Mr. G. Kishan Reddy, Member of Legislative Assembly of the State of Andhra Pradesh, is quoted as having said that there is no administration in Andhra Pradesh. I am glad that an MLA has confirmed what I have been saying for a while now. I have been saying that ever since the taking over of the State by Mr. K. Rosaiah, as Chief Minister, the functioning of the State has been becoming less and less evident and in the last couple of months it does look like the police is the only official machinery that is still functioning in public view. Sadly, theirs is not a job that wins them public accolades, since most people's perception of the police is that they hinder rather than make things easier. But to say that whatever happens is all because of the fault of the police would be stretching things too far. Yesterday, in spite of the police being everywhere and causing traffic jams and gridlocks, agitators were able to destroy a local train, an entire train station (this is fascinating because this is the doing of lawyers apparently, all on their own, without any help from any others if the newspapers are to be believed) and half a dozen buses. All public property, built and run with the help of tax payers' money. This is especially sad because Andhra Pradesh is now a state that hangs precariously on the verge of bankruptcy, thanks to hare brained schemes. These are schemes which have been called populist but allegations are that they benefitted the Congress party workers and not the people. Whatever the case maybe, they have ensured that there is more expenditure for the State and less income.
The State is already beleaguered in financial terms and the fresh set of losses that are being accumulated on a daily basis cannot make things easier. Disruption of services, destruction of property and paralyzing of the economy thanks to the non-cooperation movement initiated for a separate Telangana and the call for bandhs over extended periods of time are all contributing to impoverish the economy and the State further, not to mention the severe inconvenience that it causes to common people. It is heart rending to see ambulances stuck in traffic gridlocks, medicines not being available to the needy and staff of various hospitals not reaching their work places on time or not reaching at all due to the chaos that prevails on the roads. All this is indicative of ineffective and gutless political leadership that in the first place foisted this problem on the people. First it was Dr. Y. S. Rajashekar Reddy who indulged in multiple speak, thereby confusing people about where he ultimately stood vis-a-vis separate Telangana. Then Mr. P. Chidambaram's double speak and the Prime Minister's statements that this problem will be solved only by consensus. I would like to ask how it is possible to create a consensus when a handful of dubiously motivated politicians (on both sides of the great divide) are presiding over the destiny of the people? Please permit me to deviate a bit here and express my deep disappointment with the Prime Minister. I have held in the past that he is a politician with some vision but his conference with the electronic media and his utterance that he was not as big a culprit as he was being made out to be, have left me disenchanted with him. Am I to understand that he is not a big culprit but nevertheless a culprit? If that is the case, what moral right does he have to continue as the Prime Minister? Another defence that in coalitions it is difficult to check corruptions (referring to the 2G scam) and governments have to perform with corruption (that implied and not said explicitly) so as to rule out elections every six months, is the most disturbing statement that I have ever heard. I would rather the country bear the expenditure of elections than that of corruption, indecisiveness, hooliganism and lumpenism.
But to come back to the point that I was making, a weak leadership lacking in self-confidence and in integrity has been driving the nation down and not up. The festering Telangana issue is proof of this. The attitude of both the Government of India and the Government of Andhra Pradesh seems to be that of just not doing anything about the issue and hoping that it would die. But that is not going to happen. It will remain a fire that will be stoked again and again and repeatedly interfere with peoples' lives on a daily basis. The first thing that has been hit and remains hit for more than a year now is the education system. With hardly any serious functioning the higher education system which has been under doldrums has now become a haven new lumpen leaders to emerge and bargain for their own pieces of the pie that is being arbitrarily apportioned. I have been stating that this is not an issue that pertains only to Andhra Pradesh alone but has ramifications for the entire nation. The country is like a living organism and malfunctioning parts contribute to the death of the whole organism and not just those parts. Can we imagine a body whose kidneys are dysfunctional carrying on? Yet there seems to be no attempt being made by anyone to set the situation right by taking a decision and not leaving the issue the way it is. The drain of finances here will have repercussions for other parts of the country as well, especially since the city of Hyderabad is now firmly tied to the national and international economies. But no one seems to be overly concerned about this.
That brings me back to the point that I have been repeatedly raising in this blog of mine. The necessity for a vibrant public sphere and properly deliberative democracy which will see stake holders (the people) coming together in various forums in a non-combative way and rationally deliberating is the way forward. Modern democracy has been conceived of by many a thinker such as Emile Durkheim and Max Weber to name a couple, as an extension of an organic process of growth in society due to rational mechanisms that bring people closer together based in the notion of consent and agreement. What we are witnessing in India is the exact opposite; the use of democracy to build barriers between people (by unscrupulous political leaders) and to try and draw mechanical compliance out of them. Public institutions therefore function only in terms of some procedures and rarely take care of the substantive aspect, for which they are there in the first place. This is to me is indication of the inadequacy of relying only on representative democracy where only leaders play a role in politics. Democracy should be augmented by a deliberative process where people will come together rationally and without preconceived notions to chart a course of development for the country. Only then can we see an end to the inaction on Telangana, end to scams such as the 2G spectrum scam and manipulative politics. Deliberative democracy is the way forward to ensure that the young of this country have some future to look towards. As usual I hope that the future of my country is truly bright. I am happy to see that the Supreme Court has directed the State Government (of Andhra Pradesh) to pay its dues to professional colleges, which means at least they will not be shut like they were threatening to.
Sir, it is uncanny but this is exactly what I had commented about after reading your previous post. The lack of credibility of democratic institutions and the government. What we see everywhere is the emergence of violence and hooliganism as a viable alternative to peaceful demonstrations or debates. Take for example what happened in Delhi, a month back. An illegal structure was brought down by court order. Vested interests incited people against this,lakhs of people congregated at the place to demonstrate, burn buses, even try to rebuild the structure. So what does the CM do? Question the court order and buckle under pressure to let the status quo remain. Whether its the Gujjars, or muslims or any other strongly cohesive group, all they have to do is show their displeasure by gathering in large numbers and indulging in violence and arson for their demands to be accepted by the weak government who is more bothered about vote banks than any thing else. In this scenario no one has any faith in the government as a fair arbiter of disputes. In the example above, what about the people whose land was illegally occupied, who will give them justice when the court order has been questioned. if there was any problem with it why did the squatters not appeal instead of resorting to violence coz they know that they can get away with this. As long as we have such a weak government which keeps buckling under the slightest pressure pressure, we will only see an increase of such kind of behavior. I feel this will become a norm now rather than an exception.
ReplyDeleteI am aware of the Delhi incident. It is very true that might is right and I think it is for this reason that Rousseau had talked about the untenability of a democracy based in the show of strength of any kind by a majority. I am at this ripe old age beginning to understand the true brilliance of people like him and what he meant when he talked about the General Will and in what seemed an idiosyncratic move proposed the alternative of a single Universal Legislator who could embody and act for the good of 'ALL' when instances where direct democracy is not possible or fails. He shrewdly suggested two alternatives so one could take over when the other failed. But coming to the context of India coalition politics and a general tendency to favour aggressive groups who threaten, blackmail and disrupt society has now firmly come to the forefront and the only solution to that is an enlightened people. But the failure of the education system in the last 63 years has ensured that enlightenment of the people is a distant dream.
ReplyDeleteThe arguments of Dr. Yum Yum Singh that (a) coalition politics necessitates corruption; and (b) that in order to avoid frequent elections, a certain level of corrupt practices by coalition partners has to be entertained are clearly indicative of a warped mind - the same mind that can with great equanimity claim that it is ok to allow grain to rot in public godowns but not distribute it to the hungry and the malnourished, because the market will not allow it. Maybe Karl Polanyi was right when he suggested that supercharged capitalism will necessarily take the economy far beyond social constraints. The question though is whether, because of the double movement, the economy will be brought back to an even keel peacefully or violently. An apocryphal story: apparently President Roosevelt (Theodore), after a particularly trying meeting with economists. turned in exasperation to his Secretary of State and asked him if he could find some one handed economists. Apparently, the poor economists who had met him at the turn of the previous century, were humble enough to acknowledge that their prescriptions and prognoses were fraught with uncertainty. Economists of late twentieth century seem to be another breed altogether - arrogant, and animated more by ideological fervour rather than any moral compunctions about their own epistemic short-comings. Oh how I wish we could go back to the era of two handed economists - they'd be infinitely better off than the one handed market fundamentalists who are ruling the roost. We are even more unfortunate that one such amoral economist heads our government.
ReplyDeleteVery illuminating Pramod. I am in total agreement with you on this and I once again thank you for adding comments that not only educate me but those who visit this blog as well.
ReplyDelete@Satish: The problem may also lie in the very brand of economics that Dr. Singh seems to have subscribed to - that may make it difficult for him to understand the difference between accepting the levels of corruption as fait accompli, and having to function within those levels versus taking a determined moral stand against such corruption. Much of modern economics, taking its cue from Milton Friedman's push to cast it in purely as a positive science, contains a strong kernel of determinism/cynicism - that human nature is essentially greedy, if not downright evil. Consequently they would argue that there is no point in trying to change human nature, and any attempts to changing it would be futile and even counter-productive in terms of overall welfare (without reference to distribution issues, and negative impact on certain segments). Their prescription is that a policy maker should only attempt to make the state function as a "night watchman" with respect to law and order, and the market can then weave its way through to were it will. The tautological aspect of their argument lies in that whatever end point is achieved is, by definition, the best that could have been achieved. So for a person like Dr. Singh, the notion of taking a principled stand, on the basis of some positive morality, against corruption would appear to be an unnecessary luxury, and maybe even a hindrance, to solutions that markets will eventually find. I am not surprised that he would take the stand of a victim, at the hands of the press and the opposition, and also of circumstances. A profession that is capable of building elaborate models of description and prescription on the assumption of ceteris paribus is most likely to also be incapable of producing leaders with great moral convictions. By training, Dr. Singh is incapable of a moral vision.
ReplyDeleteP.S: Have not edited the above for typographical and syntactical errors; please pardon me for that.
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