Chanakya's New Manifesto: To Resolve the Crisis Within India (7 page)

A final dividend of the first phase of our independence is, to my mind, improbably enough, in the area of foreign policy. When India began its journey as a new nation, the Cold War between the western nations led by the US, and the eastern bloc led by the former Soviet Union, was warming up. Born these groupings wanted to expand their sphere of influence by co-opting newly independent nations around the world. Considerable pressure was put on India, too, to join one or the other camp, but Nehru chose not to do so. Thus was born the Non-aligned movement, with India as one of its founders. The projection of a definitive ideology in foreign policy, which sought to resist the partisan seductions of the two powerful but opposed blocs, in order to retain the freedom of thought and opinion in international affairs of newly independent nations was, in the context of those times, a path-breaking idea. It did credit to India to have the clarity and courage to voice such a stance; the prestige it brought to the country and the dignity it bestowed on weaker nations, meant that this period will probably always be regarded as a golden moment where Indian diplomacy is concerned. It is true that the non-aligned nations were bereft of real power, either military or economic, but they did constitute a large numerical grouping whose combined population and resources were not to be trifled with. Unfortunately, the grouping later progressively reduced itself to a talking shop, and was hijacked by the motivated radicalism of stooges within, speaking for either the US or USSR. India did appear later to tilt towards the Soviet Union, but this was the result of the exercise of choice, not its ab initio negation. Finally, of course, the legitimacy of the movement was nullified almost completely when the Cold War itself ended after the Berlin Wall fell. But, until that happened, India could pride itself on being the prime mover behind a significant international political grouping.

If these were the gains of 1947, what was the downside? It must be remembered that the pros and cons in the evolution of nations are not always stacked along opposing polarities. More often than not, what is negative emerges from the womb of the positive, either as a result of the poor analysis of a situation or the lack of vigilance in crafting change when required. There are also new distortions which grow unchecked simply because they claim legitimacy from past choices. Sifting the good from the bad where historical legacies are concerned is thus not a simple task. We must enter the shadows of history to understand what went wrong, and what can no longer be right.

If a democratic India is the legacy of 1947, the distortions in the functioning of democracy today are because nobody thought it necessary to question them. It was almost as if once the structure for the functioning of democracy was created, and seemed to function in the form of periodic elections, everyone figured the job was done and refused to take cognizance of what was obviously going wrong. Paradoxically, the reverence evoked by 1947, and the ‘high-minded’ platform it gave to our early leaders, is partly responsible for this cerebral paralysis. It was not easy for a grateful people to question the actions of leaders who had come out of the testing fires of the freedom movement. The democratic system bequeathed by them could hardly be fallible especially when ‘free and fair’ elections were visibly happening, and international leaders were lining up to congratulate India on becoming the world’s largest democracy.

But the seeds of the distortions we see today were sown early. Under the awning of a functioning democracy, the proclivity towards dynastic politics was visible. Personality cults, that eroded the very spirit of democratic functioning, emerged early, as did their despicable accessory, sycophancy. Electoral malpractice, primarily through the use of muscle and money power, was a feature, albeit in much smaller measure, in the very first election. The symbiotic relationship between corruption, black money and political parties is not something that happened yesterday. The blatant misuse of regional, religious, ethnic and caste loyalties vitiated Indian democracy almost from its very inception. Inner party democracy was never given the importance it should have had.

The undoubted economic growth that followed 1947 also contained within itself the contagions of the current malaise. First, the understandable bias in favour of creating a socialist economy spawned the license-permit-quota raj, and thus both created and nurtured a gargantuan regime of systemic corruption. It also created an inbuilt mental block towards economic reform at every level of government and the bureaucracy. The economic reforms of 1991 were an exception, but even they were incomplete. The fact that they could not take place until the country was on the brink of defaulting on its sovereign debt is again due to the archaic socialist mode of thinking as a legacy of 1947. This ‘socialist’ legacy persists even today, and is partly the reason why the follow up to the 1991 reforms has been so halting and effete.

Most importantly, the notion that the State is the principal if not the only dispenser of equity has seriously militated against the larger goal of making India an inclusive society. The State’s efforts may have been well-intentioned—although there is serious reason to doubt even that, something I’ll come to later on in the book—but its ability to implement its ‘egalitarian’ schemes was usually seriously flawed. Rajiv Gandhi once famously—and rightly—said that only a fraction of the intended largesse reached the actual beneficiary. On the other hand, an entire edifice of corruption came up with the express goal of siphoning off these funds. Real solutions, which actually transformed the lives of the poor, the illiterate and the malnourished, largely remained in the realm of good intentions. At the same time, vital concepts such as corporate social responsibility and public-private partnership—which through the right policies could have helped change the insensitive mosaic of Indian society—were never given enough attention.

The writer and newspaper columnist Jug Suraiya, who is not an economist, has perhaps for that very reason pithily summed up what happened in the six and more decades that we have been free: ‘Nehruvian socialism, made more hidebound during Indira Gandhi’s tenure proved spectacularly unsuccessful in tackling the problem. Indira Gandhi’s stifling ‘socialist’ policies based on the so-called license raj fuelled corruption while smothering enterprise and initiative. The half-hearted economic liberalization the country has witnessed since then has been bogged down by a seemingly endless series of scams, a legacy of graft whose genealogy might be traced to the buying and selling of sarkari patronage institutionalized during the years of misrule represented by what might be called Indraism.’

There are a few more aspects of our economic and political history after 1947 that I would like to dwell on, or rather reemphasize. Mahatma Gandhi was convinced that the future of India lay in its villages, but, as we have seen, Nehru, while not openly contradicting this thesis, was much more preoccupied by large-scale and state-owned schemes of industrialization. The arithmetic of democracy, where the largest number of voters came from the rural areas, led to some policy initiatives being able to ameliorate their plight; but agriculture as a priority was always in the shadow of industry, except occasionally like the successful implementation of the Green Revolution.

In the area of security, the policy of non-violence, which was a potent weapon in fighting a militarily more powerful enemy such as the British, became, because of its association with the father of the nation and the high-minded ideological sanctity attached to it, a misplaced priority for an independent nation. A sovereign government in one of the most volatile neighbourhoods in the world failed to distinguish between the valid tactic and rhetoric of one historical phase and the changed imperatives of another. The result was the creation of what I would like to call the ‘flabby’ Indian state, displaying in full measure an effete, indecisive, ineffective and unfocused vision in matters of security, both internal and external. As we shall discuss in greater detail later, defence, foreign policy, intelligence and internal security need to be closely integrated in order to forge a comprehensive and clear policy for the protection of the State.

Our foreign policy has been, after that first pro-active initiative of projecting non-alignment, been unforgivably reactive, lurching from the occasional show of unconvincing aggression, to an incomprehensible stance of appeasement and accommodation. As mentioned earlier, our location in a troubled region, with two implacably hostile neighbours, Pakistan and China, should have compelled us to forge a foreign policy that corresponds to the ground realities. But, being ideologically unsure of what our posture should be—a withdrawing, pacifist, unassertive, non-violent state or a confident, vigilant and unyielding nation—we have more often than not oscillated ineffectively between gratuitous démarches of friendship and righteous howls of indignation when they were betrayed. Similarly, our defence establishment has never really freed itself from the paralysis of vision which is the legacy of nations congenitally undecided about the non-negotiable priority of defence capabilities. And, as far as our intelligence apparatus is concerned, the sorry truth is that it has just never taken itself seriously enough. This is the only inference we can make when we see the endemic lack of coordination and resolve that plagues all our intelligence agencies, be it the Intelligence Bureau (IB) or the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW)
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The level at which they operate would be dismissed as ‘dilettantism’ by professional agencies like Mossad, the CIA or KGB.

The core of the problem is that our political leadership completely lacks the unsentimental clarity of Chanakya, who knew that a first-rate intelligence setup is an indispensable necessity for the security of the State. Somehow we continue to believe in the notion that the State’s ability to be fully informed about the threats against it, and to take offensive measures to neutralize them, is a violation of the high-minded, idealistic and passive values associated with a non-violent philosophy. This is not, perhaps, what Gandhiji, with his astute sensitivity to strategy would have wanted, but his legatees are, alas, more prone to conceptual confusion. Only such a mindset could account for Prime Minister I. K. Gujral’s decision in 1997 to actually dismantle our covert operations in Pakistan.

The year India gained independence was a landmark year in our history. It handed down much that was, and is, good. Yet we also live with some of its weaknesses. As I said at the beginning of this chapter, nations are compelled to make choices, especially in their formative phase. Those who laid the foundations of our nation made theirs, and if something has subsequently gone wrong with a choice that was made then (or if one or more of their choices were inherently flawed), it is incumbent on us to recognize and rectify it.

GOVERNANCE

The root of wealth is economic activity and lack of it brings material distress. In the absence of fruitful activity, both current prosperity and future growth are in danger of destruction.

In the interests of the prosperity of the country, a king should be diligent in foreseeing the possibility of calamities, try to avert them before they arise, overcome those which happen, remove all obstructions to economic activity and prevent loss of revenue to the State.

A king with a depleted treasury eats into the very vitality of the citizens and the country.

The Arthashastra

Governance must be an overriding priority for any country. This is especially true for India, given the magnitude, complexity, and urgency of the challenges it faces. Unfortunately, in recent times most governments at the Centre and in the states have shown a pronounced inability to govern. This is unacceptable. To correct this state of affairs, we must first identify the root cause of their poor record on governance. The blunt truth is that the manner in which our democratic polity now functions has become the biggest obstacle to governance. Our founding fathers while drafting the Constitution did not envisage such a situation. Their vision was that democratic elections in a parliamentary system would elect a stable majority which would work for the fulfilment of the needs of the people for a period of five years. For many decades after Independence this held true. The Congress party won elections with comfortable majorities. There were no unstable coalitions. The Opposition, consisting of a number of parties, grew in strength, but its combined strength did not threaten the tenure of the ruling party.

However, from the beginning of the nineties the situation changed dramatically. Elections threw up fractious and unstable coalitions with wafer-thin majorities. It was clear that the era of a single party winning a comfortable majority on its own was over. Smaller regional parties grew in direct proportion to the shrinking base of the erstwhile banyan party—the Congress. No other national party could win a majority on its own. This changed the political paradigm that would enable the deliverance of governance.

In the new politics of the coalition era, all the energies of the elected government of the day are invested in political survival. The need for political management completely replaces the imperative of governance. Any policy-making is held hostage to the immediate requirement of political convenience. Moreover, good governance is often overwhelmed by the dictates of political compromise. In a coalition with a vast number of constituent parties, each faction holds decision making to ransom. Even when policies for governance are made, their aim is not the actual delivery of the good of the people on a long-term basis. More often than not, their aim is short-term political mileage. Decisions then become transparently populist in nature, and are diluted to suit the expedient and motivated interests of all the coalition partners.

A key requirement of governance is the appointment of people with talent to run vital ministries and departments. We shall deal with this subject later as well, but to put it categorically: the compulsions of coalition politics do not allow governments to appoint people to positions of power on the basis of merit. People are given crucial portfolios, affecting the lives of millions of people, not on their proven track record or ability to deliver results, but merely to cynically accommodate the pressure of constituents. Each coalition partner brazenly negotiates as many ministerial berths for its party members as it can wangle.