Column

US politician and sociologist Daniel Patrick Moynihan had a low tolerance level for visitors to China who, upon their return home, gushed about the absence of flies but were unconcerned about the absence of freedoms. Little wonder, then, that Moynihan felt at home in India, where there is manifestly an excess of both flies and freedom — including, as Mamata Banerjee will testify, the freedom to sabotage projects that promise to enhance the Brand India image globally.

Since Moynihan’s time, the number of visitors to China who leave dizzy and awe-struck has only increased exponentially, with good reason. In just the past week, when Ratan Tata threw his hands up in despair over the Tata Nano project in Singur, China unveiled the world’s third tallest building in Shanghai and a trans-oceanic bridge in Xiamen nearby, and announced plans for the world’s fastest bullet train service. So frenetic is the pace of change and the speed of project implementation that the opening of the world’s biggest airport terminal in Beijing earlier this year and countless other mega-construction projects in recent months and years have already faded from public consciousness.

It is this pace of change and the glitter of the new that led New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman last fortnight to make unfavourable comparisons between New York City’s “dumpy terminal” and “crumbling infrastructure” with Shanghai’s “sleek airport” and speedy mag-lev train. “Holy mackerel!” he exclaimed after watching the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony. “The energy coming out of this country is unrivalled.”

Governance is, of course, about more than just building showpiece construction projects and organising spectacular sporting extravaganzas. But just the mere fact of a skyrise being completed in time or a factory rolling out the world’s cheapest cars — or even of sportspersons winning medals — can be a powerful symbol to a country’s people that the grand project of “nation-building” is on course and that its leaders are not asleep at the wheel.

It’s true that when it comes to project implementation, an authoritarian one-party state like China can activate power levers that open, democratic societies like India and the US cannot. Compare Ratan Tata’s despair, for instance, with the experience of Lakshmi Mittal’s son Aditya Mittal, who turned up at a proposed plant site in China at the invitation of a local Communist Party leader, only to find that the area was still heavily populated. Where’s the land, Mittal asked; to which, the party secretary said: “Right here. In 90 days, everyone will be gone.”

Even so, China’s successes in recent decades cannot all be explained away by the absence of Mamata Banerjees and Prakash Karats in the Chinese political space. The critical difference that underlies China’s dramatic transformation of the past 30 years is of governance, driven by a pressure to deliver results, which is richly ironic considering that the Communist Party of China doesn’t derive its legitimacy from popular support.

In fact, it is this very ‘illegitimacy’ of power that compels Chinese leaders to deliver results as part of a ‘social contract’ with the people. Under this social contract, the leaders pledge themselves to deliver economic growth and give the people a chance to work their way up the ladder of riches; in turn, however, the people are required to keep their head down and not demand a stake in political power. In other words, China’s leaders can avert the clamour for democracy and political change only by consistently delivering results.

In India, on the other hand, the rough-and-tumble of the electoral process and a ‘popular mandate’ invest elected leaders with the stamp of authority, and lets them off rather easily without the pressure of having to deliver results through good governance.
Not everyone wants China’s ruthless efficiency in “nation-building” replicated in Indian civil society. Just an occasional sign from our leaders that the governance machinery is still ticking — and not just swatting flies — would be inspirational.
Email: venky@dnaindia.net