By the people - democracy in India

When a great insight is repeated often enough (as it will be) it becomes a cliche. And a cliche becomes banal, robbed of its profundity by familiarity. This is very true of Joseph de Maistre's great insight (often attributed to de Tocqueville or Lincoln, such is its power) that "in a democracy people get the leaders they deserve."

There is some sense in India today that our parliamentary leaders are a bunch of criminals and thugs foist on us with no legitimacy. Not true. Our members of parliament do not parachute into parliament house and commandeer it. They all get elected, some get thrown out in the next election, many are elected repeatedly. The people of India choose these men and women to represent them. There is horror at increasing criminalisation of politics, and disgust at dynastic succession. Truth is, political parties are primarily election focussed (obsessed?) and favour individuals who will win. These people win. The question is why - why does the electorate knowingly elect these people? That is the question, not the 'legitimacy' of elected politicians. Who in India isn't aware that the Gandhis are a dynasty? Haven't people in Delhi heard about certain Congress politicians being linked to the 1984 killings? Is anyone in Gujarat clueless about the 2002 massacre? Who in his UP constituency doesn't know Raja Bhaiyya's reputation? By voting such people in the electorate certainly deserves them. 

It is also said that this is all because of the absence of decent candidates. The logical deduction would be that 'good' candidates always get elected. Sadly not true. If you were to look for the most progressive constituencies, ones that would by that logic readily elect upright, moral, intelligent candidates, then South Bombay and South Delhi would surely top the list. Meera Sanyal barely got 10,000 votes in South Bombay in the last election. Manmohan Singh, while he was still well respected years ago got so badly thrashed in South Delhi that he lost his nerve and never stood for election again - and he, unlike Sanyal even had the backing of the Congress party. In another setting, Malika Sarabhai, a philanthropist and social activist from a very well known and respected family lost miserably in her home constituency, where she, her work and her family are well known. 

Maistre was right.  It is not about the leaders as much as it is about the electorate, the people. The middle class (so called) is dismayed by the leaders we have, and that is because the opinion of the middle class has been pretty irrelevant to the outcome of elections. The leaders have been someone else's choice, driven by factors which the middle class does not understand. All that is changing. The same Congress that has for decades had scant regard for the opinions of the middle class is now sitting up and taking notice of it. It is beginning to change its policies and actions, sensing that the power equation has changed. After having introduced a bill and an ordinance this year to allow criminals to remain in parliament it got cold feet and backtracked shamelessly as it saw urban public reaction getting ugly. 

The middle class in India has now reached numbers where it could well determine the next election, provided enough come out and vote. One reason for poor representation of middle class opinion has been poor turnout of their numbers at the polls - that could be part of the reason Sanyal and Singh got thrashed.  The well orchestrated anti corruption agitation and even more significantly, the subsequent spontaneous, fearless, leaderless and more successful anti rape demonstrations have now given the middle class a taste of success, a feeling that it now matters. It is now determined to force change, and hopefully that will translate into votes. That is what was missing so far. It is the turning point that other democracies have experienced, and it is now upon us. 

Now that the middle class is in a position to assert itself what will happen? So far, the focus is primarily on corruption, a cause celebre which seems to have sucked all the oxygen out of the room, leaving little for the urgency and imperative of economic growth. The US, the oldest constitutional democracy in the world went through its robber baron, crony capitalism phase. When the middle class asserted itself, greater probity came in, and the very same two parties cleaned up their act, election reforms and anti-trust laws followed and cleaned up the system greatly. However, the importance of business was never in doubt. Successful societies recognise that prosperity is essential for human well being. Even the current emergence of the middle class in India as a force for change is the result of economic growth. The wrong headed squeamishness of Indians about business needs to yield to a recognition that business is the only engine for economic growth, that eliminating widespread gut wrenching poverty in our country depends on giving business its due importance. The recent debacle regarding FDI in retail is a perfect example of India's conflicted approach to business, of wanting to drive ahead with the hand brake on. 

We need politics that elevates money generation, profit to the highest priority. Not the only priority, not an uncaveated priority, but the highest. China did, in a communist regime, and their per capita GDP is three times ours starting from the same base 35 years ago.  Tocqueville wrote with admiration that America judged the value of every issue in terms of the money it would generate. No wonder the US is so prosperous, while our dysfunctional, socialistic, anti business country has achieved less than 3% of the US per capita GDP, we have 50% of the world's poor and similar proportions of malnourished children. Lifting these destitute souls out of their bleak and wretched hopelessness asap should be our primary focus. 

  

Politically, our problem is that we are stuck with Hobson's choice. Either we empower the Hindutva promoting and anti-westernisation Sangh Parivar, or we stay with the dynastic and dissolute Congress party. Maybe Narendra Modi can make a difference, yet do we want the Sangh Parivar with their virulent communal hang ups and sclerotic desire for a backward flip into archaic conservative traditions, both born of a fixation on the past? Should we risk enhancing Hindutva based tensions in society and belligerence towards our hostile neighbour - maybe even start a war over the next terrorist act? On the other hand, looked at soberly, these risks appear overblown. After all, the BJP ruled at the centre, led by Vajpayee, quite responsibly. Chauhan, Parrikar, Raman Singh the other current BJP chief ministers are also quite moderate. Even so Modi, who's persona reveals his strong RSS past and who carries the stain of 2002 is a strongly polarising figure and does magnify these generic fears about BJP rule. 

Despite all this, and despite his rough, rustic, unlettered, swaggering and gaffe prone persona Modi has a reputation for clean and efficient governance and he understands, welcomes and supports business. Earning across the board support from diverse business leaders isn't easy. It reflects respect for not just the individual but for the clean and effective state wide administration he runs and cannot be, should not be easily dismissed. Is a stint for him worth these risks? Well, maybe it is.  If wealth creation is the highest priority, doesn’t he represent our best chance to make a clean break from our socialism soaked past?  The thought is tempting driven by sheer desperation for radical change. In the old days they used to give malaria to cure syphillis. The problem is, I am not entirely sure which is malaria and which is syphillis here. The day I make a final determination on that I will have made a choice - the toughest electoral choice I have faced. 

Some say we need a new liberal party to take the agenda forward. Well, there is none on the horizon. All we have is the newly minted AAP, the current favourite of those in thrall of its anti corruption catechism.  While it is just confined to Delhi for now, Kejriwal has declared national ambitions. What does he stand for? Is AAP progressive - the answer to India's challenges for the 21st century?  Kejriwal doesn't display any real concern for rapid economic growth, or any understanding of its complexities, let alone a passion for it. His only clearly enunciated policy is anti corruption. Other than that he has populist promises like give-aways of water free of charge and cutting the price of electricity in half, revealing a commitment to dystopic socialism as well as a hostility to business - a hostility which shows up repeatedly in his pronouncements. Support for business, the compelling need of the hour, is a far cry. Being anti-corruption is his only positive attribute. That is like a person applying for the job of MD of a company in deep trouble saying, when asked 'how will you turn things around?":  'I will be honest', 'Yes, but what will you do?': 'I will be honest.' Would you hire him or her? 

Yet, nature and history abhor a vacuum. The regions will have more say - that is the inescapable force of history in India. That is how we were before the British gave us a common language and administration that created the possibility of India as a country.  The increased importance of regions can be through regional parties, though it is hard to see what will bind them together in an orderly, sustainable fashion with coherent, progressive policies. Or it could be through a complete reorganisation of the existing parties with the sweeping out of the self obsessed, clueless, out of touch central oligarchies, a hangover from the freedom movement, in favour of regional, performance based leaderships which will be more in tune with the beat of the country; a complete makeover of the existing parties, driven by the expectations and aspirations of the youth dominated middle class. That would be our true demographic dividend. Modi is the first salvo of the regional, performance based onslaught, unnerving as that has been to the Delhi political establishment. 

Quite possibly it will be a combination of both - regional parties as well as meritocratic regional leadership for central parties. Time will tell how the defining change in demographics towards youth and middle class and a return to India's historical regional focus plays out, catalysed by disgust and anger at the shamefully shameless dysfunction at the centre. The hope for change lies in the young who want jobs and prosperity, and the electorate in the states who have tasted some economic success, want more, and are driving politics towards meritocracy - a transformational shift for the country. 

Yet, Maistre will have the last word in determining how far we go and how fast we go. 

Defining India

Egypt was the first  to form as a country as people flocked to the delta to benefit from 'the gift of the Nile'. It became one kingdom as early as 5000 years ago in 3100 BCE. Next came China, which was brought together as an empire a more recent 2200 years ago. Other than that, the world largely formed into countries in the last few centuries, mostly in the 19^th century. 10,000 years of ‘settling down’ post the Neolithic transition started to gel into national identities only very recently. India along with some African and middle eastern countries was born in the 20^th Century. 

India today is going through a very trying time of evolving into one cohesive nation. The fact is that India is less like other countries, and more akin to the European union. Throughout the world, most countries started with one dominant language which was adopted by all as national identity developed. Even long standing monarchies like the Ottoman empire or the Austro-Hungarian empire split up into individual countries which allowed linguistic coherence, and the more recent construct of Yugoslavia suffered the same fate. One dominant language, and not many others: this pattern repeated just about everywhere but here. Some have more, but they are the exception, not the rule. India has twenty three, and no dominant one - the attempt to foist Hindi as the national language after independence was a complete fiasco. In fact, until the British colonized us and introduced English, we had no common language for interaction between different linguistic regions. A shared language isn’t just a matter of communication, this communication engenders a shared ethnicity, sense of history, world view. Little wonder that the concept of nationhood for India never existed in the past, and was born of colonization. As an interesting counter-factual, how many countries might India have been if the British had not brought it together under one administration?

Its unique dominant religion Hinduism has distinguished India geographically and the Arabs called it 'Hindu' in medieval times. Yet religion was too weak a force to unite it. But then, religion has not been able to overcome language or ethnicity anywhere - look at Europe, especially the Iberian peninsula which was the first in Europe to form into countries back in the 14th century. Despite a peninsular geography and a common religion, language drove it into two countries, Portugal and Spain. Spain at 47 million is smaller than ten Indian states, and Portugal at 10 mn is smaller than two Indian cities - and even together they would not add up to Gujarat, the tenth largest  Indian state!  

With the different linguistic regions in India now bundled into one country there is the Babel like effect of different languages and ethnicity, with a common dominant religion the only visible binding factor. It hardly bears repeating that the Hindi belt has very little in common with Goa or Andhra or Kerala. The north eastern states are yet another story, where even religion is not a factor binding them to dominantly Hindu India. In fact while different religions are a source of diversity, they are also a source of political disharmony: witness our problems with Kashmir, the Sikhs, and the north east. Religion has the ability to divide a country, though it doesn't necessarily unite it …. look at Pakistan. 

It is not as though the linguistic states have had a long and continuous history of independent existence either. We did not have such clean and integral demarcation of linguistic states before. So identity formation of the states and the nation has had to happen simultaneously, and in an entirely new political  set up where people had a say, got to vote, and started to figure out individually and collectively how to make their vote count. We Indians had to get through a turbulent period leading up to independence which unleashed a myriad competing ethnic demands including hacking apart bits of the country in a blood soaked dismemberment the trauma of which still causes an occasionally violent spasm. We then had to develop democracy at the local state level, and become part of a larger democracy called India. Over the past six decades identity formation of the states has developed well and is still evolving, correcting for errors made by pouring immiscible regions together. One clear sign of development of democracy is that state governments are getting more conscious of the need to provide economic development and jobs, as the voters are getting more aware and holding them accountable. The representation of regional parties in the Lok Sabha is also sizeable now, and has brought in an era of coalition politics, so the center is perforce learning to deal with the states better than before, albeit fractiously. 

Independence threw us all together, and we started very bravely with a strong centre, strengthened by a dominant Congress party which was incorporated in 1885. The Congress grew in strength through the long and arduous freedom struggle, and was then led into independence and formation of the first central government by towering, nationally popular figures like Gandhi and Nehru. The strength of the centre lasted for a long while after independence due in part to the huge popularity and trust the Congress and its leaders had gained through the freedom movement and in part to a dysfunctional socialistic economic policy with centralised planning and huge centrally driven expenditure on public enterprises, which contributed to the power of the centre. Now the Congress has decayed into a meritless dynasty, the BJPs Hindutva stain prevents it from being a credible alternative to the Congress at the centre on a sustainable basis, and the command and control economic structure has yielded ground to more disaggregated  market forces. The linguistic states having gained some political identity, power is beginning to move centrifugally outwards from the centre to the states, to flow back to the centre with a different mooring. It is significant that the BJP's Narendra Modi is emerging as either major party's first ever regional candidate for PM in the 2014 election, despite severe opposition from other hopefuls in the BJP's central leadership. 

India today has a compelling moral issue to deal with. We have 300 million hopelessly, abysmally poor people, about half of the worlds’ population of the destitute. These are people who know nothing but hunger and deprivation, whose lineage has probably never had any education in recorded history, and who see no hope for themselves or their children. They are the wretched of the earth. The serious moral issue for the nation is to pull these people out of poverty as fast as possible. There is no other objective that even remotely approaches the urgency and importance of this. Our governance should really focus on this as the country’s top priority. China did, and their per capita GDP is three times ours, starting from the same base 35 years ago. 

Growth requires business to flourish. The tragedy of India has been that the dialogue since independence has articulated a deep suspicion of business. The rhetoric of socialism has created antipathy towards business. Profit is regarded as a sin by those who do not directly have to deal with it, and who do not realize that every rupee, rouble, yuan or dollar on this planet comes from profit. If there were no surplus/profit there would be no money. Even NGOs get their money from profit … someone else’s profit cascading down as donations. Growth comes from surplus, from profit. Without embracing that simple truth it is very difficult to pursue growth on a sustainable basis. The difficulty the Congress led government is facing in pushing through reforms is because they have failed to create the right narrative about this, even within their own party.  

It is not that there are no other issues. To name a few, there is the status of women, emancipation of the lower castes, the position of religious minorities especially muslims, the place of our 100 million tribals (who seem to have been off the continuum for millennia), the rule of law, education, (mal)nutrition, and of course, the much touted issue of corruption, a recent cause célèbre. Most of these do yield to development, to increasing per capita income, so there is no conflict of objectives, though not all will happen at the same time or at the same pace. Even the seemingly intractable issue of tribals will eventually benefit from development – they will be included in progress when they are needed for the wealth creation of others. 

There has been progress, most promisingly on the huge and deeply entrenched issue of caste, where the strength of numbers of the lower castes has worked well for them in a democratic set up. Who would have imagined, even twenty years ago, that someone like Mayawati could be chief minister of UP? While a lot more has to be done, the mechanism of democracy has started to dismantle the stranglehold of the upper castes, and that has come a long way in an astonishingly peaceful fashion. 

Empowerment of women has begun, but has a long long way to go. The fact of empowerment of women - that many more are getting educated, working and getting a taste for individuality and independence has created a backlash. Too many snarly Neanderthal males and right wing organizations with medieval thinking around who resent such freedom for women, all allowed a free rein by feckless governance. Even so, the direction is clear. The recent relentless, fearless week long protest at India Gate in Delhi in the wake of a horrific gang rape, where ordinary citizens faced down an ineffectual, corrupt, bigoted, and violently high handed police force backed by a self serving, apathetic and clueless government, was revolutionary. The fact that the government and indeed all of parliament got jolted into action shows that the direction is forward. 

However, not only  has there been no progress but there has been actual deterioration on the last two issues which affect all citizens. As development has increased, so it seems has corruption, and law and order has deteriorated largely for the same reason: corruption in the police and judiciary, and cozy connivance with politicians. Every public institution seems to be tainted by corruption, even the supreme court and the once exemplary armed forces. This and the exposes of huge scams has led to public revulsion, and led to the very heartening sign of the middle class asserting itself on the streets across the country for the first time in response to the movement led by Kejriwal and Hazare, a very positive development for our democracy. History teaches us that when the middle class becomes large enough to assert itself, the values in a democracy come to reflect middle class values.  The question is, what are the values of the middle class in India?

Corruption has two forms, one is extortion, the other is collaboration. Middle class Indians are protesting extortion, as well as collaboration between business and politicians at the expense of the middle class. I am not sure Indians have a problem with collaboration which involves them. The same person who will cry himself hoarse about extortion if someone asks for a bribe to renew his driving licence will willingly pay a bribe to get his worthless son a licence without a test. The same small businessman who will howl if the electricity inspector asks for money to keep his connection trouble free will gladly pay him money to have his bill reduced. I have a feeling that we will be in for a shock if middle class values come into focus in India. Even beyond corruption, our middle class values do not appear to be the liberal values that modern democratic India was founded on, like meritocracy, secularism, tolerance, civic mindedness. There is a phase lag in our history. While doubtless better than the self serving, amoral and comprehensively corrupted values of our governance and institutions, our middle class values need some evolution too. One can only hope.

While we now have a fight against corruption which has caught the attention of the people as an end in itself, the moral imperative of growth to end poverty has once again been ignored in the riveting and intoxicating tamasha of exposes and morchas and fake fasts unto death. That is a matter of concern. Actually, there need not be a conflict between fighting corruption and gunning for growth. Both are a matter of good governance. If we look at the bigger picture of governance and see corruption as a piece of that puzzle we can solve both together. To get high growth you need good governance, and good governance needs administrative reforms, electoral reforms, judicial reforms, police reforms, and better education to get a more aware, participative and productive citizenry. Do these things, and you will build the capability of our institutions and get better governance, which will attract better individuals, leading to much better performance as well as lower corruption, on an effective and enduring basis. 

The recent movement seems to be based on hatred of both politicians and business. There seems to be little to no recognition of the need for growth for poverty alleviation on the sound, sustainable basis of creating jobs rather than giving free handouts, either in parliament or in Anna Hazare or Kejriwal’s now separate movements, a strange congruence of ignorance or apathy. In addition to hatred of politicians and business, there is also contempt towards a parliamentary system of government. This is a dangerous trend to cultivate for a democracy as large and diverse as ours. If we drift from the processes that uphold the constitution, who will protect the rights of all especially the minorities? 

There is also a segment of opinion that more power should devolve to villages and 'grams'. That doesnt makes a lot of sense. Governance for growth requires large scale effort to build infrastructure: roads, power plants, railways, airports, ports, a functioning school system, public health, policing, courts, not to mention forward looking laws and regulation. Building all this infrastructure requires focus centrally to get cost effective, coordinated, world class solutions. Calling for devolution of power to villages and grams will not address any of those requirements. That call harks back to Gandhi's desire to arrest ‘western’ style economic development and head back to the village economy. The whole world at one time was based on the independence and self sufficiency of the village, which was the outer limit of human grouping for millenia. Life was very local. Hardly anybody ever travelled more than 30 to 50 miles. The boundary of the village got pushed outwards mightily through shipping and the industrial revolution to the nation state as the viable unit of self sufficiency. The world is evolving into global inter-connectedness, pushing the outer boundaries even beyond the nation. The definition of local now is a country, and travel is global. Trying to focus on the village again is profoundly retrogressive. 

After millennia as a land fractured by two different races and more ethnic diversity than anywhere else in the world, India today is coming together as one country, fused by the relief of democracy where finally people who never had a say are finding a voice. We are being driven by this huge linguistic and ethnic diversity towards greater federalism.   All of this makes us quite unique, with no real points of comparison with anyone other than the European union, and see how that is struggling.  The size and complexity of this experiment in democracy is humbling in comparison to any other, and its relative success is actually quite remarkable, despite its painful deficiencies, especially considering the unusually low level of economic development at which we entered democracy and the dysfunctional neighbourhood we live in. 

We are an ancient civilisation and an immature nation. Coalescing a myriad disparities kaleidoscopically into a coherent picture as a functioning country, while simultaneously addressing the societal maladies accumulated through the ages is incredibly challenging. The changing of demographics towards youth and middle class is leading to changing expectations, and that is driving progress in many dimensions. Yet the true impact of history is at the level of the individual, which leads us back to our defining question of conscience: in the rush and tumble of all this will we address our greatest challenge, lifting almost a quarter of our population, one amongst four of us, from the malevolence of poverty as rapidly as possible? Will we embrace accelerated economic growth as the primary focus of the nation as a compelling moral necessity?  If we dont, our claim to 5000 years of civilisation will ring hollow. If we do, that will benefit not just the poor but all of us, and speed our development towards a more modern, just and liberal society.