RE: [MTC Global] Is India reinventing politics?

I do agree that with the advent of AAP on Indian political scene, there are new governing paradigms being concocted even as I am writing these lines. 

There is no doubt that AAP rule will implement certain new governing paradigms that would challenge corruption and hypocrisy widespread in Indian bureaucracy and businesses to the hilt. No one can deny that these two maladies are - in a major way -at the root of the stalled India's high-growth patterns that were projected just a short 5 years ago. Addressing these challenges frontally is not only necessary but, indeed, absolutely vital for the health of Indian democracy and economy.

A third and perhaps most significant challenge - that has largely been overlooked - for the AAP would be to pursue their agenda without causing a scare among businesses. the word "audit" and "oversight" especially by Government  engenders terror in the heart of business CEOs and causes a severe loss of productivity and motivation to grow. If the businesses feel that they are being monitored and watched by "big brother", a lot of their resources and creativity is expended on making CYA activities. I think Mr Kejariwal will do well to recognize this potential adverse impact of an overly enthusiastic drive to purge corruption or malpractices, especially as they relate to businesses. Can he recognize and walk the fine line? that is a million dollar question that only time will tell.

I know that many people in India - where being anti-big-business, anti-money is fashionable - would simply dismiss my concern as bogus and unfounded... but story of the US and W European economies and the emergence and  rise of Republican party, for instance, in the US, substantiates the validity of my concern. Some might say that if businesses are doing nothing wrong, they have nothing to fear. I beg to differ. I could reduce the argument to a common man level: if I am walking on a railway platform and their are cops who can search and arrest me - even with the assurance that no action will be taken if I am innocent - it still instills fear and I will work extra hard to make myself immune to being booked.

Ashok Kumar

Professor of Management

Fulbright Scholar

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From: join_mtc@googlegroups.com [join_mtc@googlegroups.com] on behalf of Richard Hay [profhay@gmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, January 02, 2014 12:44 AM
To: join_mtc@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [MTC Global] Is India reinventing politics? 

AAP's takeoff can bring in sea of changes in the Indian political arena. Similarly,  Modi's proven leadership can champion the cause of the middle class and the upper strata of the poor. Both are decisive factors which would herald a bold and new India which can ensure development of the country sans corruption. In the new world order, India will be able to become a strong player, following pragmatic  economic policies in the near future.A big change is essential to get out of the rut and the slumber, too many weaknesses of the system, and patronizing the old order- type of governance.

Prof Richard Hay

On Wed, Jan 1, 2014 at 11:16 PM, Prof. Bholanath Dutta <bnath.dutta@gmail.com> wrote:

Is India reinventing politics?

AAP has a chance to usher in a radical new programme of municipal management and decentralization of power

Chandrahas Choudhury, a novelist, is the New Delhi correspondent for World View. 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Indian democracy took a turn towards ancient Athens after the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) went to the people a second time in an attempt to resolve a political dilemma. The fledgling political outfit that earlier this month won 30% of the vote and 40% of the seats in elections in the city-state of Delhi invoked the notion of "direct democracy" in defence of its decision to hold a referendum on the question of whether it should make a bid to form a minority government in the capital.

 

In its manifesto, the AAP has borrowed from Brazil's Porto Alegre model of local government by popular consent. This makes it appear all of a sudden that the world's emerging markets are also emerging as the sites of new developments in democratic thought and practice—as indeed in the practice of authoritarianism and capitalism. New energies in India and Brazil are reworking forms of representative government that have settled into stasis in the developed world.

 

The referendum itself was a double-pronged affair involving a range of traditional and 21st century forms. It offered the citizens of Delhi the option of going to a set of public meetings that would return a single "yes" or "no" answer by popular vote, or of sending in their answers by text message or on phone. Some sceptics questioned, in my view wisely, the wisdom of such a referendum and the claim of "the will of the people" established by its results. After all, those who had voted for the AAP might be logically expected to be more willing than others to participate in such an exercise and to favour a "yes".

And so it turned out, with the party declaring a 75% yes vote from individual respondents and a 90% yes vote from 280 public meetings. After the referendum, the party's high command decided on 23 December to form the new government of Delhi.

 

There was much debate, however, of the wisdom of the AAP's move, which will involve a political version of sleeping with the enemy. The new government of Delhi will have a slender majority in the assembly only because of the support of the Indian National Congress, the very party that was comprehensively voted out of power in Delhi, returning only eight seats after three successive terms in power in the state. There is no love lost between the two parties, and a single phrase was enough to establish the fragility and mistrust of their compact. In a long interview, Arvind Kejriwal declared the AAP was actually "calling the Congress's bluff" in accepting the older party's offer of support from the outside.

 

Indeed, political innocence and experience could be seen jostling one other: The newest major Indian political party tried to set up a government without conceding the moral high ground, while the oldest one offered it a lifeline that might also yield advantages and power to itself just when it had resigned itself to life in the margins. A fascinating set of calculations and political tradeoffs were behind the AAP's move to form a government and the Congress's decision to support it, involving idealism and pragmatism, and the looming shadow of national elections.

 

The installation of a government in India's political capital and sole city-state will give the AAP a chance to usher in and test the feasibility of the radical new programme of municipal management and decentralization of political power envisioned in its manifesto and to appoint an anti-corruption authority with wide-ranging powers, called the Lokayukta, for which it has long pressured the major political parties without success.

 

The ascent to power and prominence in the national capital would allow the AAP to scale up quickly to make its presence felt in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections—especially, as the political scientist Ashutosh Varshney pointed out in a perceptive piece on the "AAP effect" on Indian politics, in the 200 or so urban and semi-urban parliamentary constituencies. That, the Congress anticipates, would enable the AAP to short-circuit the rapid rise of Narendra Modi, the leader of the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), whose development record in Gujarat and rhetoric of "strong governance" have won him a substantial constituency among young urban voters—a large new following distinct from the BJP's traditional upper-caste, predominantly north Indian vote base. A few months ago, with the Congress-led coalition government appearing moribund and directionless, it had looked like Modi was going to run away with the game in 2014, but as Siddharth Varadarajan argued on Bloomberg View, it looks likely now that the "Modi wave" is losing momentum.

 

But it's that same Modi wave that likely led the AAP to choose the course of forming a minority government over a new election in Delhi, as such an election would likely be tacked on to the national elections and might be overwhelmed by issues of national significance—such as Modi's attempt to turn it into a virtual referendum on himself. But of course the AAP has its guns trained on not just the BJP but the Congress, and had made a pre-election promise to investigate corruption in the previous Congress government of Delhi. Should things become too uncomfortable for the Congress in Delhi, it is certain to pull the plug on the new government. Few expect the new government of Delhi, then, to last its full term.

 

Every shade and nuance of political idealism and realism, calculation and compromise, was on view in this story, and what this ferment portends is that India is going to be supplying some of the most exciting stories of 2014.

 

 

Educate, Empower, Elevate

Prof. Bholanath Dutta

Founder, Convener & President

MTC Global & Knowledge Cafe

 

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