Comment

Do you often feel that you are heading in a direction you may not want to, but you still head that way because you assume that’s where everybody’s going?

You want to observe traffic rules, but you see everyone ignoring the red light and you do the same. You and your spouse decide you must save money, but on a boring afternoon, with nothing to do, you end up shopping, buying something you didn’t want. Worse, you both think the other one set you up for it.

It’s called the Abilene paradox, where two or more people end up deciding on something none of them actually wanted. The term Abilene paradox comes from a story in Texas, where a family is playing dominoes on a dull, hot afternoon. The father-in-law, believing that everyone is bored, suggests a trip to Abilene. His wife, not wanting to play wet blanket, seems to agree, saying it might be a good idea. Soon the rest of the family agrees to the trip in the false belief that that’s where everyone wants to go.

It’s only after a hot, dusty trip leaves everyone exhausted and edgy that someone has the honesty to exclaim she wished she had stayed home.

Indians have been on wasted trips to Abilene for as long as one can remember. Whether it is stupid, demeaning TV soaps that portray women and men in stereotypes, or garbage on the street, or the election of scoundrels to parliament, we end up doing the things we professedly abhor.

Just consider the things we all don’t want to do and still end up doing. Nobody wants to pay a bribe, but we think others will do so anyway, so we feel forced to do it ourselves to avoid becoming victims of the system.

We all know we are overloading our kids with excessive studies, but we send them to IIT classes and special tuitions anyway. We don’t want them to be left behind in the rat race. We all scream about pollution and traffic, but we will not car-pool or take the bus to work.

The Abilene paradox applies to the political system as well. The CPM wants industrialisation in Bengal but not elsewhere; the Congress wants it elsewhere but not in Bengal; the BJP doesn’t want the nuclear deal unless it is in power.

The CPM doesn’t want US hegemony, but Russian or Chinese hegemony is fine. Every party rails against casteism, but no party wants to abolish it. Reason: the caste card is everyone’s veto power.

If you are wondering what makes us so cussed, that’s precisely it: we are happier denying someone something rather than going after what we want ourselves. What Indians value most is the power of the veto — the right to stand in the way of someone even if he isn’t bothering you in any way. The government wants to stand in the way of enterprise, businessmen want to prevent others from succeeding even if they are not in direct competition, and every party wants the right to block any policy, never mind that it had wanted to do the same things while in power.

This hankering after veto power is making India ungovernable. The only sensible system for stable governance is a presidential system, where there is one directly elected leader. A US-type system is workable in India, complete with a two-term limit and a presidential veto to stop legislative excesses.

Most of India’s leaders and the people would be happy with such a system — most parties are anyway run like that. In our democratic political structure, every party runs a one-man (or one-woman) show. Do Sonia Gandhi, Mayawati, Karunanidhi, Jayalalithaa, Mulayam Singh or Lalu Prasad run democratic parties where the opinions of others matter as much as their own?

Even so, all parties are against the presidential system because they may lose their power to block. It will take a national catasprophe to get the law changed in favour of a presidential system.
Email: r_jagannathan@dnaindia.net