The 'Subjective 'political culture is the second major type which. refers to a situation in which the individuals are well aware of the political

Transcription

1 The 'Subjective 'political culture is the second major type which refers to a situation in which the individuals are well aware of the political system. Almond and Verba opine that "there is a high frequency of orientations towards specific input object and towards the self as an active participant with zero approach". (Ibid P. 19) The subjective is well aware of specialized governmental authority, he is effectively oriented to it, perhaps taking pride in it, perhaps disliking it; and he evaluates it either as legitimate or otherwise. But the relationship towards the system on the general level, towards input structures and towards the self as participant is passive. The Participant political culture is the third type. This prevails in democratic societies. In such societies, people play their role actively in the political sphere, considering themselves to be active members of the party. They are quite conscious of their rights and duties. According to Almond et al. "The members of the society tend to be explicitly oriented to the system as a whole and to both political and administrative structure. In other words, to both political and administrative structure or to both input and output aspects of the political system. Individual member of the participant polity may be favourably or unfavourably oriented towards an activist role of the self in the polity, though their feelings and evaluations of such a role may vary from acceptance to rejection"(ibidp.19). Political culture may or may not be congruent with the structures of the political system. A congruent political structure would be the one 10

2 appropriate for the culture. In other words a culture, where political cognition in the population would tend to be favourable. In general, parochial, subjective, or participant culture would be most congruent with a traditional political structure, a centalized authoritarian structure and a democratic political structure respectively. Almond and Verba (1963) recognised that the classification of political culture does not postulate historical or evolutionary development from one culture to another. But they admit that in practice there may be various degrees of admixture and combination of the various types of political culture. There is almost an explicit manifestation of the sentiments that the participant culture, as it has developed, particularly in the United States and Great Britain, constitutes an ideal type. Here is a culture where the individuals and the political systems maintain a correct relationship with each other; where the democratic citizen is active yet passive, involved yet not too involved; influential yet differential; where the individuals do not overload the political system with all sorts of demands but these are processed and channelised through the interest groups; where the various segments of people maintain a crosscutting relationship with each other and their demands and aspirations are integrated through the political parties. Political culture could not be developed on homogeneous lines in India because of different trends of socializing agencies. In India, where, in each generation, novel and intermittent relationships are being 11

3 established between subjective orientations to pojitical and historical traditions identifications of political culture is not an easy task(arora 1987). The adult franchise has certainly brought hitherto apolitical people into political process, easpecially the scheduled castes and the scheduled tribes. The mass media has helped, somehow, in increasing political consciousness among many sections of the society. Women and scheduled castes and scheduled tribes have little participation in the decision making process the so called decentralised system of Panchayati Raj. Concentration of power in the hands of the dominant few people at the national level have become mockery of democratic decentralisation. The democratic form is maintained by the various political parties in India but right now the spirit has finished. Gandhian techniques are used on politics by all parties merely as a formality, without internalising the Gandhian ideology and spirit. Due to the lack of necessary political education to the people, politics has become a profession only for the material prosperity of the kith and kin. It is not viewed as an instrument of socio- economic change, as was postulated by the constitution makers in India's mold of nation building. In India, one can easily find a picture of parochial type of political culture mostly in rural areas and especially among the scheduled castes and women voters. It can be analysed easily from the field work survey 12

4 and general observation. Many times, the respondents had little awareness and knowledge of their political system. Their general attitude was of indifference and aloofness. In a large country like India, we see a major part of population with a mix of subjective and parochial culture which is governed by a tiny participant political culture of the organised class. In such a culture, as Rajani Kothari( 1986:292) argues "government could rule and survive principally by becoming sensitive to the changes taking place in various segments of society government in a hitherto apolitical society has to be both sensitive to the changes taking place in the society and assume an active role in bringing them about. If it fails in either, it may soon lose its legitimacy". As regards cultural diversity, Indian political culture may be considered as a cluster of many political sub-cultures. One can find many examples of such sub-cultures like men and women culture, rural-urban culture, culture of dominant castes, scheduled castes' political culture and regional cultures etc. Rajani Kothari(l989:81) pointed out that "while it is clear that we are passing throught a fairly serious phase of culture conflict, a phase in which the assumptions that we have had of preserving a pluralistics civilization through a democratic political process is under shadow, it does raise a very large number of rather pertinent questions of both religio-cultural and socio -cultural kinds." 13

5 Basically, India always had a composite culture which has its own community life style; but in recent times political process has spoilt the spirit of this composite culture. No doubt the Indian people are good managers to solve their problems and there is a strong sense of democratic spirit in the society at the grassroots level; but the politicians have messed it up undoubtedly. They have introduced criminalisation and militarisation in politics to contain the sub -cultural attitudes. Mostly in developing countries like India the individual feels that he can have little influence on government action as an individual. The orientation towards the political system and political culture are worth examining to measure the extent of citizens' level of awareness and their feelings about a political system. It is worthwhile to examine whether they are satisfied with the performance of political system or not, and if they are not, do they want organizational and structural changes in it. It is equally significant to know to a certain extent that how far a democratic process is capable of generating initiatives for political awareness, participation in various electoral and political activities among the masses and meeting their expectations and aspirations, what is the individual awareness and empathy with regard to political issues and political parties and their evaluations of the political process; evaluative judgements of the various institutions of the political system, often negative, as la Palombra pointed out in the case of Italy(Verba and Pye 1972). There has been a growing interest in this psychological dimension 14

6 of political behaviour of India but more research efforts are needed before we begin to comprehend this qualitative dimension of political behaviour. Empirical studies on political culture are not of recent origin. The bibliographical information reveals that only 233 studies in all were conducted upto Out of which 71 studies were directly related to political socialization and rest were related indirectly Gupta (1975). However, a very few works have been done on political culture so far. The first empirical study on political socialization by Gupta was published in Most of the studies were conducted in the U.S.A. and very few in the United Kingdom, Germany, Scotland, Sweden, Zambia, Italy and Maxico. Most of these studies dealt with school children, adolescents, youth and adults. In India, very small number of relevant studies have been organised in the field of political culture and political socialization. The majority of studies have been directly conducted on students and a very few of them on teachers and pre-adults. Atal (1971) conducted a study of attitudes, communications and political behaviour in Uttar Pradesh, under the title of "Local Communities and National Politics". His investigations dealt with political behaviour, the composite index of individual's degree of exposure, extent of awareness, range of opinion and style of political participation. He terms "political involvement" very useful and rigorious 15

7 on the descriptive as well as on the analytical plane. He found that irrespective of community differences, size, urbanism, literacy, communication links, the people included in the sample exhibited an upper medium level of involvement in the democratic policy. Weiner (1972) argued that two types of political cultures have emerged and are operating at various levels of Indian society after the freedom from the clutches of foreign rulers. One is at local level and another at a higher level. The local level political culture permeates local politics. It is an expanding political culture which reaches out in state assembly, state government and state administration. The second type of political culture is personified by Indian planners, many of the national political leaders and the senior administrators. Weiner further explained that the first was an emerging mass political culture and the second, an elite political culture. His observation is that today the elite culture, even when it maintains itself through its own socialization process, has been losing political ground to the mass culture. Another study entitled "Intellectual Perceptions and Attitudes Towards a Public Polity: A study of Six-Point Formula in Andhra Pradesh." conducted by M.Kistaiah and V. Bhaskar Rao (1974) in the Telangana region, found that college teachers did not evince keen interest in the formula. However, despite the general dis-satisfaction, lack of faith in politicians and the expectation of an agitation in future, there 16

8 was a preference to live in an integrated state. This study was with a limited purpose of understanding perception of teachers. Gupta (1975) conducted a study at 'Etah' a district town of Uttar Pradesh, among the students of a higher secondary school. In this study he collected a sample of 220 students, 20 teachers and 50 parents. All of them were interviewed. Efforts were made to draw a political profile of students and examine the role played by family, teachers, mass media and elections. The above study, multi-dimensional in nature, focused on exposure to mass media, awareness, opinion participation and political efficacy. The main findings of this study show that there are class wise variations of political involvement. Students of lower classes have more participation in the school activities, whereas those of higher classes have been found to be participating more in community level activities, such as raising slogans and taking out processions. The political involvement index of students, in general, in terms of exposure, awareness and participation, is higher in all classes except in the 6th class. Gupta also finds that the father's rank is lower than that of the teacher in terms of these indicators, but they have more or less the same level of political efficacy. "Since teaching shows better indices than father, and students are also ready to accept their values, they play a more important role in the political socialization of the "children than 17

9 the family" (Gupta 1975:236). Narain (1976) pointed out that some aspects of personality traits like, attitudes and values, in terms of human behaviour and patterns of political culture and socialization, determine in a good measure, the nature of leadership, its support base and media needed for its mobilization. Further, he argued that it should not be ignored. The nature of human resources has itself been in the process of change through changes in political culture, exposure to processes of socialization and democratic politics. It should be treated as a dynamic and not as a static phenomenon. The future of Indian democracy will be affected by the nature of political culture and it also depends on the tendencies within the political culture. The nation is attempting to create a stable pattern of democratic institutions. Therefore, it has become necessary to conduct some empirical studies among various categories of people in the society to find out how much political culture has percolated in the society. Jamil Farooqui (1977) conducted a study on "Academic Elite and Political Participation." This study dealt with the political participation of academic elite in Aligarh. An interview schedule was administered on 300 teachers of Aligarh Muslim university, Aligarh. It was done to gauge the political participation, measured in terms of their exposure, awareness, opinion and participation in voting and other 18

10 decision making processes. The main results of the study indicate that those teachers who are highly educated and highly exposed to mass media are relatively more aware of community dnd national issues. About 50 percent teachers have low participation, whereas percent are highly participant and about 23 percent show medium participation. Mishra (1980) conducted 'A case study of Amarpur Gram Panchayat' of Siwan District of Bihar, with the objective to know the role of political parties in political socialization. For this purpose Mishra selected 30 pre-adults from the age-group of years and they were asked to tell about their preferences, symbols, leadership and preference for voting. The main findings of this study indicate that partisanship takes root only after the age of fifteen; the congress party possesses the highest extensity; the Bhartiya Lok-Dal stands at the bottom in extensity and intensity both. Haq (1981) conducted a study on a sample of 600 respondents selected from three schools of Delhi. There were 308 school children, 128 teachers and 164 parents. The objective of this study was to estimate the political orientation of students, teachers and parents. This study was concerned with three issues : political awareness, political commitment and political participation of students. He examined the effects of rural/urban factor, caste, scholastic performance and socio- 19

11 economic background. With reference to teachers, he has taken into account rural/urban factor, caste, age and length of service. In respect of parents, in addition to the above variables, he considered their education, occupation and income also. Other objective of this study was to examine the role of various agencies of political socialization through which school children are educated in terms of political awareness, commitment and participation. Exposure is positively related to awareness, just as the background of the students and their performance, the age and length of service of teachers are positively related to political awareness and commitment to leftist parties. Parents' education and occupation are positively related to awareness and negatively to participation and commitment. Haq also found that scholastic performance and socio-economic background of the students affected their political orientations. The political participation of public school teacher was low, students arid the participation of their parents was medium. The political awareness among public school teacher was medium and among parents and students high. Political commitment was high among all the three groups. Singh (1983) conducted a study in Bihar by selecting a sample of 600 students comprising, 182 students from secondary school, 282 from college and 166 students from university at Gaya in Bihar with the purpose to gauge the democratic orientation of students in India. He finds that students have perceived political system in the right direction. \l\595 2^ Vt f I Dalvenltr lliitif

12 The respondents consider that democracy is the best form of government. Vajpayee (1983) in his research paper examined the pattern of changes in the bureaucratic political culture prevailing in Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Utter Pradesh. He took a sample of 360 states and district level senior administrators to elicit relevant information from them. He found a continuity in political culture, that is, a high sense of national identity, trust of gevernment, belief in equality and to moderate political effectiveness. Rani (1983) conducted a study of a small town of Punjab 'Samana' and its nearby villages within a radius often miles and on a sample of 183 school teachers. The main objectives of the study was to analyse the political culture and political socialization profile of school teachers. The study mainly dealt with socio-economic background, exposure to mass media, political awareness, opinion, political participation and political efficacy of the teachers. It also tried out whether there is any difference in the profile of teachers teaching at various levels. The study revealed that majority of the teachers fall in the medium or high category of exposure, awareness, opinion, participation and efficiency. The study further indicates that urban and rural male teachers are more exposed to mass media and more aware about local, regional and national political issues than their counterparts. Further this study shows that the majority of teachers irrespective 21

13 of their age and education fall in the category of political involvement. It is therefore concluded that on the whole, teachers have great political socialization and politicization in comparison to others. In the light of brief overview of literature, it becomes a necessity to investigate political culture in a developing society. The Indian society with its pluralistic and multicultural setup provides a fit case for such an analysis. The democratic political system of India is comparatively of recent origin. The greater degree of involvement and commitment, high participation rates are compulsory ingredients of a democratic process. Such micro level studies can be linked to the political system as a whole at the macro level, by establishing what tendencies of political behaviour exist in various parts of subcultures. Therefore, it is worthwhile to study the political awareness, feelings and opinion orientations of a section of Indian population in a specific socio-cultural and geographic region having its own peculiarities to have a clear understanding of citizen's role in a polity. It will be helpful in estimating the prospects of the efficient working and stability of a democratic system. THEORETICAL ASSUMPTIONS In the light of the foregoing discussion on the concept of political culture and the review of literature, it may be assumed that the teachers are erudite intellectuals and one of the most sensitive rather 22

14 sophisticated sections of our society. It is therefore assumed. 1) that they have a higher degree of participation political culture, manifest political socialization and politicization. With higher degree of politicization they also have greater manifest political socialization. 2) that there is a greater degree of unconscious acceptance of norms and values of the political culture among the teachers which results in their political socialization as their service years increase. 3) that being educated and with relatively greater acceptability among the most volatile section of the society i.e. the students they develop, the tendency intensify efforts to maximize political influence and power in the society. 4) that being with greater exposure to the mass-media and mass communication, they have higher level of awareness and corresponding level of politicization. 5) that the structural attributes, such as caste, class, power, income have a great influence on the level of their politicization and political participation. 6) that being a part of the overall system of the society, the teachers also develop affiliation and commitment to a particular political ideology, which further enhances their chance of political participation and politicization. 23

15 Objectives In view of the above discussion and theoretical assumptions the present study has the following major objectives. 1) To understand development of political culture in colleges and universities in the past 1970 era, with special references to the politicization of the teaching community. 2) Since, politicization is conditioned by the process of political socialization, the study aims at understanding the co-relation of the political socializations. 3) The impact of emerging political culture and politicization on; a) The status of teachers vis-a-vis administration and society at large. b) The development of work ethics among teachers. c) The level of political participation. d) Education system. 4) To what extent politicization has affected changes in the relationship between the teachers and society. * 24