A dateline for India, in the near or long term, is an impossible deadline to live up to. Deadlines and datelines are valid for those lands, and peoples, who live predictably. Who live according to a pattern of programmes, planning and performance. But India does all this, and yet does not follow any of these principles of progress. And ‘progress’, after all, is what the pursuit is about – the pursuit of power, so as to influence policy, plan the programmes, chart the performance, and so measure ‘progress’.

So much is governed by the letter ‘p’. None, however, as encapsulating of the Indian spirit than the word ‘politics’. It is this word, this phenomenon, that drives India mad. Politics and power, as they are both peculiarly understood in India, and peculiarly practised. The pursuit of one after the other, in an Indian way, has first to be understood in the historical and cultural context. To contextualise better, we could say ‘Indian way of politics’ just as easily as ‘political way of India’. But the essence is to understand politics as practised in India in order to visualise progress. And the progress of India 2010 is the subject of this essay. So back to politics, and my favourite election story of 2005.

Had I still been a working journalist, and there are times I think about the prospect with fondness, I would have gone out of my ‘beat’ to do a feature on an election that truly reflects Indian politics, pursuit of power, and involving those who ‘plan’ and implement programmes. Despite being non-party it was a classic and had all the makings of a quintessential Indian election. From voter mobilisation to a dummy candidate, it was truly Indian. (And contrary to conventional writing, since there was no booth capturing, I believe it actually reflects an Indian election!)

 

The Delhi Gymkhana Club went to the polls this year to elect a president. It happens at all clubs, from the moffusil to the metropolitan. And so the candidates lined up, divided by service (aka community!), petitioning voters through emotional appeals, to quenching thirsts and appetites. One candidate was set up so as to disturb the vote bank of another serious contender. All familiar and practised forms of electioneering in India were employed to win this one. Except that the seat, and polling booths, were a stones throw from the prime minister’s residence. Literally in the heart of the country’s power point.

This was no presentation, but an actual event that mobilised voters by the hundreds. By all accounts the voter turnout was substantial. So much so that there was no parking space available for miles around. Various brands of perfumes clashed, pearls contested for attention amongst many different stones, as chiffons sashayed in those imperial India corridors. Silk queued with cotton and georgette to cast a vote. And all for the post of president of the Delhi Gymkhana Club. I recount this episode, this election, not for the methodology behind the victory, but because of those who participated.

 

It is perfectly safe to assume that the voters list of the Delhi Gymkhana Club is the ‘elite’ of political India. In that those who run the ministries, those who influence the policies, and those who implement the programmes were amongst the primary voters of this eagerly contested election. If any club could be termed as the most politically influential club in the country it would certainly be the Delhi Gymkhana Club.

There is little to differentiate between the members and governance of India. But these same gents and ladies that drove distances and waited eagerly in disciplined lines couldn’t be bothered to vote in elections that affect the vast Indian political landscape. I don’t even dare suggest that they couldn’t be bothered to stand in line to vote because they wouldn’t have to. They’d be rushed into the booth to cast their votes before flashing light bulbs and shivering polling officers. Pearls et al.

Even this is too much to expect from the Indian elite. So they wouldn’t know their local municipal councillor, may not know their local MLA, though would certainly know that an MP exists. But since the MP is in any case likely to petition them to facilitate files, they wouldn’t worry about influencing him or her. It would indeed be a wonder if they even knew the location of their polling booth, the one in which they are supposed to cast their vote. Yet, this is the most vocal and influential section of society, the ones that are heard the most when it comes to complaining about inefficient municipal services, about shifty state governments and dodgy parliamentarians. ‘The constantly moaning elite’ was the heading once given by a subeditor to one of my opinion pieces. Appropriate in this context too. But this is not to say that those who vote in Delhi Gymkhana elections are the only moaners in this country. Far from it.

 

The phenomenon of a moaning and non-participatory elite is spread across India, from the current to the future metros. And it covers the entire political spectrum, from left to right. All labels and brands are present in this collection of India’s rich and famous. Dialectical differences remain the only means of differentiating between the political labels. The same things are moaned about through differing choice of expressions. So Delhi Gymkhana is not to blame, alone. Therefore, how does one give a prognosis on progress, a vision statement on a dateline, when those that influence the most participate the least? So the influential continue to define ‘progress’ even as the political practitioners and participants remain wedded to the belief that they matter too. Such, therefore, is politics and progress in an India that defines its own pace of performance, its peculiar planning programmes, and all because ‘power’ is a word with as many meanings as there are ways of saying it in this country.

So back to India 2010, politics and planning for progress.

Such has been the nature of progress in India since the demise of one-family rule in 1989, that politics is increasingly irrelevant to progress. The professional economists will of course contest this claim, and the employed political observers will obviously declare that ‘it is the political economy, stupid’. It of course is, and I’m being stupid in sticking my neck out into a field with which I have less than a passing knowledge.

But how does one explain the fact that the country has maintained a decadal growth rate that is above the global average, and that despite its bizarre politics. If politics, and the schisms that it naturally causes was to govern progress than there was no way Gujarat would have been India’s fastest growing state, and the best in terms of financial probity. The Bolsheviks, pinkos, and other chatterers, would of course be loathe to admit these facts, but they are what they are, facts. Unreal to many, uncomfortable to others, but nevertheless they are facts. Therein lies the route towards an understanding of the solutions.

 

Planning for growth is, and has been, the prerogative of a select few professionals functioning from sanitised premium locales who tell the natives what is good for their present and the future. That the nature of planning in India is completely Stalinist in its mindset is not the point. Certainly not when members of the ruling elite have yet to out grow third-worldism, non-alignment and believe Pravda to be the epitome of freedom of speech.

Planning in India is rooted in the belief that the capital knows best what is good for the country. Specialists know better than the practitioners, despite their experience and inherited knowledge. Generations of experience with the Indian sand and sky mean nothing today. This, alas, is the bane of development of India. The various departments of governance conspire with various non-governmental organisations to drive home the point that they have the solutions to India’s problems. And they alone. That, alas, is far from the truth. For local problems always have local solutions. Be it Saddam Hussein in Iraq, or a recurring drought in the desert. But centralised capital inspired planning doesn’t think so.

At best this is nothing less than patronising. And at worst what it has created is a totally dependent sense of being. It has deeply flawed the basic Indian mindset once famed for its completely decentralised functioning. Now what has appeared in its place is a system where each hamlet has to seek from the capital its solutions, its answers and its funds. All of which were once well within its limitations of knowledge, expertise and finance.

But now it is the patronising all-knowing capital which dispenses its budgets based on statistically derived solutions. For the capital has within its sanitary corridors those that are experts, well educated, highly qualified, talented, and with fancy technical tools at their disposal that match their fancy degrees. This vanity of the capital breeds within governance an attitude that cannot reconcile to the native sense, does not believe in the valuation of acquired and inherited knowledge, and refuses to acknowledge the benefits of decentralisation.

 

A vivid example of this mindset is a chance meeting with one of the glorified planners of India who works out of one of the famous planning institutions. When the conversation turned toward water, naturally my pet subject, he said, ‘We need to cover most of Barmer in the dark zone.’ (For those who don’t know, the dark zone is an arbitrary evaluation made by the state to deny farmers in the designated area any chance of getting permission to draw sub-soil water). When I asked why, he replied, ‘They’ve drawn too much water anyway for agriculture, which is depleting our reserves, and it can’t be recharged fast enough.’ So I said, ‘Good thoughts, but do you know that it is the state which draws the most water and indiscriminately too?’

It wasn’t surprising that he didn’t know. And coincidentally enough the subject of this conversation cropped up recently in one of my favourite constituency occasions, when I can sit down with a group at the end of the day and let everyone speak their minds. This was in Guda Mallani, when Natha Ram, the deputy sarpanch of Baanta, brought up the matter. He asked that the dark zone designation be re-evaluated since the farmers have been unable to get electricity connections for their pump-sets. His village is along the bed of River Luni, an occasional river that flows into the Rann of Kutch through Barmer district. So over time the wells have produced splendid water.

Out of curiosity I asked him how many wells in his village were run by the government. He exclaimed, ‘20 in Baanta alone. And they run 24 hours of the day. Even when power fails they have generators to draw water. And we can’t even get the connections.’ This is precisely what I’d told the super-specialist – the farmer will only draw as much water as he needs, down to the last litre. After all he has to pay his bills. But it is the state that can keep drawing unmindful of budgeting for a life. But the planners know better, nay best.

 

Is it, however, fair to blame the planners? Or rather look at the entire edifice of governance, the structure. Is it not rooted in an imperial badshahi function? Where seats of governance were once centres of exploitative power? And from where favours are dispensed, baksheesh given, and funds dispersed. Those that are the loudest and ask the most are given the most. Thus making them feel somehow better-off than those that have been unsucessful in asking enough.

This structure has perpetuated a system of patronage, and in the process created a nation of pleaders. It has robbed the people of their dignity, and forced them to seek from the capital. Today they can’t even store rain water for public consumption unless a clearance is given by the ruler. Collective community actions have been reduced to dharnas and when that fails, even violence. This centralisation of decision-making, dispersing goods and services, lies at the root of India’s inability to jump various percentage points in the growth rate. It also lies at the root of India’s unequal development. Islands of prosperity, in some senses even regions, coexist with zones of darkness.

 

So back to politics, and their importance to progress. Of course politics influences progress. Otherwise there is no power on earth that could have made Bihar, and now even large parts of Uttar Pradesh, the cesspools of poverty and decay that they’ve become. They have an abundance of the two most important resources – water and voters. What they lack, however, is sufficient democratic participation. Social schisms determine voting, and thereafter governance. Voting preference is determined for them on the basis of everything other than a social and political vision. So the various special packages and programmes, periodically announced with fanfare in Parliament, come to naught. All because politics has made a mess of progress. And the people continue to suffer in utter neglect. Alas, the lack of democratic participation is something they share with the voters of the Delhi Gymkhana Club.

The voters in chiffon and silk who turned out in such numbers wouldn’t ever do the same for elections that determine the various tiers of governance – municipal to the national. Their democratic participation is limited to ‘Delhi Gym’ and their membership of governance. So those who participate the least influence decisions the most. Not surprising, therefore, that my favourite statistic from the 2004 general election is the comparison between Barmer (of course) and South Mumbai, from where my friend Milind Deora won.

 

In area the Barmer Lok Sabha constituency is a little larger than Sierra Leone, and for the Euro-centric, larger than the Republic of Ireland. Most of the gram panchayats in Barmer would be larger than South Mumbai. And yet, in the month of May, Barmer recorded almost 64% polling while South Mumbai, I recall, had 44%. There would be a polling within walking distance of most buildings in South Mumbai, while in Barmer some voters are 40 or so kilometres away from their polling booths. So who influences policy in India – the poshest constituency, South Mumbai, or the largest and most rural, Barmer? The answer is foregone, and brings me back to the earlier thesis, that politics does not influence progress. When participation should normally be the criteria, then it is obvious that politics does not matter for progress. And so the islands of influence, and affluence, persist with planning, programmes, progress and performance to better the lives of the people of India.

And so it shall be five years down the line. The dateline will come, deadline near, and yet India will persist with its politics and structures. Progress will happen too, despite the politics, or lack of it. And the peculiarities of India will become ever more vivid. It defies conventions, statism, and planning. But all continue to happen at the same time. And in this phenomenon lies the beauty of India. Which can certainly become even more beautiful, sans silk and chiffon.