Can we have real, not empty, populism

The big game in the country is populism and politicians and parties are indulging in it with great abandon. Prime minister Manmohan Singh has provided the trigger for the fireworks by making those micro-calibrated announcements with deafening noise levels. Politicians, including Singh, have taken up positions and picked up the megaphones and we have not been hearing nothing else. A closer look shows that the positions are not really clear and if any of them were asked to defend themselves, none of the leaders will be able to give reasons for what they are saying.

Political pundits are generally critical and even contemptuous of populism but they are forced to eat humble pie because it is the populist issue that triumphs. Populism is of course a double-edged sword. It can spread hate messages as much as constructive issues. Singh’s populist measure, FDI in retail, was constructive in a way because it could have led to a good public debate on liberalisation, on agriculture, on rural India and the Indian farmers. It is not happening. Even those studious politicians with facts and figures at their fingertips are not able to say anything interesting in criticism or even in defense of the measure. Singh and minister for commerce Anand Sharma have been forwarding dud arguments in defence, and so are the fiery critics, including Mamata, Modi and Mulayam against it.

It seems that populism has its own inexorable logic for politicians in the country, and they pursue it for what they think to be rational ends. It would be wrong to damn populism as such because it can and does highlight at times what really affects people at large, and which politicians do not ever care to talk about. Unfortunately, populism in India never throws up issues that affect every day life of people like the state of schools and hospitals, state of roads and even streetlighting, crime and even community relations.

It would be a mistake to believe that it is only the maverick West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee who is behaving like the proverbial bull in the China shop, and that the Trinamool Congress leader is undermining her own political assets. Her great achievement has been that she has dislodged the apparently invincible Left Front government of over three decades in the state. Instead of leveraging her success, she is opposing to FDI in multi-brand retail because she would not want the Left Front to grab the issue for itself.

Samajwadi Party leader Mulayam Singh Yadav is only slightly different. He opposes FDI in retail, the opposition to rise in diesel and the cap on LPG cyclinders is but an aside, because he does not want any other party, including his local rival, Bahujan Samaj Party, in Uttar Pradsesh, to occupy the opposition space in the run up to the 2014 Lok Sabha election. After stating his opposition, he is willing to support the UPA government because he has other business to do with the centre because his party is in power in the state.

Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar did not want to be left out. So he proclaimed that he would support any party that will give special economic status to his state. This was seen as a political googly which hinted at the Janata Dal (U) leader turning his back on NDA, reason enough for the BJP leaders to humour him.

Gujarat chief minister Narender Modi who has been boasting of the economic success in the state because of his open policies, attracting foreign investment and foreign auto manufacturers, turns around and opposes FDI in multi-brand retail even when it flies in the face of his own market economy beliefs and leanings.

Singh is part of this gallery of populists too though many may be inclined to believe that he does not belong here. Like Mamata and Mulayam, Nitish and Modi, Singh has taken up the issue of FDI in retail as a rallying cry in spite of the fact that there are no big investments coming in on this front. An angry BJP accuses him of his diversionary tactic without realising that it is conceding defeat to the beleaguered prime minister’s populist gambit.

Of course, there was pressure from the US and other foreign governments and businesses to open up the retail trade. But Singh has obiged with the awareness that it will not come back to haunt him by causing harm to the economy. He is aware that it will not happen in any significant sense. He has no doubt riled the opposition. It is good for the Congress and the government. Singh like others fails the populism test in the proper sense. He has not staked his all on issues that matter — education, health, jobs. Not even on the economy.

What we need is genuine populism. And not something that is confined to a single issue like the demand for Lokpal. There is need to talk about even an apparently abstract thing like values. Politicians are scared of populism in this sense. They then would have to speak a lot more sense and substance.

Parsa Venkateshwar Rao Jr is editorial consultant with DNA