Obliquity

Obliquity

What is truth?
Pontius Pilate

The one major thing in Indian governance that is not substantially tainted yet, despite routine shrill allegations, usually from the losing side, is the conduct of elections under the Election Commission of India. And the actual, rather swift, counting of votes from the hard-to-rig EVMs (electronic voting machines).

We are somewhat ahead of the world in the use of EVMs, despite unproven allegations of electronic ways to make them favour one side or the other. They are, curiously, not yet used in the West - remember the “pregnant chads” controversy from a punching of cards system in the Florida primaries, in the closely fought George W Bush Vs Al Gore presidential election?

Well, our voters from the proverbial Kashmir to Kanyakumari, in the largest voting exercise on earth, don’t have a problem with them. And, as a consequence, our elections are much less susceptible to the traditional “stuffing” of ballot boxes. But alas, we tend not to have wildly popular winners with over 99% of the votes cast, such as former President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan or President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe!

This free and fair election system is probably India’s last bastion, because even the higher judiciary has not escaped corruption charges, with more than one Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in contention in recent times. And so, the supremacy of the people’s verdict holds out the greatest hope for the future; despite the inexcusable go slow and stonewalling tactics of the Government besieged by a sea of corruption charges and the huge civil discontent over them.

With every investigative institution, including the CBI, also allegedly serving the Government’s narrow objectives, the voting public has no recourse against the might of an experienced ruling party, except at election time. But fortunately for us, the Indian voter knows this full well from past experience.

So irrespective of the havoc being wreaked on the protests of “civil society” by multiple and ruthless government action, all is by no means lost. Matters may well be addressed, if not redressed, at the general elections in 2014, notwithstanding the several assembly elections before that, which will also indicate which way the wind is blowing.

The Indian voting public has already shown itself to be astute and well-informed in recent assembly elections in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu in particular, and there are many instances of how it has brought about dramatic and decisive change time and again throughout our 63 years as an independent nation.

The Government meanwhile is inexplicably unable, or perhaps unwilling, to stem the rot with any urgent measures, be they swiftly bringing those charged with corruption to book, or controlling inflation and runaway prices, or indeed reviving the long stalled reformation process amongst other things. So we find the economy is slowing, the stock markets declining, and governance in a tail-spin.

In such a situation, the UPA may be well served by changing tack. It could resort to the power of tangentiality, that is, approaching subject matters via the scenic route, obliquely, rather than directly. This method has long been the life blood of diplomacy, and some new age management theorists say, all successful change.

It leaves, owing to its strategic ambiguity and deliberate vagueness, its calibrated diplomatic code, its ability to save face, enough wiggle room to wriggle out of long held positions. Positions, that have perhaps outlived their usefulness.

Using obliqueness, not only people and ruling parties, but nations also, can stay engaged in almost all situations short of all-out hells-bells war. And even then, the secret back channels would keep buzzing, just as, in the old days, spies from every side and a half mingled and swarmed over neutral territories-- such as the storied and romantic Casablanca in Morocco, the more matter-of-fact Geneva in Switzerland, Lisbon, Portugal, or Vienna, Austria. And all that spying was also diplomacy, and not just an opportunity to meet, and mate, with Mata Hari.

The result of such negotiated change, includes the accommodations necessary on both sides and flanks, across parties at the parliamentary and assembly levels, bilaterally at the national one, and sometimes multilaterally too. It can actually move mountains, an example being the multilateralism that resulted in India’s recent and semi-official inclusion by the de-jure nuclear powers club.

Consensus building processes, arrived at obliquely, with some big brother support to boot, do not result in rupture and its inconvenient consequence of lack of continuity. And this, even amongst people and nations of considerably divergent viewpoint, or in common parlance, amongst sworn enemies, frothing at the mouth, with daggers drawn!

Obliqueness, or as one new management study calls it, obliquity, has the embedded virtue of effectiveness and positive yield, that swashbuckling, but usually tragic, duels of honour do not.

Our long-held notions of non-alignment are a case in point. They were betrayed from the start with our eagerly sought inclusion in the Soviet camp, necessary for our very survival. But it didn’t somehow stop us pounding the pulpit at international fora without ever noticing the ridiculousness of our situation.

Meaning, in a roundabout munimji to sarkar kind of way, that in order to succeed, leaving leg-room for contenders to adjust and shift positions, is probably better, and happens when issues are approached tangentially.

This way, we could not only arrive at consensus on the running of this country internally, but also work with both China and Pakistan, at a qualitatively better level, without in fact compromising any of our strategic concerns. We could however actively refurbish, renovate, remove and reincarnate a political trajectory.

Closer home, think of what a power of minority wooing could do to the prime ministerial prospects of a most efficient chief minister like Narendra Modi of Gujarat? And how it can result in forgiveness, much like the Delhi anti-sikh riots of 1984, which actually killed more Sikhs than the Godhra carnage killed Muslims, despite, or is it because of, the oft repeated mantra of secularism? Played right, the whole Godhra controversy can yet be released to the slipstream of history, duly defanged, denuded, dessicated and dropped.

Pablo Picasso, famous and successful from the age of 19, spoke of art as a lie that revealed the truth. But in this season of innumerable scams and political drift, public and media outrage, actual retribution still faces heavy headwinds.

Is this then the reactionary backlash against a head-on confrontationist approach essentially doomed to failure? Or is the sarkari repression mobilising and consolidating public opinion rather well, making it ready to counterattack and unravel the power structures of today at the next elections?


(1,100 words)

20th June 2011
Gautam Mukherjee