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NOW that we have a new President safely ensconced at Raisina Hill, hopefully we will be spared the plethora of self-serving arguments accompanying what, by all accounts, has been the most no-holds barred contest for the highest constitutional office in the country. In the eagerness to defend their choice of candidates, both the NDA and the UPA-Left combines plumbed new depths, little realizing that their respective campaigns did little to add to the stature of either the candidates or the post for which they were contesting. But more distressing than the shenanigans of the two political formations, was the role of the media, both print and television.

For some years now, the middle classes in the country, aided in no small measure by the leader writers in the press, have been carrying out a vilificatory campaign against the political class, if not politics itself. Derided as self-serving and corrupt, politicians and political parties enjoy dangerously low trust ratings, bettered only by the police and lower officialdom. Progress, in this view, is possible only if we insulate increasing arenas of public life from political contestation. The belief is that ‘experts’, operating within the broad framework of the market, are best equipped to lead the Republic in the new millennium. Nothing exemplifies this better than the campaign to offer a new term to former President Kalam, failing which to ‘persuade’ other non-political personalities to assume responsibility.

It is no one’s case that our political leaders are a particularly edifying lot, suffering not just in comparison to the stalwarts of the freedom struggle but equally the many leaders of social movements and people’s struggles. All so often we are confronted with the unsavoury past (and present) of many of our elected representatives, the alleged misdemeanours ranging from accumulation of unaccounted wealth to heinous crimes. It hardly helps that the political class seems predisposed to stonewalling all attempts to introduce greater transparency and accountability in public life – preferring to set themselves apart from and above the common citizens they purport to represent.

Needed reform of our political institutions and political processes, however, entails not turning away from politics and handing power over to a set of unelected and unrepresentative experts, be it the judiciary, the intelligentsia or the corporate class. Rather, we require a greater engagement with politics which, even if messy and time-consuming, is the only guarantee against consolidation of elite rule. At the very least, we should learn from the experiences of our neighbours who have repeatedly suffered military intervention, all because their elite lost patience with politics and the political class.

As we approach the sixtieth anniversary of our independence, if may be worthwhile to engage in a more thoroughgoing introspection about the nature of our democracy. And while it is not inappropriate to be pleased with our record as a relatively free competitive, electoral democracy (barring the interregnum of the Emergency), complacency either about our presently high growth rates of GDP or of the stability of our democratic institutions appears misplaced. It is, for instance, disturbing that our policy-making elites remain singularly inattentive to the dangerous situation of worsening nutritional standards of a majority of our population. Computed thus, the proportions below an arbitrarily defined poverty line are increasing rather than diminishing, as is so commonly asserted.

Equally of concern is the wilful neglect, if not misappropriation, of common property resources on which a large section of our citizenry depends. Rajasthan, the state of which our President was recently Governor, has been quietly reclassifying village commons as wasteland and handing them over to selected corporations for development, in the process excluding the poor from access to fuel and grazing resources. The same process is underway in each of our major cities, where in the name of upgrading infrastructure and making world-class cities, not only are the poor being thrown out but scarce public spaces are being redeveloped as malls and parking sites.

Should we thus be surprised by the growth of violent dissent across the country, and not just in the insurgency-affected North East or Kashmir or the tribal dominated districts of central India? As citizens get squeezed between a recalcitrant state enamoured with consolidating its emergent power status and a violent and often criminal protest, the space for a liberal, accommodative and caring society is being squeezed out, generating forces that a discredited political class may be unable to engage with.

Now that we are done with a divisive presidential campaign and possibly have stopped congratulating ourselves for our first woman president, maybe we can turn to somewhat more pressing concerns.

Harsh Sethi