Responding to Amartya Sen

An op-ed takes exception to Amartya Sen’s mild praise for Narendra Modi.

A flawed review of “India After Gandhi”

A close friend recently shared with me Sanjay Kak’s review (login required) of Ramachandra Guha’s book, “India After Gandhi.” The review is flawed for the following reasons:

• Killing the Messenger: Guha’s book is a historical account of India and if history did not quite follow the course of perfection that Kak demands, it’s not Guha’s problem.  For example, what is Guha to do if early elections did not fully represent Kak’s definition of democracy.  Of course, the real tragedy is Kak’s complete dismissal of India’s early elections as “procedural—rather than the substantive—aspects of democracy….”  Kak reminds me of myself who finds fault in the “way” the guy in the park is exercising forgetting the irony that he’s at least exercising.

• Focusing on the Trivial: Kak’s litany of issues with Guha’s book are dominated by trivial criticisms.  For example, Kak finds fault with (1) the sub-title (“not A History, mind you, but The History”), (2) “even the small selection of pictures … fixated by the man—or woman—of power, from Lord Mountbatten to Amitabh Bachchan”, (3) Guha’s methodology describing it as “curious” (academic speak for “something wrong”) for utilizing both primary and secondary sources, and (4) using “hugely contested words like ‘Jihadi’ and ‘Terrorist’.”

• Criticizing the Absence of What was Supposed to be Absent: Guha – to my own disappointment – refuses to engage deeply with the 1990s and 2000s because it’s not distant enough for a historical perspective.  But these periods are probably the closest to the average reader (not the exacting pseudo-academic that Kak is) and so Guha addresses them briefly.  Kak finds the author’s prerogative to define “scope of work” unacceptable.  I guess every aspiring author needs to have his / her subject validated by Kak before proceeding to write it.

• Questionable Intentions: Kak’s review is so intensely negative of Guha that I began questioning his true intentions.  So I asked, “Who on earth is Kak?”  It is “curious” that both Kak and Guha were born in 1958 and attended St. Stephens according to Wikipedia (the source will sorely disappoint Kak).  Is it likely that both overlapped at St. Stephens and Kak finds it difficult to reconcile to the fact that Guha has done more things with his life?  Kak’s (seemingly slim) body of work “includes films on the theme of migration, looking at people of Indian origin in the fringes of the city of London.”  Isn’t it insane that someone who studied the “problems” of NRIs should question Guha – who began his career with “The Unquiet Woods” – for not adequately addressing India’s development refugees?

• Lousy Writing: Let me just say that I was able to complete Guha’s 900-page book but gave up on reading the last two columns of Kak’s three-page review.

Amul’s Enduring Relevance

I grew up and went to school in Gujarat where an enduring story from my civics textbooks was that of Amul.  Now institutionalized in our societal memory through its superb ads, the movie Manthan, and the legendary Verghese Kurien, it is amazing that the story still has legs.

Harish Damodaran, author of the must-read “India’s New Capitalists,” has published an insightful op-ed on the continued relevance of Amul showing us how enduring great ideas can be.

Ideology vs. debate

Sadanand Dhume complains in a recent article on WSJ.com that “[o]paque family rule is no way to run a political party, let alone a major economy and aspiring great power.”  In response, I posted the following comment:

Mr. Dhume describes the Congress party as “utterly amorphous” and as a “motley crew.”  The same adjectives can describe India and that too in a positive vein.  It is only appropriate that India’s largest political party shares the country’s characteristics of diverging views and vigorous debate.  In bemoaning the lack of “adherence to a coherent ideology” Mr. Dhume is implying a preference for the regimented and ideological RSS/BJP combine, which was thoroughly routed in the past election.  It is interesting that India’s articulate “chatterati” is complaining of the Gandhis’ inaccessibility in a Western newspaper.  That India does not care is also reflected in the verdict of the last election, when the Gandhis’ were as visible and accessible to the electorate as any other political party.

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.

How to stay in power for 33 years: The communists and West Bengal

A question I often get goes, “How have the communists stayed in power for 33 years in West Bengal?”  “Land reforms” as an answer draws a blank, while “delivering things to the rural electorate” is met by disbelief, cynicism, or dismissiveness reserved for political junkies like me.

But that is the unvarnished truth celebrated in this great article by Harish Damodaran in Business Line.  Soon after coming to power in the late 1970s, the communists implemented two major institutional reforms:

– Operation Barga granted 15-lakh sharecroppers rights to the lands they had been tilling and

– Enabled devolution of powers to the panchayat level for a wide variety of agricultural investments.

These investments have paid off in the past three decades and today West Bengal occupies either the first or second position in the production of a number of agricultural products.  The agricultural sector in the state has grown from 0.7% during 1970-83 to 5.4% during 1983-95.

Not only did “land reforms” generate political rewards but also sustainable development.  Good politics is always good development.

Tharoor’s travails

Shashi Tharoor must quit or be fired.  That is the price for his lack of (and refusal to learn) political sensibility.  Beginning with a series of minor but irritating indiscretions that did not amount to anything more than speaking insensitively or out of turn, Tharoor has now landed himself in serious trouble.  (As an aside, for the 30 odd years spent at that temple of global diplomacy called the U.N., Tharoor demonstrates little skill at being diplomatic or understanding new cultures as reflected in his insensitive “cattle class” tweet.  The rumors of the U.N. being a moribund institution populated by ineffective, narcissistic wonks are perhaps not exaggerated.)

He is accused of supporting the Kochi IPL Cricket franchise because of the potential to profit, albeit by proxy.  Besides financial impropriety, the issue is marred by personal slander.  This controversy is a distraction at a time when there are larger political issues and Tharoor is no albatross the government need carry.

Of course, this blog is no fan of Tharoor.  We were lukewarm to Tharoor’s foray into politics because we do not share the popular but misplaced perspective of India’s middle class that professionals and the educated must be accommodated in politics.  The underlying assumption is that professionals’ educated mindset equips them better to serve India’s interests while their experience results in skills transferable to administration.  Humbug.

Our view is that electoral support at the grassroots must be the sole arbiter of political influence.  Political experience at the grassroots provides leaders with:

–         a true understanding of the issues that matter,

–         an ability to implement ideas and policies,

–         the maturity to cooperate with different stakeholders, and

–         the strength to assume and stand strong on positions.

While professionals will likely have a richer understanding of issues and policy alternatives, they are often ineffective because of the inability to push initiatives.  These weaknesses are accentuated by continual insecurity and the resultant hesitation in speaking truth to their political masters.

The history of Indian politics is replete with failed professionals-turned-politicians.  The firebrand journalist Arun Shourie spent his days as a minister conducting studies on how long files take to navigate the government bureaucracy.  Mani Shankar Aiyar overstepped his brief as interim petroleum minister to be relegated to an inconsequential berth.  Manmohan Singh has been an honorable exception but he has been uncompromising with ideas (e.g., economic reforms in the 1990s and the nuclear deal this decade), ethics, and integrity.

Finally, in the year that Tharoor has spent in power, he has been in news for his many indirections rather than for having been an effective foreign minister.  Of all worker classes, it is professionals who ought to know that performance appraisals are conducted annually, contributions matter over visibility, and that there are consequences for falling short.  Unless, of course, one spends their life at an organization such as the U.N. with a sense of self-entitlement gained only at St. Stephens.

Telengana: Royal bungle

The graphic in this article from Outlook reflects what a royal bungle the idea of creating Telengana is.