Alternate titles
How politics is about the punchlines
What to do with the CCD-vote bank that's decided to wake up
Saffron vs. No-good - hobson's choice, and
Why TV debates are really, no good at all
I was watching this show called Left, Right and Centre on NDTV, where the BJP had sent an easily excitable Sudheendra Kulkarni and the INC was represented by an overly populist Kapil Sibal, PhD in I-make-no-sense-EVER. The twenty-something audience, all of who looked like they'd stumbled into the studio while returning from neighbourhood CCD, seemed to love Sibal. To be fair, I guess the man's brand of politics does cater exclusively to subzero IQ levels - punchline, slander, 2-minute-Maggi and you-never-need-to-read-a-book-to-understand types.
So this is my fear - post-Barack, politics has become cool. All of South Delhi and South Bombay are looking for a party to register with, and there is a feeling among many that the INC is the "secular" party. And it isn't too hard to add onto that image words like "liberal", and "Obama-esque" - we are after all, a nation of delusional optimism. Contrast the visuals of Rahul vs Advani, Ram Rajya vs the nuclear deal, and send in Kapil Sibal to make some more populist statements, and the INC will have achieved what McCain/ Palin couldn't - an election win on massive populist appeal alone, no substantiation required.
And this worries me a fair bit, given especially how anyone who tries to list out the achievements of the UPA government in the last five years will not be able to go beyond
a) the nuclear deal and
b) love-the-farmer.
The first was handed to us by the Bush administration on a silver platter with chocolate on the side - we still managed to nearly mess it up. The second was more a set of initiatives - the minimum support price, the farm loan waiver, the guaranteed 100 days of work. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that most of these treated the symptoms and not the disease, and that too at a very high price, literally. Our fiscal deficit is ballooning, bad debts are looming and the public sector is being forced to lend to India's biggest vote bank that's been told its OK to not repay. The INC's manifesto - which as I understand no one really reads - lists out a bunch of achievements, none of which even comes close to helping urban India, and nearly all of which has hit our budget and banking systems so badly there is no way they'll be able to fight the recession, create jobs *and* finance these plans going forward.
I find it very disappointing that a cabinet led by Dr. Singh with Chiddu as finance minister could mess up so much. Easing FDI regulations, the insurance act, retail investment in India, tax breaks for all energy exploration, cleaning up the system even a little bit - they had five years to do it and were content riding on the GDP momentum created by the policies of the previous government. I wonder if the CCD returnees care, or even know, what they were laughing for?
===
Coming back to the show, the big issue was the BJP's manifesto, where re-building the Ram temple figured as an agenda. Sibal called it a last-ditch attempt by a failing party to get the vote out from the conservative base. Anyone who knows anything about politics in India will know that the BJP's biggest skeleton, and the reason it has never harnessed the support it needs from urban India and the minorities, has been its right-wing affiliation. Now with Advani at the helm and Vajpayee no longer in the picture, there is a very valid concern that the party might come closer to polarizing the India to the highest extent since 1947.
But there was a question asked by one member of the audience which I thought pretty much summarized a lot of people's thoughts on the flip-side of this argument. He said how as a Hindu, he was forced to vote BJP because the INC took the majority for granted - reservations everywhere, etc - could the INC defend its almost anti-majority stance? And I thought Sibal was a jackass for dismissing him with a non sequitor punch line- ("I am a Hindu, and part of the INC - did you think you were the only Hindu in this room?") - obviously the audience roared with laughter - how funny, he just made a funny! Haha. Now I think that was a bold Q to ask, and it's a pity the moderator - who's JD for the day, possibly from Barkha Dutt - seemed to have been kill-the-saffron, did not push Sibal for a straighter answer for this.
I was also reminded yet again why in the debate vs. discussion bit I always choose the latter. Debates are almost always about the punch lines and the easy laughs, you never dig into the topic or analyze the merits of the other party's argument. I knew that this problem wasn't restricted to university debating, but to see it almost symptomatic of the sport itself was a pretty uneasy realization.
It's been known for a while that India doesn't fight elections on issues. But the upcoming elections - this show being a poster for the issue - has brought about a couple of hard truths about the system:
1. Democracy votes with a weightage of one. It's a numbers game, and if the folks who vote happen to be farmers, jobless gomers and CCD-goers, well that's who you'll need to cater to.
2. Drawing from the point above, it is a pity the BJP is going back to colour politics. Their 2004 manifesto - India Shining - focused on development: infrastructure, regulation, development to ride on what India had achieved in the last 5 years. Nariman Point stayed home on election day and the farmer had no idea how the fancy terms would help him, and went to vote for the aam aadmi agenda. It makes perfect (and disgusting) sense that the party would go back to the things that bring out the foot soldiers this time around - ram rajya, temples, and Varun Gandhi
3. Speaking of whom - Mayawati is probably going to win a lot more seats than had actually been projected, thanks to Gandhi Jr Jr. She's done the big thing by slapping an NSA order on the kid and is currently in a catfight with the mother. Already-victimized voters of the minority community are thinking: M's our girl.
In other words, the election season is here, and you know what I'm going to be doing both at work and outside :)
PS: On a lighter note: headline after the BSP decided to contest all the seats on its own: Mayawati - she's single and happy!
Tuesday, April 07, 2009
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7 comments:
Ah, now it's demerit points for Manmohan Singh, because "Bush Administration gave it on a silver platter". You forget the maneuvering he did in India, and the cliffhanger voting in the parliament.
Boy, the one time government bails out farmers, it's tantamount to giving them a free ride for all the years to come.
What's everybody's issue with reservation? They are getting their percentage share of representation. Yeah, that is not meritocracy, but can I say 35% of those seats are in merit, but I don't see the good work done by those 35% people in India when 40% of India is below poverty line. Reservation is anti-majority how?
So the hardline right wing agenda doesn't worry you, because they have a progressive agenda right? I thought there were educated people in that bunch because the way they are muddling up Hinduism and serving it to uneducated and pretentiously educated alike makes me cringe. Please at least do a better job at that while coming up with several cadre based organizations -- with the special skill to plan and execute riots -- so as to run the country.
So you are one of those who is happy with Narendra Modi's Gujarat that registered the best growth amongst all the states. What a way to go, progress at the cost of values. Pretend not to see, or make it vague so that it's no longer definite enough, to hang on to benefit of doubts.
>> Ah, now it's demerit points for Manmohan Singh, because "Bush Administration gave it on a silver platter". You forget the maneuvering he did in India, and the cliffhanger voting in the parliament.
Ah but it should have *never come* to the maneuvering and the wrangling - the Left were never going to support the bill and the UPA knew it. They could have got the SP support a year back - in which case in addition to the nuclear deal they might actually have been able to get some reforms done (which they blame on the Left now)
We can't credit Dr. S for a solution when he also created the problem - quite the contrary?
>>Boy, the one time government bails out farmers, it's tantamount to giving them a free ride for all the years to come.
1. The loan waiver does not bail out ALL farmers - it doesn't bail out any farmer who's tried to repay any loan. It does however, give a free ticket to people who haven't repaid anything. So if you're a farmer who has taken out a loan, the only logical thing to do is to default utterly. It's a master class in moral hazard.
2. Secondly, it is irresponsible - we don't have the money in our coffers to waive these loans. Fiscal deficit is currently at 8% of GDP and growing, while we fight a recession that's found its way to India post-Lehman. Demand is down, India's industrial production numbers are falling by the month - how can the government possibly fund this Rs 600b - by raising taxes? Slapping excise duties? All of which will reduce demand even further, which will eventually hit all production. If families decide to cut on all consumption - that'll end up hitting the farmers in the end?
It's irresponsible, short-sighted and most importantly - does not solve the problem at hand. Not to mention that it's the worst kind of slippery slope - no party can get off this bandwagon. The BJP *has* to put it on its manifesto (which it already has). Until we get to some really scary deficit like back in 1991.
3. If the government really wants to help farmers, its going to take more than fortune cookie governance.
First of all, they need to segment out the farmers that need help (in the off-chance that the needs in the Punjab plains are different from those in the flooded NE). Then they need to help the folks grow their crop (like in AP - better irrigation, infrastructure and roads to transport the goods - INC govt, btw). And finally, they need to help them sell their produce to networks that will bring about a fair price - Tata Kissan Sansar is a great initiative taken up by Tata Chemicals, Reliance Retail also has something similar.
Such a mechanism a) will not involve writing a blank check to the farmers; b) we'll know how to fund it (because we're spending on infra anyway), not to mention it'll solve the issue without killing us in the short, medium and long run. Finally, c) there are strong incentives for everyone involved - the government gets the "development" tag, the farmers get to sell their produce, and the companies get their stores filled (and the CSR tag which I'm sure will help).
60 years of subsidies haven't worked, and there's a reason for it - subsidies are an attempt to stem the bleeding without checking for the underlying problem. The old adage of giving a man a fish vs teaching him how to fish? That's the solution for this.
A thought, the sixth pay commission implementation could have been delayed by one year to find the money for funding farmer loan waiver. That should have footed about Rs 350 - 400 billion of the bill. Both are arbitrary decisions taken by an elected body and suiciding farmers have the same one vote as the bloated government employees.
All that can be done, technology, better irrigation, better seeds and fertilizers, eliminating middle men, but why the insistence for all these to be notwithstanding some direct help from the government. Farmers who are not in a position to pay their money back, here is one opportunity your government is giving you, so as to not be weighed down by your past mistakes which in all likelihood was forced on you by forces of nature and greedy men/women.
As to the point that some farmers have been left out, that's something that should be taken up to refine this initiative and not a reason to do away with it altogether. This government gets my mark for trying and finally giving the farmers a break. If future governments are going to follow this course blindly it will probably not be the right idea, but I would rather let future take care of itself especially when what's being provided now is life support.
when the congress party puts its mind to it, its riot kill rate is as good as any seen in cambodia or the nazi camps (e.g., 5000 sikhs in about a day's work in '84 with very little protest or legal action. such a clean job unlike modi's relatively paltry score in '02, which was also a lot messier). cant beat congress when it comes to being failing. its done so for 40 years since 1969, when the great indian national congress formally died.
when folks start rationalizing "percentage representation quota" and "education" in the same sentence, its pretty clear that the nation is doomed. education is a fundamental right to dignity in a non-tinpot country, not a scarce resource to be approportioned. Reservation in india cannot be justified fully or criticized fully, but it can be made irrelevant. open more schools, colleges, build roads, clean water... its no different from 1809 or 1909. the decision is therefore far simpler to make. congress is crap, bjp is b.s. we had crap for 4 years and it did not work. time to give b.s a chance to loot us again.
- mainer
Naveen and reservation:
In India everybody is a minority.Or is it only muslims and christians as per you?
we are so divided by language and sects that nobody really can claim an exclusive minority status.either everybody or nobody based on religion,language or caste deserves reservation.
deepa
1984 riots is not in my conscience probably because I came of age several years later. Both the riots are horrible acts, it's however certainly not the body count that's the measure of their horror but the ideologies that fuel them. Blind dynasty leadership worship that till today haunts congress and a nascent political ideology that exploits religious and regional fault lines from the Sangh Parivar organisations are both problems, but I think the congress under Manmohan Singh government behaved differently.
If only we had been able to construct schools and colleges to keep pace with education needs of the country would I have not seen my cousin loose out because of her higher caste credentials. To think that this is also not a failure of the higher castes is certainly not helpful, but we are all losing out in one matter or the other because we are Indian. Yes, India is a nation of minorities, but when you look at the conundrum from this other view, that without reservation some of my friends and their families wouldn't have had the slightest of whiff of opportunity, it's perhaps a mechanism that when weighed in the largest interest of a nation, at the very least has a semblance of a balance.
i have a 'conflict' of interest with deepa, so I'll not directly respond there :-) I have little complaint against reservation for talented sc/st students. That's the good part. I too have classmates in India who made it thru that path. On the other hand, providing caste based res. to "backward classes" is a criminal farce. There's not an ounce of representation or balance there. Its purely reservation of, by, and for the political/business classes.
As far as riots, body count does matter. Mass murder cant occur without active or passive assent from the party in power. There's always going to be extreme ideologies - nobody can control warped minds; however, law and order is the first responsibility of a government (be it bjp or con-gress), and its their duty to wipe out those who try to test mad ideas on the public. The body count is an indicator of the extent to which the government fails.
Lastly, the sangh parivar is not the only extremist game in town. India is a playground for a myriad of *equally* deadly forces. Just a sample. The christian cult/extremist missionaries (many would say they are deadlier than the parivar), the wahhabi islamic outfits, the pseudo-secular commies and maoists, naxalites, sikh khalistanis, all have indian blood on their hands! A lot of these have grown ten-fold during the manmohan's feeble watch. this guy's a skeleton under a turban. Fidel castro and il-jung are more alive than this guy. make mms the president.
There are few innocents in india except the millions of innocent villagers and tribes who have had reservation for decades but dont know what it is, heard of medical care and decent schools, but not seen it yet, heard of roads, ....
- mainer
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