Reality check

Reality check


Bertrand Russell, a towering Leftist philosopher himself, critiqued the Bolshevik Revolution, that too shortly after it took place, saying that the Communists did not live up to the theory of their creed.

The dictatorship of the proletariat was, said Russell, just a plain old dictatorship, presided over by Lenin and Trotsky, with Stalin still carrying the bags and bringing up the rear at the time. And the “proletariat” consisted of carefully vetted yes men of the goonish persuasion, busy ruthlessly gutting all dissent in the ranks.

That Mr. Russell was right has been borne out by the collapse of Communism and its offshoots of Fabian Socialism and even Scandinavian and French versions of Welfarism; albeit for a variety of reasons other than venality. But these reasons do not offer much comfort because they range from indictments such as rank naïveté to a revolutionary wooliness - as in Cuba, lost in a time warp, ignorant of the thrust and parry of human nature.

But such disintegration might be the fault of the original formulations of Karl Marx himself, writing away in the warm bowels of the British museum while Engels picked up his bills. All people alas are simply not created equal, except in their mother’s eyes and in the eyes of God, and that is all there is to it.

Indian democracy for all its impressive Election Commission supervised exercises, of largely free and fair elections, doesn’t work in a particularly democratic way. After the votes are counted, the netas prefer to take a page out of the colonial book and render themselves inviolate.

The voter that actually can be herded to the hustings, is only seen as important at election time, when he and she is wooed, flattered, bullied and threatened if necessary, and/or mildly bribed with cash, kind, and liquid refreshment for his vote.

This is because not a single institution with the possible exception of the RTI mechanism has been created since independence to actually empower the hapless voter. Nothing beyond anodyne grievance mechanisms that are designed to be better at stone-walling than actual redressal. And a judicial system that delivers at snail’s speed.

The urban voter, growing more numerous as progress sends more and more people into cities and towns, does not get much change out of his elected representatives. As for the rural voter, still constituting the backbone of the election process; his plight is best described in the numerous R.K. Laxman cartoons over the decades since independence.

All of them are variations of the same theme. They feature helicoptering visits of politicians in dazzling white malmal, solicitously enquiring about the welfare of their destitute voters, while the latter stare uncomprehendingly in their tattered loin cloths, their bellies distended with promises, painfully trying to make sense of the big man’s questions.

The great white hope out of this third world morass that mocks at our rapid GDP growth, is the dawning realisation amongst some politicians that development and growth in the hinterland, amongst the great unwashed, may be the way to obtaining and holding on to power. That is, without the constant flux and eddy that characterises the old politics of caste, creed, regionalism, dynastic and nepotistic succession, and so on.

Bihar and Gujarat, both run by determined men of humble origin, certainly demonstrate this possible new maxim. And both states have also succeeded in lowering the boom on corruption with Chief Ministers demonstrating a high level of personal integrity, and thereby leading their political and bureaucratic flock by example, if not by the nose or ear. And let it be remembered that neither state was exactly a paragon of probity in the past!

But apart from the evolution of our polity from an elected anarchy, that owes more to the bazaar than it does to the Westminster model: towards something more coherent; we may be forced to re-evaluate many assumptions about the virtues of elite leadership.

Many of this miniscule species, are now, it is seen, morally spent, and unlike their ilk in the decades before independence, do not have the will or desire to provide leadership to an emerging world power. Our elite, sustained quite largely by inherited privilege, may be too enfeebled by good living and cronyism to make any serious effort at anything as selfless as nation building. And many amongst this charmed circle have even forgotten how to be ashamed.

However, happily for the multitude, the people from the smaller towns and villages, identified both by management thinkers such as Ms. Rama Bijapurkar and business heads such as Mr. Ratan Tata, as the “treasure” at “the bottom of the pyramid”, both in terms of their collective buying power and their aggregated human resource, hold out hope for the future and may well come to the rescue.

If they do, turning exceptions into the rule of thumb, it will be a most welcome if unbidden phenomenon, that may however have its roots in the earlier democratisation of our elected representatives, with the higher caste politician being joined plentifully by others of much humbler antecedents.

This has had some raucous consequences, such as chairs and microphones hurtling through the air in state legislatures; and some falling away of notional airs and graces past their prime, including the villainy and lecherousness of the rural “Chowdhary” in film after Bollywood film of a certain vintage; and even an explosion in corruption like starving people with sudden access to the banquet table; but through all this turbulence has come a renewal of unseen but subliminal benefits.

The parallel, while drawn in the blood of millions, could be the emergence of the working classes after the debacle of the first World War in Europe. The old aristocracy was largely wiped out then, but not only because of the attrition of leadership involved. Folly, arrogance, insouciance and incompetence may have had a good deal to do with their demise, and the consequent changing of the world order.

Here in India, the small towns and villages are demonstrating a competence and leadership that comes with not being jaded. The small towner is not ashamed of his origins or his culture any more, and these days looking at the calibre of the city folks, he has little reason to doubt his relative competitiveness. The old manipulations and stratagems of the elite therefore may be no more than at a last gasp of history.


(1,064 words)

5th April 2011
Gautam Mukherjee