Poverty of thought

Every passing day as we witness the debate culminating to the next year general elections, the populace is left more and more bewildered of the debate and policies of the respective political aspirants. Of course, the ardent fans of each camp do not care it is just a passing phase.

But there are underlying factors which drives this confusion in the political spectrum. After 10 years of Congress rule of which the last 3 years have been excruciatingly painful, a large part of the urban population is looking for a break from the past, especially the young first voters. The rural voters who have benefitted largely from the variety of largesse or poverty upliftment programs of the government may still vote to a certain extent with the Congress. While corruption may not be a big issue in rural India but where masses have been lifted beyond poverty, fulfilment of aspiration (the next phase after poverty removal) is the next big issue. If one looks at the Congress it is still stuck in the quick sand of poverty and therefore would lose ‘aspiration’ vote.

The BJP right wing politics does not allow for poverty doles and knows that Congress is the ‘champion’ of poverty programs. It is also wary of what happened in 2004 elections. Having said this, it believes rather than charting the true development agenda and articulating the free market policies it would undertake, it is playing anti-thesis to the Congress i.e. highlighting corruption, lack of effectiveness of the poverty programs, low job creation due to lack of governmental approvals etc.

While we may all blame the organizational issues that plague both the national parties, the key fact is they do not understand the unifying vote factor.  In fact given India’s fragmented polity there is none today and this trend has accentuated with the regionalism of the smaller parties.  It at this moment a nation, especially as large and diverse as India, needs a national leader who stems the fraying.

There are some critical issues at hand that the next government needs to address, (1) Restoring institutional integrity and framework starting from the PMO; (2) Regional security i.e. post-2014 Afghanistan, restoring regional trust in the Indian state from Bangadesh to Sri Lanka, relationship with a post-sanction Iran; (3) Economic growth, inflation and fiscal correction (in possibly winding down stimulus environment globally).

There is no one who seems to be talking about how these will be achieved. This period of non-governance, especially given the pressure on the Congress Party, will cause significant strain on other institutions like:

• RBI will be left alone to handle the economy but its hands are tied by foreign exchange markets and inflation. Consumer inflation is primarily driven by logistical issues (principally in food), high property costs and taxes. These are principally in government hands to deal with. For example, encouraging transport using inland waterways and coastal shipping can bring logistics cost down significantly (water transport cost is a 1/4^th or 1/5^th of road cost)
• Armed forces will be left to handle the Kashmir / Pakistan heat, where the hard diplomatic moves would reduce the pain. Changing Iranian equation (initiation of nuclear negotiations with EU and US) provide India with a significant opening to potentially create a counter-balancing situation with Pakistan

I do not think the quality of debate during this election will improve whether pre-manifesto or post. We live in the season of poverty of thought not because our leaders are unable think through the issues (at least in my view) but among the leaders there is no leader who has the conviction of thought to state it. It will be realpolitik all the way.

In the life of a nation, however, the quality of the election debate does not matter, governance post the elections will. If this were a true predictor of that, one would run scared..