and third generations of the settlers. The youth who receive secondary and tertiary education have no access to income. In the rural Dry Zone, young men give up education and migrate to the cities in search of employment. According to Chandrakumara, the scarcity of water has become a source of insecurity and conflict in the Dry Zone countryside. The scarcity of water there has also led to health problems among the peasant populations, making health a new source of insecurity.

Devaraj (a trade unionist): discussed how the human security dimensions could be improved with reforms in the state security sector. He argued that security sector reforms were essential to develop cooperation between the police, the security forces and the people. Such reforms should include re-training of the police and setting up of community level peace committees.

Devaraj also pointed out that in communal conflicts, there has also been a tendency on the part of the police and the bureaucracy to be partial whenever communal conflicts broke out. Victims of such partial state behaviour have always been the minorities. He drew attention to the experience of plantation Tamils. Victims of communal conflicts have been rarely compensated. Devaraj argued that influencing political society was crucial to bring about changes in the behaviour of the police and the bureaucracy towards the ethnic and religious minorities.

Devaraj pointed to a paradox of the democratic process in which those who enact legislation in turn violate the very law they passed. He was particularly referring to the violation by politicians of laws relating to the electoral process. “When the very people violate laws which they enact, democracy is subverted”.

With Devaraj’s last point, the discussion focussed on political corruption as a source of citizen’s insecurity.

Deena Dayalu (a management consultant in the plantation sector): raised the question as to why the participants so far focussed only on the negative aspects of democracy, but not on its positive aspects. He observed this was primarily due to the pervasive corruption that democratic politics had generated in the country. He asserted that democracy, if it were to get rid of political corruption, required discipline. Deena Dayalu hoped that a ‘correct political leadership’ in the mould of Lee Kwan Yu would bring corruption free democracy to Sri Lanka.

Prof. Jayadeva Uyangoda (Social Scientists’ Association): Jayadeva intervened at this stage to say that although democracy had many infirmities in Sri Lanka, more democracy, and not less democracy, is the best democratic option to address the questions of democratic deficit. He said, “The middle class desire for authoritarianism to which Sanjaya referred during the morning session, should be countered by making an argument for more democracy”.

Sanjaya (a University teacher): Sanjaya took up the question of security among the marginalized and excluded communities. “Marginalization of the youth which Chandrakumara spoke about earlier represented one of the major democratic deficits in Sri Lanka. The neo-liberal economic polices that were being implemented in Sri Lanka undermined the democratic process, because it fostered income and social inequalities”. According to Sanjaya, the human security of outcast social groups (marginalized because of the occupation and sexual-orientation, sex workers, disabled people) has not been strong in Sri Lanka’s democratic discourse.

Patrick Fernando (a political activist from Colombo): suggested that the goal of this dialogue and the study should be to aim at structural changes. Patrick pointed out that the critique of the conditions of democracy and human security developed during this dialogue actually called for radical structural reforms.

With Patrick’s intervention the Dialogue came to an end.

Prof. Jayadeva Uyangoda (Social Scientists’ Association): Prof. Uyangoda from the Chair summarised the main concerns, anxieties and possibilities that emerged in the Dialogue. He began the summing up stating that the Dialogue enabled the multiversity of knowledge, experience and critique of democracy to be expressed in an open discussion.

Prof. Peter R deSouza (Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), Delhi): Peter de Souza in his summing up said that he identified three key issues that emerged in this Dialogue.

Appendix

Dialogue on Democracy and Human Security

Social Scientists’ Association, in Collaboration with the Center for the Study of Developing Societies
(New Delhi) and International IDEA (Stockholm)
Held at
Sri Lanka Foundation Institute – Colombo
November 25, 2004

What is Human Security?

The concept of Human Security is much larger and broader than the concept of national security. It includes not only the security of the nation but also the security of the people who live in the nation. The concept of national security on the other hand is more or mainly related to the security of the land area (territory) of a nation from external aggression or from internal disturbances. National security in this case has more to do with arms, armies and the police based security to the people of a nation. Human security on the other hand is about the total well being of the people: their physical safety, their economic and social well being, respect for their dignity and worth as human beings and protection of their human rights and fundamental freedoms. There can be many reasons for the threat to human security such as the threat from hunger, disease, inadequate shelter, unemployment, social conflicts, crime and environmental hazards and also from the threat of external aggression.

Military threat from outside the nation is only one and in many cases may not be the most significant threat to the human security. This means that the threat to human security exist even when there is no threat of external aggression. In some cases it may be possible that there is a tension between the security of the individual and that of the nation or regime. In this way it can be said that human security is concerned with how people live and breathe in a society, how freely they exercise their many choices, how much access they have to market and social opportunities and whether they live in conflict or in peace. So, when we talk about human security, we not only talk about the threat of external aggression to a nation but also the threat to the right to live with human dignity of the people.

The feeling of insecurity among people of a country may also arise from the worries of their daily life, for example; will they and their families have enough to eat? Will they lose their jobs? Will their streets and neighbourhood be safe from crime? Will they be harassed, humiliated or persecuted by the state or its institutions because of their religion, region, caste, gender, class, ethnic origin, language, political belief or opinion? The preamble of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) adopted more than five decades ago by the General Assembly of the United Nations has proclaimed that freedom from fear and freedom from want are the highest aspiration of the common people. The Human Development Report (HDR) published every year by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) also speaks about two major components of human security: (1) freedom from fear and (2) freedom from want.

(1) Freedom from Fear: Freedom from fear is an important component of human security but not the only component. The threat to freedom from fear comes when people fear of violation of their human rights or civil rights. Or the fear that they may be discriminated or persecuted due to their religion, caste, gender, language, region or political belief, either by the state or its institutions or by the dominant groups or people. The fear may also be of aggression by other country or social conflict. It can also be the fear of becoming a victim of crime.

(2) Freedom from want: The other equally important component of human security is freedom from want. The threat to freedom from want arises when people fear that the basic requirements of a dignified human existence would not be available to them because of one or the other reason. One of the major reason for threat to the freedom of want is the threat to their livelihood system. The best way in which the people can be assured of the freedom from want is that they get a regular and adequate income by doing some productive work. This not only provides the people a decent standard of life but also contribute to the development of their country.

According to the United Nation Human Development Programme (UNDP), both these components of human security, freedom from fear and freedom from want, are of equal importance and human security can not be achieved at the cost of the other.

Three set of threats to human security: Based on the above two components of human security, the threats to human security can be explained in the following three sets:

If the policies of the government towards other nations and 'other' citizens within the nation are just, humane, non-exploitative, and non-discriminatory, there are less chances of threat from them. These types of threat to human security cannot be ward off completely or permanently with the help of arms, armies and police. Rather if we try to depend more on the arms, armies and police for security, we may be inviting more insecurity than security. This is because the security through arms, armies and police is very costly and still not effective. To meet the prohibitive cost of security through arms, armies and police, countries have to cut spending on social sector such as education, poverty alleviation programme, health and social security etc, due to limited resources available to the nations. The expenditure on arms, armies and police at the cost of social sector expenditure creates conditions for further insecurity among people.

Human security means absence of threat to national security and people's security. But the nations are known to exaggerate the perceived threat to national security and to minimise the real threat to people's security. A large number of governments in the world are spending huge amount of available national resources to protect their citizens against the perceived threat of aggression by another country and on the maintenance of internal security machinery, in spite of the fact that poverty, illiteracy, disease and lack of minimum social services continue to afflict hundreds of millions of people in these countries.

Link Between Democracy and Human Security?

Is there any link between human security and democracy, when human security is defined in terms of freedom from fear and freedom from want? Democracy is defined as a political system of governance where more than one political party take part in regularly held free and fair election on the basis of adult suffrage and compete for political power to run the state of affair of a nation. This process of democracy, it is being said, makes politicians more likely to respond to people's needs and aspirations. 'Democracy' it is being said, 'is the only political regime that guarantees political and civil freedom and the right to participate in policy decision and debates'. Political freedom, it is argued, also empower people to press for policies that expand social and economic opportunities. According to the HDR - 2002, 'democratic institutions and processes can also contribute to human development. Because of all these features of democracy it is claimed that democracy is more suitable to provide human security to its citizens than any other form of government. Does all this mean that there is a link between democracy and human security? Does democratic countries provide best human security to their citizens when compared with the non-democratic countries? It may be true that democratic system is more conducive to promoting human security but there is no automatic link between democracy and human security.

From the above table we can see that although 85% of South Asia's population was living under democracy and only around 22 % in East Asia and the Pacific but still only a smaller percentage of population in South Asia was having freedom from want, when compared with East Asia and the Pacific. More percentage of people in South Asia were living below the poverty line, a larger proportion of infants and women during pregnancy were dying every year in South Asia, people in South Asia are expected to live less number of years and the mortality rate among children below 5 years was much higher in South Asia when compared the same with East Asia and the Pacific. In other words East Asia and the Pacific where only 22 percent of people were living under democracy were enjoying more freedom from want when compared with the people of South Asia where 85 percent people were living under democracy.

Similarly, majority of the 12 countries having widest inequality in income in the world (income inequality measure above 20 when the gap between top 20% and bottom 20% people of the country is taken in to consideration) were democratic countries. Also, majority of the 12 countries with highest poverty ratio in the world (40% or more people living below the poverty line in a country when poverty line is $ one per person per day) were democratic countries. This shows that in case of freedom from want there was no inherent advantage for the people who were living under democracy as compared to the people living under non-democracy. Rather the people of East Asia and the Pacific were in a better position in terms of freedom from wants than the people of South Asia.

We have already noted earlier that freedom from fear and freedom from want are two equally important component of human security and one cannot be promoted at the cost of the other. Now even if democracy provide more freedom from fear than the non-democracy (which is not yet clear) still political system of governance (democracy or non-democracy) cannot be said to have an inherent advantage in providing human security to its citizens.

In India the fear of dalits, women and poor can be seen from the fact that they even fear to go to the police station to lodge a complaint of crime committed against them by the upper caste and the rich and powerful because they know that the police is always with the rich, powerful and upper caste people who commit crime against the weak, powerless and dalits. This is the case in Sri Lanka too. The poor, powerless and dalits know that if they go to the police station they are not safe from the police. Ordinary people do not feel safe even from the police of democratic India which is suppose to be the protector of ordinary people. On the basis of these realities it can be said that neither democracy nor non-democracy is a factor in determining the human security. The experience of more than fifty years of formal democracy shows that democracy in itself is no guarantee to human security.

Sri Lanka’s experience of democracy poses many questions about human security. Armed rebellions in the North as well as the South have emerged during the past three decades. Political violence, killings, disappearances, violations of individual as well as group rights has been a part of the political process during this period. State as well as non-state actors have emerged as major threats to human security. When such political violence began to decline, the democratic process itself has come to embrace violence. Election related violence is the case in point.

The purpose of this dialogue, Democracy and the State of Human Security in Sri Lanka, is to understand from the experiences of activists / academics and those belonging to the socially and economically deprived sections of Indian society, whether more than five decades of democracy in India has contributed positively towards improving human security in Sri Lanka? In other words, whether the democracy in India could provide freedom from fear and freedom from want to the people of Sri Lanka especially those belonging to religious, ethnic and linguistic minorities and women and the poor? To see the contribution of democracy, if any, in providing human security in India, there is also the need to see the state of human security in our neighbouring countries having different political system (non-democracy) and compare it with the state of human security in India.