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Sometimes when friends from other countries tell me that their politics is complicated,
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There's nothing remotely as deeply complicated as Indian politics.
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For one, it is a happy miracle that a country so large and diverse has actually stayed together.
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We have so many languages and ethnicities, different kinds of divisions.
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Just look at our population, all these people, so many states and districts and units of
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governance, it's almost impossible to figure it all out.
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It was relatively simple after independence when the Congress party almost inherited the
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But over the decades, the political scene has gotten more and more fragmented.
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No one really knows what's going on.
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You know, after every election, there is always talk of this mandate or that mandate.
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But I think mandates are nonsense.
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They are simplistic post-facto narratives quenching our thirst for explanation.
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Every election is really local.
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Every individual voter is voting for her individual reasons.
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And parsing this is very hard.
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If our democracy has to work, it's important not just for political entrepreneurs, but
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also for voters, for us citizens to get a grip on the nature of our politics.
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Welcome to The Seen and the Unseen, our weekly podcast on economics, politics and behavioral
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Please welcome your host, Amit Barma.
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Welcome to The Seen and the Unseen.
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Today's show is about the state of Indian politics.
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And my guest today is Jaiprakash Narayan, also known as JP.
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Don't confuse him for the political giant of the early decades of our independence who
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also carried the same name, though this JP is no less of a political titan.
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JP started as a physician, then became an IAS officer, and then left the IAS to enter
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He founded the Lok Sattva movement in 1996, which became the Lok Sattva Party in 2006.
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JP is today not just one of the most respected politicians in our country, but also one of
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our most respected public intellectuals.
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So without much further ado, let's get on with the show.
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Welcome to The Seen and the Unseen, JP.
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JP, I want to talk today about Indian politics in general, but before I do that, I want to
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start by talking about your personal journey.
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You were a physician to begin with, and then you joined the IAS, and then you got into
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politics and started the Lok Sattva movement.
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What prompted you to join politics yourself?
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You know, I was born about a decade after independence.
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So all these starry-eyed notions of freedom, romanticism about democracy and nation-building,
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you know, that sort of thing, an inheritance from the earlier generation that rubbed off
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on all of us, you, I, all of us from across the country.
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And by the time I was 17, 18 years of age, the disjunction between what we all read in
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textbooks and what we all believe our country to be and what actually seems to be happening
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was increasingly apparent even for tender young minds.
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And then, if you recall, 1970s, we had this Watergate episode in the U.S., how a mighty
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president was brought to Boca by the institutions in the country for relatively minor infractions.
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And how in our country, India moved towards emergency, and then freedom was suspended.
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Then post-emergency, Janatha came, and there's no institutional accountability, and things
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didn't change, even when there was electoral change.
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So all this made an enormous impression on many of us across the country.
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I'm sure hundreds of thousands of us across the country in various fields today, in business,
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in administration, in politics, in media, in social reform, in governance reform, all
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of us in some way or another are conditioned by this whole experience of emergency.
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And that was actually my whole journey.
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I was a medical doctor going into IAS, not because I'm in such of a job, but you wanted
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to learn and do something about it.
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Then when I left IAS, it's because you understood what is possible.
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You also understood what are the systemic constraints, and then trying to figure out
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what you can do as a citizen collectively to make things possible.
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Then the reform movement, Lok Satta, then the political party in the hope that if there
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is sufficient public support in the electoral sense, it will accelerate change.
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So it's really the same journey.
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How do you make a democracy work?
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And you know, nowadays if you ask young people, they often think of politics as something
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that they can never be part of because they look at the people in politics and, you know,
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no matter how educated they might be or the kind of opinions they might have, they don't
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have that same call to public service, let's say our leaders did during the independence
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struggle because they were animated by sort of a higher cause.
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Well, what young people today see is that, you know, the people who go into politics,
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it's essentially they are driven by a lust for power.
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They're not animated by those higher principles like you say you were after your experience
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of emergency and so on.
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So, you know, having said that, I mean, you're one of the very few people I can think of
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from sort of the educated classes who actually made the jump and said, no, I'm going to do
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And would you say that that idealism is born out or was it perhaps a little misplaced?
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A, idealism is always born out if you combine it with the tactical wisdom and if you are
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a perseverance, not romanticism.
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And B, I don't know if really the youngsters today are any different from the youngsters
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I believe the youth today are as idealistic as early generations, except that the romanticism
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that we all have because of the freedom struggle and early days, etc., that probably gave way
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to a more deeper understanding of the society and a greater clarity about the goals, which
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is probably good, not bad.
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So, I don't think that idealism is any less today.
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If anything, the skills are greater, they're more technically equipped, they have greater
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understanding, more learned today.
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But the downside is today with technology offering many opportunities, the kind of window
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of opportunity to be able to make an impact on the country or to attract these people
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to make an impact on the country is much less today because life offers for very bright
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people many more opportunities today and there are many more distractions and there are many
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more technological tools available.
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Barring that, I don't think idealism wise there's any deficiency today and I don't think
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there's any incapacity of the young people.
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It is our inability in the political process or even in our larger social process in absorbing
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these young people and giving them an opportunity, a perch and giving them a direction.
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So the failure, if any, is that of the earlier generation, not the younger generation today.
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So, I want to talk a little bit about the nature of politics.
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Like a lot of us think of, like for example, one question that has always preoccupied me
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is to what extent is the nature of our politics determined by the structure of our state.
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For example, many of us think of the Indian state now as this bloated parasitic rent seeking
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beast with political parties really competing only for who will be the ruling mafia for
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five years and you know basically bribing voters either with direct cash or biryani
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or loan waivers or similar kinds of patronage politics to come to power.
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So would you say there is some truth in that about the structure of our state determining
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the nature of our politics and therefore setting limits of what is politically possible?
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Not some truth amidst a whole lot of truth.
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The structure of the society and the way our institutions evolved has a profound impact
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on the nature of politics, electoral politics, competitive politics, I have no doubt whatsoever.
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Today we all know there's nothing new and I say which is original on this, the amount
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of money power deployed to buy the vote and the freebies that are offered without actually
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the state performing its basic functions and of course fomenting divisions in a very complex
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and diverse society for electoral gain, caste, region, religion, language, all kinds of things.
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They're all too real for us to require any further elaboration.
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All this is because of the factors that you mentioned but the Indian state has spectacularly
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failed in doing what it ought to be doing.
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In my book, the state has four basic functions.
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The first is a rule of law and justice and public order.
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The second is basic infrastructure including electricity for every family and accessible,
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I'm not saying free, accessible in transport and water and sanitation and sewerage and
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Then quality education accessible to everybody without auto pocket expenditure and healthcare
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accessible to everybody without auto pocket expenditure.
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Indian state failed spectacularly in all these areas.
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I'm just now doing a survey.
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I've taken 49 countries in the world which have more than 200 billion dollar nominal
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GDP in the world today in dollar terms.
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There are only 49 countries at this point of time from my study.
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India ranks in almost all things that matter from 45th to 49th.
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There is not a single issue where India ranks above 45th because what the state should be
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doing is completely neglected in India and the state has become a rent-seeker, a power
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hungry monster and the lust for power, even if it's not money always, it's the lust for
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There are areas where there's not much money, many panchayats there's hardly any money and
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yet in many states the panchayat elections are fought so viciously and so much money
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is spent to buy the votes when the candidate cannot even afford to spend money because
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he is thinking, most often it is he, this power lust is mostly a male phenomenon, though
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females are not exempt from that, he is thinking that somehow the position gives him some result
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and for that he's willing to do anything at personal cost.
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So it's an insane process largely because of the way we structure the state, excessive
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centralization, incapacity to hold bureaucracy to account in a country where most of the
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people are much weaker and much less powerful than even the lowliest of government servants.
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Once we created a monstrous structure, the rest of it became a vicious cycle from which
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ordinary politicians or parties cannot come out unless you really want to change the institutions
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of state and the political process, if you merely want to be a power player to seek power
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and this is a worthy thing, there's nothing wrong in seeking power, but if that becomes
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your goal then you're trapped in a vicious cycle.
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So you're absolutely right, we have a terrible situation and unless we look at institutions
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and redesigning our democracy in a sensible way, not a radical way really, in a sensible
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way, the way it should be in any civilized country, unless that is done, I don't think
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there's an easy escape and it doesn't matter if Modi is the Prime Minister or Manmohan
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is saying or this party or that party, all this is a make-believe fight, ultimately at
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the grassroots level it's all the same.
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Ideally in politics one would assume that the politician should look at coming to power
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as a means to an end, but here it's essentially an end in itself.
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I want to follow on from this and ask a question about the political marketplace and ask a
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sort of a fundamental question which of course has many complex answers and I'm hoping you
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can shed some light on that, which is that in any marketplace you would imagine that
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there is demand and there is supply and therefore in the political marketplace the politicians
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have to give what the voters want and given how our state has failed in so many areas,
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you would imagine that there would be popular anger about that and things would change.
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However, voters tend to continue voting on the basis of identity politics or short-term
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populism and so on and so forth and I know this is a question which obviously you gave
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a lot of thought to before you took the choice to jump into politics yourself.
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So my very simple question is what do voters want?
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It's a great question actually.
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Perhaps a central question of our polity today if you want to reform the country.
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You know, let us go back a little bit, I mean go to 1947, 1950, 52, the first general election,
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the constitution making so on and so forth.
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When you go back, what happened?
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Did the people of India, the voters of this country today, did they ask for democracy
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I don't recall any such thing.
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It was given to the people of the country without even asking and we reduced that even
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in our institution making vote and shout, you have the right to vote, somehow they realized
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that the new Maharajas are chosen by something called a vote, a ballot paper, a ballot box
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and a little mark and now of course the EVM and pressing the button.
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They don't know why or how but they know that happens, that's true, that's real because
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the electoral governments are really in power and two, they have the right to protest every
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day and do Rasta Roko, Dharana and some Hartaal, all kinds of things, this is the Indian staple
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Barring that, we never allowed our people to understand what it really means to be in
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I mean a centralized system, when you don't deliver anything, when everything is reduced
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to who is in power and people somehow miraculously have the right to decide who will be in power,
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then whatever is happening today is an inevitable consequence and therefore the voters are seeking
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either the short-term freebies because they believe that the subsidy you get, the free
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rights you get, the loan waiver you get is something real and tangible.
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You can feel it, you can sense it and they have lost hope that the most substantive long-term
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things can ever happen and that's why in India, there's hardly any debate or hardly any protest
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and the poorest of the poor, the rickshaw pullers send their children to a private school
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at 500-600 rupees a month and yet get third-rate education in private school equally and people
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don't even ask about that.
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It's not even a natural issue because people gave up on the government and there's no other
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country where there's greater poverty and mass misery on account of failure of healthcare,
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roughly 60 million people are falling below poverty annually, descending into poverty
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on account of healthcare costs or loss of earning on account of ill health.
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This is incredible misery and yet healthcare is not really a central issue in our elections
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because people gave up on the government.
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We did not even make people understand that this is really what governance is about and
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therefore people want to maximize the short-term real gain that they can perceive because they
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don't understand any other long-term gain.
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So blaming the people is no use and if freebies are not enough, then obviously the money for
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the voting and we have done it, we have perfected this in our country to your heart.
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In most states, there are some states where it's relatively less prevalent but money,
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recent Arkanagar, earlier Ranjar in Andhra Pradesh or elsewhere, you see the garishness
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and the incredible sum of money we're talking about in a desperately poor country and of
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course divisions in a very, very poor country with enormous schisms, polarization is so
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easy because we are still tribal, we still haven't built that sense of unity of purpose
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beyond your origins in this country.
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Again, the institution's failure is very clear, evident in those cases and therefore
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people fall back upon a sense of security that comes from caste, religion and anything
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that touches them, reservations, a religious issue, past real or imaginary insults or caste
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or region or language is so easy to arouse them and none of this is surprising, it's
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almost mathematical to me.
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I'm actually trying to do some kind of a game theory application.
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The initial conditions that we had, what would happen to a democracy?
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My bet is in any country, these are the initial conditions which are not addressed adequately.
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If you didn't build institutions to make people understand the meaning of the word, then whatever
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happened in India is an inevitable consequence in any democracy.
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We are not unique in that sense.
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So the challenge is how do you now create an incentive for the players to alter these
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You can't do it overnight dramatically by one fell swoop, but what are the critical
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My belief is local government empowerment with some accountability and some effective
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rule of law so that there is no untrammeled exercise of abuse of power with impunity,
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but there is some consequence of following abuse of power.
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If these two things are in place and with service delivery so that you don't depend
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on a party missionary at the grassroots level, and that is really at the root of much of
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what happened to parties, then there is a hope, and these three are achievable and they're
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also politically popular if the media and the middle classes and the intelligentsia
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and the opinion makers, they look at these instead of lamenting or merely taking partisan
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positions for or against this other party.
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Therefore, I believe it's doable.
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I know how tough it is, but you have to keep at it.
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I mean, the two great challenges you pointed out is that the voters tend to be A, fatalistic
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about getting anything out of the government at all and B, tribalistic.
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So those impulses can be played too, but like you said, there are sort of ways of beginning
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Can you give some examples maybe from the kind of work you've done about how the process
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really is of, you know, getting these kind of sort of like, and again, this is sort of
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One part is that, like, do you address it sort of at a local level and say, okay, these
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are the specific changes we want to do.
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This is one, two, three.
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These are the things we want to agitate for and we build a movement and we get these done
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and, or is it also possible to build a broader movement to have deeper institutional reform
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of the kind you pointed out and of the kind you wished existed right from the start from
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when we became independent?
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Let me give some examples.
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Let's take Dr. Kurian's, Vargis Kurian's work.
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Well, Sivunath Patel and others, they all started this whole movement.
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Is Kurian's genius and his ability to articulate and build systems and make them acceptable
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that made a milk revolution in India possible.
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The illiterate village milk producer, small milk producer, with no economic muscle, completely
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disconnected in the market, he created a framework in which he understands or she understands
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the stakes in production, understands that there is transparency in the system and if
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I produce more and better quality, I get more income.
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It's done in a manner that they can easily feel that.
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Therefore, they transcended all the limitations of an individual in terms of economy of scale
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or money power or their knowledge or access to markets or technology.
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All this could be made available because he designed a mechanism where they were in control
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As a public servant, one of the things I have done when I was dealing with industrial infrastructure
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was I handed over the management of industrial states to the entrepreneurs.
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Until that time, the entrepreneurs were complaining to me against the officials.
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The officials were complaining to me against the entrepreneurs for obvious reasons.
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I summoned all of them one day and I said, both of you are right, let's hand over to
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the entrepreneurs who have the stakes.
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Let the stakeholders have the responsibility.
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They simply have to do and therefore, we'll empower them but in an accountable manner.
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Miraculousness happened.
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As a district magistrate in one of the poorest districts of the then combined Andhra Pradesh,
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Prakashan district, I gave the people the complete opportunity to utilize resources
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with their government programs and empower them locally in a manner that they could actually
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design their projects for irrigation.
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The result was 150,000 to 200,000 acres of small irrigation at a ridiculously low cost
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in a very short span of time and every single loan was repaid within the next one or two
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There is not a single defaulter and every former prospered.
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So if you really design institutions in a manner that people understand the link between
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their decisions and their self-interest, decision may be vote, it may be economic decision,
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it may be some other decision and self-interest very clearly and if you empower them with
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accountability, then people will learn the art of democracy.
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It's like the apartment owners association.
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I believe there is an economic and political stake in that.
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For instance, urban India increasingly is conscious that they're paying taxes.
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Earlier they were not conscious of paying taxes.
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We know now we're paying property taxes and we feel that we are being shortchanged and
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there is an enormous anger.
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Now they're all saying, I'll throw down this government and elect a new chief minister
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and new prime minister.
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But if actually some smart politician understands the value of this and says, look, I will transfer
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a part of the resources to you from Delhi to the states today, the government of India
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is transferring by a variety of means, 51 rupees out of 100 in the budget and 67 out
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of 100 among all the tax revenues, tax and non-tax revenues, minus debt.
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Supposing the state government says, I will transfer to this town and this city on per
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capita basis, X amount as your money to be decided in whatever manner you feel, being
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fit to utilize is your share of the third tier of federalism.
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But with accountability, I built a first rate ombudsman system.
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I guarantee you there will be remarkable improvement in outcomes, great leadership will emerge
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and people understand the value of the vote and also the limitation of resources and priorities.
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By not doing and perpetually shortchanging ourselves, we are blaming the people on the
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one hand and we are condemning ourselves to penury and a very substandard economic base.
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So I believe there is an economic incentive, except that the articulation to make people
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understand why they self-interest, the kind of things that Narendra Modi does, how he
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is so effective in articulating, but he is not doing for the right causes, but that kind
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of ability to make the people connect their vote with their own self-interest, I think
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I am a great optimist, I believe that time is near, it may not happen across the country
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at one time, one goal, but I believe it will happen in parts of the country and if you
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accelerate the process, the country will be better off, otherwise we will pay the price.
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So from what you just said, I actually have three questions which are almost like separate
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questions, so let me just articulate them before I kind of lose track.
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The example you gave of Mr. Kurian is a great example, but to me it is also an illustration
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of what I keep saying of how Indian society survives and thrives in spite of the state.
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It seems to me that the whole Amul movement was more of a social movement than anything
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to do with politics really.
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That's my first observation, regarding what you did as a district magistrate, now the
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thing here is and I am sure you will agree with me is that in that one case, there happened
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to be an enlightened district magistrate who decided to get the job done, but in most cases,
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the way the incentives are aligned, officers of the state are more inclined to increase
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their own power and look after their own turf rather than actually take such an enlightened
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stand where you give the stakeholders so much power, you are actually giving away power.
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And how easy is that kind of change?
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Because when you talk about the big oppressive government, a lot of the reform you try to
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do is essentially to make the government devolve power or give away more power because that's
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really what empowering the people also involves.
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And my third question, again you talk about how Modi is great at articulating his ideas
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even if they might be the wrong ideas, but my question here is and this is again a challenge
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that classical liberals or libertarians often face is that many of our ideas are so deeply
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unintuitive, like when you talk about the economy not being a zero sum game but a positive
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sum game or you talk about societies and markets organizing themselves through spontaneous
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order and the whole command and control mindset being wrong, these are very unintuitive ideas.
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So how easy or hard have you found the communication of such ideas to be over the years?
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Okay, let me take each of these three things quickly and then address the last point.
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Take Amul, I agree and to be honest the inspiration and the great leadership of one human being
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mattered because all great change always has the origin in some individual's inspired idea,
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but it's an institutional issue and there's a distinction between an individual's inspiration
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and institutional thing. Institutional thing is self-replicating. It doesn't require the
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individual any longer. What Korean did was build a self-governing local milk society
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with a federation at the higher level to bring the economies of scale and technology. The
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rest of it is all movement. You know we inspire people always with the great films, great
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writers, great thinkers, great speakers, that always happens in society, but you built an
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institutional mechanism for the people to appreciate their self-interest and an incentive
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to alter their behavior in never so slight a manner, which will therefore alter the outcomes
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and that is what we need across the country in all spheres of governance.
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The second broad issue is, I agree, big change happens either because of enlightenment.
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You require maybe a Likun Yu, maybe a great thinker who also happens to be a philosopher king,
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etc., or incentives aligned, as I said rightly, to bring about the right kind of change which
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are compatible with political power. My argument is that enlightenment and incentives can go
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together. Just as economic reform, nobody until 1991 believed seriously that economic liberalization
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was a political winner, but when the society was primed by a variety of means, we did not even
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realize our politicians were so dumb, so short-sighted that until the crisis drove them to it, they did
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not even dare to do it. That's the tragedy of India. But when the crisis came, when they did it,
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the most remarkable thing to me is the take-home point is that unlike almost any other complex
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society, there was not even a murmur of protest against economic liberalization. The whole society
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from top to bottom embraced it with glee, with almost no disruption. That means society was
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ready. Politics was not ready. I am betting that even today, our society is more ready than
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politicians give credit for. It is their failing, it is their incapacity, their mediocrity, and of
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course their utter corruption. That is what is leading this. It's not because society is not ready.
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The third point about Modi and the dialogue, the broader point is that the right kind of dialogue,
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people will listen, and people will do what is right, because you are not giving them some
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bhashans about democracy. To me, that is meaningless. You are telling them what is in their best interest
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in terms of their kids getting educated. Today, India has the worst record in education among
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civilized countries. We are 73rd of the 74 countries in PISA rankings, and India's response is
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that we will no longer participate in PISA surveys. We will pretend that everything is all right.
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Now, every parent knows this. The poorest parents are sending their children to private schools.
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In the last 8-9 years of the Right to Education Act, there is an increase in private enrollment
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of 40% to 45% in the country. There is an absolute reduction in government enrollment of 15% to 20%
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in the country. But if only there is a politician who understands this and who has enough megaphone
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and tells them, I will ensure quality without burden on your pocket, it will be a political winner.
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It is just that the imagination of the politicians is so lacking. Entry barriers are so great in the
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first pass to post system, and the organizational power required to run politics is unlike in any
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other country, thanks to the enormous burden on politicians and political parties, to get even
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the minimal service rented in a government office, in the middle of total lack of accountability.
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You go to any government office, you get anything done, without a bribe or divorce, almost nothing
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gets done. India is unique in that sense among aspiring countries. And therefore, political
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parties are overburdened. And they think that the only thing they do is intermediation, and then
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somehow win the elections. They forgot the purpose of politics. But I believe this can be changed,
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and some efforts are being made. Ahmadmi Party, with all imperfections, is an effort.
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But it's not, perhaps, smart enough, not wise enough to understand the deeper implications.
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But I think it's an important effort. I believe some other efforts are possible.
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But given our electoral system, it's going to be much more difficult because the entry barrier is
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very high. But we have to fight for that. And I believe... Can you elaborate on what you mean
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by the entry barriers being high, the level of organizational support needed to fight an election?
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Let me take the second, the first thing, first entry barrier. The second one I'll take later.
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Now, we have a first-past-the-post system, as you know. In our system, you take for instance,
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a party like BJP, which is winning almost everything everywhere, and see what happened
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in Archanagar. They got fewer votes than Nota. Look at Congress. Earlier, it dominated everywhere.
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And once they lost the perch in key states like UP, Bihar, now even to find the third place is
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very difficult for them, fourth or even below fourth. So, this is a system which only rewards
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a party that has 30-40% votes. Once people feel you are not one of the top two parties,
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you are no place. And once people feel that their vote is not translated into electoral seeds,
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it's a very irrational thing, but it's a normal response all over the world, not only in India.
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They feel the vote is wasted with the vote for the right cause.
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Even if by electing a third-rate MLA or MP, you are not doing a service to yourself,
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that doesn't matter. They feel in that particular event, their vote had a value because they got
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somebody elected. And if you don't get somebody elected because they are not electable, because
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they don't have 30-40% vote, then vote is wasted. Therefore, even the support that would normally
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be forthcoming would not count. Let me give two illustrations to support my point. Take Amartya
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Party. Do you recall in the first election, the parts failed? Well, they got significant votes.
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They were still number two. BJP was number one. People surprised themselves by voting for Amartya
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Party more than they realized they were going to vote for. Therefore, the moment there was another
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election, Amartya Party was stuck to power. Take Bihar. When Lalu Yadav was holding sway
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and Nitesh Kumar was very gamely trying to find an alternative, election after election was
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designated. But ultimately, in 2004-2005, if you recall, he got significant vote but not enough to
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get power. Assembly was suspended and all that. But people realized that they were close to it,
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they were not number two. Therefore, becoming number one is not difficult. Next election when
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it came, suddenly, the parties that were not viable earlier became a dominant party, Nitesh
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Kumar's party. So, our electoral system does not look kindly to third parties or fourth parties.
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Your percentage of vote doesn't mean anything at all. You win or lose. That's why the energy
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barrier is very high. The organizational barrier is much harder to understand for many people.
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India did not adequately understand this, in my view. Political scientists didn't pay enough
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attention. Amit, there is no other country among democracies in the world where such a huge burden
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is placed upon political parties, right from the beginning. Because no bureaucracy from colonial
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times will say, fail to deliver is unaccountable. An average citizen, 90% of the citizens are weaker
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and poorer than the lowliest of government employees, a clerk in a garment office. There
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is tremendous asymmetry of power. The people never had the capacity to hold the government
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officials to account or even government employees to account. Now, instead of our founding fathers
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addressing this challenge by creating an accountable system and delivery of basic services, they
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committed a cardinal blunder. Because they already had the infrastructure of freedom struggle in
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every village, they utilized their organization to become intermediaries. They only ensured
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intermediation so that there's somebody to hold my hand to deal with the government office or
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then make the government office actually function. And that meant enormous burden on the party. Even
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today, even in urban India, you start a political movement. You know what people say? But where is
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your man in my street to take care of my needs? For my water supply, to get water on that day,
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or to get a water connection or power connection or electricity connection or something else.
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But where is your man? No other country is there this burden. Once a party has to bear this burden,
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you require about 100 to 200 workers of the party working near full time in each assembly
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constituency. And even if you want 15-20,000 rupees per month for the person to survive,
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and that's a policy of 15-20,000 rupees for the family, you're looking at 30-40 lakh rupees a
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month in many states. You're looking at 3-4 crores rupees to maintain a party in an assembly
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constituency every year. After that is done, corruption, either by the top people to feed
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these fellows, or allowing these people to plunder at will by a variety of means, including transfers,
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permits, and particularly in the early years because of the socialism, state control, therefore
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much more easy for this arbitrariness, etc., and seeking, as you said. That became inevitable.
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Once parties are in that trap, whether it's BJP or Congress or CDPR, DNK or ADMK,
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Sushana, you take any party, they're all in this trap. It's incredibly hard to come out of it.
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And unless we also make it less necessary for the political parties to build such a massive
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apparatus and therefore reduce the entry barrier and make politics do its main job, the job of
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politics is fourfold in my view. One is encourage the best in society to come into public life,
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give them a hospitable ground. The second is allow them to rise to office through ethical means,
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not by violating ethics. The third is provide genuine alternatives to people in terms of an
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agenda and policies. The fourth is actually deliver once you're elected to office. In India,
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none of these four purposes is adequate, Mr. Actually, they're very poor, Mr. So our whole
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politics is about who is in power. It's like a game. It's like the old civil laws. It's nothing
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to do with any of these four functions. And that's the reason why most of the truly capable people
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are generally they're shunning politics. I can understand them. They hate politics. And even if
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they enter politics, it's very difficult to ethically rise in politics. And you really have
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no alternatives to offer to the people. It's just a management of the image and the polarization of
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people using the primordial loyalties. And of course, once you're in power, your behavior is
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fundamentally this way. It's a minor change of freedom there. It's not an accident. There is a
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compelling reason. And I'm guessing this vicious circle of money and power, you know, there seems
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to be no way past it because you need a lot of money to be in politics in the first place and
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money that money always comes at a cost and therefore you need to get to power and generate
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more money and so on. And like you said, it's a vicious circle and there's no way past it. And a
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friend of mine once mentioned that even if the best of people enter politics, they won't remain
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the best of people anymore because politics is morally corrosive because of the compromises that
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you're forced to make just to survive on a daily basis. Now all of this is something that you face
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through your journey like the Lok Sattar movement started in 96 but then your party started in 2006.
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You've had your brushes with electoral politics, all the while being very aware of what the game
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is really like. So what did you feel might mitigate this and what are your big learnings over the last
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20-30 years in public life? You know, if we do two things on it and they're one of the
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easy and politically popular, the first one is service delivery. If you think you ensure basic
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services, I'm not talking of guaranteeing healthcare overnight, I'm talking of getting a
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certificate, a water connection, a power connection, getting a land survey, getting a document office,
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or most of it you actually pay a fee. If you ensure the delivery without any intermediation, some
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service delivery law is actually enforced and implemented. That's the reason why we actually
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have an army of employees and we fund them and we pay. If you make that happen, it will be
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hugely popular. That is actually the single biggest source of written corruption,
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large scale corruption, small corruption, largely because of the weak common dogma. If you do that,
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the unintended consequences, not merely the political popularity, will reduce the burden
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of corruption and re-gradation. The unintended consequences, the burden on political parties
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will slowly disappear. Over time, you won't meet such a massive operator to survive in politics.
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No democratic country outside of Indian subcontinent, we have hundreds of thousands of
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people doing only politics, all the time, all the time. There are numbers of parties,
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they fund the party to the extent they can, numbers reduce and even. And during election time,
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they all decide who are the candidates and they all go and campaign at the beginning of time.
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That's all. Otherwise, the rest of the time is their own, they are masters of their own life.
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They don't bother about politics, except understanding it intelligently. There is here,
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it is a full-time, 24-hour day, 365 days a year, five-year occupation. You simply cannot have
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more than democracy working in a healthy manner in this country. There was service delivery,
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destructive service delivery. I am deeply disappointed that even the current government
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of Modi has not even looked at it. In fact, a law pending before Parliamentary Committee,
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and Parliament became already a report, a law pending before Parliament, it was written on.
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They just don't want the service delivery law to enforce discipline in bureaucracy and accountability
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in bureaucracy because they are afraid of the collective bargaining power of the bureaucracy,
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rather than the people, because they know that they somehow can get the people's work the other
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way. The second is empower local governments in a responsible way. And the simplest way to do it is
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give a per capita grant to the local government, let's say a thousand or two thousand rupees per
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capita per year, which is a small proportion of the total public expenditure. The government in
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India spends 30 to 40 thousand rupees per year per capita. Give a small percentage of that and
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remove yourself from the picture. You don't have the burden of doing the things that are now being
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done by local government. In fact, there is no budgetary burden. It's just that you are transferring
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resources and transferring the burden of the state. You now take care of it and have accountability
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system, a proper accountability system like an Ombudsman. You will be rid of many of the problems.
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You can blame the local government if they fail. You are not responsible for their failure.
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And a lot of improvement will happen initially in urban India and eventually in rural India.
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And it will transform the day of politics. People understand the value of the vote because local
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governments are the best tools for democracy. These are the two easiest things to be done.
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It's not that we cannot do or they're not popular. Our imagination is now so limited, you know,
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long years ago, almost 25 years ago, a man who became later a very high functioning in the country
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at the time of the fairly high constitutional constitution. He said, Jayaprakash is talking
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about democracy, constitution, good governance, all these things. You know, for the people in
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the corridors of power, all that matters is who is in and who is out. So I suppose one way to make
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them realize is that they will be out-crucified. Therefore, I am not a great champion of stability
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as governments. If governments are utterly incapable and utterly corrupt and lacking in
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imagination, that stability is stability of the graveyard. Sometimes, if you actually have a
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quick turnover, if the politicians are really scared of elections, and therefore are willing
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to look at options out of the box, maybe they'll do more good to the country. And middle classes
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and media of India are somehow seduced by the notion that stability at any cost is most
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important. While I value stability, I don't think stability of the graveyard is what we require.
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We require a dynamic society where we look at the political malice and look at fundamental
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issues. JP, I've taken enough of your time. So I'm going to end with two questions. What makes
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you hopeful about the future of Indian politics and what makes you despair? Okay, despair first.
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There are many things which appear to be nice and well-meaning, but because they were done very
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badly, they led to spectacular failures. Let me give you two concrete examples. The local
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government, 73rd and 74th Amendments, on paper, the principle is sound, well-meaning, much
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publicity, romanticism, because then in a horrible way, we created over-structured,
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under-powered local government which is building really an effective local government with
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accountability, capable of generating leadership locally and making people understand the link
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between the vote and public good and factors and services. By wrong design, by complete lack of
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professionalism, by lack of passion, by lack of genuine commitment, by simply grandstanding,
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we messed up a thing. Today, it's much worse than it was in 1993-94. If we didn't have this
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rigid amendment, at least some states, some places have experimented with better local government,
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things would have been better. So we're actually making things worse in some respects. But speaking
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the right language, we're doing the wrong thing. The second example is the Right to Education Act.
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Who in my mind would say India should not be educated? Every child must not get an opportunity
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to be educated. But it's a lousy law. It created exactly the wrong framework, and the outcomes
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are today as bad or even worse than they were earlier. And as I mentioned to you before,
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more and more people are going to private sector, but even there, there's no quality education.
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So these experiences, not because there are no solutions, but because we seem to have lost
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the capacity to even imagine, even when we seem to have some will to do something right,
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we don't even know what is right. The intellectual capacity and the professional capacity to even
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institutionalize something right and do it well is increasingly in decline, and that's the cause of
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despair. And as part of that, public discourse is now so shallow. It's all about who's winning,
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who's losing. It's not about the fundamental issues, let alone institutions. It's not even
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about education and healthcare. It's not even about getting justice, you know. A chap in Gurgaon,
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because there was a child brutally murdered, this innocent driver, he's beaten up brutally,
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and the police extract a confession, and the media and the country doesn't think that there's
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something terribly wrong. And it's not one isolated case. It's what's happening in every
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single police station everywhere in India. And we seem to have lost the capacity to understand
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what's happening and to raise the issue and find an answer. This is despair increasing.
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The optimism comes from two things. One, with increasing incomes, more and more people are
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willing to look at what needs to be done. There's not enough of understanding. Some of us are desperately
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trying, you are doing it, trying. This effort is essentially that. All of us are doing our best to
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try and see how best we can enhance the capacity to understand and therefore look at solutions.
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And it's only getting better because there's so much experience in the country and across the
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world. Our economic capacity, while it's not growing as fast as it should, is increasing.
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Therefore, we can withstand a few shocks a little better than we used to withstand earlier.
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And ultimately, I have a great belief that if a few enlightened individuals, they understand
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what is at stake and they do the right thing. Even the bulk of the people do not understand
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overnight. Eventually, people in their own self-interest, not because they're moral people
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or they're sane, in their own self-interest, they see the value of it. Yes, if it takes longer,
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there's a greater price to pay. But in the medium and long term, I have no doubt that these good
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things will happen. You know what Margaret Mead said. To change the world, you don't require
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millions of people on the march. A few thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed,
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the civilisation that I have is. That's what gives me optimism. But I also know that if enough of
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people who have the power to change things don't own this and do it swiftly, it's a price they're
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paying as a nation. Already, as I mentioned before and as we all know, there are 49 nations
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above $200 billion GDP. India is at the bottom. We deserve more. We deserve better. Every day,
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we are losing hell of a lot. And grandstanding and sloganeering and pious intentions and dreams
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are not good enough. We require institutional mechanisms to translate our dreams into action.
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And the longer we delay, the greater the suffering, the greater the misery and the
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greater the missed opportunity in the global community. Let's hope that we will not delay
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far too long and do the best we can. That's a great note of caution and hope to end the show on.
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JP, thanks so much for coming on The Scene and the Unseen. Thank you, all the best.
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If you enjoyed listening to the show, do follow JP on Twitter at JP underscore Lok Satta or just
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Google Jayaprakash Narayan. You can follow me at Amit Verma, A-M-I-T-V-A-R-M-A. Many of the topics
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that JP brought up on the show, like the Right to Education Act or local governance, many of them
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are, have been discussed by me before on The Scene and the Unseen. So do check out our archives
#
at sceneunseen.in. And hey, Happy New Year to all of you.
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If you enjoyed listening to The Scene and the Unseen, check out another hit show from
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Indusworks Media Network's Cyrus Says, which is hosted by my old colleague from MTV,
#
Cyrus Brocha. You can download it on any podcasting network.
