Chanakya's New Manifesto: To Resolve the Crisis Within India (3 page)

The central problem here is the absence of clarity and focus on the part of our leaders, as well as institutional inertia. A lack of effective governance in other words. Setting up various Groups of Ministers (GoMs) is not a substitute for action. The gravity of the challenge must be understood. Even if we assume that India will grow at about 8 per cent, with its population remaining constant, it will require three decades for it to surpass Brazil, and two decades to overtake South Africa, in per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) terms. It would take ‘29 years to overtake Russia and the UK and 35 years to even dream of overtaking the US. As for Asia’s other giant, China, which has a GDP per capita that is almost two and a half times the Indian figure, and outpaces our economic growth by two percentage points, the status quo in terms of growth rates would clearly mean India can never hope to overtake China.’
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2. DEMOCRACY: We have set up the essential structures of democracy, but the spirit of democracy is being asphyxiated by those very structures. Numerically, we are the world’s largest democracy, but the tenets that should make us the world’s largest effectively functioning democracy are given short shrift. Consider these facts.

Money and muscle power are still pervasive in our elections. Electoral reforms have been delayed. The arithmetic of elections is still disproportionately influenced by cynical considerations of caste and creed. The existing system operates to keep people with integrity and talent outside the democratic process.

The criminalization of politics has increased, not lessened. In the 2004 Lok Sabha, 128 members, or almost one-fourth of the house, had criminal records. In the 2009 elections, that number rose to 153, up by 20 per cent. This means that almost 30 per cent of those who represent us in the Lok Sabha have criminal records. Of these, 14 per cent have very serious cases against them, including murder, rape and extortion.

In most political parties there is a complete absence of inner-party democracy. Leaders spout democratic rhetoric, but suppress any voice of dissent or difference within their own ranks. Sycophancy, autocracy and a totally inert intellectual milieu is, therefore, the prevailing scenario in most political parties.

The dynastic impulse threatens to undermine our political ethos. No less than 41 per cent of Congress MPs have dynastic ties. This is not surprising since the unquestioned supremacy of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty has become the principle functional hallmark of the Congress. In Uttar Pradesh (U.P.), Mulayam Singh Yadav has anointed his son Akhilesh Yadav as the chief minister, and brought in several other family members to positions of power and authority. The same trend is visible in the case of many other parties. In Tamil Nadu, the entire state was sought to be made the personal fiefdom of the extended Karunanidhi clan.

There is a sense of national revulsion about the manner in which parliamentary proceedings are conducted. On most occasions what should be the temple of democracy is reduced to a place more reminiscent of a bazaar or mandi, with a hapless presiding officer pathetically failing to bring even a modicum of civility to the house. In the 2012 monsoon session, two legislators started brawling in the Rajya Sabha, and every day of the session saw adjournments in both houses, with almost no work done.

There is a general but strong feeling of alienation from the democratic process among our citizens, especially the young. People feel that politics is ‘dirty’, it requires too many ethical compromises, is riddled with black money, and nurtures people with questionable backgrounds and grossly inadequate competencies who have strayed into politics because they would have failed everywhere else. The imposition of a non-workable diarchy at the Centre has weakened the foundations of parliamentary democracy. In running a country as large and complex as India, it is essential to have a strong prime minister (PM). The ruling party is entitled to have an advisory role. On key issues it can submit suggestions to the PM, and the PM may voluntarily seek the counsel of senior party leaders. However, to have disproportionate power vested outside the formal executive, and to have the PM as a puppet-like nominee of that external power, is to make a travesty of the very foundations of executive functioning within parliamentary democracy. This has totally vitiated the balance necessary between a PM and his political party. Simultaneously, it has eroded the central authority which is needed to give focused direction to administration, fatally diluting the requisite discipline and accountability which should percolate down the line.

For any democracy to work optimally, the balance between the executive, the legislature and the judiciary has to be maintained. If any of them becomes weak or ineffective, or abdicates its role, the other constituents move in to fill the ‘functionality’ void, and in so doing, the structure of the whole edifice is wrecked. Today, the executive is weak, the legislature has lost credibility in the eyes of the people, and the judiciary is accused of overreach.

3. CORRUPTION: India is perceived by most observers as one of the most corrupt countries in the world. A perception that most Indians will wholeheartedly agree with. The prestigious Commonwealth Games of 2010 did not showcase India’s organizational efficiency in staging big international sporting events but only uncovered the corruption within the country to the world’s gaze.

There is almost no area in an ordinary citizen’s interaction with the government where this scourge has not spread. It is encountered when a person seeks a death certificate, driving licence, pension papers, ration card or passport; it has to be dealt with when one seeks to register property, pay water bills, house-tax or electricity bills, admit a child to school, get a hospital bed, or have one’s income taxes assessed. It has infiltrated the judiciary; it is the bedrock of the electoral machinery; and, it ubiquitously lubricates the workings of the executive machinery. And it is not just the privileged middle class who have to grapple with it; it is the poor who suffer the most.

Corruption within the country has ballooned to astounding proportions and the money it generates for those adept at it is stupendous, thanks to the mala fide distribution of state assets, like land, minerals or spectrum. The 2G scam is only the most conspicuous example of this new avatar of an old demon.

Corruption and the corrupt prosper because of the not unfounded belief of despairing observers that those who are powerful condone, collude with, and benefit most from corruption. This belief transforms itself to conviction when it is seen that the very investigative agencies that are meant to curb this menace are compromised or ineffective without the essential independence to proceed against the perpetrators who, more often than not, are the powerful.

Any reform measures (like the Lokpal Bill) require nationwide protests to see some hope of the possibility of enactment. The Lokpal Bill was first brought to Parliament in 1968; since then it was sought to be enacted nine times, each time unsuccessfully. The bill remains an intention even now.

The conviction of those who protest rampant corruption turns to anger when the track record of booking the corrupt is so abysmally low. Cases drag on for years; exemplary punishment exists only in the rule books; the judiciary is not only inexcusably tardy but also very often an accomplice of the corrupt, not to mention grossly understaffed. To give an example, in 2012, close to 50 per cent of the sanctioned strength for judges in the Allahabad High Court was vacant while over fifty lakh cases remained pending. To hope for quick and exemplary deterrent punishment in such a situation is to expect the impossible. Interestingly, the speed of judicial action in the country whose jurisprudential principles we have copied is an eye-opener. After the July 2011 riots in the UK, as many as 1,500 rioters were identified, prosecuted and put in jail in a matter of days, with judges sometimes sitting overnight to decide cases.

Black money has become the unseen but very visible template of the economy. Huge amounts are transferred through havala, or stashed away in Swiss banks, and the government expresses its helplessness to do anything about it.

The economic cost of corruption is no longer sustainable. According to Transparency International, corruption eats away 16.6 per cent of our GDP. A distinguished economist has pointed out that India ‘could have been growing faster by about 5 per cent, since the 1970s if it did not have the scourge of black economy. Consequently, India could have been an $8 trillion economy, the second largest in the world. Per capita income could have been seven times larger. India would then have been a middle-income country, and not one of the poorest. That has been a huge cost.’
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Desperately needed laws, especially in the area of enforcement, technological intervention, transparent regulatory mechanisms, and electoral reforms have been on the backburner for years. Electoral malpractice is, in particular, at the core of corruption in this country. Reform in this sector, including the auditing of accounts, and the mandatory declaration of political contributions, has been neglected for decades.

Most importantly, corruption has severely dented our self-esteem, notions of morality, respect for institutions, international image and belief in idealism. This loss cannot be computed in economic terms.

4. SECURITY: India has become a soft state, and is perceived as one. Zero tolerance to terror has to be our policy. Yet, there are no signs that this is going to happen any time soon.

The incontrovertible fact is that India is situated in the most dangerous neighbourhood in the world. A clear appreciation of this fact is woefully missing, and our defence planning—and preparedness—is thus, far below par. We have two implacably hostile countries on our borders—China and Pakistan—but our foreign policy, defence and security establishments are just not geared to deal with this reality. For instance, China can move thirty divisions with 15,000 soldiers each to the Line of Actual Control (LAC) within a month because of the military infrastructure it has built in Tibet, outnumbering Indian troops by three to one.

In addition, our foreign policy is inexcusably reactive without holistic, long-term, calibrated and unsentimental underpinnings to it. We remain forever undecided on what is the best way to handle a country like Pakistan. Our response to China’s carefully planned provocations, such as border intrusions, intransigence on the high seas, or stapled visas for those from Arunachal Pradesh, is ad hoc, defensive and apologetic. The policy planning divisions in the ministry of external affairs (MEA) have become cesspools of mediocrity. More damagingly, there has been a systematic dilution of the institutional functionality of the foreign office. The foreign affairs ministry has had progressively weaker ministers; as a result, the MEA, which otherwise has a fine cadre of officers, has abdicated its role of giving robust and considered advice on foreign policy matters to the government, and is content to follow the line decided upon by the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), with the foreign secretary mostly not even attempting to protect or project the MEA’s independent policy-making capacities.

Our response to the reality of externally sponsored terrorism is weak and sporadic. When an attack, such as the one on Mumbai on 26 November 2008, takes place, there is a flurry of pronouncements and statements of intent but the urgency soon abates. The unforgiveable Kargil invasion in 1998, which led to the avoidable deaths of hundreds of our young officers and soldiers, led to the appointment of a committee (the Kargil Committee chaired by Dr K. Subrahmanyam) but most of its recommendations have not yet been implemented.

Our intelligence apparatus is flabby; the coordination between different agencies is inadequate; the interface between the Centre and state police is inefficient. The response time to terror strikes is unacceptably tardy. There is no systematic analysis of actionable intelligence.

The situation has become more complicated because, apart from externally sponsored terrorism, we have the new phenomenon of homegrown terrorism. This requires an infinitely higher level of intelligence gathering, but there is no evidence that this is happening, especially since state police agencies are incompetent, and infiltrated by the underworld, many of whose constituents actually fund and sponsor this homegrown terrorism. Today, as many as 200 districts of the country are under Naxal influence. The state police apparatus that is expected to deal with this problem is pathetically inept and an inadequate response from the Centre makes matters worse.

There is insufficient understanding of the fact that terrorism needs to be handled quickly, effectively and decisively. Counter terrorism agencies are inadequately equipped (Ombale, the brave Mumbai police officer, died during the 26/11 attacks because he did not have a bullet-proof jacket), yet procurement is caught up in administrative paralysis and accountability fears; expensive equipment lies unutilized for lack of trained personnel. Bomb blasts at the Delhi High Court on 7 September 2011, revealed the scandalous fact that CCTVs had not been installed in such a sensitive institution even though an explosion had occurred at that very place only four months earlier. Photographs of bleached, rusting high-tech boats bought after 26/11 for coastal policing shocked the nation after the blasts in Mumbai in July 2011. There are six lakh vacancies in the police force waiting to be filled (India has the lowest ratio of policemen to population in the world), but only 90,000 posts were filled in 2010 and 10,000 more in 2011-12.

Even though 26/11 dramatically revealed how vulnerable our coastline is, our resolve to bolster security along the coast lies visibly unimplemented. Nothing illustrates this better than an incident in July 2011 when a 999-ton tanker, the MT
Pavit
, flying Panamanian colours, drifted undetected past multiple layers of coast guard and naval security. The Mumbai police sat on information about this intrusion for fourteen hours, and reached the spot twelve hours later.