This stratagem of Machiavellian politics can have many variants and be described in many other ways: the principle of supra-government, the halo of sacrifice, the backseat driver, or the remote control principle. However, in simple terms they all amount to having the cake and eating it too.
So, Mulayam Singh Yadav has found something lacking in the SP administration in UP. After four months of it people don't feel much difference, Mulayam gives it just two more months to shape up. Thus spake the patriarch at a public function, laying it on thick. As Akhilesh and other SP bigwigs sat and listened silently. For all the world, it was like a stern father scolding an errant schoolboy for a bad school report. Or like those hilarious scenes from ''Meet the Parents" where Robert de Niro, playing the dominating father of Ben Stiller's fiancee, points two fingers at his own eyes and then to Stiller -- indicating he'll be watching what Stiller is up to with his daughter. Strangely, Mulayam also went on to say at the same meeting that SP ministers should avoid airing differences in public, as that leads to embarrassment for the government.
Mulayam's is a time-tested stratagem. You may be the power within the government, but should your government's actions affect the aam admi - you become the aam admi and articulate his disaffection with the government, even before he does. Be protean, cover all bases, stage being the opposition and thus upstage the opposition. Should the government act like a bad cop be the supra-government, the 'good' king who criticises his satraps for decisions they didn't really take. Divide up powers so that no one really knows where the buck stops. And you will have thrown dust into the people's eyes.
This delusive division of power between party and government has, of course, been mastered by the Congress. When Sonia Gandhi gave up the prime ministership and conferred it on Manmohan Singh, the move garnered applause all round. By hindsight it can be seen to have been disastrous, as Singh's authority was (and remains) much reduced while real decision-making power resides with 10 Janpath.
Power without accountability is an evil. It ought to be done away with in modern structures of governance. Power without accountability, however, is ubiquitous among Indian political parties -it's not a special Congress or SP affectation. BJP, for example, marches in lockstep with the RSS, a so-called cultural organisation with unelected leaders. This prevents it from modernising itself, ditching exclusivist, 19th century ideas like Hindutva and becoming relevant to the 21st century. Ditto the CPM, whose sarsangchalak (aka its general secretary) can sideline elected leaders like Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee. Bal Thackeray once even sanctified this principle of governance by boasting that he ran Maharashtra by remote control.
Can we, for a change, have real leaders who step up and take charge - taking on attendant responsibility as well -- instead of governing through masks and throwing red herrings across the trail?
The surest way to ride out an economic slowdown is to improve productivity and competitiveness. Unfortunately, going by the Global Competitiveness Report brought out by the World Economic Forum, India seems to be doing precisely the opposite. Not only has the country slipped 10 ranks in the competitiveness rankings, from the 49th position in 2009-10 to 59th position in 2012-13, but it has also been overtaken by other Brics economies like countries like Brazil and South Africa which are now ranked in the 48th and 52nd position respectively. Meanwhile China, the most competitive Brics country, retained its ranking at the 29th position and even Russia, the laggard Brics nation, has slipped only four rungs to the 67 position during the period.
But what makes the scenario even worse for India is that it is losing out on the competitiveness edge when the country is still languishing at the first stage of development, the factor driven stage where growth is based on factor endowments like natural resources and cheap labour along with 37 other economies like Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan and Vietnam. On the other hand most other Brics countries were either in the efficiency driven stage or the innovation driven stage of development where growth is driven by step up in efficiency or by introduction new business models and products.
So what accounts for the sharp fall in India’s competitiveness ranking during the last four years? A cursory glance indicates that the reasons are extensive with India’s rankings slipping sharply in at least half of the dozen parameters that contribute to overall competitiveness. It included competitiveness drivers like infrastructure, institutions, technological readiness, business sophistication and innovations with India’s global ranking in these various parameters falling between 8 to 16 rungs. However the highest fall in the competitiveness parameters was in higher education and training and goods marketing efficiency with India’s ranking going down by 20 and 27 places respectively. The only solace was that the country’s ranking has remained fairly stable in the case of other parameters like macroeconomic environment, health and primary education, labour market efficiency, financial market development and market size. Given such complexity of the national competitiveness it is no great surprise that India has to focus on an extensive set of reforms to improve it competitiveness and get the economy back on the rails
And the possibilities of a reversal of the trends and an improvement in competiveness are not too daunting. In fact the experiences of some Asian countries give India some semblance of hope. The best example we have closest to home is that Philippines which has improved it global competitiveness by 22 places over the last four years. And its problems are similar to that of India with the economy lacking in adequate infrastructure and rigidities persisting in labor markets. So it is now up to the government to let loose a slew of reforms that improve the competitiveness of the Indian economy and accelerate growth to the pre crisis levels.
Pols, particularly Congress pols, must be rubbing their hands with glee on this one. They set a trap, and Team Anna walked right into it. Politicians certainly don't want strong anti-corruption legislation, and demonstrated that in parliament when even the anaemic version of the Lokpal bill proposed by the government was assailed by the opposition as well as minority coalition partners. Their jibe at Anna has always been, he isn't an elected politician like them, and so cannot be said to represent the people. Stung by the jibe, and boxed in after fasts undertaken by Team Anna members failed to draw much popular support, Team Anna has decided to throw its hat into the political ring. And thereby hoist by its own petard. Congress has seized the occasion to declare, in ringing tones, that it knew Team Anna had political ambitions all along!
A necessary condition of Team Anna's moral force was that it stood outside the party-political domain. That was reinforced when Anna Hazare spoke of money power in politics, or when politicians were prevented from addressing (and taking over) Team Anna rallies. However that will be radically compromised the moment Anna enters politics. In political terms Anna Hazare is supported by sections of the middle class, that too perhaps Delhi-centric as Delhi-ites were appalled by the extent of corruption they witnessed during Commonwealth Games held in the city. Politicians have always known that the Indian middle class - unlike in Western democracies -- are too few in number and don't matter politically. And they will be right - an Anna party will have a limited constituency and may even lose its deposit wherever it contests elections.
Having avoided the mistake of helping out Anna Hazare by arresting him, politicians can now sit pretty. They have Anna exactly where they want him. While the Election Commission has a low spending cap of Rs 25 lakh per candidate in a Lok Sabha election, campaigning typically costs Rs 15-20 crore. Thus soon after Anna steps into the political arena, he will have become a partner in breaking the law. Dirt can be dug and corruption jibes thrown back at him. He'l l effectively have been tamed by the system. As I&B minister Ambika Soni put it (one might imagine a delicate cough here), Team Anna is about to find out that it's not easy to work honestly in politics.
Besides, let's assume for argument's sake that Anna does manage to get 3 or 4 MPs elected to Parliament. It'll quickly degenerate into a numbers game, as other parties will be able to brandish vastly larger numbers of MPs who'll be opposed to Anna's demands, and thus defeat him. Neither do Anna's followers politically cohere - they can comprise anything from the far right to the far left. Cant words like 'decentralisation' and 'grassroots' don't really cut the mustard in terms of a coherent political programme (who isn't in favour of decentralisation and grassroots politics?). As if to underline its confusion, Team Anna has submitted a set of questions to 'the people' about what political course it should follow.
Team Anna's decision to enter politics is a sad let-down for many who wished it well. It reveals a disturbing lack of ideas at the movement's core. If it wants to recover ground it must make a commitment to vetting and supporting clean candidates from outside, rather than entering the political fray itself. Its strength is to act as a pressure lobby, it would be weakened if it became a political party.
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