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India turned 60 @ 12am strokes. Most of news channel are busy showing youngsters celebrating night out in sports bar to restro bars; and ads showed One billion hears One mission. But is there really much to celebrate; has independence really achieved what it was indended with. Why no one feels sorry when Nehru gave his so called freedom speech in English than common mans language Hindi; even today's(must say yesterdays) paper carried out a survey where close to 80% respondents view politicians and bereaucrats as biggest headache for countries growth and quality of life. Just few minutes back NDTV aired there first of kind (btw i saw this first of kind indo pak talks on 3 channels :)) Indo Pak politicians and service men debate face to face in dubai with PoK leaders joined them via satellite link. It was same old story of you hate me & understand me and issue will be resolved. Indian service men still living in dream world and openly saying for you guys we are too big :) (anchor did reminded him of soviet russias boat) And messgae from audience specially young generation was clear We dont give much of interest to this entire kashmir thing propsperity our freedom and right to live our life our wa matters.
Indian economy is doing good at moment but how long it can sustain under crumbling infrastructure; a decaying collapsing society and too much of babudom n netagiri. But yes though a merely 60 year old nation; it has came twice close to dictatorship rumors in past (one was after Nehrus death and other was after 1971 war) but democracy has survived and became more common and acceptable thing. I personnaly feel Indian soil holds the key; even in past all cruel invaders from greeks portugese arabs to british mellowed down in india; looking at amount of violence and cruelity they showed in other parts of world; in India it was not even 10% of it. And that explains how with so many religions castes and beliefes in day-2-day life 1 billion people lives with peae and solidarity.
Peoples participation is electing real and visionary Netas will decide how far we as a nation sail and which all shores we manage to hit.
Getting back to yesterday TOI survey; Lets look at how we really have poor and bad politicians.
Why Does India Have Such Poor Politicians? - 1
A V Rajwade, in an op-ed in the Business Standard complains that the economy’s changing, but leaders aren’t. He covers many of the things we’ve discussed here on IEB — among them, the re-emergence of manufacturing & the (somewhat) increased interest in agriculture. However, to me the most interesting portion was this tidbit at the end…
Tailpiece: I began the New Year with a laugh when I put on the NDTV India news channel at 8.00 AM last Monday. It showed a Leftist leader, with the usual scowl and world-weariness on his face (remarkably similar to many RSS bigshots), denouncing the finance minister for wanting to divest equity in some profit making PSUs, to get a few thousand crores, when he is sitting on PSU reserves totaling more than Rs 2,60,000 crore. Unfortunately, I could not get his name — but he was not one of the usual suspects like Sitaram Yechuri, Karat or AB Bardhan. He seemed to be under an impression that company reserves are held in the form of currency notes or bank deposits. With such a constituency to satisfy, it is no wonder at all that the Left has to take the completely illogical stances it often does!
No wonder also that former Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha has remarked, “The quality of people in politics is very poor…very few understand economics and those who do are unpopular. It would be difficult to take up reforms unless the rank and file of political parties believes in reforms.” (emphasis mine)
Politics and venal politicians have been much-discussed issues — on IEB, and of course, in every home across the land. Which raises the question: why on earth is India saddled with such inept and crooked politicians? I will attempt to answer that in a follow-up post.
Why Does India Have Such Terrible Politicians?- - 2
Many (all?) of us blame venal and mendacious politicians for India’s problems. Atanu’s sentiments in his series of posts on Lee Kuan Yew, that “when it comes to greed Indian politicians are a class apart” are echoed in any debate/ discussion about India’s problems.
I agree that many of India’s politicians are crooked and inept. However, just blaming them is simplistic. Or rather, it’s not the whole story. In my opinion, mendacious politicians are a proximate issue. It would be far more useful to figure out why India is saddled with such terrible politicians? After all, there’s no evidence that Indians are any more more crooked or inept than any other nation or race on earth. Then, how does one explain the terrible politicians?
T C A Srinivasa-Raghavan in a wonderful article in The Business Standard, titled The Rules Of The Empty Game, sums it up marvelously.
I’ve excerpted the rules below, but I’d encourage all of you to read the full piece — brilliant stuff.
Like academics and pickpockets, politicians too have rules which they can break only at great risk
Operation Duryodhana, in which some clever journalists secretly filmed as many as 11 MPs receiving money in return for asking questions in Parliament, has surprised only the naïve. This is because if you define honesty in the conventional, unqualified and non-contextual way, an honest politician is an oxymoron.
Clearly, there is something about the profession that induces even otherwise decent fellows to behave caddishly. It is the way the game is played. (emphasis mine) It is important to understand this because all callings have their own implicit rules which are very different from the formal explicit ones. If you want to get anywhere in your chosen profession, you simply have to observe these implicit rules.
Since this is as true of academics as it is of pickpockets, it is more useful to examine the rules, rather than the persons who play the game. (emphasis mine)
Rule No 1 is that only winning matters because the winner takes all. This zero-sum game characteristic of politics has two consequences.
First, the squeamish stay away. Second, the rules are made by those who regard honesty like people usually regard exercise or prayer—something to be admired in others but never emulated.
Apropos rule #1, a question for readers of this blog: How many of your classmates/ friends, who had other career options, went into politics? I’d be surprised if the answer is more than zero for the vast majority of answers.
Rule No 2 is that your political worth is directly proportional to how much money you can bring to the table.
[..]
Rule No 3 is that no one but you will be responsible for your day-to-day expenses.
[..]
Rule No 4 is that you must recoup your election expenses in the first two years and devote the next three years to generating the margin money for the next election.
[..]
Rule No 5 comes out of Rule No 2: the political parties need you to bring in more than money if they are to bank on you.
[..]
Rule No 6 is “No squealing”. If you rat on someone, you may be ratted on next. And since you need the money, it is not in your interest to rat. So there is no internal pressure to remain honest.
Rule No 7 is that in the current framework each MP must spend more than the other. This comes out of a Prisoners’ Dilemma sort of situation where, although each MP is best off spending as little as possible, in reality none of them can.
This is because whenever one MP realises that the other is not spending, he can achieve a higher individual payoff by spending more, and thereby hoping to extend his reach amongst potential voters. Given that each MP stands to gain by spending more if the other does not spend, what ends up happening is that they all spend as much as they can.
In other words, TCA says that wishful thinking of the Palkhivala school, in looking for politicians of vision (sic) is not realistic. Nor, for that matter, are rants that blame everything on venal politicians.
I’ve long averred that it’s unrealistic to expect a fighter to adhere to the Marquess of Queensberry rules, when all his opponents are exponents of no-holds-barred fighting. With our current system, the search for honest politicians is a chimera. The solution lies in reforming the rules of the political game.
While I’d love to see idealists like Paritrana succeed without soiling their hands, I’m a tad skeptical. Perhaps they’ll prove me wrong.
