Amulya Ganguli: Statism of Congress and NAC 'jholawalas'

A look at some of the Congress party’s recent policy initiatives may help in understanding why the party is ailing today. The primary intention of all these formulations is to boost the party’s electoral prospects. There may not be anything wrong, per se, with such an approach that is common to all parties. But, what is apparently hurting the Congress is that it has completely ignored the far more important task of reforming the system, without which there cannot be any definitive progress.

Instead, its focus is solely on keeping the electorate happy with dole outs, which entail high unproductive expenditure and, therefore inevitably, high taxation to meet the costs — the typical ingredients of a socialistic pattern of society, the phrase used by the Congress in 1955 to define its goal.

Whether it is the rural employment scheme or the food security bill or the communal violence bill, the emphasis is wholly on a top-down, paternalistic approach, which continues the feudal and colonial concept of the mai-baap sarkar. The party shows no interest in changing the system so that the role of the government, and particularly that of the ruling politicians, is gradually reduced in accordance with the party’s avowed goal of decentralisation.

For instance, if the police are given genuine autonomy, as the Supreme Court advised in 2006, then there will be far fewer instances of their gross misuse, mainly by insulating them from political influence. As a result, there will not be a repetition of happened in Delhi in 1984 or in Gujarat in 2002 or in Nandigram in 2009. Similarly, if the CBI had the kind of freedom which it is supposed to have, then the agency would have followed up on its own any clue it might have received on the various scams instead of waiting for the Supreme Court’s orders. However, since the use of the police and the CBI for partisan purposes have long been established as one of the privileges of power, no political party is willing to reform the system in this respect.

What is strange, however, is that even the supposedly idealistic jholawala members of the National Advisory Council, led by Sonia Gandhi, have shown no inclination to do so. The reason, perhaps, is that as Leftists, they are admirers of a ‘big’ government with its hand on every lever of power. Hence, their preference for gigantic bureaucratic bodies, as prescribed in the communal violence bill, for instance, which will erode even the authority of the state governments. To these Leftists, the idea of a police force which is not under political control seemingly resembles a private enterprise which is ideologically unacceptable to them.

Not surprisingly, therefore, the NAC hasn’t said a word about one of the major scandals of the parliamentary system — the rising number of legislators with criminal background who are entering the hallowed portals of the Lok Sabha and state assemblies. Yet, this is the problem which has enabled the civil society activists to portray politicians as despicable elements who have a vested interest in preventing the establishment of a powerful ombudsman since that will mean the end of all their nefarious activity.

However, instead of trying to usurp Parliament’s legislative powers to pander to the poor or the minorities — the Congress’s targeted vote banks — the NAC could have focussed on these systemic flaws. Had it done so, it would have been able to establish a connection with the middle class, which is probably more aware than others of how the decline in the moral calibre politicians is eroding the system. As is known, the middle class has lost faith in the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty’s zamindari -style authoritarianism with its control of the ‘commanding heights of the economy’ — a favourite phrase of Indira Gandhi’s — and has embraced the market economy with gusto.

But the Congress and the NAC remain statist. Hence the disconnect with the middle class, which is no longer dependent on government and public sector jobs. The new world opened up for them by the private sector has highlighted the meaning of efficiency — anyone familiar with both a private sector internet service provider and the MTNL/BSNL will know that — and made them conscious of how the system is being distorted by a self-serving political class, absorbed in its power games and aware that the once-in-five-years electoral tests do not loosen their grip on a life of privilege.

— The writer is a Delhi-based political commentator