Where does the national interest lie? Who determines it? And does it shift with every election? This week Prime Minister Manmohan Singh departed from a prepared text to bemoan the absence of an establishment in India — an establishment composed of thinkers and strategists who set the terms for debate and action based on a long-term perspective. The PM should know the absolutely practical dividends of this vacuum. In a disparate coalition, he has in the past 20 months seen progress stalled on a range of measures. On each step relating to privatisation, administrative reform, strategic choices like the nuclear pact with the US, and India’s international commitments on non-proliferation, consensus has had to be initiated from first principles. For a country yearning to be on the fast lane to economic growth and a place at the high table in global institutions, this obviously creates a obstacle path of speedbreakers and diversions.There is therefore great resonance in the prime minister’s pointer: “All modern societies have such a group of people who debate, discuss, who shape and re-shape public policies in diverse fields.” These people of the establishment, in his explanation, would have a long-term stake in the system and be secure enough to worry about the future. In actual fact, such an establishment did exist in the early years of Indian independence. In the national movement had come laden with debate on a programme for a modernising India. And under Jawaharlal Nehru’s prime ministership, great accent was placed in carrying together the widest range of ideological opinion. This gave persons of strikingly different hues a stake in the system to accelerate legislation for social reform and the setting up a constellation of world-class educational institutions and centres for scientific research and industrial production.Political complexity splintered that establishment. Decades ago historian Eric Hobsbawn had observed that the Indian establishment comprised just a hundred or so persons. The question is, how can a new establishment, more representative of India’s diversity yet supple and independent enough to accommodate the rapid circulation of political elites, be put together. The prime minister has framed a problem that has for long had no name. It, at the very least, demands of the political and intellectual classes to reach out across ideological divides to debate together important national issues. In the long term they, and their country, stand to benefit.
