Commentary/Dilip Thakore
Politics is business because politicians are
incapable of succeeding in any other vocation
The Jain hawala scandal, the great Bihar fodder scam, the
Sukh Ram telecom rip-off, the JMM bribery case, the daylight sugar
robbery and now the blossoming ONGC oil exploration blocks scandal.
These are but some of the scams and scandals which are grabbing
the headlines as with the long overdue judicial spring-cleaning
the worms of the socialist order come crawling out of the nation's
crumbling woodwork.
And at the risk of being accused of repetitive, let me reiterate
that these scams and scandals are but the proverbial tip of the
iceberg. Even as you read this an estimated 40 million (2 per
public servants) scams, great and small, are being visited upon
the exchequer and the public.
Yet at long last, thanks to the courage and uprightness of the
judiciary and the media, the only institutions of democratic governance
to have survived the ravages of post-Independence India's unique
Midas-in-reverse political class, the details and mechanics of
the more colossal frauds practiced upon the nation are being exposed
to public scrutiny and horror.
Consequently no useful purpose other than to reiterate the magnitude
of the perfidy of the political class will be served by dwelling
on the fraud of the Constitution and the nation. However it might
prove illuminating to focus the searchlight upon the antecedents,
class composition and characters of the dramatis personae
neck-deep in the great scams of recent origin which have outraged
all right-thinking members of society.
Though this assertion is likely to greatly annoy proponents of
the gospel of political correctness, the truth is that the great
majority of frauds and tricksters in public service are of lower
middle class backgrounds with pronounced rural antecedents.
An understanding of the motivations, character and self-enrichment
methodologies of this aggressive class which is systematically
destroying the institutions of governance is a prerequisite of
cleansing the Augean stables of this high-potential nation.
The motivations of the new lumpen bourgeoisie which dominates
Indian politics are transparent. Insufficiently educated to succeed
in a meaningful way in business or the professions, this class
has transformed the formerly noble vocations of politics and public
service into the nation's most lucrative business.
Unfettered by ethical constraints which are the by-products of
sound education and/or a study and absorption of the tenets of
the world's great religions, post-Independence India's mofussil
politicians have exploited all the weaknesses of democracy and
the dogma of socialism to transform politics and the public services
into businesses managed with the objective of serving the narrow
interests of kith and kin at the expense of the wider public.
And unfortunately for the nation in this great grab-fest principled
and honest politicians have been marginalised and reduced to a
small minority.
It is important to also bear in mind that the rise of the nation's
lumpen bourgeoisie to positions of power and responsibility in
public service has been aided and abetted by the educated middle
class which has virtually succeeded from politics and latterly
from the civil services.
Moreover, the educated middle class which still dominates the
media and the judiciary has been consistently guilt-tripped into
creating political space for ill-educated rural and mofussil politicians
advocating positive discrimination for the 'backward'.
The clearance of the pernicious recommendations of the Mandal
Commission (which stipulated that over half of the public sector
employment should be reserved for backward castes as a measure
of empowerment of the underprivileged) by the Supreme Court, was
born of a liberal impulse.
But unfortunately it has had the effect of fracturing the carefully
nurtured unity of this polyglot nation and breathing new life
into archaic caste politics.
Abstractions such as national unity and the emergence of regressive
particularist politics apart, at the functional level the nation
and the general public has had to pay a high price for the adoption
of caste-based positive discrimination.
There is a direct nexus between the dramatic deterioration of
public - especially civic - services and the acceptance of caste-based
quotas in the public services. At a time in world history when
technology and human resource efficiency have coalesced to deliver
dramatic breakthroughs in productivity, it is disastrous to fill
institutions of public service with people selected on criteria
other than merit.
Moreover soft-state attitudes and liberal promiscuity have had
the ground-level impact of lending legitimacy to and sanctifying
illiteracy and ignorance.
Latter day politicians sprung from the subaltern classes tend
to wear their ignorance and lack of formal education as a badge
of pride and qualification for ministerial office.
And this absurd presumption has been encouraged by guilt-ridden
liberals within the intelligentsia and the media.
The consequences of artificially empowering the subaltern classes
by injecting them into institutions of government are visible
in the utter poverty and chaos which characterises contemporary
India.
Unlike leaders of the subaltern classes (such as Dr Ambedkar)
who struggled mightily against their historic disadvantages and
transformed themselves into highly educated individuals who rose
to high positions on merit and contributed handsomely to the national
development effort, contemporary backward caste leaders are characterised
by quasi-literacy and lack of principle. And their major contribution
to the nation is the culture of corruption, electoral malpractice
and violence.
Consequently it is high time that the nation's soft-headed intelligentsia
grasped the reality that for subaltern class politicians, politics
is a business for the simple reason that they are incapable of
succeeding in any other vocation.
At least not to the same extent. This hard-headed attitude of
subaltern class politicians to politics and public service explains
the spread of the corruption cancer to an unimaginable degree
within the body politic.
Yet to be fair it must also be conceded that the culture of corruption
is not the monopoly of the newly empowered subaltern classes.
The leaderhsip of the Congress party after the death of Lal Bahadur
Shastri was hardly of the subaltern class.
Both Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi were products of the upper
middle class though it is disputable whether they were sufficiently
educated.
But it is not clear that they played a major role in encouraging
and institutionalising corruption in politics if not the public
services. However, it is my argument that the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty
was exceptional.
I still maintain that it is only the educated middle class which
understands cause and effect sufficiently and has the managerial
capability to cleanse the nauseating pig sties of Indian politics.
Against this backdrop, the new unsparing attitude of the judiciary
and the media towards members of the political class who have
dipped into the public till is as welcome as it is overdue.
As politics and the management of the institutions of government
become more complex, there is need for a wider awareness of the
inherent limitations of the mofussil politicians and the subaltern
classes in general.
It is in the national interest that there is a growth of this
awareness which will prompt the ending of the romance between
the liberal intelligentsia and the subaltern classes and terminate
the unsustainable idealisation of the backward.
Dilip Thakore is the founder-editor of Business India and
Business World and former eidtor of Debonair.
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