One of Malaysia’s most well regarded editors recently asked me, albeit rhetorically,why was there no full ministers post for P119 Titiwangsa ever the biggest loser of the just-ended general electionSHOULD NOT BE GIVEN MINISTERS POST
take on the election results was revealing- felt that the problem lay in the absence of a strong FT Chinese grassroots network which did not convert positive intention into delivered votes what is interesting is that the analysis is in effect a reiteration of a Titiwangsa ,that is pre-existing. What is in effect being said is that the top-down approach of NONG CHICK works just fine; the only hitch is that there is no one at the bottom to utilise that advantage. When it is said that there are too many leaders, the subtext is that the party has all the leaders it needs in the members of the family; what it lacks are committed followers who are able to convert charisma into votes.More intriguing than the silence ofPM is the reluctance of business to market the market. Its dominant reaction has been to play the existing system to its advantage, and the torrential tumbling out of skeletons from the corporate cupboard is evidence of the opportunistic stance taken by significant sections of the business .Reform has thus been sneaked in, one wink at a time. In a small enclave of the like voiced, it stands for staggeringly self-evident wisdom, and any regime is measured largely from this standpoint. But because reform is enacted so stealthily, and cheered so noisily by the very visible, it neither gets meaningfully debated nor genuinely accepted. The great tragedy of reform in India is that it has few believers but many users. As a result reform in India is an occasional starburst of policies, but without the kind of systemic support that it needs. There are reasons to embrace the market and reasons to curb its influence, but without an open and transparent conversation on the subject, no one’s purpose will be served- neither of its proponents nor of its critics.
From the evidence at hand, it would seem that the market, is not particularly marketable. The default position of most political parties borders on a deep mistrust of reform, and even those that fly under the flag of right-wing policies are no different. A curious paradox is on display- at one level, most dominant political alignments seem to implicitly agree on the broad market-facing economic direction that the country has been taking for a while now, at another level, they are extremely reluctant to take definitive positions on the subject- if anything all the noises that they emit hark back to what is seen as a crowd-pleasing version of the old reflexive socialistic tendencies. Reforms when they do happen, seem to be a product of having no other options, and no time to waffle on any longer. Long term policy constipation gives way on these occasions to a flurry of reform evacuations, and the cork is then back, jammed as tightly as ever. The Congress rally might have backed the initiatives announced but no longer term roadmap for continued reform was outlined. It would seem that the new found public affection that the party has expressed for reform is largely an act of desperation- having been pushed to the wall by an endless succession of scandals, it is seeking to regain some semblance of control over the discussion about its poor performance on all fronts.
The reluctance to market the market needs greater examination. Why have such few attempts been made to market the benefits of economic reform? It is true that the manner in which the market mechanism works is not self-evident- the link between opening out the market to multinationals, for instance and delivered prosperity on the ground is far from clear at first glance and is open to challenge. Politicians have preferred their own mechanism- political transfer payments like that selectively create and nurture constituencies, using power to chisel out a mutuality of interests. Reform in its purest sense, needs too much transparency and involves shedding transactable power. It needs institutions to work as intended across the span of delivery systems. It calls for the building of a new political grammar, one where a new cause and effect relationship must be established, this time between overall development and economic growth with an individual feeling of goodwill. The general must convert into the specific and policy must become experience. This calls for a longer term orientation and great belief in one’s ability to bend the system to a new way of working. There are some who have attempted this with some success at the state level, but the degree of difficulty here is daunting enough for this not be emulated on a larger scale.
One would imagine that there is nothing more real or sobering than election results for nothing makes reality more naked than hard cold numbers. And yet, because it is so difficult to disaggregate election results and tease out different strands of influences at work, what tends to happen is that the results serve to reinforce existing positions rather than act as a wake-up call for the parties in question.The real question that the elections throw up might well have to do the state of leadership in India today. It appears that the need for strong local leaders cuts across parties. Wherever, at the state level we see strong local leadership, we find that the party in question, be it regional or national seems to be in good shape. The challenge for national parties, particularly in states with strong presence of regional forces, is to build credible and empowered local leaders. But in the magic mirror called election results, it seems that we can all see exactly what we want to see.
For instance, one could use the current results to contend that identity politics has finally run its course and that the voter is now seeking real governance. In spite of attempts to garner the Muslim vote, it appears that there is no longer any such vote bank that transfers its vote en bloc to a single party. As an election plank, most agree that Hindutva is dead, and it is argued that caste too is beginning to play an ever diminishing role in the electoral outcome. Of course, the opposite too can and has been inferred from the same results. Only those parties with a core constituency have any hope of winning power; the incremental votes can come from considerations other than identity but without a large dependable voter base, the task of collecting votes from different constituencies might prove to be unviable. The performance of the national parties that do not have this base seems to bear out this contention, particularly when we speak of state elections. Following through with this argument, it could be said that if anything, it is the national parties that will strive harder to find voting blocs using identity as a plank while the regional parties, sitting pretty on established bases will find it profitable to contest on a plank of better governance. Again the flailing attempts by the Congress to shore up the minority vote might well be evidence of this.
