Revisiting the 2009 election

To briefly revisit the 2009 general election, this blog believes that it was different as described in our guest column published an year ago.  A somewhat similar perspective was presented recently here.  Highlights:

1. The 2009 election was qualitatively different from all previous elections, especially the 2004 election.

2. It was not merely a conglomeration of state contests, and reflected, if not a national mandate, at least a national vote that was a sizeable slice of the overall mandate and swung the verdict.

3. The “national voter” of 2009 was far removed from his father and grandfather of 1971 or 1984 – two elections with huge national mandates – in that he was not guided by fear, apprehension, anxiety or identity. His “national vote” – his very nationalism, I would argue – was a product of an emergent Indian middle-class sensibility, based on shared economic aspirations.

On Jairam Ramesh’s track record

This blog has a dim view of professionals in politics for reasons described elsewhere.  Jairam Ramesh, however, is different.

For one, he has truly stepped out of the secure confines of a professional lifestyle to pay his political dues by spending years in the back rooms of the Congress.  The winning campaign of 2004 with its popular slogan, “Congress ka haath, aam aadmi ke saath,” is widely attributed to him.  So if he has an opinion and chooses to state it, Ramesh deserves more leeway than Shashi Tharoor.  While his remarks in China presented a uncoordinated image of India, they did not warrant Ramesh’s resignation.

Further, Ramesh has been a gust of fresh air to the country’s Environment Ministry.  Used to being either a doormat or a rubber stamp since its inception, the ministry’s environmental agenda has had to be pursued by the country’s civil society.  This has led to the proliferation of remarkable leaders including Medha Patkar, the late Anil Agarwal, Sunita Narain, Sandeep Pandey, and Sunderlal Bahuguna among others.

Ramesh, however, is the first Environment Minister to have a distinct perspective, commitment to due process, and the strength of political conviction to do the right thing.  One knows this is true when India’s civil society stands up for a minister as Sandeep Pandey does in this article.  Excerpts follow:

Jairam Ramesh has given teeth to the environment ministry as T N Seshan [ Images ] had done to the Election Commission. Nobody used to take the environment ministry seriously earlier. Projects used to go on without environmental clearances or conditional clearances which were never honoured. It was believed by the development enthusiasts, especially promoters of big projects which had an environment cost, that this ministry was essentially an obstacle which was not insurmountable.

…

He stunned even his own Cabinet and party colleagues by deciding to go around the country to conduct public consultations on the issue of the introduction of bt-brinjal in India. In a country where decisions are normally taken behind closed doors; even after an RTI Act is in place most departments and ministries would prefer not to disclose their decision making process.

…

He is truly India’s first independent thinking environment minister and it is also probably for the first time that an environmentalist has become a minister. He is taking positions which are normally taken by activists and their organisations. But he is not somebody who can be merely dismissed as one moved by passion alone.

YSR’s legacy: Andhra as a lab for policy experiments

This blog is a die-hard fan (see here, here, and here) of the late Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy:  he delivered both development and electoral success for the Congress in Andhra Pradesh.  India Today has published an interesting piece analyzing the state of his legacy, in particular the numerous social programs he launched for the state’s farmers, women, and the poor.

The new chief minister, K. Rosaiah, has pruned these programs’ budgets but the cuts are not severe enough to dilute YSR’s legacy.  A more interesting insight from this article is the following:

The pioneering cashless health cover for the poor, the Rajiv Arogyasri Scheme, provides domiciliary health care, including expensive surgeries at state expense. Nearly 2.4 crore families have received medical benefits but given the nature of health problems and the expense, whatever is done remains inadequate.  While extending quality health care through the extended referral system, Rajiv Aryogyasri has inadvertently helped revive what seemed a dysfunctional primary health care system and raised some hope of deliverance from an increasingly unaffordable health regime for the poor.

The article goes on to highlight the cost control issues with the health policy but it is heartening to see the network effects of some of these policies.  Primary health care in India is in a dismal state and if Andhra’s experiment shows a way to revive it, YSR’s legacy will in time include the transformation of Andhra from a state known for its paddy fields, software engineers, and movie-crazed masses to the laboratory for policy experiments.  This is also a great story why politics is fascinating: it enables the creation and delivery of new ideas and YSR certainly had many of them.