The Passwan’ factor

There may be a different way of looking at the Paswans and the Mamatas thanto perceive them as the cynical, old-fashioned sarkari gravy train drivers.Can we see them as genuine political animals who could make such adifference to the pace and quality of economic change if only we couldpersuade them to join the reform brigade?

Why should it make such a big difference?

Economic reform has so far been blighted by the hesitation on the part ofthe classical vote-gathering politician to accept it as a good thing for hiscareer. The staunchest champions of reform have either been the WorldBank-IMF trained economists or economists-turned-gentleman-politicians.Manmohan Singh, Chidambaram, Yashwant Sinha are all members of a distinct,English-speaking, urbane, clean set of Johnnies-come-lately who strayed intopolitics from economics, law and the IAS, respectively. They have pushedeconomic change in isolation of the political mainstream.

Their personality and upbringing make them distant from day-to-day politics.They are great when addressing corporate India at CII, FICCI and Assochamand confabulating with the Fund-Bank mandarins, but make very little senseto Real India. At a pinch they may be able to convince middle class urbanIndia it is good for them if the government reduces the subsidy on the LPGthey consume. But how can they sell the increase in fertiliser prices to thefarmer, the reduction in the PDS grain to the poor and the shutting down ofloss-making PSUs to the workers being laid off? To talk to Real India onthis you need real politicians.

In the scam age, politics has been in bad odour as a profession. But ademocracy needs its politicians as much as it needs its civil servants,judges, policemen, soldiers. A military dictator can bring about changes insociety and economy at gunpoint. A benign dictatorship, like Singapore, caneven enforce through fiat, laws that curb such basic human freedoms aschewing gum. But in a democracy every new idea, every departure from thepast has to be explained — and sold — to the people. That needspoliticians, sometimes even the rabble-rousers.

The presumption that politics and reform don’t go together has harmed us. Itis a disaster that much of the reform so far has not only been implementedin isolation from politics, some of it has, in fact, been deliberatelyimplemented behind the back of the political system. Those who know thepulse of the people and the idiom in which to communicate with them havenever been made part of the campaign. Take the example of WTO. It is no usea Chidambaram, a Yashwant Sinha or a Jairam Ramesh arguing endlessly throughthe pink papers and the glossies that global free trade is good for Indiawhen the poor farmer is convinced that it is a western conspiracy to pickhis pocket.

Similarly, on patents, a very erudite R.A. Mashelkar, head of the Council ofScientific and Industrial Research, has, repeatedly and convincingly, arguedthat the new IPR regime, instead of enabling the West to steal ourtraditional knowledge actually helps us protect it. But it is no use if theentire rural constituency is abandoned to the vile charms of the jholawalabrigade that says just the opposite.

The urban, educated, upwardly mobile India has already accepted the mantraof reform. If anything, its acceptance of economic change and globalisationis far too unquestioning to be he-althy. But the poor, rural and real India,the Bh-arat that makes and unmakes governments in the elections, is stillde-eply sceptical. To persuade it to look at the picture differently, youneed the Paswans, the Pilots, the Mamatas and the Mahajans, the Fernandesesand the Chautalas. For real India they are the “people like us”. They lookless like agents of the World Bank and the IMF.

Why has this not happened so far? Under Narasimha Rao, reforms did,actually, begin stealthily, under IMF pressure. He was never an instinctivereformer and Manmohan Singh was a latter-day convert. They were in aminority of two in the cabinet until some of the ministers, holdinginfrastructure portfolios, figured out the spoils in calibrated,discretion-laden and selective opening up of their respective sectors.

The subsequent Third Front governments had even lesser commitment toliberalisation. It was full of old socialists and new Lohiaites who couldbarely stand Chidambaram. Yet, he was able to carry on because Deve Gowda inhis own rustic way had come to accept change. He did not quite comprehendits scope. Nor did he have the personality or the articulation to market it.But he had the foresight to leave Chidambaram free. But he had to proceed insilence, almost stealthily.

More was expected of the BJP. But it came to power in the midst of confusionon its economic policy. It was battling the swadeshis within its ownparivar. Besides, having opposed the WTO, insurance Bill and so many otherreformist steps in the past, it now had to make a quick turnaround. It isonly now that, led by Sinha, Jaitley, Kumaramangalam and Mahajan, it isshaking off that hesitation. Reform can only gain momentum if you have aFernandes selling the benefits of the VRS to the workers, Mamata justifyingthe liquidation of the IISCO and Chautala and Badal telling the farmers whyfewer subsidies but better infrastructure is good for them. It may soundunlikely, but is not impossible. These are tough, earthy, cynicalpoliticians. But they are not morons. Once they understand their stake inchange they could transform the equation and, in turn, make the jholawalaslook like blabbering, bored memsahibs.

On a recent visit to Bangalore one of the big dads of the high-tech industrymade an interesting comparison between Naidu and S.M. Krishna. Naidu, hesaid, was going to be more successful because he was more of a politicalanimal. Krishna, he thought, might not be able to move so fast.

"But he should know what he is doing," I asked, "after all he is a Fulbrightscholar."

"That is the problem," said this maharaja of market cap, "How I wish he washalf-bright and at least half-a-politician." At the end of the day, heexplained, you have to sell your policies to your people, get work done inDelhi.

This is why we have to learn to see the Paswans in a different perspective.Is his logic behind free phones a bit like the Employee Stock Options(ESOPs). Except that nobody has perhaps reasoned with him like that. Aren’tChautala and Badal, now going back on their free-power-to-the-farmer promisethe likely new spokesmen for the reform process? Now what do we have to doto bring Mamata and Fernandes also on this bandwagon?