#
Before you listen to this episode of The Scene in the Unseen, I have a recommendation for
#
Do check out Pullia Baazi, hosted by Saurabh Chandra and Pranay Koteswane, two really good
#
Kickass podcast in Hindi.
#
Why are there no good people in Indian politics?
#
That's a question I often hear and much of the time it's a rhetorical question, a lament.
#
I attempted an explanation for this in a column a few months ago through the lens of economics
#
as you'd expect, looking at the incentives of leaders through the ages.
#
We had great leaders during our freedom struggle because the men and women who stepped forward
#
had little chance of acquiring any kind of power or personal glory and were instead animated
#
by ideals and principles and similar silly little things that are missing in modern politics.
#
The politician today, on the other hand, seems motivated only by the lust for power, by the
#
desire to be part of the parasitic rent-seeking apparatus of government, by the desire to
#
rule rather than serve.
#
Political parties today are like rival mafias competing for the levers of power and in these
#
circumstances most self-respecting people stay the hell away from politics.
#
This does not mean that all politicians are bad people, just that it becomes almost impossible
#
for even a good person in Indian politics, once she has entered the fray, to do good
#
This is not just because of the incentives that draw people to politics, but also the
#
nature of the political economy, which almost seems designed sometimes to paralyze action.
#
The incentives of politics are morally corrosive, the circumstances of politics require virtue
#
Does that mean that there is no cause for hope in Indian politics?
#
That's usually my default position, but at the end of recording the episode you're about
#
to listen to, I had reason to be a little less cynical.
#
I hope you are as inspired as I was at the end of it.
#
Welcome to The Scene and the Unseen, our weekly podcast on economics, politics and behavioral
#
Please welcome your host, Amit Verma.
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Welcome to The Scene and the Unseen.
#
My guest today is J.P. Narayan, founder of the Lok Satta movement, a man who joined the
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IAS in the late 70s for the right reasons and then left the civil services to start
#
a political movement where he spearheaded many different reforms designed to make our
#
country a better place.
#
I'm recording this intro a week after my conversation with him in Hyderabad and he's
#
not in the room, so I don't run the risk of embarrassing him when I say that he is one
#
of the people I most admire in modern India.
#
J.P. is a rare public intellectual who, instead of complaining from the comfort of his armchair,
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like so many of us do, jumped into the rough and tumble of Indian politics to try and change
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the system from within.
#
His journey in Indian politics has been fascinating and every time I speak to him, I feel like
#
my brain is expanding and my understanding of the world is so much better.
#
J.P. was a guest on episode 50 of The Scene and the Unseen, almost two years ago, and
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I'm glad I got the chance to sit down with him again to take a wider, more discursive
#
look at his journey in Indian politics.
#
Before we get to that conversation though, let's take a quick commercial break.
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JP, welcome to The Scene in the Unseen.
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Amit, my pleasure to be with you.
#
The last time we spoke, almost a couple of years back, in episode 50 of The Scene in
#
the Unseen, in fact, and I was glad that I had someone like you to bring that number
#
It was a very different show.
#
I did much shorter conversations.
#
Our conversation was something like 40 minutes over a phone and, you know, over a period
#
of time, the show has evolved to much longer, discursive, relaxed conversations.
#
So I want to, you know, start this off not by, you know, asking you the typical questions
#
everyone will ask you about Indian politics and where are we and so on and so forth.
#
But tell me something about your personal journey, like where did you grow up?
#
Where was your childhood?
#
Amit, first of all, it's amazing to me that you could actually hear a podcast running
#
into a couple of hours and a very relaxed conversation because in this time and age,
#
everybody tells you that people have no patience beyond 10 seconds.
#
So it's actually quite stunning to me that something like this is working and I must
#
congratulate you and the team.
#
My journey is pretty normal, very ordinary.
#
I grew up in a village.
#
My parents were in Maharashtra.
#
My father was engaged in the railways in a small little town in Maharashtra.
#
But because we're of Telugu speaking origin, my parents decided to send me to my mother's
#
village, where there was a school, because my father's village didn't have a school.
#
It didn't have a high school.
#
So I think I studied there for eight years, though I joined class one and some early promotions
#
So my whole universe at that time was that village and the school and what little you
#
learned from the school textbooks.
#
Beyond that, I don't think I had any idea what was happening.
#
Maybe one knew the name of the chief minister or education minister.
#
But what it meant also, I don't think I really understood.
#
There's a normal talk about freedom struggle, very panegaric kind of thing, you know, we
#
read in textbooks and stuff like that.
#
And some notions of patriotism without understanding what it really means.
#
I suppose mostly idolatrous patriotism, Bharat Mata kind of a thing.
#
Then I went to a Jesuit college for plus two, what we call college in this part of the country.
#
After 10th grade, you have to do two years of plus two course.
#
Went to the Jesuit college in Vijayawada, a neighboring town, a significant town, not
#
obviously not a big city, but a significant town for us, a big city in those days.
#
That college opened up my eyes quite a bit because for the first time exposed to people
#
from all over the Telugu land, some even from other states.
#
I remember some friends from Kerala and quite a few from Hyderabad and elsewhere.
#
So the world is a little wider, beginning to understand what the world is like.
#
At the age of 13, I was there for two, two and a half years because I did two years course.
#
And then before joining medicine, I continued because there was a delay in admission.
#
Then medical school, again, another town quite close within another 20, 30 kilometers from
#
Probably the age of about 16 or so, my world began to open up.
#
So it's curious that now you have this podcast.
#
I have great fascination for radio because much of my young adult life was spent on radio.
#
I listened to BBC probably about eight to 10 hours a day.
#
This was back in the village or when you were in college?
#
No, not in the village.
#
Once I went to college, maybe once I was about 16 years of age or 15 years of age, I procured
#
a transistor radio and then I listened.
#
In fact, almost everything that I knew about the world, I picked up from the BBC, BBC radio
#
Probably there was a time when there was nothing that happened anywhere in the world that I
#
did not know within half an hour because I was listening every half hour, every hour,
#
And it was an amazing experience, the least costly experience to get some modicum of understanding
#
72 American presidential elections I remember I followed very closely, every single state,
#
the primaries and then the election, et cetera.
#
Then the Watergate, blow by blow, on an hourly basis I knew what was happening, again thanks
#
And on the same time, if you recall in the 70s, the anti-corruption movement in India,
#
some amount of unrest and anger from the youth, because we already finished about 25 years
#
of freedom, there was some amount of frustration creeping in.
#
And therefore, Gujarat, now Nirmadan Dholan and then JP's movement in Bihar, then spread
#
I was one of those hundreds of thousands of Indians, young Indians, deeply impacted by
#
Again I was following Allahabad High Court proceedings, blow by blow.
#
So probably most of my life was about what's happening around me rather than my medical
#
education or something.
#
That I was paying enough attention to be able to understand what the profession is about
#
and acquire some skills, but basically it was about the world.
#
Emergency changed life, many of us, for me certainly.
#
I was angered, I was deeply disappointed and I was rebellious.
#
1975, I was 19 years old, 19 years old.
#
And I very vocally opposed emergency, wherever there was an opportunity, extremely vocally
#
And I led some small teams of protest, not on the street, I was never for street marches
#
and stuff like that, but going to the officials and giving a signed petition and that sort
#
Apparently, I didn't know at that time, I knew later, I was kept under surveillance.
#
They felt I was sufficiently nuisance to be able to keep track of me, but I was pretty
#
inconsequential and therefore there was no reason to arrest me.
#
So I was somewhere in between.
#
I got to know about that later when I got into the civil services, because there was
#
a delay in my, the invitation to join the National Academy, the results were published
#
I got a pretty decent position.
#
I was surprised, I got to know later because the police clearance took time because of
#
the surveillance earlier.
#
Then after I finished medicine, medicine of course is a different world altogether.
#
Therefore, you have a, you acquire an understanding of the society as it is, because the sickness
#
and the causes of sickness and not everything is really medical, it's actually more about
#
the way we structured our society, your drinking water, your sanitation, your mosquito control
#
and your infections and so on and so forth, your immunizations and so on and so forth.
#
Depend the perception about the country and its governance.
#
Post-emergency, there was so much of elation followed by very quick dejection.
#
That's when somebody suggested to me, why don't you join the civil services, you're
#
You're obviously not looking for a traditional career as a doctor, you're worried about the
#
Just then, doctors were allowed to join the civil services.
#
Until that time, doctors were prohibited for some strange reason in this country, who knows
#
I mean, it doesn't have to be very logical, but they simply said, doctors are banned.
#
But the ban was lifted.
#
Then I joined the civil service.
#
But by the time I think I was pretty clear what my goal in life is, not a career, not
#
a job, but an opportunity to actually try and make the democracy work the way it should.
#
Because those years between 1973 and 1977, let us say, or maybe even post-77, 78, 79,
#
because until we understood the crisis after Janatha's success, I don't think I understood
#
the nature of governance crisis.
#
Otherwise, I thought Indira Gandhi was the problem once she's removed and Janatha came
#
to power, things would be fantastic.
#
So I suppose I also had to see the failure of Janatha to understand it's a deeper crisis
#
So since then, I've been pretty clear that we have to make our democracy work and we
#
can make it work if we really design it a little better.
#
And all my life in government and out of government has been a quest for that.
#
You know, there's this famous essay by the philosopher Thomas Nagel with the title of
#
something like, What is it like to be a bat, where he essentially postulates that a bat
#
experiences the world so differently from human beings in terms of using echolocation
#
instead of sight and so on and so forth, that we cannot possibly get inside the head of
#
It is impossible to understand that.
#
And just thinking aloud, you know, when you were talking of sort of growing up in your
#
village and when I even look back at myself growing up in the 1980s and so on in relatively
#
privileged circumstances, it strikes me that young people of today can have no possible
#
conception of the influences that young people of today can access all the knowledge in the
#
They get information from various sources, there is so much culture coming at them, everything
#
When I was growing up in the 80s, you know, if you wanted specific kinds of international
#
music, you had very little available to you, you had to, I mean, just getting a mixtape
#
of the music you wanted was such a remarkable personal triumph and a triumph of discovery.
#
And in your case, it's, you know, you kind of grow up in a village and then you go to
#
a medical college, but you have access to the BBC and there's a sort of a world of information
#
and it just strikes me how we are shaped by the contingency of the influences that are
#
And it then strikes me that at a wider level, you know, even our society and politics is
#
perhaps changed by this because I imagine not everyone in your generation is sort of
#
listening to the BBC or has a kind of wonkish interest in American politics that you do
#
and therefore that sort of broader interest.
#
So I imagine in that sense, you were an outlier.
#
Can you tell me a little bit about what are the things that young people were into in
#
Where did they get their influences from?
#
Were there political instincts, the typical tribal or communitarian instincts that you
#
Was there sort of deeper engagement?
#
Where do you get your ideas from?
#
I think there were several strands, if I may conjecture.
#
One is the kind of thing, very traditional kind of thing, freedom struggle, romantic
#
notions of the nation and Bharat Mata and very romantic idealism without any deep understanding
#
and so on and so forth, without any exposure.
#
The second is people with slightly more exposed background in cities and so on and so forth
#
with greater understanding of economic activity.
#
I think by that time, there was a beginning of anger against socialism, just the beginning.
#
It didn't get mature because even Loknag JP, all his demands were to make socialism work
#
It was not really about the role of the state clearly defined and so on and so forth.
#
But I could see at least in my medical school quite a few and at that time, because I was
#
not exposed to that and I didn't understand enough, I was both curious and surprised because
#
that was heterodox at that time.
#
The third is a strong ideological thing, right or wrong.
#
The leftist movement had a profound impact on the psyche.
#
Lots of discussions, literature, debates, the media and many colleges had that impact
#
Sometimes with some understanding, sometimes without much understanding, sometimes tribalism,
#
sometimes based on ideas.
#
Then at a global level, Vietnam war during my early youth was a profound influence.
#
It's very difficult for people of this generation to even contemplate that it could sway so
#
I remember when Haiphong blockade was ordered by Nixon, I thought that was the end of the
#
I was shaken beyond belief.
#
I was horrified that something like that could happen.
#
I remember some of my seniors in medical school laughing at me because of my very apoplectic
#
concern, things like that.
#
So that also had some impact.
#
But at least people of a certain background, the kids who were doing academically reasonably
#
well, et cetera, there was also this relentless focus on their own professional skills and
#
equipment themselves with knowledge.
#
What I find is despite the obvious deprivation at the time, the kids then were far more confident
#
about the future, which is amazing.
#
With so few opportunities, there was no deep seated insecurity, whereas today with all
#
the opportunities, I actually sense a lot more insecurity and a lot more propensity
#
for depression and some disquiet about the future, which is actually pretty surprising.
#
Of course, in those days, the only pastime for my generation was films.
#
Apart from reading books, I used to read a book a day at some stage of life, all kinds
#
A book a day, a book in two days was the norm in those days.
#
So hungry, I was waking up for all the lost time and I couldn't read much.
#
That apart only films, whereas today I think one disadvantage that this generation suffers
#
is that there are so many impulses, so many stimuli, that it's very hard to focus.
#
Your mind cannot be consistently focused on things that really matter, at least in your
#
own mind, but that apart, I don't think that when we grew up, we felt there was any sense
#
It's only retrospective and you look back, you realize, no, my God, we actually endured
#
In fact, one of my friends who was a guest on the show, Suyash Rai, a political scientist
#
in Delhi, he once theorized that people in the first century AD were much happier than
#
we are today, to which my response was, how is that possible?
#
There were no smartphones.
#
There was no air conditioning.
#
How could they be happier?
#
But I guess that's subjective.
#
You were speaking of reading and like reading a book a day and so on, something that I also
#
kind of try to do and I keep proselytizing the importance of reading.
#
So I once wrote this column called the Aakho Dekhi Prime Minister, and that was based on
#
something a friend of Narendra Modi told me about him.
#
And the anecdote was, she mentioned how she was a personal friend of Mr. Modi and how
#
she was once sitting with Mr. Modi at his house when he was CM of Gujarat.
#
And he was relating this anecdote about how when he was a kid, his mother was ill.
#
And he went to turn on the fan because she felt very hot and he flicked the switch on
#
and the fan did not come on because there was no electricity.
#
And as Modi related the story, his eyes welled up with tears.
#
And the point my friend was making was that his view of the world, according to her, was
#
very experiential because he had experienced that lack of electricity and therefore the
#
He then made it a priority when he came to power to, for example, get power all through
#
Gujarat because he understood that.
#
And in her view, his view of politics is very experiential.
#
So things that he can experience directly like roads are important, power is important,
#
he tries to do the cleanliness is important, he tries to do things about that.
#
But a lot of the business of governance, of running an economy, rely on abstract concepts
#
that you cannot experience like spontaneous order, like, you know, the positive someness
#
of things, which is very unintuitive.
#
And therefore my point was that you have to continuously read to expand your knowledge
#
of the world because ultimately we make sense of the world by building narratives about
#
The more dots we have, the clearer our pictures and it seems to me the only way we can accumulate
#
those dots is by reading, not by watching news television or, you know, talking to people
#
So in your experience through your career, not just in politics, but in the IAS and so
#
Like are there understandings of the world ossified from an early age into whatever is
#
received wisdom or whatever little scraps they might experience, which I mean, do people
#
read and would you even say that that's a fundamental problem that people don't read
#
It's interesting what you say about Mr. Narendra Modi.
#
Each of us, we learn about the world in the early days only through experience, a child
#
I remember in my stupid days, you know, when I didn't have electricity in my home where
#
I grew up with an old aunt of mine, a childhood widow.
#
Again, these are important influences that shape your mind that a child could be married
#
and she could be a widow and she refused to remarry.
#
You understand our society a lot more because it's very real, it's personal.
#
So in order to understand what electric shock was, I kept hearing about it, I didn't know
#
I actually put my finger in that socket and then I asked these chaps to switch it on.
#
And I felt I was shaken, I didn't know it was a shock.
#
If I have to learn everything that way, then I think mankind would be particularly tribal.
#
Therefore this Chakya Pramana as our own tradition says, this experiential thing, well, it's
#
The world grew and became sophisticated and there are so many complex social interactions
#
and economic interactions because of many of the pramanas.
#
You learn from others' experience.
#
That is what humanity is about.
#
An animal learns only from its own experience.
#
Mankind because of the gift of language, gift of speech, we have the capacity to learn from
#
others' experience and also pass it on to the next generation.
#
Without that there's no intellectual evolution, there's no economic growth, there's no social
#
Sadly, in our country, in a substantial measure, you cannot generalize, obviously, there are
#
many, many exceptions, education in an insecure society is seen as a passport to employment
#
or some kind of an economic prospect.
#
And many, many people after they have arrived, quote, unquote, you got into IAS for instance
#
or you're doing well in a business or a profession or something else, except to the extent that
#
if it's an economically productive business, like you have a medical doctor and you have
#
to be up to date in order to be able to practice better, certainly doctors to that extent do
#
try to update their knowledge.
#
If you're a child accountant and you have to understand what's happening on a day-to-day
#
basis, the laws and the procedures and so on and so forth.
#
But beyond that, I think the capacity to learn on a continuing basis and enrich yourself
#
is significantly less in our society than it should be for a country of such tremendous
#
depth and strength in our intellectual tradition.
#
I think this is a serious problem, even in the civil services and the very lack of specialization,
#
the notion that almost anybody can do any job in this day and age, that the generalized
#
all-purpose service with some vague sense of common sense is enough to really administer
#
a very complex affairs in the modern world is absurd.
#
I remember I was appointed as MD of an Apex bank, two Apex banks actually, in the cooperative
#
sector long-term and short-term in the then combined state of Antipodesha.
#
I knew nothing about banking, zero.
#
I was so embarrassed and ashamed.
#
I spent quite a bit of time, normally I had some humility.
#
I tried to learn always whenever I entered a new job from my predecessors.
#
They told me everything that they thought was relevant, including the caste of each
#
of my senior staff officers and who is good, who is not good, who is competent, who is
#
corrupt, very valuable and very accurate by and large.
#
But they forgot to mention or they did not know the two most important things for those
#
banks at that point of time.
#
The bank when I joined had 8% recovery rate.
#
It was after Chaudhary Devi Lal's loan waiver, 8% recovery rate.
#
As a consequence, the bank was the biggest default in India's history to the Apex bank,
#
to the national bank in Nepal.
#
These were the two most important things for a chief executive to know.
#
I became the chief executive without knowing that.
#
Now that the bank survived me is a miracle.
#
But this is our approach in general, perhaps in society and very definitely in governance
#
I don't think we are doing ourselves a great service by that approach.
#
Speaking of reading, what was sort of like one question I often ask my guests is if they
#
can name one or two or more books which changed the way they think about the world, like books
#
which sort of gave you that kind of aha moment, like for me those aha moments without referring
#
to particular books was for example when I understood how natural selection works, which
#
obviously then takes away the need to believe in God.
#
So that's just an example of one kind of aha moment a person can have or how markets work
#
or the wonder of spontaneous order and so on.
#
What were your sort of formative aha moments and the books or thinkers who gave you those
#
moments who influenced you?
#
Undoubtedly the most influential thinker early on in my life was Bertrand Russell.
#
See coming from a village background and the traditional, the normal notions of God and
#
so on and so forth, Russell opened my eyes to this whole rational approach, this questioning
#
and a very soothing, soft, systematic approach to knowledge.
#
To me it's amazing the way I felt empowered, energized by Russell.
#
Is his essay on atheism something you're thinking of?
#
I read several of his works at that time.
#
So it's not one particular work but in general quite a lot including his biographies and
#
autobiographies and so on and so forth.
#
The other influences once I was grounded in some of the basics of these things.
#
Some of them are fashions of the moment which I later really did not take seriously.
#
And for instance now those days Albert Camus kind of things.
#
But I don't think they left a profound impact on me except Camus, the question, the myth
#
Why the hell are you doing what you're doing and where do you have to live?
#
You have to find an answer in life.
#
Except that the right question and trying to find your own answer I don't think the
#
impact has been very great.
#
But as I said this whole evolutionary biology and increasingly I find that I'm attracted
#
to anthropology, how human society has evolved over a period of time.
#
One of the recent books that impressed me most with the scholarship and insights is
#
Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel for instance.
#
Or even more recent impact would be somebody like Harare who tried to make us understand
#
how complex relationships build complex organizations.
#
With Sapiens and Homo Deus.
#
So there are many, many people and increasingly I find that I don't read fiction these days,
#
I read mostly fiction in those days when I read a book a day, both fiction and non-fiction.
#
But today it's selective fiction, it has to be economics or governance related or philosophy
#
or anthropology or history, biography, things of that kind.
#
And many of, as far as economics and politics are concerned, many of the received notions
#
that even I got in college are kind of vaguely left liberal notions which emphasize the role
#
of the state in bringing about welfare and so on and so forth.
#
At what point did you start thinking differently about economics and even politics, which is
#
Indian politics has such a focus on particularities?
#
It's a very good question.
#
Economics, many of my generation, it's very difficult for young people today to understand
#
how seduced we were by the notion of the state being the center of the universe.
#
Socialism, public sector, it was natural things.
#
But luckily while I was also part of that brigade which broadly believed in the goodness
#
of the state and public sector, I was never a Marxist, I don't even know why.
#
Probably there was too much influence of Gandhiji's thinking and the reverence for Gandhi in me
#
to go for the Marxist doctrine because the collectivization and killing the individual
#
spirit and of course the violence that was necessary complement the traditional Marxism.
#
I think all those repel me a great deal.
#
But I think the broad tendency was a little pink.
#
I think that changed dramatically when I became, in 1984, Special Officer of the Sarkapartnam
#
It was then India's largest public sector undertaking in terms of no investment, 8,000
#
Now it doesn't seem to be a big money.
#
A billion dollars is not a big money now, but a lot of money at that time.
#
8,000 crores then was probably three, four billion dollars.
#
But more important, given India's kitty, it was a very big sum.
#
Very soon I realized that public sector in India is private sector of those in public
#
It has nothing to do with the people of the country.
#
The word public seduced us because words, when we use them repetitively, they could
#
actually give a different meaning to your mind altogether different from what actually
#
Since then I've been an implacable supporter of the market, wherever market works and competition
#
and choice are possible, and the very clearly defined limited role of the state, though
#
I always understood the importance of the state, therefore my whole life is about how
#
to make the state work better.
#
So I'm not one of those who would say the market offers all solutions.
#
That's a silly notion, but I always had a very clear notion.
#
I remember in 1991 May, on the 4th of May, the Economist wrote a brilliant 28-page essay
#
on India, Clive Crooke.
#
Till date I think it's probably the most insightful, most seminal essay on India.
#
In those days, economic reform did not come yet.
#
It came two, three months later.
#
In those days, I made hundreds of copies, those days we had to Xerox it.
#
There was no other means, no internet, no nothing.
#
We didn't hear these expressions.
#
You sent links to people by taking physical Xeroxes and sending it to them.
#
And I sent to prominent editors, owners of big newspapers, significant people in the
#
country, hoping that they would actually go through it and then rethink many of their
#
So that's the economic thing.
#
Since then I've been absolutely clear, unless we define the role of the state clearly and
#
unless the state performs that role very well, efficiently and fairly, the economy will be
#
in shambles and society will be in shambles.
#
By expanding your remit and trying to do everything and doing everything generally badly, we messed
#
up our society and governance.
#
I have absolutely no doubt about it.
#
About politics, I think it was the contrast between what was happening in India and what
#
happened in Watson, Watergate trials, relative to what we were doing to ourselves.
#
Nixon's follies were very marginal.
#
Let's be a little practical about it.
#
But in those days, like many young people, idealistic, no room for any error, you have
#
to be absolutely correct and moral kind of a thing.
#
Dogmatically virtuous is the right expression.
#
I like many other people across the world, I'm sure, genuinely believed that Nixon was
#
In retrospect, I actually believe that minus Watergate, he was a pretty good president,
#
a pretty good statesman too.
#
But anyway, at the time, the way the system dealt with the infractions of the mightiest
#
leader in the country, the whole process, because I was following the congressional
#
hearings, et cetera, on radio, we had no access to TV, and TV was not available in India for
#
most people most of the time.
#
And that versus what Mrs. Gandhi could do and get away with, including finally the imposition
#
of emergency and incarceration of 100,000 people, almost every significant voice in
#
And the contrast was extraordinarily clear to me.
#
And I remember in 74, just two days after Nixon resigned, I wrote an editorial for my
#
I was the editor for the English section.
#
Somebody showed it to me the other day, some 40 years later, it's pretty much summarizes
#
what I'm doing even today, except that it was more breathless and more youthful.
#
Maybe a little bit more certain, but pretty much by that time, I was pretty clear what
#
When I look back, I realized that I am what I was in many ways then.
#
And it's interesting how the timelines work out where you describe your disillusionment
#
with politics because of the emergency, but at the same time, you get into the IAS with
#
a lot of idealism about changing the country.
#
And my father was also an IAS officer, and he describes to me, he joined in the mid 60s,
#
63, 64 sometime around then.
#
And he talks about how he joined with so much idealism and wanting to do good for the country,
#
which I am of course skeptical of because nowadays we know what the bureaucracy is and
#
why people would want to join the IAS, what those incentives would be.
#
But he kind of retained his idealism in a manner of speaking for much longer than one
#
would have expected right to after retirement.
#
But in your case, you've already spoken about like one aha moment where you realized that
#
the public sector is actually the private sector of those in public office.
#
What was the process of that idealism turning to cynicism?
#
And therefore, at what point did you begin to think that I cannot make the change I want
#
I have to get into politics.
#
My journey was not of that kind.
#
I didn't join the IAS for a career.
#
I joined for an opportunity, because even by that time, I remember vividly thinking
#
actually politics is not an option.
#
When I look back, politics was a much better option than it is today, to be truthful.
#
And yet, from my young mind, impressionable mind and seeing the way things were happening,
#
even by that time, if you're not a person of means or pedigree, and if you want to stick
#
to certain norms that you imposed on yourself, then political career was not an option.
#
But here is an option where your ability and hard work alone can take.
#
You don't require anybody's patronage.
#
You don't require to compromise your moral compass.
#
And I could sense, I didn't know initially exactly what I was looking for, but I knew
#
it would afford me an immense opportunity to understand and to make a difference.
#
And I don't think I was disappointed.
#
It certainly gave me a ringside seat and therefore a much deeper understanding of our system
#
It worked and many people believe that my results were pretty out of the ordinary.
#
And that's because the bar in India is so low that almost anybody who applies himself
#
or herself a little bit appears to be outstanding.
#
I was one of those lucky ones to get the public support and adulation and support of all political
#
I must also be very fair.
#
While I had my battles, I never took them seriously in the sense that, no, I can't really
#
There was so much pressure on me and therefore I had to, there's nothing heroic.
#
I genuinely believe that across the spectrum, while I had my battles, they all respected
#
me and gave me space and therefore I could achieve results which were generally regarded
#
as way out of the ordinary and put in place, actually implement some of my ideas in terms
#
of people's empowerment, in terms of changing the way things work, in terms of decentralization
#
of power, designing in a manner that incentives are altered, et cetera.
#
All the ideas that I espouse now and try and work on, I actually could implement wherever
#
is possible and with exceptional results.
#
So mine was not a case of cynicism or frustration and I count on non-performance or a sense
#
that my hands and feet were tied.
#
It was that I could see that when I'm lionized, I could see my performance probably is about
#
20 or 30 on a scale of a hundred and because in this benighted country, the performance
#
on an average is about five or six, this 20 or 30 is seen as outstanding.
#
I was deeply troubled by that and I used to say that to the public repeatedly on a scale
#
of a hundred, what I'm doing is 20, 25 and you're so happy because I used to use the
#
expression Alpa Santosh, we are contented so little because we don't realize how much
#
more is possible and necessary unless we are habitually able to do 70 or 80 on a scale
#
All our individual heroism is of no consequence.
#
I was clear enough to understand that.
#
It was that that drove me and once I understood that pretty early on in my career, I realized
#
that the bigger change had to happen and as I developed that thinking and a model as to
#
what required to happen, the only question is when, not whether.
#
So when I felt that, yes, I mean, I have learned something, that's not enough, but maybe now
#
I would actually move into a different area now to try and make those changes happen.
#
It's not cynicism at all.
#
In one aspect, it seems to me that your drive in politics to make things better and as the
#
imperative that drives you to get into politics in the first place is more reminiscent of
#
pre-independence politicians and politicians today.
#
Like one lament that is often made by people is that look at the quality of leaders and
#
statesmen that we had in the 30s and 40s and before that and contrast it with what we have
#
And I'd once written a column sort of speculating on why this could be the case and it struck
#
me that to a certain extent it might boil down to incentives because if you had to take
#
part in the freedom struggle at that time, you had virtually no chance of succeeding
#
or gaining power in a meaningful sense, power over other people.
#
You were driven only by ideals.
#
You did it because it mattered to you in an idealistic sense and you would sacrifice everything
#
You were not out there to make money or exploit other people.
#
But those incentives have changed.
#
Today, you know, power does corrupt, even the lure of power corrupts, power and money
#
are in this constant sort of a circle that is vicious for the public, certainly.
#
And people are driven by those kind of wrong incentives, the lust for power, which always
#
of course corrodes character.
#
And is that a structural flaw to which there is no solution?
#
Because looking at our politics, it seems to me and I could be wrong and this could
#
be a naive observation, but it seems to me that you are an exception, you are an outlier.
#
There are three strands in this.
#
The first is I agree that there is an enormous lust for power in our society relative to
#
many other societies because we've always been a hierarchical society from a family
#
to a nation, from caste system to oppression of women, though there are many virtues in
#
I admire Indian family structure, but minus these negatives.
#
But we are a hierarchical authoritarian society intuitively.
#
And therefore, this has also spread to the public domain.
#
Therefore, the lust for power in this country without a sense of purpose is perhaps extraordinary
#
I don't think there's another society that matches India in that lust for power without
#
That's a larger cultural problem.
#
But barring that, the rest of your hypothesis I don't think is valid.
#
One, the politicians today are not evil or bad.
#
I know this is not a very fashionable statement, but I've been saying this for the past 30,
#
Many of them, in fact, most of them are pretty well-meaning people who want to do something
#
They also have this bug that they want glory and they want recognition, and nothing wrong
#
That ambition is not a terrible thing.
#
Actually, it's a good thing.
#
But sadly, we created an institutional mechanism and an incentive structure where honesty and
#
survival in public office is increasingly incompatible.
#
Even if individuals are honest, and there are even today quite a few individuals in
#
public office who are pretty honest, institutionally, you cannot be honest and you cannot survive.
#
Dr. Manmohan Singh is personally honest.
#
Narendra Modi is personally honest.
#
Many others are personally honest.
#
But institutionally, you have to press out over a system of corruption in order to survive
#
It's a larger structure and institutional issue where there are victims of a vicious
#
They're not really villains.
#
Therefore, it will be very sad and also counterproductive if we view them all as, you know, they're
#
evil people who are out to make something, and therefore they enter public life.
#
Because then the conclusion has to be that every panchayat board member to the Prime
#
Minister of India, they come only with an evil intent.
#
There is a third dimension to it.
#
We're looking at only politics as the quest for power, not like Maharashtra, what's happening
#
You were telling me about what's happening.
#
I was not aware because I don't watch TV news or newspaper.
#
We are recording this on Saturday, the November 23rd when, you know, last night Uddhav Thackeray
#
was supposed to be CM and this morning Mr. Fadnav has been motored in.
#
I had such a hearty laughter that tears rolled down my cheeks, you know.
#
These are the unexpectedly funny moments in life.
#
But we are forgetting that there's a whole lot more to politics.
#
What you and I are doing is politics.
#
You may not contest elections, you may not seek power, but this politics is small p,
#
I think there are thousands of extraordinarily bright people, and this number is increasing,
#
I'm delighted to note that, who are deeply concerned about our public space and trying
#
I've seen in recent months, for instance, some exceptional people working in the field
#
Not so many in healthcare, but there are quite a few who are doing that, some in rule of
#
Politics are the best kind, and these are all imbued by the same degree of idealism
#
and same kind of idealism that inspired our freedom fighters.
#
So I don't think that there is a dearth of that.
#
What is the problem is that they have no space in impacting decision making.
#
And apart from power struggle, for whatever reason, either because it's not easy or you
#
choose not to be a part of the power struggle, you may not want to be in power.
#
That's perfectly all right.
#
But when you have something to offer to the country, if X is in power, that X must have
#
the wisdom to utilize your talent, and the barriers between the state and the society
#
must not be so rigid, we erected such barriers that a third rate buffoon in government treats
#
an exceptional genius who can actually make a difference to the country as a mendicant
#
because this genius happens to go to the buffoon.
#
But to me, these people are doing politics of the right kind.
#
So while I understand the anger, the frustration, some amount of despair, it's now universal
#
and there's not one of us, including me, who from time to time does not yield to that.
#
I think there is a lot of hope.
#
And that's a very illuminating distinction between electoral politics and the sort of
#
politics that we are doing now, for example, by having this conversation.
#
I didn't mean to imply that politicians today are evil necessarily to use that term, but
#
merely that they are responding to incentives that drive their behavior in ways that outside
#
of those incentives would be considered virtuous and which brings me to this great dilemma
#
of democracy, this interplay between money and power, where we know that listen to win
#
elections, you need huge amounts of money, the money has to come from somewhere.
#
Most often it will come from interest groups, they will have a quid pro quo built into the
#
If it is a specific industrialist, he will then want that once you come to power, you
#
erect barriers to entry so that his market is protected and so on and so forth.
#
And of course, the problem of special interests in electoral politics is probably far worse
#
in the US than it is here.
#
Here there are all kinds of, I think, other dynamic factors at play.
#
But is this, I mean, is there a democracy in the world where this is not a problem,
#
where these sort of institutional incentives are in play, where the chief incentive for
#
a politician always is, listen, I need to get elected again and therefore I need money
#
for my campaign and therefore I need to keep these people happy, not necessarily cater
#
to what might be good governance at large, but does this necessary interplay between
#
money and power in a democracy pervert our incentives, the incentives of politicians,
#
so much that the kind of politics you and I would like to see is effectively at least
#
very unlikely, if not impossible.
#
You know, obviously politics needs money.
#
The moment you want to reach the people, make people think and communicate and compete and
#
study and research and come up with alternatives, it costs money, no question about it.
#
But that's different from the kind of incentives that we have in play in this country.
#
It's not true that most mature democracies really play by those incentives.
#
Even America, which is the worst among the developed countries, you know, almost from
#
the day you are elected, you have to again raise money for the next election, but just
#
legitimate money for legitimate campaign purposes.
#
While it is sad, some of it could have been avoided by more sensible approaches, there
#
is no serious compromise in terms of public interest or in terms of ethics and morality.
#
It's easy for us to say America also is like that, which is rubbish, we don't understand
#
Europe is altogether different.
#
They brought the cost, very low level, very high quality of discourse and integrity in
#
public office, without having to worry about raising resources every day for the elected
#
representatives is pretty strong in that continent.
#
So I don't think it's inevitable that democracy will degenerate into collecting money and
#
therefore compromising yourself.
#
It is a systemic issue.
#
And the systems, the consequences are not always universally the same for the same system.
#
It depends on the kind of circumstances in which you created a system.
#
I was, because three days from today, we have the 70th anniversary of our constitution making.
#
Dr. Ambedkar, on the 25th of November, 1949, he made a very significant speech.
#
He said, look, there are three things required.
#
Just because we made a constitution, don't believe that everything will be wonderful.
#
The first he said, let us give up the grammar of anarchy.
#
He actually coined, used that expression, the grammar of anarchy and use constitutional
#
methods of protest in order to pursue the economic and social goals that we have in
#
The country ignored that.
#
We continue to pretend as if, you know, there are extra constitutional methods of obstruction
#
and abuse, which are pretty normal and it's not merely a politician or a political party.
#
We as a culture have never really gotten into that Ambedkar's mode, what he advised.
#
The second thing Ambedkar said, he said, never, he quoted J.S. Mill, never lay your freedom
#
at the feet of a tyrant, however great the leader is.
#
You have some restraint, don't have this extraordinary hero worship and learn to hold them to account.
#
Our political parties, our family estates, our, you see the leaders, even at an MLA or
#
MP level, let alone a minister at a prime minister's level, the kind of, you know, that
#
the hundreds of people thronging around them, even as in your mind you abuse them and you
#
come back and criticize them harshly, this desperate worship of power, not only seeking
#
power for oneself, but also worship of power, we have never really kept it on a leash.
#
And therefore the parties decide your fate as a human being in politics.
#
And therefore consequences follow.
#
And the third, he said, we also have to build a social democracy, particularly he emphasized
#
In a hierarchical society, where caste is always distinguished by birth, you're superior
#
or inferior, how to address that and two, how to address the fraternity, one equality.
#
The second is fraternity.
#
See all these groups, varied groups may be equal, may not be hierarchical, but with that
#
language or region or religion, we all know the strife in the country from time to time,
#
unless that fraternity is brought systematically, institutionally, there's a problem.
#
But at the heart of it, I'm absolutely certain that we have committed grave blunders in believing
#
that vote and the right to shout are enough to build a democracy.
#
And there I lay the blame at the feet of all the great men who built India, because they
#
were great men and women, leaders of great honor and distinction.
#
I assumed that without institutional mechanisms to ensure that degree of conduct, it would
#
automatically happen because anything else was unthinkable for them.
#
That was a mistake in not recognizing human nature anywhere in the world and therefore
#
not creating an institutional mechanism to make democracy work.
#
In particular, low bureaucracy in this country is unlike any other low bureaucracy anywhere
#
It's so powerful, so oppressive, that an ordinary clerk in government is bigger than 90% of the
#
We haven't really paused to think about it, what it means and what are the consequences
#
to a democracy and governance on account of that.
#
And as a result of this unaccountability, the people always are mendicants and of course
#
the socialist moral we adopted early on, the scarcity economy and the license permit raj
#
and the begging the government official for everything that you are entitled to get as
#
a human being in your life, that made it even worse.
#
The roles are reversed, mendicant, the citizen became the mendicant, the employee who is
#
a public servant became the master.
#
This lack of accountability is a first major brand.
#
We haven't understood just because power changed hands, it wouldn't change much.
#
The second thing is we centralized power abnormally.
#
Despite Mahatma Gandhi's entreaties, we never created a link in people's minds between
#
the vote they give and the consequences to their lives at a personal and family level.
#
So vote is a celebration.
#
All the great things we talk about, Indian democracy and voting, actually they are the
#
wrong things that we celebrate.
#
There's so much of wonder, this is rubbish, this is about our collective goals.
#
There's nothing very noble about it, it's very mundane.
#
Water supply, electricity, the sewerage system, the storm water drainage, the school functioning
#
for my kids, the local health center, or the mosquito control so that I don't get dengue
#
for a strain of trouble.
#
So this is very practical.
#
Instead of making it a practical issue, we made it a grand national issue.
#
In the absence of decentralization, people never understood the link between these two.
#
We keep voting each time with great fanfare and great hope and expectation, and we keep
#
getting disappointed almost on each occasion.
#
The third is rule of law.
#
On paper it is there, but in reality it stinks.
#
Therefore, neither are the rulers held to account, both bureaucratic and political,
#
nor are we secure enough to believe that our rights will be enforced.
#
No matter how big the other fellow is, no matter how small I am, my rights will be enforced
#
and I will have my place in the sun.
#
That confidence nobody in India has.
#
And finally, an electoral system wholly unsuited to our conditions.
#
It's not per se bad, but if conditions were right, it would have been okay.
#
But over a period of time, because of the three failings that I mentioned, the electoral
#
Because in a poor country where the delivery is weak for the reasons I mentioned, where
#
the rule of law is not there, accountability is not there, people are mendicants, then
#
you know, they're deeply dissatisfied and we are poor and therefore something tangible
#
that day, that money does matter.
#
Not that I vote necessarily for the fellow who gives money, but I do not vote any longer
#
without getting the money in my hand in the first place.
#
So the entry barrier is created and of course the corruption and so on and so forth.
#
Then the freebies, now for instance in many states where on the verge of a fiscal collapse,
#
the kind of freebies they've gone out of control completely because the parties are desperate
#
and today I think it's safe to say that political parties have come to a stage when if they
#
say we will not offer any freebies, they almost certainly get defeated.
#
So it's no longer blaming this party, but there's a systemic issue.
#
The third is divisions.
#
It's easy in a diverse society to fragment us and then fashion vote banks because of
#
the primordial loyalties.
#
These are not unusual and these are not unexpected.
#
In fact, there is a logical sequence and now I think we have to fix these first three things
#
and I think we have to change the incentives in the electoral system.
#
That's the primary thing.
#
It's not necessary at all for a country to degenerate.
#
I would make one postulate.
#
You take any country, make it a democracy the way you made India a democracy without
#
these four things, particularly these three things.
#
Centralized power, don't have a real rule of law, don't deliver even the basic services
#
In a poor society in general, I guarantee you the consequences that followed in India
#
are inevitable in the electoral system that we have chosen.
#
There's nothing unique about India.
#
It is almost mathematical.
#
There's a lot to unpack in this and in fact, I'm looking forward to just sort of listening
#
to this episode again and taking notes.
#
Before I sort of move on to my next question, I'll make four or five observations about
#
what you just spoke about.
#
One, I'll express a mild disagreement with your contention that America isn't all that
#
bad when it comes to special interests because I think that while there aren't mostly any
#
overt abuses of power like we see in India, I think at the level of public policy and
#
economic policy, there is a lot of damage which is done, which kind of goes unseen.
#
And to all my readers, I'd recommend this book by Jonathan Rauch called Government's
#
I'll link it from the show notes, which was an eye opener for me in just understanding
#
how much of the system there is sort of ruled by a special interest.
#
Let me briefly interrupt.
#
If you take gun control issue or the healthcare, two particularly glaring issues, you can see
#
the power of the vested interests and the way the American Congress or the American
#
Having said that, the two broad points, the reason why I said there's a distinction, there's
#
no comparison between what we're doing and what they're doing to themselves.
#
And two, despite that, they use legal means to do foolish things like the healthcare system
#
They're doing legal, legally, unwisely because of vested interests, et cetera, et cetera.
#
It's not illegal things and the moment you do something illegal, the system is strong
#
enough to hold you to account pretty quickly and pretty efficiently.
#
In that sense, certainly for a country of that extraordinary civilizational strength
#
and ideas and wealth, I don't for the life of me understand how they mess up healthcare
#
so badly despite such expenditure, how almost every other day you keep hearing about mass
#
It doesn't make any sense.
#
To that extent, I completely agree with you.
#
I mean, that distinction about legality, I don't know what to make of that because it
#
seems to me that when you have given the state a monopoly on violence and when as a people
#
we have normalized the massive levels of coercion that we face on a daily basis, it might then
#
be said that a lot of things which are wrong can easily be legal and therefore your guiding
#
people should be virtue rather than legality per se, but leaving that aside, I mean, that's
#
You also mentioned the three points Ambedkar raises, so my second observation is about
#
Ambedkar, of course, is one of the intellectuals I admire most in the 20th century, just an
#
absolutely remarkable man beyond the familiar dimensions in which people talk about him.
#
But you mentioned about how he implored Indian people to give up the grammar of anarchy and
#
this observation of mine is an aside not really related to the broader episode, but it strikes
#
me that in that one instance, it seems very convenient to me where he says that, listen,
#
we use the grammar of anarchy when protesting against our oppressors, but you may not use
#
the grammar of anarchy when protesting against your oppressors.
#
I don't think it's a fair characterization.
#
He's saying once you have the tools of vote and free speech, you no longer have the right
#
to use violence or obstructionism.
#
We had neither during the alien rule.
#
I think that's the context.
#
I completely am with Ambedkar on that.
#
And I mean, to be fair enough, the counter to that would be that people like Gokhale
#
and Ranade and the Indian liberals who were really, in a sense, British liberals of the
#
late 19th century actually tried to work with the empire in a constitutional way with petitions
#
and so on and so forth.
#
So the British could have argued that, hey, we have a process in place also.
#
Of course, they didn't have the vote and all of those things.
#
So that point of Ambedkar is well taken that we built a constitutional democracy.
#
And I might even go a little beyond that and say something extremely controversial.
#
I'm sure I'm going to be attacked by many people.
#
If we actually gave ourselves a little bit more chance for the devolution, particularly
#
from 1937, 37 was when we really had self-governance in states with the Government of India Act
#
Two terrible things happened that did, I think, immense and lasting damage to our country's
#
The first was the Second World War.
#
Mahatma Gandhi, because of political compulsions in an act of unwisdom, I dare say that, he
#
directed the Congress Cummins to resign.
#
That's the day when Jinnah called it the Day of Deliverance.
#
It was a political compulsion, I understand that.
#
But I think it did immense damage to the country because the Congress Cummins were doing an
#
extremely good job, because they were men of honor, irrespective of the structural issues
#
of the constitutional framework, they were actually trying to do the right things to
#
make people understand the meaning of democracy.
#
Local governments could have been institutionalized effectively.
#
Many other things, the art of self-governance would have slowly learned, though there was
#
limited franchise, et cetera.
#
That was interrupted very rudely.
#
And suddenly, without any further experience, we got one day of freedom.
#
The flags changed, and we said, we are a free country.
#
We had no understanding or experience.
#
The 1942 made things even worse.
#
The moment you indulge in this grammar of anarchy, I don't know how moral it was in
#
The Quit India movement.
#
And the whole world was fighting against an extraordinarily dangerous tyrant, an idealist
#
Hitler was an idealist, he wanted to reshape the world in his vision.
#
But a tremendous threat to humanity, as we understood, the moral values, as we understood,
#
that is one rather moral issue.
#
But as a practical issue, that perhaps made it even harder.
#
So if we gave ourselves a little more of that evolutionary thing and gave our people a chance
#
to understand the self-governance and its limits and its possibilities, particularly
#
the local governance and accountability, I think our democratic transition would have
#
My third observation is a dual observation, really.
#
It's one about the point you made about how our great leaders, because they were great
#
leaders and they were sort of assuming that future leaders will be like them, did not
#
build the constitutional safeguards that they should have and that a healthy democracy needs.
#
And my observation here would be that, again, as I postulated earlier, these leaders were
#
great because of the incentives that brought them to where they were.
#
They were not animated by a lust for power.
#
When they joined the freedom movement, it was only out of idealism and wanting to do
#
And those are not the sort of drives that would take someone into politics today or
#
And perhaps they got carried away by that and, like you correctly said, assumed that
#
all we need is good leaders whom the people will duly elect and all will be well.
#
And that's not the case.
#
The second point you made about the urge to centralization and the centralization that
#
we embedded in our constitution and our institutions, I did an interesting episode with the historian
#
Gyan Prakash, who's written this very illuminating book called Emergency Chronicles.
#
And his central thesis there is that, look, Indira Gandhi did not do anything illegal
#
All the powers were powers granted to her by the constitution, the over-centralization
#
And Gyan's theory on that was that, look, at the time the framers of the constitution
#
were sitting together in their room in Delhi, the country was erupting in violence all over.
#
You know, they did not know that this country would stay together.
#
Like today with hindsight, we know that, yeah, you know, the center did hold.
#
But they did not know that.
#
And therefore that urge to centralization is perhaps understandable given the context
#
And this is just an observation, not my question.
#
My question really then comes down to the whole issue of voter apathy.
#
Like why are we so apathetic?
#
Why do we, I mean, we vote in large numbers, but we almost assume that our vote won't really
#
It is almost like, you know, one friend of mine once speculated that this vote is an
#
The same way that we go to watch our favorite football team and we cheer for them, the vote
#
is we are expressing our tribal affiliation, so to say.
#
But we almost seem to have assumed that our vote won't make a difference.
#
And does this have something to do with the institutions that are in place where there
#
is such a disconnect between power and accountability, especially at the local level?
#
While, you know, all our lives, you and I, many of us, have been urging people to exercise
#
the right to vote without which you cannot bring about change and civic duty, not only
#
right, et cetera, it's absolutely true.
#
That's the only way you can bring about change.
#
As I keep telling people, the only antidote to the ills of a democracy is more democracy
#
and better democracy, not sitting out, not rejecting it, it's absurd.
#
Having said that, the people at large are not entirely wrong in coming to the sad conclusion
#
that their vote does not seem to make a difference because of centralization again.
#
Let me give you a concrete example.
#
Delhi, whether you subscribe to one party or another, that's not material now, we're
#
talking in a larger context.
#
There are some signs of hope, some shoots, why?
#
Because the citizen of Delhi understood intuitively that a vote in Delhi makes a difference to
#
Delhi to at least some extent, real difference.
#
It may not make all the difference, like rule of law, other big things will not be changed,
#
but your local education, healthcare, basic service delivery, current free services, other
#
Because Delhi has a situation where the chief executive of Delhi is the most empowered mayor
#
of India, much less empowered than any mayor anywhere in the world, but because we don't
#
have the strength of local governments, by Indian standards, chief minister of Delhi
#
is the most empowered mayor of India.
#
Therefore, some kind of a change is possible.
#
Mumbai, the same thing is not there, Mumbai actually is much more vibrant as a city in
#
I hope it remains to be so, but I've known Mumbai for quite some time, I love that city,
#
the kind of citizen activism, the spirit of the community, the voluntary sector, the civil
#
society, and the general performance and trust, from punctuality to delivery.
#
And yet, a voter in Mumbai does not feel that her vote makes a difference, because unless
#
you change the whole of Maharashtra, you cannot change Mumbai.
#
And given India's complexity, it's much harder to make rural India recognize its own value
#
of its own vote and make it as a powerful tool to change.
#
So that certainly, if some people come to this sad conclusion, I can understand, I don't
#
I would urge them to still fight that despair and then figure out the way changes will happen.
#
Let me give another example.
#
We are looking at democracy or institutions only as the union government, state government,
#
But what did Korean do?
#
The moment the incentives are properly aligned, there is not a single cooperative society's
#
member who does not believe that her vote does not matter, his vote does not matter.
#
They know their vote matters.
#
There's the same people of India, castrated and superstitious, poor, often illiterate,
#
And yet, the self-interest is clearly manifest.
#
I keep telling people about the apartment complex where I live.
#
After this recording, I go home and suppose the elevator is not functioning.
#
My elderly mother, 84 years old, she is with me and she obviously cannot climb stairs because
#
of all the other problems.
#
I'm not going to keep quiet and holler.
#
Whoever is managing, I have chosen them, we've all chosen them, we're paying monthly maintenance.
#
I'm not going to keep quiet because my vote matters.
#
Matters in a way that I directly understand, not some romantic way of Bharat Mata.
#
The elevator is not functioning.
#
The electricity outages are there.
#
Watch and ward is inadequate.
#
Water supply is interrupted.
#
And these are simple things which everyone gets and experiences.
#
When I said democracy is not about the noble and romantic things, it's about simple and
#
practical things which are collectively needed.
#
And unless you bring that connect, a vote does not become a very meaningful tool.
#
So the answer is, for heaven's sake, let people make decisions as long as their decisions
#
don't impact other people.
#
If you decide in Mumbai or a part of Mumbai and Juhu something, if that decision is bad,
#
as long as I am not affected by the decision, I think you should have that freedom to commit
#
mistakes and learn from that.
#
And we can certainly sit there and advise them or we can hold them to account if something
#
But you cannot deny them the decision-making power because, and this is again a very controversial
#
one that I'm saying, I truly believe and I say it often that even a villain locally controlling
#
the issues, a local leader who is a villain is better than an angel who is a distant person.
#
The notion that you require some extraordinary people, Mahatma Gandhi-like figures to govern
#
the destinies of a nation, somehow things will be okay, is a dangerous delusion.
#
That's a very profound insight and something that I often keep hopping on repeatedly is
#
that you should have rules and institutions in place so that even if the worst, most evil,
#
power-hungry human being you can think of is in charge, he can't do much damage because
#
there are enough checks and balances.
#
And what you've said ties into that, that a local leader who is accountable immediately
#
to his people and depends on them for his power will have to deliver.
#
He might be evil, it doesn't matter, he has to get the job done.
#
And you know, I did an old episode with Shruti Rajgopalan which I'll again link from the
#
show notes on urban governance.
#
And what she laid out with great clarity in that was that, you know, taking Mumbai as
#
an example, is that there is a disconnect between power and accountability which is
#
The people you vote for, your local corporators and councillors and so on, don't really have
#
much power to get much done.
#
The people who do have power which is at the state level are not reliant on the urban vote.
#
They are catering more to the rural vote banks.
#
And therefore, who's looking after your interests?
#
And this is something that I know, you know, the subject of federalism, government being
#
as local as possible, I know is something that has been very close to your heart as
#
well and you know, you fought for it.
#
And it strikes me and again my lament and hopefully it's naive and too pessimistic
#
and the things are not so bad, but my lament is that, look, the only people who can change
#
this are the people who are incentivized against changing it because obviously they want to
#
consolidate their own power.
#
So why would you devolve power away from yourself?
#
It's an extremely challenging question, you're totally right.
#
I worked very hard at one stage, we came this close to getting the constitution amended
#
73rd, 74th amendments, those provisions in order to really make it a meaningful thing
#
and there was political executor who was ready and willing and the political parties
#
were ready and willing.
#
But because of the fall, one other thing I realized in life is it's not always the evil
#
man who stops good things.
#
Oftentimes it's the unwise good man who is actually a bigger enemy.
#
Unwisdom is greater challenge than dishonesty.
#
I know it's not a fashionable thing to say, but in my life time and again I saw, I know
#
how to deal with a crook, relatively speaking.
#
I don't know how to deal with an unwise person, particularly when he has this virtue of honesty.
#
But there are some levers.
#
For instance, the union is transferring significant amount of resources to states.
#
If you take all put together now, the latest newspaper accounts say that Delhi is trying
#
to bring down the share of the states that we will have to see the 15th finance commission,
#
But something like 47.5% of the total union budget is transferred to states, either constitutional
#
revolution or other forms of transfer.
#
Supposing some significant portion of it directly goes to the local governments on a per capita
#
basis, you're not increasing the cake.
#
You are just inter say you're changing it and to that extent you will force the states
#
to do all some of the responsibilities like, you know, paying the salaries of teachers
#
It's not that they simply get the money.
#
They simply have to pay from their hands, but they also control the way the school is
#
managed or local health center, for instance.
#
That's one easy way of empowering because power follows money.
#
The constitutionally we created a monstrous structure.
#
The 73rd, 74th amendments to the constitution are very well-meaning, but extremely unwise.
#
They created an over-structured, under-powered local government system.
#
So if the political consensus is there to change that, it's wonderful.
#
As I said, I tried very hard at one stage, but at the last moment we failed, but this
#
The second way is in Telangana recently an effort was made, at least urban local governments.
#
You know, in urban areas people are increasingly aware of their power and their deprivation
#
We're paying taxes, we're sustaining ourselves, the state is not funding us.
#
And yet in the most basic services we're not getting, that anger is there.
#
And urban areas, they're problem solvers after all, the best of India are in urban areas.
#
That's where money is, that's where economy is, that's where talent is.
#
This voice is heard, and if it's made politically an influential voice, at least our cities
#
and urban areas, perhaps we can have a beginning.
#
What's happening in Delhi could happen elsewhere slowly, and therefore that also will politically
#
transform the country, not only in terms of governance and outcomes.
#
So I think there are some possibilities if our leaders are wise.
#
I'm not saying empower blindly, hold them to account very strongly, have a strong independent
#
You control that, be ruthless, though theoretically, I mean, when you are doing all ugly things
#
and there's no control, why should you bother about them?
#
But I wouldn't try to use that argument, because my idea or anybody's idea of decentralization
#
is not decentralized corruption or abuse of power.
#
It is to actually improve things.
#
Therefore you have all the safeguards, I have no quarrel at all, as long as they are institutionally
#
independent of the political part of the government, local framework or something else.
#
It's hard because the constitutional injunctions are very, very rigid and unwise.
#
Take, for instance, the German constitution.
#
In about 53 words, very elegantly, the German constitution clearly outlines the independence
#
and autonomy of the local governments and their accountability, and then leaves the
#
rest of it to the local statutes, the state statutes.
#
India is the only country in the world, the only country in the world, where the local
#
government structure is elaborately prescribed in the constitution of the federal government.
#
It's so absurd that we're not able to even recognize because we think it's normal, it's
#
In our medical textbooks, a textbook of pathology, there was a great author called Boyd, very
#
Red blood cells are the body.
#
They're very important.
#
They're the most numerous cells also of the body, very tiny cells.
#
And without that, you cannot survive.
#
They are the ones that carry oxygen and so on and so forth.
#
The red blood cells of the body do not have nuclei.
#
For students of biology, a cell without a nucleus is like a human being without a brain.
#
You cannot imagine that a human being can actually survive or flourish without a brain.
#
Don't look at Indian politics and you'll be disabused with that notion.
#
Sorry, I just had to say that.
#
So Boyd says, we are so used to the fact that the red blood cells have no nuclei, that we
#
cease to wonder about it.
#
So the absurdity is we're so used to them in our country, we think they're normal.
#
These are abnormal in the extreme.
#
We'll take a quick commercial break.
#
And when we come back, I want to talk with you about your personal political journey.
#
Hey, everybody, welcome to another awesome week on the IVM podcast network.
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If you are not following us on social media, please make sure you do.
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And you know, it's about time that you did.
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So I mean, like we're IVM podcast on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, go to whichever platform
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Also, you should check out our Instagram feed.
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We have a lot of interesting stuff going on over there, peeks inside what's going on in
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the studio, polls, all kinds of cool stuff.
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Our sponsors make this stuff possible.
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And so please make sure that you shout out to them, let them know that you appreciate
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One more note before we get into talking about what went on in the network this week.
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And that was that I would appreciate deeply, deeply, deeply appreciated.
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If you guys could go to IVM podcast dot com slash survey or go to the website and click
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And what we're going to do is we're going to do another listener survey.
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We'd like to know a little bit more about you, who's listening to us, why you're listening
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bit of more information from you guys about who you are.
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And that would help us kind of go out and talk to advertisers, which is again, as I
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mentioned earlier, how we get this thing going.
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So this week we're premiering a new Hindi storytelling show is called Tupni Tales and
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it's hosted by Madhuri Advani.
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Madhuri narrates day to day stories and occurrences in women's lives across generations.
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This week, she questions the tea serving traditions in our house through the mother and daughter
#
pair in her story called Chai Ki Cha.
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On Cyrus says Cyrus is joined by senior journalist and author Veer Sanghvi.
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He talks to Cyrus about his new book Game Changers and discusses the prominent personalities
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that have impacted India.
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They also touch upon election results and what the future might hold.
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On Storytells and Story Sellers, Vineet is joined by journalist Bhanuj Kapal and co-founder
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of Gully Gang Entertainment, Chaitanya Kataria.
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Together, they talk about the hype around hip hop in India and its cultural impact.
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On Filter Coffee, Karthik is joined by NBA commentator and author Akshay Manwani.
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In the episode, Akshay expresses his passion for classic Indian cinema, especially the
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works of Sahir Ludhianvi and Nasser Hussain, and discusses the evolution of the NBA in India.
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On Ganata Nidra, Dr. Ornit Shani joins Saryo and Alok to discuss the first electoral roles,
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the entrenchment of democracy in India and why despite trying times we must take heart.
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On the Empowering series, Rina is joined by Dr. Mithika Kanabar.
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They discuss the relationship between stress and addiction.
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On Postcards from Nowhere, Utsav talks about his 6-month long stay in Shanghai and how
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it changes outlook towards Chinese tourists.
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On Agla Station, Adulthood, Ayushi and Ritasha test each other by asking 20 questions.
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And with that, let's get you on with your show.
#
Welcome back to The Scene and the Unseen.
#
I'm chatting with JP Narayan about the state of Indian politics and his own personal journey
#
And, you know, we've kind of so far spent time talking about Indian politics in general,
#
the nature of politics in general and a little bit of your personal journey.
#
I want to now dovetail into your actual joining politics.
#
Like, is that decision to leave the IAS and join politics something you mulled over a
#
period of time or, you know, how was the process?
#
I never thought of joining politics.
#
I left the IAS to build a movement.
#
So politics came more than 10 years later.
#
In 1996, I left the IAS, built Laksattha Movement and Foundation for Democratic Reforms and
#
then was lucky to be involved in quite a few significant changes in terms of, you know,
#
governance reform, several constitutional amendments, several changes in law and so
#
At a certain stage, about 10 years after this, by the time it became perhaps one of the more
#
influential and one of the more respected movements in the country in terms of governance
#
reform, only because the field is very scarce, you know, there are not many people.
#
Again, as I said, the bar is very low.
#
But then at one stage, two things happened, at least two ideas.
#
One is perhaps with a certain amount of economic reform and creeping prosperity and media and
#
internet and communications, perhaps a significant section of the population, let's say about
#
10 percent, that was my assumption, 10 percent, are now more and more aware of what is at
#
stake and they're willing to vote according to what they believe is right and looking
#
into the future rather than voting for who will win in an electoral system, which always
#
rewards the winner and there are no second prizes, winner take all system.
#
I sensed or I felt, I assessed wrongly as it turned out, that 10 percent people in India
#
are perhaps ready to vote for change, real change on a sustained basis.
#
I was certain if 10 percent people are willing to vote for that on a sustained basis, the
#
political system will respond immediately.
#
Whatever you say about politicians and political parties, they understand this, the way things
#
are happening, electoral patterns, and immediately they'll embrace the ideas.
#
Real change does not happen because you, with one fell swoop, destroyed the existing system.
#
It happens because the political parties change their behavior and their ideas to reflect
#
the people's aspirations in order to get the vote, and that's a perfectly legitimate incentive.
#
So I felt if 10 percent is there for transformation of politics and governance, then the parties
#
That was my expectation.
#
The second is I also sensed that while some significant changes we could engineer, like
#
the electoral funding law of 2003 after the Halka scam, India has actually a pretty good
#
Most people don't realize it, but that simply is not enough because most of our problem
#
is not legitimate funding for campaigning.
#
It is illegitimate funding for vote buying and many other dirty things.
#
Similarly, the Right to Information Act, I was instrumental in drafting that law and
#
the government of the day was willing to do it, and therefore something would happen,
#
and all the political parties were willing to do it.
#
The Ninety-First Amendment, Ninety-Seventh Amendment, Cooperative Autonomy, Ninety-Ninth
#
Amendment, the National Judicial Commission, which the Supreme Court unwisely crushed subsequently,
#
the local court's law, and several things we could engineer.
#
But when it came to the fundamental change required in the governance process, decentralization,
#
I mentioned to you, for instance, how the hurdles ultimately blocked it, or electoral
#
change, or rule of law change, the big changes.
#
I felt that the political system will not listen unless there are electoral consequences.
#
As I said rightly, if it's going to hurt them politically, why should they do it?
#
Other good things, well, you may get some goodwill and you may want to do some good
#
As long as it doesn't hurt you, you may want to do it.
#
So I felt if 10% people are willing to vote for that, they realize it's actually hurtful
#
to them if they don't come onto the bandwagon.
#
You see, these two things which made us think that maybe we should look at a political platform
#
of the way it should be, the way it is not in India.
#
So after a very agonizing period, because intuitively I am not for partisan politics,
#
I'm not suitable for that.
#
My whole approach, my life, my work, everybody knows about that, and even my articulation,
#
are about consensus building, how to reconcile rather than how to differentiate, whereas
#
politics is about how to segment the market and take your share.
#
And therefore that hard edge that pretends of huge differences, making everything black
#
and white, that is the nature of politics world over.
#
So it is that that compelled us to join the, to form a political party.
#
As it turned out, in urban India, particularly big cities, the 10% assessment was right.
#
In rural India, I think it's never beyond about a couple of percentage points.
#
And my assessment is that in the absence of local governments in urban India, if urban
#
India and local governments are allowed, this 10% would have become 30%, or even a governing
#
Because citizens get more involved and they feel they have a stake.
#
You see, people, once they shed the skepticism, for instance, you know, when Lalu Yadav was
#
holding sway for about 15 years in Bihar, in one election, if you recall, Nitish Kumar
#
got a significant vote, but not a majority.
#
Once people realized that, yes, we're actually much more numerically stronger than what we
#
thought, next time when the chance came, they voted him to power very comfortably.
#
Similar thing in Delhi, if you recall.
#
Initially, they gave a significant percentage, but not a winning margin.
#
Once they realized that next time around, they gave over.
#
So that's the way electoral politics in the first past, the post system, they operate.
#
Therefore in big cities, if you have self-governing models like in Delhi, that kind of a thing,
#
doesn't matter what name of the platform, but basically if it's an ethical and credible
#
thing with a clear sense of where we should go, people will respond.
#
But rural India is nowhere near that because there is this clientelism.
#
If you recall, I mentioned something about the basic delivery of services lacking in
#
Therefore, the ordinary people, they're desperate to hold on to the court tales of somebody
#
in politics, the local political workers, a machine.
#
So it's not merely vote buying, that of course is important.
#
It's not merely freebies.
#
It's also that without them, you have no sense of survival.
#
Not that they are doing anything very great, but at least they're giving you some access.
#
And you cannot build an ethical party with such a vast machine of thousands of workers,
#
five years, around the year, working.
#
Freedom struggle is possible.
#
So they ought to be necessarily mercenary in some form or the other.
#
Maybe somebody pays them or somebody allows them to make money by misoperating the system
#
with the police cases, the contracts and tenders, the land grab, the ration shops, the transfers
#
and postings of officials, petty contracts.
#
This is the way it operates, the whole system.
#
That's why it's so hard to substitute an established political party anywhere in the country.
#
So because of this special problem in rural India, we underestimated the magnitude of
#
And once we felt that this vote is not enough, there's no path to reform, we decided that
#
we will not invest our energy and time in this.
#
We'll work in a different way.
#
But I think one day or the other, India must move towards these political formations of
#
a different kind or the major parties changing their way and therefore giving space for these
#
kinds of people and these kinds of ideas.
#
That's the only way forward.
#
You can't have a bloody revolution in the country.
#
I don't believe a million people marching in Delhi or Hyderabad or Mumbai will change
#
It may become actually a grammar of anarchy.
#
There are very few instances in human history where a million people sitting actually change
#
So I have three observations slash questions here.
#
Would it be fair to then characterize our political system in the absence of the rule
#
of law, which as you correctly pointed out earlier, in most of the country, for most
#
of the people, we don't have the rule of law.
#
In the absence of the rule of law, are our political parties basically different mafias
#
competing for the monopoly of violence that we give the state with its attendant consequences?
#
Mafias may be a strong word, a very pejorative word, but certainly they are feudal fiefdoms.
#
They are personal jagirs.
#
There's no doubt about it whatsoever.
#
And my second observation is actually, what you said about as politics gets more local
#
voters will be more incentivized to, you know, to feel that they have a stake in the system.
#
Extremely insightful because like in public choice theory, there is this phrase rational
#
ignorance where voters tend to be apathetic because every voter knows that at an individual
#
level his one vote doesn't matter.
#
And therefore, when the reward is so low, why put in the hard work of educating yourself
#
on what is at stake and understanding public policy and economics and it's rational to
#
As you've just pointed out that the more you increase the possibility of that vote actually
#
mattering, which it will at a local level, more the incentive for him to be an informed
#
citizen and actually take part in the democratic processes of the country.
#
You see, decentralization obviously will understand the consequences and a different electoral
#
system where every vote actually counts.
#
And therefore, even if you are 10% or 15%, that has a voice and therefore you now feel
#
And you are, you know, Green's party 30 years ago, where were they?
#
One, 2% take Germany, for instance, but over time as more and more people were converted
#
right wrong, I'm not going to ideologies and the philosophy.
#
It became a significant party.
#
So that space we're not given ourselves in this country.
#
It's almost impossible to be outside the mainstream parties and be politically significant.
#
Therefore, we have to really look at the alternative electoral system and tremendous decentralization
#
of power with accountability.
#
Otherwise, this will be a very long and painful transition with enormous cost to society,
#
unquestionably within the country and in terms of global comparison, we will lose, we already
#
We will lose a lot, lot, lot more.
#
To come back to your journey in politics, you know, when I think of the political marketplace,
#
I've always sort of held the view that it is naive to expect change at the supply end.
#
You have to first the demand for change has to come from the demand end.
#
And therefore it is more, if you want to change politics, you can only change it via the culture.
#
Like Andrew Breitbart once said, politics is downstream of culture.
#
And to me, that sounds like a very profound truth.
#
And it seems to me that, you know, when you leave the IES, you decide to start this movement.
#
That's what you're trying to do.
#
You're trying to influence the demand and you're trying to influence, change the culture
#
so that more than the 10% of urban voters and the 2% of rural voters actually start
#
fighting for good governance.
#
But then at some point you decide that this is not enough and you actually enter the supply
#
So what prompted that change in that shift, so to say?
#
No, as I said, these two estimates, one, an optimistic one that no, maybe an opportunity
#
is now growing because of the economic growth a little bit and greater awareness and communications.
#
The other, a little bit of anger against the political system, which is not willing to
#
look at bigger changes as in the combination of these two.
#
Probably one or two specifics also might have contributed to that at a particular point
#
For instance, we were very close to altering the electoral system.
#
And the way I sell these changes to the political parties and major leaders is not the country's
#
good because I don't think they really are motivated by that alone.
#
I'm not saying they don't want it.
#
I don't think that is enough motivation for them.
#
It is their own political future and survival that matters.
#
So at the time, the way I would, it was, we did enormous research.
#
We found that take the six largest states of India, UP, Bihar, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh,
#
Tamil Nadu and Bengal, which accounted for 55% of the Lok Sabha seats.
#
At that time, things have changed because BJP has expanded its footprint in some of
#
these states, which is actually against the trend.
#
But at that time, 10 years ago, in four and a half states, Congress and BJP were irrelevant.
#
In one and a half states, one state, Andhra Pradesh, where Congress was one of the dominant
#
players and Maharashtra, where BJP was a significant player, not yet a dominant player, today became
#
They have space and similarly Congress in alliance with the NCP was a significant player.
#
Today it appears the alliances have changed and nobody knows what happens.
#
So we explained to both the Congress and BJP why this happened.
#
In a first past the post system, once your vote share comes below a certain threshold,
#
you'll intuitively realize that a vote for you does not mean the seats.
#
And they're familiar to the idea of wasted vote kicks in.
#
And therefore, very soon, the 25% vote becomes 5% vote.
#
And therefore, the national parties actually gain in a system where there's nothing like
#
a wasted vote, provided you have some safeguards to ensure that there's not too much of fragmentation,
#
There are ways of doing it, reasonable threshold, rewarding the big party with extra seats and
#
But incentives are dramatically altered.
#
The reason why I am interested in that is, once a candidate has no incentive to buy the
#
votes, and if I spend money, Amit and many others along with me in the list will benefit,
#
the incentive is no longer for me to buy.
#
Why should I spend my 20 crores in order to benefit Amit?
#
Life doesn't work that way.
#
And the parties also right now, they see a tremendous advantage in bringing money backs
#
without any ability to govern or desire to govern well, because they are winnable.
#
Whereas tomorrow, it's the credibility of the person and overall respect that the panel
#
enjoys, the slate of candidates.
#
That will give you the voting.
#
Therefore, the way the party thinks, the way the candidate thinks, these two will dramatically
#
The way the people think that, no, if I vote for Amit because of moral considerations,
#
And there's also, most democratic voting in our system is tactical voting.
#
I don't vote for the best candidate.
#
I vote for the second worst candidate.
#
Because my fear is if I vote for the right person, the very wrong person may actually
#
That's my God, I can't afford that.
#
And we wanted to break that.
#
For whatever reason, it almost came through, but it didn't happen.
#
Maybe that's also a moment that sort of, you know, generated this thinking because you
#
are this close and it didn't happen.
#
Damn it, we have to persuade the political parties by more than mere logical persuasion,
#
but by the vote, the fear of the voter.
#
So you know, so when you as coming from, as someone who's sort of new into politics and
#
is coming from civil society, when you speak to politicians, when you entered that game
#
where you're speaking to politicians and trying to convince them of policies and you know,
#
we should do this and we should do that, does the manner of your discourse changes?
#
Like do you have to tailor your arguments to their incentives?
#
What are those conversations?
#
I speak exactly the way I'm speaking with you.
#
No lies, no deception, no big talk, non-judgmental and with genuine respect because I believe
#
they deserve genuine respect and a deep understanding and sympathy for the plight in which they
#
are, whether it's vote buying or the wrong kind of candidates, it's not because they're
#
Now I'll give you two examples.
#
In Andhra Pradesh, Mrs. Sunia Gandhi and Congress party at one stage decided that after Mr. Dr.
#
Raj's secretary is passing, the son who wanted to be chief minister instantly, they felt
#
Let you at least have some chance.
#
You can, while they were all for dynastic parties, Congress had only opposed dynastic
#
parties, they thought it was too, what should I say, too crass and therefore they did what
#
they thought was the right thing.
#
They paid a humongous price, forever, possibly forever.
#
In Karnataka, BJP asked Mr. Yadurappa, then chief minister to resign on moral grounds.
#
The party paid a humongous price.
#
It was not forever because Yadurappa came back and BJP patched up and now again they're
#
So when the parties do the right thing that you and I, all the moralists and the intelligentsia
#
want, the price they pay is quite humongous.
#
We must understand and sympathize and therefore create conditions where doing the right thing
#
is also not politically suicidal.
#
You be respectful of their genuine compulsions.
#
And then while advancing an argument, while you are on the lookout for public interest
#
and persuade them on that, don't be stupid and ask them to commit harakiri.
#
That is one thing that the tailoring if it's required, it's not untruthful, it's not secret,
#
it's not some magical thing, it's open.
#
But honestly, this is also an advantage for you.
#
Like for instance, if your vote share is below a certain threshold, to retain that, if you
#
alter the system, you actually benefit, otherwise in the long term maybe you'll lose out.
#
It's a very honest argument.
#
Why didn't it go through?
#
This is the first time I'm stating it publicly.
#
At the time, the UPA was in power.
#
The communists leftists had about 64 or 65 seats collectively.
#
And if they wanted it, and they wanted it, communists always wanted a proportionality
#
If they wanted it, that was the time because Congress party would do anything to retain
#
You know, the DNA of Congress.
#
That is there once, you know, Mr. P. Vinay Samarov said, Congress is a party with the
#
But today, of course, BJP is the party with the promise of power.
#
Somehow bring some consensus, somehow do whatever it takes to stay in power, et cetera.
#
We persuaded the Congress party, very emphatically, I mean, they saw the data and they knew.
#
BJP at some level were interacting with people and they also understood.
#
And at that time, they were in disarray, nobody expected Mr. Vajpayee's defeat in 2004.
#
I don't think many people really anticipated that, it was a shocker.
#
So they were in disarray.
#
They also realized that, no, something needs to be done.
#
Then Mrs. Gandhi said, I'm completely persuaded, I'm excited actually, I understand the problem
#
now and how to address this.
#
And after, I don't want to go into too many details of the conversation, I'll talk to
#
my colleagues and get back.
#
After a month, Mrs. Gandhi said, you know, colleagues are saying, we are in power, why
#
Because you know, there's a status quoism embedded in that party.
#
The differentiator would have been the communists.
#
I pleaded with the communists, particularly CPM leadership, Prakash Karat, repeatedly,
#
repeatedly, each time the responses were completely in favor, but we will not raise
#
If Congress parties on board publicly gives a statement in favor of this and saying that
#
we are going to do it, we want your support, then we will join the bandwagon.
#
I told them, look, it's a status quoist set up, it will not happen, but it's a fundamental
#
change, institutional change and incentives change.
#
And you believe it's right for the country, you believe it's good for your parties also.
#
They chose not to do it.
#
Why I can only conjecture, and I'm reasonably confident that that is a correct assessment.
#
They wrongly wanted to use their political capital for other purposes, stopping economic
#
liberalization, WTO agreement, Indo-American nuclear agreement, and many other things.
#
And they felt that by using this ammunition for this cause, they will not have the ammunition
#
I think it was a terrible strategic blunder.
#
Of course, they paid a humongous price, but I think the country is paying a humongous
#
How would our politics have looked different if that had gone through?
#
Three things would have happened.
#
Number one, the kind of people who are entering the political office now, why are they entering?
#
They're not entering to be legislators.
#
They're entering to have a finger in the executive pie.
#
And they're using money power, organizational ability, and caste power as the levers.
#
These are the three things that really are the determinants of who gets the seat, whether
#
it's BJP or Congress, some other party, doesn't matter, these are the three broad things.
#
Criminality is not always the consideration.
#
We often talk because we're angry with politicians, we talk about criminality.
#
Even criminality, when that background is there, it is because criminality brought the
#
money power, organization, and almost every criminal who became a significant politician
#
styled himself as a caste leader, or sometimes a community leader, religious leader.
#
So criminality is not the fundamental.
#
It is the three things that happen along with criminality.
#
And therefore, the incentives are wrongly aligned, over buying money, once you spend
#
that kind of money, stakes are so high.
#
I mean, in some of the states, like in the South and the West, 20, 30 crores for an assembly
#
Even in the Northeast, for a Lok Sabha seat, sometimes 30, 40 crores.
#
Absurd amounts, obscene amounts, unheard of amounts anywhere in the world.
#
And you have to get an ROI somehow after that.
#
Otherwise you have no choice.
#
See, after spending that, you will not be elected, but you are now in contention, serious
#
case, it's an entry fee.
#
Now, once you have a proportionality model, for instance, with a slate of candidates,
#
and the party's success depends on the proportion of votes you get, not who wins in a constituency,
#
neither vote buying and money power of that kind, nor the other highly misplaced policies
#
in order to get another 200,000 votes.
#
For instance, in recent elections in several states, many parties very unwisely offered
#
that they will scrap the new pension scheme, you know, because the salaries, the pensions
#
are now outstripping salaries, index linked pensions, and therefore very often you're
#
getting much more than your lost salary drawn as pension, and your life spans are expanding
#
There is a state where the future generations are forced to pay for the services in the
#
So quite wisely, the union government sat with all political parties and the state governments
#
and came up with a new pension program, it's necessary for the country.
#
But because you're afraid that you lose those 100,000 votes or 200,000 votes in a state,
#
in a first pass to post system, they and their families are enough maybe to put you this
#
way or that way, in the desperate gamble, they're willing to offer that.
#
This is the way the system operates, winner take all system.
#
Here in the proportionality model, you're not worried about that.
#
And once the incentives for the political party and the candidate are dramatically altered,
#
and once the people realize that each vote counts and therefore I don't have to vote
#
for quote unquote winner, there's no winner.
#
Each vote actually has a value in terms of representation, it will be a significant change
#
in the way things happen.
#
That's not the only way you can transform India.
#
Right now, I don't think that's possible because when Mr. Narendra Modi is winning everything
#
that he fights, when a political party is dominant and they're getting disproportionate
#
representation as Congress did for a long time, there's no incentive for them to switch
#
Perhaps now the model we have to think about is can we think of a clear separation of the
#
executive and legislature, a direct direction of the data because anyway people vote for
#
Narendra Modi and for KCR and for Jagan or somebody, they're not voting for a party in
#
And therefore you actually make it legally and institutionally so that some of the burdens
#
that today's system imposes on the leaders, namely how the fellow get elected in the constituency
#
and therefore have all these qualities rather than good representation.
#
You depend on them for survival in office, any day they can bring you down and therefore
#
do their bidding, all the misgovernance, interference from court cases to contracts to transfers
#
to postings, you know, endemic all over the country.
#
And your ministerial positions are dependent only on the legislature, therefore everything
#
is about fighting for crumbs rather than looking for the best people to govern.
#
And because the legislator see local governments as a threat in a system where power is highly
#
centralized, entrenched, you don't dare to empower local governments where tomorrow legislator
#
does not matter in that sense and the people who want to be legislators actually will go
#
to local governments and lead them if you empower local governments.
#
So the incentives will be altered.
#
So you have to figure out how to alter the incentives and the levers of change you must
#
And I believe there's a possibility now, let us see if that works and I believe some
#
people are looking at that then, you're running dispensation and if that is true, I think
#
we must help them structure it properly and sell it well in the country and then make
#
So over your time in politics, I mean this is obviously something that almost happened,
#
but if you look back on your time in politics, what are the things you're proud of, your
#
triumphs and some of them might well be silent low key triumphs which are not publicly sort
#
Let me expand this question to the larger public advocacy.
#
First a caveat, in terms of what we've been able to accomplish as a group, we probably
#
are the biggest in the country.
#
That's because the bar is very low and there's not much that's been accomplished.
#
But I'm always mindful that in the context of what needs to happen, what we accomplished
#
is still miniscule, though it's bigger than almost any other group, perhaps in the world
#
without political power.
#
I mean three constitutional amendments, seven or eight significant laws and four or five
#
major policy changes including 2G spectrum license cancellation through court intervention,
#
disclosure of candidate details law, local courts law, et cetera, et cetera.
#
And removing the export ban on food grains, I don't understand what EDSC made us impose
#
that ban, a removal of trade barriers within the country, food grains, et cetera, and I
#
But in the larger scheme, these are still miniscule.
#
As a legislator, obviously I could do some things, more things to prevent damage from
#
happening rather than making good happen because it's easier to prevent damage from happening
#
if you have a sufficiently strong and credible voice and they respect you.
#
It's harder to actually make the ruling party agree to do the right thing.
#
Therefore, when they try to bring in a terrible and draconian society's law, even British
#
government during their time, they had an extremely liberal law, single-handedly I could
#
I mean, they simply did not know how to counter my opposition.
#
I was a lone opponent on that.
#
Several such things I can cite, but the particular context in which I was a legislator in this
#
state, the state was really driven by this Andhra, Telangana thing.
#
And therefore, mine was one of the few voices of sanity trying to bring people together
#
and reconcile conflicting emotions.
#
I don't think I succeeded, but I think that voice was loud and clear and widely understood
#
and increasingly that voice has greater credibility today because post those incidents, people
#
of both the states realize that that is what was required and they simply were falling
#
prey to the emotionalism.
#
Coming now of sort of the landscape of Indian politics, it seems to me number one that most
#
parties are really extremely similar, that is, in their economics, they are very statist.
#
As far as their approach towards society, it's often very dictated toward by identity
#
and vote bank politics.
#
And you know, as Arun Shuri once famously said, the NDA is UPA plus cow and the Congress
#
also has embraced the cow in various places.
#
Given this, it would seem and also given the large number of people who don't actually
#
vote or who vote noter, it would also seem that there is scope for disruption.
#
And in a sense, when you entered the electoral marketplace, you must have thought of perhaps
#
being a disruptive influence.
#
And definitely whatever one thinks of the Ahmadmi Party, I'm not a big fan, but whatever
#
one thinks of them, what they did very successfully as political entrepreneurs.
#
Because they disrupted that marketplace and made that space for themselves, which is pretty
#
But that was in the local political market of Delhi.
#
So in general, given that politics has become so ossified that all the parties are just
#
more of the same, do you think that there is scope for disruption?
#
And if so, I mean, I know politics and the future are both story of unknown unknowns
#
and weak is a long time in politics, as is famously said.
#
But what are the possible avenues through which such disruption can come?
#
If cities are empowered, like in Delhi, let's say Mumbai has a genuine self-governance and
#
the mayor of Mumbai and the council of Mumbai actually matter on their own, I'm absolutely
#
certain that something even bigger will happen in Mumbai or Bengaluru may not be on the same
#
scale, but Hyderabad and Chennai and others will also follow.
#
Unfortunately, we are not giving ourselves that chance.
#
Once I asked the then prime minister, sir, can you name the name of mayor of Delhi?
#
Of course, I could not either or Chennai or Bengaluru or Mumbai or something I said, then
#
can you name the mayor of London at the time Boris Johnson was the mayor, the current prime
#
minister, mayor of New York, Bloomberg or somebody earlier, the current Mexico president
#
He could name some of them.
#
I said, aren't we ashamed?
#
We know the names of mayors of other cities in the rest of the world.
#
In India, we don't know the mayor of a single city.
#
In 1924, some of the biggest names in India were leaders of local governments.
#
Rajendra Prasad in Patna, Rajwala Nehru, Chitranjand Das and later Subhash Chandra Bose, Sardar
#
Vallabhaya Patel and even much earlier in Salem, Chakravartal Rajagopalachari or even
#
before him, our own Prakasham Panthalu in Rajahmundry.
#
So you know, local governments during British India were far more powerful and nurtured
#
leadership than in independent India.
#
Actually, I feel ashamed to say this, but it is absolute truth.
#
If that happens, then there is a lever.
#
In the absence of that, I think the cities can start shouting, making their voice felt.
#
If Mumbaikars say, I don't care if it's BJP or Shoshana or NCP or Congress, if you don't
#
allow Mumbai to have self-government within reasonable limits, we are going to vote against
#
If that voice is felt strongly, I think there is an option available.
#
But that means you have to overcome the primordial loyalties.
#
I think parties will listen.
#
At the very least, you must start a framework for the big cities so that they can set the
#
Barring that, as I mentioned to you earlier, if a well-meaning government, if they have
#
at least half wisdom, if they at least fiscally empower with adequate accountability so that
#
the levers still are with you, you're not losing control because they're afraid of losing
#
Sometimes it's legitimate concerns.
#
Many people say, look, almost everything you say, we agree, but local governments, you're
#
No, there is almost corruption, which is true.
#
There's vote-buying, which is true.
#
But you have all those things.
#
You can't use that as an argument.
#
But even then, I don't want to say that.
#
You hold them to account, create strong accountability instruments, and keep them broadly under your
#
I have no quarrel with that.
#
I think if you create that framework, at least in cities, I don't think it will happen easily
#
in villages for two reasons.
#
One, it's much bigger, parties don't want to lose control.
#
Two, and this is a very sad statement I'm making, I grew up in a village.
#
Given the way our economy has progressed over the years, there's nothing of leadership left
#
There is neither money nor talent available in villages.
#
Almost anybody who has ambition and ability had to necessarily migrate to urban areas.
#
And therefore, in the current local governments in the village, unless you establish larger
#
local units, not a village panchayat of 2000 population, not 1.5 million or a million panchayats,
#
all this is, in my judgment, a very romantic, silly notion.
#
If you create larger entities like Kerala has done, and then empower them, rural areas
#
also a similar thing is possible, but right now, I don't see that.
#
Urban area, people for the first time are aware that they're paying taxes, and urban
#
local governments largely are self-sustained, and people are increasingly angry that despite
#
paying property taxes, my services are very poor, they're angry.
#
I think if that can be harnessed, I think that can be potentially a transformational
#
And you speak about how things can change, say the people of Mumbai raise their voice,
#
or the people of Chennai raise their voice, or whatever.
#
In your time in general, how has the expression of politics within civil society changed?
#
Do you find civil society expressing itself more or less?
#
Is technology somewhat of a factor in that, that it becomes possible for so many people
#
who otherwise would not have had a platform or a megaphone to actually go on Twitter or
#
wherever and express themselves?
#
Undoubtedly, reaching out to people and mobilizing people is much easier than it was when I started
#
in 1996, after leaving the civil service.
#
I mean, I remember the amount of hardship we had to undergo even for the simplest things,
#
and today, in a jiffy, we can reach people.
#
But also, things have gotten infinitely worse in some other respect.
#
At that time, and I'm saying this with a serious sense of responsibility, a lot of middle classes
#
are able to and willing to go beyond caste, region, religion, and party.
#
Even if they are committed to a particular party, they are willing to look beyond that
#
for the larger good of India, and they were willing to buy that argument and articulate
#
Today, that capacity is significantly diminished because we are much more polarized, much more
#
acerbic, much more volatile, and much more hate-filled.
#
No, and I was at an event last evening where I was talking about how even if liberalism
#
has been failed by politics, it can still be enabled by technology, like technology
#
enables individual freedom and enables us in so many ways.
#
And then one person from the audience shut me up very wisely by pointing out that look
#
what happened in Kashmir, that where the power of the state being what it is, sure all the
#
technology is there, but they're not even allowed to go on the internet.
#
That is still a special situation.
#
I would not be alarmist about that because I would still say because of the historical
#
legacy and tortuous history and the passions, et cetera.
#
But even otherwise, even where there are no constraints on the use of technology or your
#
freedoms in general, what has happened is political parties have almost become the new
#
That rigidity that was there throughout our history in our caste system, which is hopefully
#
sort of breaking down a little bit in the past 50 or 100 years, political parties that
#
There's no willingness to listen to the other person.
#
There's no willingness to look at the issues beyond personalities.
#
If you, Amit Verma, I like you, I agree with you, then whatever you say is right.
#
Doesn't matter how stupid or idiotic it is.
#
If I don't like you, if I don't like your face for whatever reason, then no matter how
#
wise and wonderful and useful to me it is, I'm not willing to listen.
#
So that's a very dangerous situation.
#
I think in a very significant measure, I don't think that is the whole of India, but I think
#
that is the dominant part of India vocally right now.
#
And I think in many of the countries, I don't think the United States is different.
#
It's as messed up as we are, but they can afford that mess because they're at a much
#
higher level of evolution and their local governments are so strong.
#
Ultimately, if you take away a federal government and the basic headlines, their lives will
#
Whereas in our country, I think we are in a grave danger.
#
We are completely ignoring things that actually matter to us and paying a heavy price.
#
In fact, there's a term popularized by the social scientist Cass Sunstein, which describes
#
this very beautifully, it's group polarization.
#
And he and his fellow researchers had carried out an experiment where they took people with
#
specific views like a bunch of conservatives or a bunch of liberals and put them in a room.
#
And they found that at the end of a session of interacting with each other, the views
#
of the group as a whole had shifted beyond the most extreme individual in the group,
#
which he called group polarization.
#
Because they are reinforcing each other and they are each then also sort of signaling
#
to each other how true they are to their cause and so on.
#
And what the internet does is that it enables this at scale.
#
So you have this group polarization happening at scale, these giant echo chambers where
#
everyone is posturing to raise their stature within their in-group.
#
And soon what happens is that issues don't matter.
#
It's a complete tribal war.
#
And you know, one of the ways in which I gauge whether a person is thinking about politics
#
deeply is whether their support of a party or opposition to a party is absolute or is
#
contingent around specific issues.
#
You know, I remember people who would criticize the BJP for opposing FDA in retail, continuing
#
to criticize them after they allowed it.
#
You know, so whatever you do, whatever you do, you are the enemy, you are the other,
#
you know, and there's nothing that can happen about this.
#
It's a very troublesome thing.
#
And I'm sure that senior leadership in all parties is aware, whether it's Narendra Modi
#
or Mrs. Sonia Gandhi or Sharad Pawar or many others.
#
But I think they're also in many ways helpless because if you antagonize the base too much,
#
then you lose your foundations.
#
If you allow them a free rein, then you lose the very purpose.
#
I think we are now in that very dangerous phase.
#
Let's hope sanity will prevail.
#
I really don't have an easy answer to this.
#
And what you're doing, that's why it's amazing that actually people are willing to listen
#
to an issue beyond parties without categorizing Amit Verma or JP or somebody else.
#
Without categorizing that you're able to engage the attention of a significant number of people
#
in a thoughtful discussion, I think that's an incredible thing.
#
I don't know how far this can spread or many such efforts can be made, but this is one
#
small little contribution you and I can make.
#
How was your journey in electoral politics?
#
Like you were earlier in politics of the other kind, the kind of politics we are engaging
#
in where you try to convince people and change hearts and minds.
#
And then you enter electoral politics where you're actually going up in front of people
#
and saying, hey, vote for me.
#
One, was there any dissonance there?
#
Was it hard for you as a person, as a thinker to actually go out there and do that?
#
And two, what was that whole experience like?
#
Did it in some sense dissolution you about?
#
You see, unlike in the marketplace, in the political marketplace in our electoral system,
#
But if you actually take that out and look at the public support or their respect for
#
these ideas or their willingness to consider, then it's a huge success.
#
But because of the electoral system compulsions and the political consequence, for instance
#
in 2014, despite everything else, there was a realistic chance that I would have been
#
the representative of the people for the Lok Sabha.
#
But because the unique situation in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana at that time, though that
#
was still Andhra Pradesh, but Telangana was already decided and the date was after post-election.
#
I contested from Hyderabad city.
#
Some significant political parties offered me space in some other places.
#
They would have got me elected.
#
But I decided not to use that because even if I stay away from that, they would still
#
be indulging in the normal practices and I didn't want that way.
#
I said, if I have to make an impact, it has to be not being merely a legislator or a parliamentarian,
#
but the way I want it to be.
#
Any other way is not worthwhile.
#
Now, the reason why ultimately that didn't work out is my constitution is the largest
#
in India at that time in terms of electorate strength.
#
The people of Telangana origin, they could see that I am their best choice, but they
#
were afraid that if they voted for me, their primary enemy at that time politically, T.D.
#
The people of Andhra origin, they could see that I was their best choice.
#
They were afraid that if they voted for me, their primary enemy, TRS, would win.
#
I got crushed between the two.
#
Second, what did Narendra Modi do in India to many people like us in a political sense?
#
What is the public perception of people like us?
#
Now, we want to bring about some change.
#
A, honesty, B, good governance, if you want to capture in two expressions.
#
Narendra Modi, in the eyes of the majority of the middle class and young people of the
#
country, embodied both.
#
Whether delivery was there or not, you forget that, but in the popular imagination in 2014,
#
Therefore, our cloak was taken over by him.
#
So between these two patterns, obviously, were rejected.
#
So in our electoral system, electoral politics and outcomes are much too complex.
#
We will be very arrogant and ignorant if we thought it's about you.
#
It's about a process and a situation and a context.
#
The currents of history and society are too strong for any one person to fight.
#
I have some further sort of questions arising out of this.
#
One is really a two part question, and I often ask, I've asked this to guests who've been
#
here to speak about Indian politics and the BJP per se, which is that there seems to be
#
a very interesting duality at play.
#
One is that the BJP is a one party that to some extent does embody a particular ideology
#
and a set of principles, whether one agrees with them or not.
#
And that ideology and that set of principles has brought them very far.
#
But on the other hand, what you see in, say, the sort of political alliances and the maneuverings
#
that Amit Shah has done, who seems to me from a distance to be an absolutely brilliant political
#
strategist, he seems to embody the will to power, that we must come to power at any cost.
#
If that means alliances with people we otherwise abused, we will do that.
#
If it means poaching people from other parties while till yesterday we had set our IT cell
#
on them, we will do that also.
#
And it seems to me at some level, and this is why it's a two part question, because one
#
it's about the BJP that is there a conflict between their core ideology and this will
#
And if so, how will it manifest?
#
Will they become a bigger version, a different version of what the Congress itself was once
#
driven by nothing but the will to power?
#
And the second question is a broader question and would apply even to you, that, you know,
#
you might get into politics with a set of principles, but what you need to survive is
#
that will to power where compromises have to be made, such as the compromise you mentioned
#
you refused to make when it came to taking the ticket of one party or the other.
#
How does one then reconcile that?
#
Let me take the first question first.
#
I think there are many strands here.
#
The first is one of the great challenges of right-wing parties all over the world is without
#
taking a certain position, which may not be entirely modern and liberal, you cannot have
#
But without having the capacity to attract the economic liberals and the modernists,
#
you cannot have a majority nor can you actually take the country forward.
#
The rest of the world grappled with that, take the Christian Democrats in Germany, take
#
the conservatives in the United States.
#
Similarly, many Republicans in United States and many others elsewhere, conservatives in
#
Britain, et cetera, et cetera.
#
I think India, this is a unique experience, new experience, and I think our leadership
#
is grappling with that.
#
They're not able to figure out what is the best way of doing that.
#
But even elsewhere in the world, let's be fair, in recent times, the consensus we thought
#
that existed suddenly is breaking down.
#
Angela Merkel suddenly is now facing from AFD, the Nazi party, that the core is now
#
moving in some respect to that, and Republicans in the United States suddenly we find that
#
something strange is happening.
#
So even there, after having solved the problem, they discovered the problem again comes back.
#
And a country as complex and as, shall I say, limited in democratic experience as India
#
is, I think it's even a harder problem.
#
I think we must understand that without being excessively judgmental, that is one broad
#
The second broad thing is, that's what is disturbing.
#
If Mr. Amit Shah and Mr. Narendra Modi are thinking of getting the power at any cost
#
and will to power is there, will to power is necessary for politics, there's no question
#
But if will to power without purpose becomes the dominant feature, how are we different
#
from the Congress regime?
#
That's exactly the criticism against Congress for a long, long period.
#
After the 1960s, the primary attack on Congress with complete justification was that there
#
was a will to power without any purpose.
#
If you become a clone of Congress, of course you will survive in power.
#
You survive for 30, 40 years in power like that.
#
But is that your purpose in life?
#
Did Narendra Modi give up his personal life, his economic fortunes, and the many things
#
that people treasure, his family, and many things for a cause that he believed in passionately?
#
Is this the net outcome?
#
I think that's a question that many genuinely thoughtful people who care and cared for India
#
deeply, they must ponder.
#
I'm not questioning the need for power.
#
But for power without purpose is the most dangerous thing.
#
I think now there is a problem.
#
But let me look at it positively.
#
In today's democratic world, Mr. Narendra Modi is possibly the most powerful leader.
#
I'm not talking of global power, obviously anybody in America, even an idiot, will be
#
more powerful than an Indian leader, that's not the issue.
#
But within the polity whose word has the greatest consequences or who has the greatest power
#
to bring about change, I think Mr. Modi is probably number one in the world today.
#
There's an immense opportunity.
#
It will not be recaptured again for a long time, for another 20, 25 years.
#
I hope, and those who pray, I think we all should pray, that the ruling establishment
#
will discover the purpose of the power to really transform the country because they
#
Mr. Modi can change the electoral system, he can carry the people with him.
#
He can decentralize power without too much of discord with the legislators.
#
He can improve accountability and service delivery genuinely through instruments of
#
law and institutional mechanisms without much resistance.
#
These are very hard for normal politicians in normal times to do.
#
Mr. Modi has this, he can completely change the rule of law.
#
Mr. Modi and Mr. Amit Shah together can easily change the rule of law.
#
Mr. Amit Shah is talking recently, I was happy to hear that, I hope there is some genuine
#
desire how third degree and abuse of power have become endemic in rule of law.
#
Because he sees himself as a victim of that process, for instance.
#
If he really wants it, he can actually do something significant about it.
#
And these are huge things.
#
Conceptually, they may not be big, but operationally, they are huge things.
#
Here is a priceless opportunity where in a democratic system without a Xi Jinping or
#
an authoritarian regime, the leadership has the power, actual power to change things with
#
the consent of the people.
#
I hope they discover the immense opportunity that's presenting themselves instead of nearly
#
wasting their energies and enhancing their footprint as a political party and making
#
some more fellows MLAs and MPs.
#
I don't understand how that matters.
#
I hope you'll forgive me for being glib, but you know, the hope you express could also
#
be summed up by saying power corrupts absolute power reforms.
#
I, I, you know, I, I, I'm a little skeptical about that because we've seen the last five
#
See, if you don't have faith in human nature and if you don't somehow hope that a leader's
#
sense of glory, ultimately you want to be remembered in the history books.
#
If you don't believe that leader's sense of glory could actually be a transformational
#
thing for a society, then all political process is about who is in power.
#
I believe that there is a immense possibility and I hope that possibility will be exercised
#
and I think come election time, if you're all disappointed, we'll, we'll vote for or
#
against somebody or other.
#
But as long as that possibility exists, even as we reserve the right to criticize what
#
we believe is wrong and to hopefully correct it, we must also be willing to be engaged
#
and see what best can be done with the opportunity available today.
#
Otherwise, each time wait for the next election and each time be disappointed.
#
That's not the best thing.
#
Many people who are deeply unhappy with BJP today were deeply unhappy with Congress earlier
#
or some other party earlier.
#
So if you are perpetually deeply unhappy, if you're not willing to engage and then see
#
what best can be done to improve things, then I don't understand what the hell we are doing.
#
And you know, I totally agree with you that, you know, being human, we are motivated by
#
the quest for glory and to leave a legacy and so on.
#
But equally, it might be argued that those guys in power right now would define glory
#
a little bit differently than us, where they might think of glory in terms of a Hindu Rashtra
#
or building great statues or temples or, or whatever, which kind of brings me to my next
#
question, which is a question about what we are fundamentally as a society.
#
Like one of the dilemmas that I have had, and I've posed to various guests, and I love
#
your response on this, is that much as you know, our constitution isn't liberal enough
#
for me, but it is still relatively liberal, it has liberal elements, but it seems to me,
#
and this is a criticism I later found, Dindayal Upadhyay himself had made in a different language,
#
is that our constitution is a liberal constitution imposed upon an illiberal society.
#
And the dilemma therefore is, how can that imposition be liberal?
#
Can you impose liberalism on someone because the act of imposition changes it, and is there
#
not something incongruous about that?
#
I believe fundamentally Indian society has been always liberal for a long time.
#
It's the most eclectic civilization in human history, whereas did Islam come peacefully
#
and survive without too much of strife, whereas did Christianity come peacefully, and these
#
are all very early, immediately after the prophets passing, within years Islam came
#
to India, and the Mopla and other Muslims, they still practice without too much of problem.
#
Almost within years after Jesus Christ's crucifixion, St. Thomas landed on the Malabar coast, and
#
even today Syrian Christians continue to practice that pretty peacefully.
#
Not only practice, but also we learn from each other and embrace.
#
We all know the eclectic nature of our civilization.
#
Or Judaism, later on, or Judaism 2,600 years ago.
#
I think it is part of the Indian ethos, live and let live, and embrace as much as possible,
#
and create another God and then pay homage.
#
If Sir Arthur Cotton, who 150 years ago built wonderful irrigation projects in Godavari
#
Delta here, and Thanjavur, and Tamil Nadu, etc., etc., actually during his lifetime
#
we built temples and worshipped, even today there are slokas chanting mantras about Sir
#
It is a beautiful thing.
#
So I believe fundamentally our society is inclusive and liberal, with certain huge distortions
#
of caste system, and many other less than happy practices on account of tradition, but
#
that's true with most societies in some form or the other.
#
Therefore I don't believe that the constitution in that sense was an imposition, actually
#
it was a reflection of our society.
#
What has happened over a period of time is, I think, I'm not a scholar in this respect,
#
I'm only a keen student of history, A, we did not realize the various trends of nationalism
#
that operated for about a hundred years before freedom.
#
And there is a lot of suppressed anger on account of non-recognition that is surfacing.
#
B, the traumatic, extraordinarily traumatic events of partition, I don't think as a nation
#
we have come to terms with that.
#
We sort of put it away in history books, somewhere in a partition happened, unlike, you know,
#
the Germans, for instance, who ad nauseam talk about the Holocaust and what happened,
#
the Nazism or somewhere else, something else, or civil war in the US, et cetera.
#
In India, somehow we want to pretend it didn't happen.
#
Well, for me, sitting in Hyderabad or in a village in Kostalandra or in Tamil Nadu,
#
But I think for a significant number of people in certain parts of India, it happened.
#
It impacted their lives and their ancestors' lives and their families.
#
I think by suppressing it, pretending it was not there, I think we did damage to ourselves.
#
Again, there's a payback period.
#
And the third strand is, and this is what is disconcerting, because perhaps of these
#
factors and because the reform movement has disappeared in India in a religious sense,
#
And during freedom struggle, nationalism, enlightenment, reform, they all move together.
#
Somehow that we gave up for some reason.
#
Therefore, the most narrow interpretation of the Hindu philosophy or religion, they
#
have become now the most vocal.
#
I don't know if they're the most dominant, not yet, I believe, but they're the most vocal
#
You and I, I can speak for myself, we can hold many views and still be broadly part
#
I mean, Charvaka was an atheist, and there were many, many others, Kanada and others,
#
We are comfortable with that.
#
This is true Hinduism, without losing our moorings or our traditions.
#
But the narrow interpretation that happened in the recent past in particular, because
#
other factors that I mentioned, because it's the most vocal one, that is what gives us
#
a tremendous cause for discomfort and the feeling that illiberal Hinduism is there.
#
But I don't think Hinduism per se is illiberal.
#
I'm not saying it out of any jingoistic pride, but I truly believe so, even as I recognize
#
that all religion ultimately is a myth, all religion, because I believe it's a necessary
#
myth for the majority of people.
#
Because many evolutionary biologists say that religion and faith are hardwired into your
#
I'm willing to buy that.
#
Therefore we must respect that.
#
But we must also modernize it.
#
And I think Hinduism has been modernized significantly and is capable of being modernized further.
#
But that modernization project probably is now halted a little bit for the time being.
#
You're actually the second person in two days pushing back at my assertion that India is
#
The other day at this event where I gave a talk, this friend of mine, Vikram, insisted
#
that India has always been, and his formulation was interesting, he said India has always
#
been a liberal society ruled by illiberal states.
#
And I agree to the extent that yes, we have been very tolerant of diversity, we've absorbed
#
I had a great episode on Indian food about how everything we regard as Indian food came
#
from outside and we embraced it.
#
Even the elegant churidar kurta that our prime minister wears has after all not had its origin
#
But at the same time, I would sort of double down on the illiberalism that I believe is
#
there by saying that look at the status of women in India through the centuries.
#
You know, right from our epics till the modern day, you know, like you must have read Yogantha
#
by Rawati Karve, which, you know, sort of looks at our epics, Mahabharata and Ramayana,
#
and she talks about the deep level of misogyny and sexism in those which are embedded in
#
our culture in a thousand invisible ways and it's almost sort of normalized, but you know,
#
we can agree to disagree on that as well.
#
Let me take this up a little bit.
#
Your critique is not of Indian society, but of religion per se.
#
There's not a single religion that was not misogynistic and sexist.
#
At the same time, right from Raja Ram Mohan Roy and Mrityunjaya Sagar and many other reformers
#
over a period of time and Indian society and state the way they embraced.
#
I think increasingly the Hindu society, I am now specifically talking about Hindu society
#
and Indian society, they're recognizing the value of women and I think today things are
#
I don't get depressed about it.
#
My mother could not go to the village to study.
#
She is bright because her father said, how can my daughter go to another village and
#
Today it's unthinkable and we are more than happy at least middle and upper classes, even
#
the poorer sections to really allow the women to, girls to fulfill their potential and give
#
There are still serious problems.
#
That's because the way we raise our children is terrible.
#
The boys have pampered too much and then given a sense of entitlement and there is a deeper
#
failing in India and that is education.
#
Not merely about math and literacy, but it's about the way to think.
#
And I think it is that failure that is manifesting today because with advancing time, I don't
#
think we are sufficiently enlightened because the capacity to think is now diminished because
#
of a horrible educational process.
#
But I don't think the society is in general becoming more illiberal.
#
I reject that hypothesis.
#
Your critique is religion.
#
My assertion wasn't that we are becoming illiberal.
#
My assertion was that we've always been illiberal and yes, the arc of history, as Martin Luther
#
King would have said, perhaps does move in the direction of freedom and liberalism.
#
But by and large, it would seem to many people like something that often seems to me to hold
#
a ring of truth is that what we have in the success of the BJP since 2014 is a political
#
expression of our social instincts.
#
As I said, some element of that is definitely there.
#
But it's simplistic on the whole.
#
I think it's simplistic because if BJP, God forbid, does not deliver economic growth and
#
the many things that we want as a society, BJP will pay the same price that Congress
#
If what you say is true, then it has to be a static world, politically speaking.
#
BJP must be sure of itself no matter what happens because you have a majority with you
#
and they're all imbued by a sense of a narrow notion of nationalism and Hinduism.
#
And therefore, politically, there is no further movement.
#
I don't think that's true.
#
This actually segues very nicely into my last question.
#
I've taken more than two hours of your time and I'm very grateful you gave me the honor
#
And that question is basically this, that, you know, just carrying on from your assertion
#
that if Mr. Modi does not deliver, he will be voted out.
#
But he did not deliver in the last five years and he did get voted in, you know, after massive
#
Big Bang deforms like liberalization and the botched DST.
#
And equally, in the past, we have seen the Vajpayee government, which I thought was a
#
pretty good government.
#
I mean, I, you know, get voted out unexpectedly.
#
2004 was a shocker to me, certainly, and much of the country, yes.
#
And I think he's an extremely underrated prime minister.
#
And my question, therefore, is that, you know, one criticism I often make of Modi and I don't
#
even know if it's a fair criticism because this is inevitable and rational behavior is
#
that he focuses far more on optics and governance.
#
Now, the thing is, the way our election cycles are, for example, there's always a state election
#
It's natural for a party to always be on campaigning mode than governing mode.
#
But a greater worry here is that perhaps they have hit upon this possible truth that narratives
#
matter more than reality itself, you know, and that therefore control of the narrative
#
is the most important thing.
#
It doesn't matter if you don't deliver in terms of governance.
#
It doesn't matter if you carry out something like demonetization, which I consider the
#
largest assault on property rights in human history.
#
You still win the UP election by a landslide after that.
#
You know, with the economy going the way it is, you still win the 2019 general elections.
#
So the larger question there is that, you know, are we given that narratives are so
#
I'm not saying reality doesn't matter.
#
Maybe at some point when things get really bad, the narrative changes accordingly.
#
But given that narratives matter so much, is our fundamental political challenge therefore
#
to frame the right narratives and if so, how has your thinking evolved not just in the
#
kinds of narratives that we need to put forward in our political rhetoric in this course,
#
but also tactically, what you know, tactically and strategically, broadly, what are the sort
#
of narratives we need to build and tactically, how do we make those narratives appealing
#
I think most democracies have this challenge and it's increasing A between style and substance
#
B between the tactics required to acquire power and the wisdom required to govern well
#
Mr. Modi has been a redoubtable campaigner is perhaps one of the most effective marketing
#
persons politically speaking.
#
He knows how to articulate, he knows how to inspire, how to get loyalty and how to acquire
#
power and retain power.
#
But I think it's time that the grander purpose, a larger sense of where India is headed takes
#
a dominant role rather than getting your footprint wider.
#
There's no doubt about it.
#
I think many people believe that the opportunity is very great and it has not been harnessed
#
the way it should have been.
#
And merely because I market it well doesn't make the outcome substantial.
#
For instance, and I'm saying this with great pain and it's not about Narendra Modi or somebody
#
else, it's what happened over 70 years, out of the 49 large economies in the world, large
#
economy defined as a country with more than $200 billion GDP.
#
If you take all the standard parameters of development and civilization, quantity of
#
water supply, quality of water, the sanitation, stormwater drainage, number of years of schooling,
#
quality of education outcomes, infant mortality, immunization, you name it, standard things
#
where data is available and authentic by and large.
#
I did nothing extra, I just took the data, I said out of the 49 countries where does
#
On every single indicator, without exception, India stood in bottom five.
#
We were never above 45th rank, we ranged from 45th to 49th.
#
There were three countries which were consistently in this group of five apart from India, Pakistan,
#
I don't even know why we're fighting, they're doing exactly the same things to our people,
#
If Mr. Modi, I believe he does, wants greatness of India, that greatness lies in this.
#
We don't deserve to be in the bottom five.
#
If that, the political system understands and we can easily overcome that because we
#
have so many advantages in this country, huge advantages, but we're not harnessing them.
#
If that recognition don't send them, that the great India that they dreamt, why did
#
Mr. Modi as a relative teenager or in his early youth, gave up his family and everything
#
There is certainly a deep inspiration, Vivekananda, Bhagavad Gita, Hindutva, culture, national
#
greatness, there are some ideas beyond individual gain.
#
But if those ideas are not translated into true greatness of this country, then I think
#
all of us will regard our lives wasted.
#
And I'm sure the leadership in this country of all parties, one day wakes up and I hope
#
all of us will make them aware of this.
#
For instance, I don't think people seriously looked at where we are among 49 large economies
#
This is not a groundbreaking story.
#
But we didn't look at it that way.
#
We look at our aggregates and we talk about we being the next China or a five trillion
#
We are so big, one sixth of humanity, we'll always have three percent of GDP, you know,
#
even if you're doing terribly badly.
#
That is not really greatness.
#
Where are we in terms of averages?
#
If our education, our school education level is second to bottom, the only country being
#
worse than Indian states being Kyrgyzstan, which was fortunately for India included
#
in that survey of PISA.
#
And the only response of the Indian government is that India shall not participate in PISA
#
And after 12 years now, they decided after after 10 years that in 2021 will participate,
#
but only for select central schools and and now they are schools.
#
Are we actually facing reality and trying to change it or are we accepting reality as
#
it is today and pretending that we are doing better than what we actually are?
#
I think this question honestly must all ask of ourselves.
#
And I think the discourse in the media too, I am equally sharply critical of the media.
#
When did this become an issue?
#
Why does it become an issue in a country which is so badly governed if our education, our
#
health care, our rule of law and the way the basic communities are delivered or not delivered
#
or service delivery, those don't become daily issues badgering us, bullying us, because
#
And if you think some grand power game like a 2020 cricket match, whether without Koli
#
who scored a century or not, if that is your dominant issue, then I think the blame equally
#
rests with us as a media and the public opinion makers and the leaders in various other fields.
#
As someone who works with young people a lot, you know, through the years, do the young
#
people of India give you hope because they are responding, they are empowered by technology,
#
they are responding to global trends or are they lost in their devices?
#
There is a slice of young people with extraordinary skill, ability, intelligence, exposure, dedication
#
That gives me immense hope, for instance, in school education, the kind of things that
#
many people independently, independent of the government or sometimes working with the
#
government attempting, it's so heartwarming.
#
And young people at large are obviously always idealistic in every generation.
#
Therefore, again, there is that energy.
#
But the way we are disempowering young people by substandard, abysmally poor education,
#
it's hard to reach them intellectually.
#
Because education has failed, to replace that through our other kind of public communication
#
and to make them think is a very hard task, we all have to attempt that.
#
But there's no substitute to improving at least the school education to start with so
#
that they can think a little better.
#
Obviously, there is hope because the younger generation is always more idealistic and more
#
And they have the future.
#
It's their future that's decided.
#
And there are immensely skilled people and talented people who, I mean, the kind of skills
#
and abilities that they have, I cannot even imagine.
#
They are way, way above what I ever was or am in my life.
#
But a whole lot of young people in a country where we pretend that we are doing well, they
#
are so denied the basic tools to fulfill their potential, that even if they have a vague
#
desire to improve things, they're not yet partners in this change.
#
Hopefully they'll get there.
#
JP, you're an inspiration to me and I'm sure to many, many of my listeners.
#
Thank you so much for coming on the show.
#
If you enjoyed listening to the show, do follow JP Narayan on Twitter at JP underscore Lok
#
You can follow me on Twitter at Amit Verma, A-M-I-T-V-A-R-M-A.
#
You can browse past episodes of The Scene and the Unseen at sceneunseen.in, thinkpragati.com
#
The Scene and the Unseen is supported by the Takshashila Institution.
#
Postgraduate courses in public policy begin in January.
#
For more information, check out takshashila.org.in.
#
Thank you for listening.
#
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