- OPINION INDIA
- JULY 7, 2010
Seceding From India's Democracy
There is a mismatch between the country's economic aspirations and its political culture.
By SADANAND DHUME
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.
Associated Press
