The Hindu Business Line : How does a democracy change gears on the growth highway

Steering a democracy on the development road is no different from driving a car. A shared vision of the future is the first gear. The second gear is to challenge `underlying theories-in-use of how we can accelerate towards our vision'. In the third gear, "we frame the situation as well as the problem that needs a solution. The fourth and fifth gears are development of solutions, and decisions for implementation."

Is India's democracy slowing down its growth, even as China gallops ahead? Perhaps, yes, but we can make democracy work more effectively, says Arun Maira, Chairman of the Boston Consulting Group, India. Politics is too important to be left in the hands of only politicians; people at all levels must take responsibility for shaping the nation, he argues in Discordant Democrats, from Penguin (www.penguinbooksindia.com).

India is the most diverse country, with "twenty-two official languages, all the world's major religions, and people of several races, all following one flag." And WMD is the solution, Maira prescribes. Not Weapons of Mass Destruction, but Ways for Mass Dialogue, to facilitate "consensus building and collaborative action amongst people with different perspectives."

To Maira, the problem on hand is no different from a computer that is down. We need to get democracy's hardware going; this comprises the structures such as `constitutions, devolved institutions and electoral processes', much like `the walls and doors and systems of the house'. Next, work on democracy's software — `dialogue and deliberations'. As in computer systems, given adequate hardware, the system's performance depends entirely on the quality of the software, he explains.

Dialogue, though, isn't easy, because of the universal habit of stereotyping most of us slip into. Stereotyping makes it easier for our minds to function efficiently; it relieves us of the need "to apply our minds repeatedly to consider each and every person on their merits." However, what we gain in efficiency, we lose in ineffectiveness in cooperation with others, points out Maira. "To build better relationships, we must respect the institutional roles each of us has to play, and we must also look for the real person behind the stereotype."

Dialogue is a process that allows small groups of people to share their perspectives and experiences with one another about difficult issues, defines Sandy Helerbacher of NCDD (National Coalition of Dialogue and Deliberation). "Dialogue is not about judging, weighing, or making decisions, but about understanding and learning," reads a quote of hers cited in the book. Deliberation is a related process with an emphasis on "the use of critical reasoning and logical argument in decision making," in the place of `power, coercion, or hierarchy'.

Steering a democracy on the development road is no different from driving a car, says Maira. "A shared vision of the future is the equivalent of the first gear. The more passion there is for this vision, the more power there is in the process of change." The second gear is to challenge `underlying theories-in-use of how we can accelerate towards our vision'. In the third gear, "we frame the situation as well as the problem that needs a solution. The fourth and fifth gears are development of solutions and decisions for implementation."

An overdrive read.

Fault-lines in democracy

Indian democracy has many a fault-line, says Patwant Singh in The Second Partition, from Hay House India (www.hayhouse.co.in). Sixty years ago, India was partitioned. "Somewhere along the way India got partitioned a second time without the world — or even Indians themselves — knowing it. So what we have now is two Indias," he says. The first is `the prosperous power with global aspirations', comprising `the country's top stratum and the middle classes'. And the second has the rest of the population — `starving, malnourished, subject to untreated disease, often unemployed and homeless, with infant and maternal mortality as daily realities'.

Singh finds that poverty's grip has not loosened despite all persuasive arguments advanced to prove it has. "The face India presents to the world is startlingly different from the faces of its people mirrored in the slums and shanties of urban and rural areas, or seen on the streets of its teeming cities — faces that India's politicians and wealthy prefer not to see."

Woeful numbers that the author cites in a chapter on health include these: "The country has only half the number of community health-care facilities it should have, and of these, 38 per cent lack the medical personnel required. Nagaland has just 500 doctors for two million people... One woman dies five minutes from pregnancy-related problems." The public health system suffers the most from `unprincipled politicians', frets Singh. They have "no compunction in shifting the location of primary health centres from where people need them most to where they might better serve their own electoral prospects."

Given India's continuing neglect of the poor, and its widespread corruption, bad governance, obsessive militarisation, and religious polarisation, will we ever come out of the darkness that threatens our future? Posing this question in the epilogue, the author wraps with his fond hope "that India's future lies in the hands of those many men and women who have moral clarity, deep convictions, and an abiding respect for decencies in public life."

Passionate arguments.

Deep Throat

Travelling back to the days before the partition, Harold A. Gould meets `Deep Throat' in the Graylin Hotel, London. They chat about `events which in 1943 led to a confidential memo prepared by ambassador William Phillips, the US special envoy to pre-independence India, addressed to his boss, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, falling into the hands of Drew Pearson who wrote regularly in the Washington Post.'

Apparently Phillips's memo was highly critical of British policy towards India; he believed `that the war effort in Asia had been placed in jeopardy by what he viewed as British arrogance and intransigence.' Pearson's disclosure of the ambassador's comments caused a sensation in Washington, and proved to be a PR windfall for the proponents of Indian freedom and South Asians' civil rights who were active in the US, writes Gould in Sikhs, Swamis, Students, and Spies, from Sage (www.sagepublications.com).

"Sikhs formed the vanguard of the initial migrants. They began showing up in Vancouver, Seattle, and San Francisco as the 1900s dawned," narrates the author. "Many were ex-servicemen from the Indian army; almost all hailed from the Punjab. They were essentially peasants who wanted to acquire land for cultivation. They were neither rich nor desperately poor; just salt-of-the-earth Jat Sikhs who were used to hard work, and who knew how to make things grow under the harshest conditions if given half a chance... "

Right reference, on a day when the state is paralysed by rival bandhs.

BSP's rise in UP

The BSP (Bahujan Samaj Party) has checked the dominance of the upper castes effectively in a number of ways, writes Vivek Kumar, in one of the essays included in Political Process in Uttar Pradesh, edited by Sudha Pai, from Pearson (www.pearsoned.co.in) . An initial success strategy of the BSP was to start `a political party led and dominated by Dalits and other marginalised castes and communities.' The BSP established itself by sensitising and weaning away the Dalits first from the Congress in the 1980s and then from the BJP in the 1990s, chronicles Kumar.

"The BSP adopted a policy of democratic political representation of different communities to check the monopoly and political hegemony of the upper castes." The party had long back floated a slogan that stressed the representative aspect of democracy: `Jiski Jitni Sankhya Bhari, Uski Utni Bhagedari' (meaning, `each according to its numerical strength'). As one saw during the recent elections that yielded decisive dividends for the BSP, "the party did not keep this slogan only a slogan, but tried to implement it both in letter and spirit."

A bunch of essential study for those who would want to understand a functioning democracy.

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