Thursday, July 8, 2010

Seceding From India's Democracy By Sadanand Dhuma - The Wall Street Journal

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704535004575349960115576520.html

  • OPINION INDIA
  • JULY 7, 2010


Seceding From India's Democracy

There is a mismatch between the country's economic aspirations and its political culture.



If you're looking for a common purpose to bind India's communists, Hindu nationalists and a gaggle of regional and caste-based outfits try this: a program of tire burning, stone pelting and bus torching. On Monday, opposition parties took to the streets nationwide to protest a government decision last month to raise fuel prices. The protestors—for the most part mobs of placard-waving, slogan-chanting men—ensured a day of cancelled flights, shuttered businesses and empty schools. The estimated cost to the economy: 40 billion rupees, or about $854 million.
Associated Press
Monday's events point to an aspect of India's headlong rush toward development that rarely receives scrutiny: the mismatch between the country's economic aspirations and its political culture. On the surface, India is a democracy like any other—with an elected government, a professional bureaucracy and a legal system inherited from the British. But, unlike in most democracies, much of India's political class represents values at odds with the most productive element of society: the educated middle class. Where the middle class seeks order, the political class thrives on chaos. Where the middle class values hard work and thrift, the political class is synonymous with theatrics and public theft. Where the middle class dream is built on an education, a career in politics usually takes flight on a famous last name.
In large part, this reality is simply a reflection of Indian society. Estimates of the size of the middle class vary widely—from 55 million to 300 million people. The higher number tends to reflect the capacity to own basic consumer goods such as a cell phone, a television or a motorcycle. But while 300 million consumers may mean a lot to, say, Nokia or Samsung, the figure says little about the people stalling trains and threatening shopkeepers Monday. To put it bluntly, you may have a cell phone in your pocket and a television in your bedroom and still think of stoning a bus as a legitimate form of political protest.
According to the McKinsey Global Institute, only about 5% of Indians, or about 55 million people, have a disposable annual income of between 200,000 rupees and 1,000,000 rupees. While wealth offers only a crude shorthand for values, these are the citizens least likely to condone Monday's events, and most likely to know that destroying public property or harassing commuters to score a political point is alien to both the advanced democracies of the West and the newer ones of East Asia. This cohort, middle class by a global yardstick and not merely an Indian one, is also most likely to question the peculiar honor code of Indian politics, where a party stands to lose face, and with it influence, if it can't marshal the street muscle to bring ordinary life to a halt.
Already hobbled by relatively meager numbers, the educated and professional classes are also shut out by the nature of Indian political parties. Most of them—with the exception of the communists and the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party—are family fiefdoms. A culture that equates dissent with disloyalty precludes competitive internal party elections of the sort that are commonplace in the industrialized world. With the right combination of backroom maneuvering and administrative skill, a talented lawyer, doctor or banker may yet ascend the greasy pole of power. But this demands a willingness to wade into the muck of a notoriously corrupt system, and to play permanent second fiddle to a party's chosen princeling. Not surprisingly, the most ethical, talented and ambitious prefer to make their mark elsewhere.
Nonetheless, those locked out of the political process also have themselves to blame for their predicament. With their resources, capacity for organization and access to the media, they ought to punch above their weight rather than below it. Instead, in the richer neighborhoods in Delhi, Bombay and Bangalore, and in the gated apartment complexes springing up in satellite towns such as Gurgaon, people have chosen to secede from Indian democracy rather than to fix it. Captive generators provide power. Private guards provide security. The kids study in private schools and visit private doctors. For the most part, politics belongs to a distant world, glimpsed on television news, gossiped about at parties and, at best, participated in only when national elections come around every five years.
In the long run, however, this apathy is untenable. For educated Indians to get the politicians they deserve they must not only vote in larger numbers, but also seek a way to enter active politics. The quixotic attempt last year by Meera Sanyal, a senior banker with the Dutch multinational ABN Amro, to run for a seat in parliament from South Bombay, ought to serve as a symbol of inspiration rather than of derision. (Ms. Sanyal lost her deposit, winning only about 11,000 votes out of 640,000). Before he tarnished his image by getting involved in a dodgy cricket scam, Shashi Tharoor, a former top official at the United Nations and a member of parliament from the southern state of Kerala, showed that Indian voters are willing to give an outsider a chance.
Time is also on the outsider's side. With India's economy growing upwards of 8% a year, the numbers of those with a regular job, a home loan and a sense of professional purpose will continue to swell. According to McKinsey, by 2025 India's middle class will expand roughly tenfold to 583 million people or 41% of the population. At that time, presumably, politicians will no longer find purchase in clambering aboard a railway engine or bringing traffic to a halt in the national capital.
If more Indian politicians could think beyond the next photo opportunity, they would see the enormous potential—for their parties and for India—of courting the middle class. In an advanced democracy, political debates are won in newspapers and on television, and through orderly grassroots expressions of dissent such as the Tea Party movement. For India to join the developed world it needs much more than eight lane highways and spanking new airport terminals of the sort unveiled in Delhi last week. It needs to drag its politicians into the 21st century along with the rest of the country.
Mr. Dhume, a columnist for WSJ.com, is writing a book on the new Indian middle class.

THE LONELINESS OF SALMAN KHURSHID - By Vijay Simha - Tehelka Magazine, New Delhi, India

http://www.tehelka.com/story_main45.asp?filename=Ne030710salmankhurshid.asp


From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 7, Issue 26, Dated July 3, 2010
CURRENT AFFAIRS 
Ministry Tussle- Minority Affairs
THE LONELINESS OF SALMAN KHURSHID
Out of the blue, a campaign has picked up speed to displace the minister of minority affairs because he may be too secular.VIJAY SIMHA reports
image
Typecast Many colleagues but few friends: Khurshid with Prithviraj Chavan, Mukul Wasnik, Sachin Pilot and Ashok Gehlot during a trip to the Ajmer Dargah in Rajasthan
Photo: DEEPAK SHARMA
ONE OF the more liberal minds in the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, Minister of State (Independent charge) for Corporate Affairs and Minority Affairs Salman Khurshid, is in a state of worry these days. Baffling him is a turn of events he barely anticipated: a campaign against him for ‘betraying Muslims’ has reached the Prime Minister, and Khurshid is worried this might cost him half his job and set the cause of progressive Muslims back.
So upset is Khurshid that on June 19, he is believed to have told the Prime Minister’s Office he could not tolerate the campaign anymore and that the people behind it must be restrained. “I was startled. All kinds of things have been said. How did this happen?” Khurshid asks.
The issue is this: the Ministry of Minority Affairs is seen as a high profile perch from where political clout can be gained among the minorities, principally the Muslims. Therefore, the minister for minority affairs is a key entry in the wish list of several Muslim politicians. Khurshid is an author, media contributor, educationist, sports lover, and a deep friend of the canines. He is not known to have said or done anything regressive in public life, especially on Muslims. In short, Khurshid is seen as too secular.
A fear is being whipped up that Khurshid would, somehow, lose the Babri Masjid case
Among those apparently desiring to be India’s minority affairs minister is K Rahman Khan, Deputy Chairman of the Rajya Sabha. Khan is believed to be the force behind the campaign against Khurshid though the two were friends once. Khan is a businessman-politician from Karnataka who has spent long years in electoral and Muslim politics. He, say people in the know, is keen to move from a constitutional post with no powers to an executive post with power.
“Khurshid and I meet on and off, as we are friends. But I have never discussed minority issues with him. I have nothing to do with it (the anti-Khurshid campaign),” says Khan. But the gloves are off for a while now
The specific issue on which Khurshid is being criticised is the Wakf (Amendment) Bill, 2010, which the Lok Sabha passed on May 7. The Bill seeks to make Wakf properties more secure so they are not easy targets of poachers. For that, the Bill says Wakf properties must be registered. In India, where land ownership is rarely transparent, this is a daunting task. Wakf properties in many places are virtually hand-me-downs with no paper records of ownership.
The case being built up against Khurshid is that the Babri Masjid, which was demolished by rightwing supporters on December 6, 1992, was not registered. Therefore, Khurshid’s Wakf Amendment Bill would mean that Muslims cannot prove the Masjid existed. This, in turn, would hand over the Babri Masjid legal case to the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and other fundamentalist rightwing groups.
image
Better times Khurshid (L) and his critic Rahman Khan (R) with Vice-President Ansari
This is a tricky campaign to run. If it works, it could drive the Muslim community into rage, which might then be targeted at the person considered responsible: Khurshid. This is Khurshid’s main worry: a false case gaining mileage by exaggeration and destroying secular, progressive thought in the Muslim community. “The core issue is Section 87 of the Bill, which is on registration. If Wakf properties are not registered, we cannot fight cases as Wakf. Litigation will be superficial and fought on an individual basis. The chances of losing Wakf property are high then,” says Khurshid.
“Also, Babri Masjid is registered as Wakf property. When we said so, a smart alec said the court did not accept the registration. If that were so, it would have prevented Wakf from coming to court all these years.”
ALL THIS reached Prime Minister Manmohan Singh when a group of Rajya Sabha members and a group of Muslim clerics met him separately and complained that the Wakf Bill was a betrayal of Muslims. The campaign said Khurshid and, by extension, the Congress had deliberately passed the Bill on a Friday when most Muslims would be praying. “It was called a betrayal of Muslims by the Congress party. That it was a Friday and that we pushed through something harmful for Muslims while they would be praying. In order to say something else, an exaggerated charge was being laid,” says Khurshid.
The attack on Khurshid is coming largely from the Rajya Sabha because the Wakf Bill has to be passed by them before it becomes law. Rahman Khan is Deputy Chairman of the Rajya Sabha. “As a person of a minority community, I give my opinion when it is sought. There is definitely scope for improvement in the functioning of the Minority Affairs Ministry. It was established for the development of minorities, but there is general discontentment that government schemes are not reaching the beneficiaries. There is a need for close monitoring of the ministry.”
Khurshid has an opposite view. “Why is this being called a betrayal of Muslims? Is someone trying to create an issue where there is none? They are feeling frustrated that the government is doing a great job. So, they say let us create a distraction and a controversy. There is more than meets the eye here. You come to me if you differ and explain why Section 87 should be taken back. The positive work is hurting someone who doesn’t want minorities to acknowledge the work. It is sad that this is weighing heavily on the heart of someone.”
Another issue on which the PM has to take a side on.