Perspectives on the Aam Aadmi Party

There's a new kid on the block. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), suddenly, is the most talked-about political movement in the country. While the party itself has been in existence for over a year, this is the first time it has captured the collective imagination of millions of Indians. And this has happened by virtue of their sterling performance in the Delhi State Assembly elections. It has been interesting to watch the ebb and flow of popular perception about the party over the last one year - and I have tried hard to maintain a liberally impartial view of the AAP brand of politics over this period. Here is an honest account of my views about the AAP movement, and how they have evolved with time.

I must confess - I started out as an ardent supporter, not of the AAP itself, but of the IAC (India Against Corruption) movement - the larger umbrella organization which fathered the AAP (and which included stalwarts like Anna Hazare and Kiran Bedi). But as I have come to ponder a little deeper, the issues and ideologies espoused by the AAP, I have certainly vacillated. As things stand today, I am rather middle-of-the-road in my assessment of the party (as well as the larger political movement it epitomizes). My own opinions on the issues raised by them are neatly split - between enthusiastic admiration and cynical disapproval.

What I appreciate:

1) Commitment to grassroot issues -

What the AAP has proposed to tackle head-on, are the quotidian, almost unromantic issues that face the ordinary Indian. Problems like water, public toilets, environment, health centres and public schools. These issues, while often part of 'electoral promises', rarely occupy centre-stage in a party's ideology. Sadly, voters in India, contrary to their demands in public, have privately almost never voted on developmental lines (except in recent rare cases where leaders like Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Nitish Kumar have been voted back into power solely on the basis of their delivery on the developmental agenda): there have been umpteen instances where narrow considerations like caste and favours/handouts have defined electoral arithmetic.

2) The promise of transparently funded politics -

Nearly all political parties, cutting across the ideological left and right have resorted to inscrutable sources of funding. The AAP is the first platform that transparently declares their funding sources and maintains accounts. The campaign funding for the State Assembly elections in Delhi seemed to be largely crowd-sourced, with a scientific efficiency of allocation aided by some savvy analytics and social media/telecom use.

3) A thus-far principled stand on issues - 

How many times have we seen parties prevaricate on important issues and stances? The AAP has thus-far stuck to their principled stand of not soliciting support from either of the two national political parties to form a cobbled-coalition government in Delhi.

What I don't appreciate:

1) Luddite promises - 

AAP promises to cut electricity tariffs by 50%. In a state that already has one of the lowest tariffs across urban centres in India! (funnily, they are the highest in the avowedly populist Mamata Banerjee's Kolkata) If power generators/discoms were making 50% margins, India wouldn't be an power-deficit nation. Corporates would be falling over themselves to set up power plants and distribution companies. Instead, power producers are among the financially sorriest companies in the country today, with a large number of generators making a beeline before banks for restructuring their loans. What AAP fails to realize is that India is a fuel-deficient nation (despite having the highest reserves of coal in the world, but that is a debate for another day), and must pay a price for not encouraging cheaper sources like nuclear and hydroelectric energy. The real scandal in electricity distribution is in leakages, a problem which is largely far removed from Delhi - there are entire industries in other parts of India whose business model depends on free electricity - which is either stolen or siphoned off in the name of agricultural use (electricity is free or subsidised for most farmers in India).

2) Mob justice masquerading as 'decentralisation of democracy' - 

One of the AAP's marquee ideologies is 'decentralisation of democracy' - they radically propose that most decisions would be made by 'Mohalla sabhas' or neighbourhood gatherings, which would have the power to delay payments to contractors and would 'vote' for which public facilities would/would not be constructed in the neighbourhood. If decision-making could so easily be outsourced to crowds, why would we need leaders in a democracy in any case? Why not have public gatherings to try criminals and pass laws too? What the enthusiastic supporters of such Mohalla sabhas fail to realize is that crowds are not equipped to take unpopular decisions that might actually benefit them in the longer term or even benefit a collective that is larger than the individual neighbourhood which votes on the issue concerned. Oddly enough, such ideas remind of the kangaroo courts which the Scarecrow (Crane) runs in the epic move, The Dark Knight Rises. Yes, our leaders do not always take decisions which are in the best interest of the public, but the solution is not to crowd-source their decisions. It is to elect better leaders.

3) Right to Recall - 

The AAP intends to implement a system where a government (or an individual representative) is recalled or dismissed by the electorate before the end of its stipulated five year term if it disagrees with its policies or is dissatisfied with its performance. Again, one must remember that the policies of governments seldom see immediate results. In their quest for immediate gratification, people could well end up recalling well-meaning governments every time an unpopular decision is taken. Let me give you an example. Every time fuel prices are hiked in India, we see large-scale protests and collective crying-foul. Almost no one realises that these are tough decisions which must be taken in an oil-importing nation exposed to the vagaries of international oil prices and a floating exchange rate. In the absence of price hikes, India would have continued to consume larger quantities of oil, importing more of it and hence fueling even more inflation because of higher current account and fiscal deficits. So in the longer-run, these price hikes are a bitter pill, which must be taken to prevent uglier ailments. Electorates, unfortunately, do not find long-run economic decision making palatable.

So, on balance, I remain equivocal in my assessment of the AAP. My views, like the party itself, are rather nascent and in a state of flux - I would rather wait to see the AAP tested out in the grind of daily governance before passing judgment. It is easy to oppose - but rather difficult to face the music on the hot seat of government. Having said that, I sincerely wish and pray for the success of movements like the AAP - it is not often that a political party reinstates our faith in Indian democracy.

     

A foot in the door...

As the country heads into parliamentary elections, the political scene has certainly heated up. A number of issues are being debated in newsrooms and living rooms across the nation. While politics takes the limelight (and almost every event in the country these days assumes, or is given, a political overtone), one must remember that at the centre of most of these debates lies an ideological divergence. 

At the risk of oversimplification, the most fundamental question at the heart of these debates is one that concerns the direction that the country now needs to take. And the multitudinous schools of thought eventually end up draining into one of two major streams: the ideological left or the ideological right. I am not in any way claiming that India votes on the basis of these ideologies - no, there are hundreds of other, more petty, considerations of caste, religion, lobbies - the works. My point concerns the broader debate around the policies that each constituency wants its government, once elected, to follow. On the one hand, there is the school of thought that firmly believes that India was better off following the Nehruvian socialist route, that we have been led astray by ideological Satans of the right. On the other, there is the school which believes that India has over-experimented with half-baked socialism. They believe that what India needs is more openness to market oriented growth, and that any growth and concomitant development that has come about in the past couple of decades is by virtue of this unshackling of policy.

This debate is important because the stakes have never been higher. 

Almost everyone agrees that India seems to have lost the plot. The socialists bemoan the entrenched inflation that has hit the average Indian hard and eroded real incomes. The capitalists argue that we have gone back to the days of lethargic decision making and protectionist policy-making that serves no one's interests (not even those of the poor in whose name these policies are embraced). Both agree that India needs change. While the former are baying for a return to state control and subsidy-economics, the latter are crying hoarse that the economy needs to be rescued from government and bureaucratic control, that the 'animal spirits' need to be unleashed.

Before taking one or the other side, I believe that every self-respecting Indian must give reason a chance - and decide his/her loyalties based on facts. And the facts are that neither Nehruvian socialism nor crony capitalism have got India anywhere. Yes, it is true that we have made remarkable progress since the opening up of the economy in 1991. It is also true that a concern for the poorest of the poor should be the moral compass for any government of the day. However, the governance that we have received for most of our existence since 1947 neither champions the cause of the poor nor truly unleashes the entrepreneurial spirit of the economy. 

The funny thing is, depsite all the bickering in pseudo-intellectual debates, these two schools of thought can and must co-exist. For that to happen, government needs to exit the sectors where its presence is superfluous and increase its presence in those where its absence is conspicuous - yes, the government has no business running corporations or holding stakes in them. It has no business controlling the natural resources in this country that are desperately required for growth, and which it hasn't been able to supply in the quantities that get anywhere close to real demand. One of the biggest reasons why we have a shamefully high current account deficit today, is because the government has run coal and oil production into the ground - state oil and coal companies are among the most inefficient state-owned entities in the free world. In an energy-deficient nation which desperate needs fuel to power economic growth that will both alleviate poverty and improve standards of living, being unable to mine natural resources that one possesses in abundance (and therefore having to import them) is criminal.

At the same time, government needs to increase its presence in sectors where no private corporation has been able to deliver the goods to the farthest reaches of this country. Sectors like education and healthcare have seen great stories in entrepreneurship but the truth remains that the private sector will only serve those sections of society that it finds economically viable to serve. There are millions in our villages and in the forsaken slums of our cities who do not have money to pay for their food, leave alone their medicines or for their children's education.

The government will only find funds to serve the poorest of the poor if it stops subsidizing the middle class and the rich farmers, who are the real beneficiaries of the egregious subsidy policies of the government. The food security bill, while excellent in its intentions, will never be able to serve the truly deserving sections of our society in whose name it is being championed. We just do not have the adequate infrastructure and the delivery systems to reach those people or to ensure that the benefits that are meant for them do not end up in the hands of middlemen or undeserving vote-banks.

I wish that the people of this country would see through the real issues behind these debates and vote wisely in the upcoming polls.  The current parliamentary elections will be one of our most critical ever, given that the nation has a lot to lose from losing its way - we have a foot in the door when it comes to raising India into the league of developed nations, and doing justice to our billion-plus citizens. We can either barge in and claim what is rightfully ours or allow the doors of prosperity to be shut in our face forever.

Not all those who wander are lost...

As I found the last dregs of energy to clamber up the final leg of my climb up the mountain, I was greeted by a truly remarkable sight. Through the fleeting white clouds on the horizon, rose tall and mighty, the Annapurna Himalayas. It was a cold, damp evening and we were not really expecting to get the fabulous views of the peaks that the early morning climbers are known to be welcomed to. We had finished our trek for the day ahead of time and we did not really have much else to do - other than to climb further. And climb we did. Up the side of the famed Poon Hill, a feature that lends its name to many an adventurous trek in the kingdom of Nepal. Travellers and trekkers from every corner of the world, like streams rushing to a river, find their ways to Poon Hill from different points in the Pokhara trekking circuit. So did we. We wound our way up from Kathmandu to Pokhara on a rickety old Toyota car. And trekked from there to Poon Hill, via Ghorepani and Ulleri.

There was nothing much to do at the summit of Poon Hill if you got there in the evening. Devoid of the splendid views of a cloudless dawn, Poon Hill seemed abandoned, almost unwelcoming, and we loitered around and waited for the sun to set. There was a watchtower, for those looking for unhindered panoramas of the 7000m plus Himalayan peaks. Even in the evening sun, whenever you could catch a glimpse of the snow-capped mounts, they seemed majestic - towering above everything else and staring back benevolently like a protective sentry.

That's when I met him. I walked up to the edge of the cliff and stared out into the horizon, as if wondering if this was indeed the end of the world. I was giddy with mirth, a feeling of footloose pleasure having crept into my spirit after the picturesque trek up to the hill. As I looked far and wide across to the other end of the open expanse, I noticed him standing on the edge and clicking away with his SLR camera. His tent was pitched just a few yards off the spot where he stood and he seemed like he was cold and would step back in soon enough. I waited a few moments and then stepped up to him and said hello. As we talked and got to know more about each other, I realized I had met a man who was truly 'free' - His name was Christian and he was from a small town in Sweden.

Christian had a fantastic story - he travelled the world like this, for six months every year, while he waited tables at a small restaurant back at home for the other six. He earned just enough to pay for his travels on a shoestring budget. I had a minor epiphany at that moment. I realized that life is far simpler than we choose to believe it is. That the truest experiences are the ones which involve the simplest of pleasures - travelling, walking, running, climbing, singing, spending time with your family or simply enjoying a book or an engaging conversation over a cup of hot coffee. Everything else is an unnecessary complication that we invent to make ourselves feel important. I realized that the greatest insights in life come from within - that it is important, once in a while, to spend time with oneself and travel alone - to wander aimlessly and see the greatest sights and sounds the world has to offer. For, as Tolkien once said, not all those who wander, are lost...

Shifting the Debate

The last one month has been interesting, to put it mildly. We have seen major political upheaval in the country just when most people thought we were about to drift aimlessly through the rest of the UPA government's second term. And I would say it was about time that these events transpired - the way things were going, something had to give. For a country that was touted to be an economic superpower by the end of the decade, economic stultification loomed large, potentially dashing the hopes and dreams of millions who had dared to expect more than subsistence in a country that was used to defeatism and poverty-mongering.

There are those who have looked at the course of events over the last month (and to put the last month in perspective, over the last 2-3 years), through the prism of an ongoing politics vs. economics debate. The rationale of their argument goes something like - Indian politicians need votes and are obsessed with staying in power, so choosing to take reform-oriented, economically sound decisions must necessarily mean going against conventional political wisdom. Well, interestingly enough, those that have been making this argument seem to have missed the shift in the debate.

If some recent accounts of major national commentators are to be believed, the politics vs. economics debate has been already been consigned to the dustbin of modern Indian history. Through anecdotal accounts as well as intensive data collection and analysis, many are now saying that the dichotomy between good economics and good politics seems to be blurring away into oblivion. In a phase shift of historic socio-political proportions (and implications), the divergence between the two is about to be decimated forever in this country. Indian people, cutting across economic and social strata have perhaps discarded the 'dole' mentality where they voted into power the political party that gave away freebies and subsidies to a narrowly defined electorate that was often defined by lines of caste or religion. That age, good morning, is over.

Instead, what seems to be emerging is an epoch in Indian political history where reforms constitute the mainstream in the electoral agenda. In spite of what some political dinosaurs like Mamata Banerjee would like to believe, the people of this country have already moved on to a growth and development based debate. Her brand of 'povertarian' politics is obsolete. Consider this - in a thought provoking article wittily titled 'The Meena Kumari Politics', Indian Express editor Shekhar Gupta claims, "An important and powerful Congress MP.... made a confession that....the party made a suicidal blunder by brainwashing itself that the 2009 victory had come because of NREGA when it had, in fact, come from growth." Even discounting for any personal biases that Mr. Gupta may have, this is an important claim, coming ostensibly from people who are grassroot politicians, not opinion-wielding intellectuals.

In yet another account published in the New York Times, called 'Reformers Do Win Elections in India', hard evidence is cited, based on the work done by economists Jagdish Bhagwati and Arvind Panagariya, "from the 2009 national elections to bust a standing myth in India’s power corridors – that pro-growth economic reforms equals to political suicide." On the NDA's loss in 2004, which is often incorrectly attributed to the rejection by India's poor masses of the reform agenda, the article substantiates how "the 2004 mandate was not for anti-growth, socialist policies of the past.... In fact, it was the opposite: Voters wanted more meaningful, high-growth reforms, not fewer."

There seems to be an increasingly stark realisation among the avant garde Indian intelligentsia that the argumentative transformation on the Indian political stage is now complete - voters have now begun expecting more than just the consistently disingenuous electoral promises of 'bijli, sadak aur paani'. Inspired by cases of model governance in states like Bihar, Gujarat, Delhi and Uttaranchal, they have begun to expect local leaders to actually deliver on these promises in substantial measure. In fact, they have gone further and have now begun to expect private-sector employment generation as a result of government policy. As someone recently pointed out, the difference between 5% and 8% growth is a difference between comfort and more comfort for someone who belongs to the middle-class or the affluent class, but for the economically weak, it constitutes the difference between unemployment and subsistence (or even aspirational upward mobility).

In a timely move, the Economist has published a special cover edition on India this week, aptly called, "India, In Search of a Dream". The publication comments, with typical trenchant criticism, that India's leaders have done a shoddy job of convincing the masses on the need for reform. They have been guilty of perpetuating a regressive pseudo-socialist regime of quotas, subsidies and inefficient government control on the 'commanding heights' of the economy. But perhaps for the first time, voters seem to be taking the initiative to bypass the politicians' restrictive agenda - matters have come to a head and the electorate has suo motu decided that growth and reform is non-negotiable and in doing so has shifted the course of this debate forever. Old fogy politicians and tantrum-throwing dinosaurs will ignore this at their own peril.

The long arm of the welfare state

In a country that has been stung by experiments with race-to-the-bottom socialism for decades, advocating a greater presence for the state can be a lonely cause. Yet, in my view, perhaps in a country like India that is making the transition from socialist poverty to capitalist nouveau riche prosperity (for a few), the role of the state becomes ever more important. Not least because the state then becomes the only benefactor of those disenfranchised by the process of development (which, even in the most benign, inclusive of models can often be skewed). Ironically, then, socialist welfare policies must be perpetuated, even expanded, not culled in the name of 'less government is good government'.

First, the rise in individual wealth in a nation also often comes with a concomitant bulge in state coffers. Even with a 5% fiscal deficit, the Indian government today is far richer in both absolute and relative terms than it was as in its socialist heyday. This gives the government a far greater ability (and responsibility) to spend more and to spend on more causes. Agreed that this model has gone horribly wrong in Europe and America - but that is only the other extreme. The 'reform-minded' economists and right-leaning policy hawks will cry foul and say that the profligate Indian state already spends far too much. Wrong. The Indian state wastes too much. Subsidies are large, not because they are unnecessary, but because they are targeted ineffectively. The poor still need cheap kerosene and rice. It is electoral calculations that hold the government back from targeted subsidies. It is often said that a 'benefit' once doled out in India, can never be revoked - be that a subsidy, a reservation or an entitlement. However, it is easier to refine a benefit by targeting it correctly than to rescind it completely.

The vastness and sheer socio-cultural diversity of India necessitates a state that reaches out to parts of the country and to people that corporations would never find economical to serve. There is either no money to be made in these transactions, or the wait for returns can be longer than a for-profit entity can be answerable to shareholders for. In all such cases and more, the state must step in and provide. It has a moral duty and responsibility to, irrespective of the economic policies that it espouses. In the farthest corners of the Himalaya mountains in Kashmir, the remotest villages of the North-Eastern states and in the densest jungles of central India, the state must extend its arms and reach out - build schools, roads, provide medicines for free and transport services for cheap. Because someone has to, and no one else will. What every newspaper in the country will tell you is the story of mainstream India. Either the India that is in the thick of the action on growth, or the India that is poor but has a political voice to matter enough. There are hundreds of untold stories from another India that a welfare state does reach out to, but one that is never heard by the rest of its fellow-countrymen for the simple reason that it does not pay anyone to hear it. This is where the state must step in and hand-hold the development process to mainstream entire populations. Even if there is no economic or electoral reward to be reaped.

A Fragile Peace

Over the last month, I have come to realize that 'peace' in India can be a very fickle state of existence. In a country with more than  a billion people with a million identities of religion, caste and creed each, fault lines can be exposed with the slightest scratch on the surface. It also makes me marvel sometimes at the chaotic fabric of society in India - perhaps chaos is the equilibrium state of this country and its people. I do not mean that to be derogatory - it is merely my assessment of our reality and perhaps something that is essential to appreciate before anyone can set about understanding, surviving in and even attempting to govern this country.

The speed with which hatred and violence spreads in India never ceases to amaze me. In the case of the recent episodes of violence in the North East, followed by the exodus of people ethnic to the North Eastern region from some major cities in India, technology became a medium for perpetrating hatred and fear. I believe that at the center of the process of creating such mass hysteria, lies the inherent gullibility of the Indian mind. You need only look at the number of 'chain emails' that regularly spam your inbox to figure out the very minimal levels of discretion that Indians exercise before passing on a viral message.

What is surprising, and to some extent disturbing, is that I have more than occasionally seen otherwise sane, 'educated' people falling prey to such instances of hysteria. The same goes for people 'sharing' meaningless viral messages on facebook - it takes almost nothing to get the most rational Indians to begin 'sharing' hateful, derogatory and frankly absurd ideas on social media. People deride and personally attack politicians, celebrities, sportsmen, countries, races and religions at the drop of a hat. They do not think twice before participating in the process of creating 'popular delusions' (a phrase that I shall borrow from the title of a brilliant and very topical book: Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds).

To cite an (admittedly tangentially related) instance, when the government sharply hiked prices of petrol a few months ago, I saw even some of the most intelligent and economically literate friends of mine crying foul on social media. As if low fuel prices, even in the face of global spikes in crude, is a birthright of every citizen in this country. Bafflingly, some of the people most actively deriding the price hike by 'sharing' the most number of such facebook messages/jokes/pictures did not even own vehicles of their own. At the heart of such behaviour lies a tendency to let the mob think for you. It has happened so frequently in this country that it is almost disturbing how we can lay claim to being part of a civilized society - the Godhra riots, the Babri mosque demolition, Delhi's anti-Sikh riots, a mob molesting a teenager in Guwahati; all of these are instances of the worst kind of mob behaviour in Indian society.

I think understanding the basic nature of the Indian socio-cultural make-up will serve any individual/government well before an attempt to censor or regulate online media is made. Even if the internet is sparingly used by the most affluent few millions out of a billion odd people, sometimes the social structures that they are part of and the identities that they represent remain largely the same as the teeming masses of the most backward hinterlands. Consumption patterns and the adoption of pseudo-liberal urban mannerisms does not change the biases, delusions and hysterias that are deeply ingrained in our multidimensional identities. Addressing these regressive tendencies should be as much an integral part of the agenda for the 'development' of modern India. Economic progress without the concomitant liberalisation of ideas and cultures is meaningless and to some extent dangerous. We are in the midst of a fragile peace that needs to be buttressed with stronger foundations, lest we should relapse into the chaos that is ingrained in our social DNA.