The Hindu Business Line : They divide... to rule

Only a political "lightweight" — surely he is no great neta with skills for organising huge political rallies or hitting on the right arithmetic when it comes to getting correct caste-combinations in the great Indian political circus — like Arun Shourie could have written so candidly and mercilessly about the games politicians and political parties play.

In his latest book, The Parliamentary System (ASA/Rupa & Co), Shourie tears to bits the present system of governance where politicians grab power only by polarising people into different groups and hence are hardly representative of the people. The author grabs your attention right on Page 1 by raising the very valid question: Why is it that on the one hand we have a "creative society that shows much energy and is surging upward" and entrepreneurs and middle-class professionals are engaged in creating a "new India", on the other, the political class continues to stoke the fire of the caste system "to keep itself in business". While in the industry new leaders are emerging to do better and more innovative things, "in public life second-raters are giving way to third-raters", and politicians need to depend more and more on criminals.

Arun Shourie

With these queries Shourie captures the attention of the educated Indian middle-class, which is increasingly talking about these issues but finds itself either helpless or disinterested in doing anything about it. The author argues that today by using muscle and money power, dividing people into castes and communities, politicians enter our legislatures, defeating persons with "competence, integrity and dedication".

Dissecting the present Parliamentary and electoral system that only fragments the electorate, Shourie blasts the argument that the legislators are representatives of the people, and as people are supreme, the Parliament, parliamentarians, the party/parties that control Parliament and "the one who controls the majority of parliamentarians is sovereign". As one who had observed Parliament first hand for 10 years, and noted the level to which discourses had fallen in our legislatures, he argues that "this string of notions" is extremely dangerous.

The Emergency, and the ridiculous extent to which Congressmen like D.K. Barooah went to defend and glorify Indira Gandhi, is the example he deals with at some length in the book. But not before he has proved to us how the "representatives" of people are getting into our legislatures with less and less votes, thanks to proliferating regional parties and fragmented electorate, who are wooed along caste, religion and other lines.

In the chapter `Myths about the present system' we are shown how in the 2004 Lok Sabha elections, 59 MPs of Uttar Pradesh entered the Lok Sabha with just 10 to 20 per cent of the vote! While the Basti MP won on just 11 per cent of the votes, the Robertsganj MP needed 11.4 per cent, Mohanlalgunj MP 11.6 per cent, Mirzapur MP 12.4, Bansgaon MP 12.5 per cent, and so on.

The crucial pointer from this set of statistics is that politicians need to get just 5 to 10 per cent of the voters solidly behind them. "This is the tactic that the Congress relied on for long. This is the secret of the `strength' of Lalu Yadav, Mulayam Singh, Mayawati. This is what lies behind the `invincibility' of the district-parties that play such a decisive role in forming and overturning governments in Tamil Nadu. This is the reason that the Muslims are courted by every party today. Frighten those tenth or fifth, cajole them, show them any sabz-baag, persuade the ones that control them or can sway them — the mullahs giving the Friday sermons, the sarpanchs — and you are home."

But the danger of this state of affairs is the marginalisation of national parties. Shourie argues that in this background even if a national party is able to get 15 per cent of votes around the country, it may end up with zero seats! So "what could be a greater inducement to a leader to fragment the electorate to address his appeal to narrower and narrower sections", is the frightening question he raises.

A splintered electorate returns a splintered legislature; today the Lok Sabha has 39 parties. While A.B. Vajpayee's government could be put together by stitching up 11 parties, Dr Manmohan Singh's government needed 14 parties; "even then, it is entirely at the mercy of the four Communist parties" outside the government.

Local chieftains

In such governments collective responsibility remains a mere phrase and local chieftains such as DMK President M. Karunanidhi hold more and more sway over important issues; Shourie gives the case of the divestment of NLC and how it had to be reversed following Karunanidhi's directive. A better example would have been the exit of Dayanidhi Maran, but the episode took place after the book was published!

The author gives the example of Tamil Nadu to illustrate the "unrepresentativeness" of governments in our `first-past-the-post" election system. Between 2001-2006, the DMK's share of votes falls from 30.9 to 26.5 per cent, and "for that it is rewarded with 96 seats. The AIADMK gets 32.6 per cent of the votes, and yet only 61 seats". (It's another matter that the DMK put together a grand alliance and could contest in a lesser number of seats — the compulsion of coalition politics).

Shourie adds that the AIADMK's vote share had actually gone up from 31.4 per cent in 2001 (when it got 132 seats).

Another problem with the present system, he argues, is that if the staunch supporters of a particular party are concentrated in some constituencies, "it will win these seats handsomely". But another party that has 15 per cent votes all over the State might end up with no seat!

With hardly a shift of 2 to 3 per cent vote spelling the "difference between a sweeping victory and being swept away", more and more pressure groups spring up. "First SC/STs were the ones to which parties had to pander, then Muslims, then OBCs, then every sub-caste among each of these groups."

Returning to his favourite topic — Mandal recommendations - Shourie says, "Politicians know as little as psephologists and journalists about who will react how to which measure. I remember Arif Mohammed Khan describing to me the Cabinet meeting at which V.P. Singh's government lunged for the Mandal Commission's ruinous proposals... One Minister told V.P. Singh: `Sir, ise laagoo kar dijeeye, bees saal ke liye koi hamen sarkar se hila nahin sakegaa.

In this immensely readable book, Shourie makes a strong case for restructuring the system to tilt power away from the legislature to the executive, make efforts to find stronger, more effective executives, make institutions more accountable, vest more power with the judiciary, directly elect a President who should be free to choose his Cabinet from within or outside the legislature.

An irresistible feature of this book is Shourie's hard-hitting prose, laced as much with sarcasm as humour, as also his incisive political analysis, which doesn't spare even the BJP that had made him a Cabinet minister in the NDA government. One example is how the NDA allowed the DMK to leave, with disastrous consequences. "Karunanidhi had given no cause for offence to the NDA leadership in Delhi. He was not just allowed to drift away, two or three local `leaders' were allowed to go on traducing him personally till he got convinced the seniors of the NDA had decided to jettison him, come the next elections." This "blunder" cost the NDA 30 seats and helped the rival alliance come to power.

Populist measures

Another example he gives is how every party wants to latch onto populist measures. The Employment Guarantee Scheme of the UPA, if implemented sincerely, would cost Rs 40,000-50,000 crore and compound corruption at the grassroots, he says. But to the plea that such "irresponsible" measures should be opposed, the response is: "By being responsible, we lost the government. They made irresponsible demand after irresponsible demand, they made false accusation after false accusation. And see, they are in government." And the opposite happens; the Opposition wants to know why only one person in a family, why only rural areas, why only Rs 60 per day, why only a few days, and so on. "In a word, the operating premise is, `Carrying on government is the job of those who are in Government. Our job is to oppose, to shout at, to block whatever is proposed, our job is to demand more."

Shourie is of course best at what he loves most — trashing reservations. "With standards having been traduced as elitist, with merit and efficiency denounced as a conspiracy of the haves to keep the deprived down", even to suggest that an incompetent person should not get a job is to invite abuse. Hence ministers and civil servants get postings not because they have any background or training for the post, but because of caste, muscle or money power. Winnability is all, and knowledge of issues, "ability to put forth a reasoned argument in a sober way", or integrity, are not the required qualifications. Even `veterans" have little to commend them than their long years in the legislature. "Rare indeed would be the case where a member of a legislature would have run an organisation... he would have had executive experience. And yet, suddenly, he may well land up in charge of a ministry, a large organisation that requires intimate knowledge of issues that fall within its purview as well as extensive executive competence and experience."

The author quotes from this lecture of N.A. Palkivala, delivered 20 years ago at a Madras University convocation. "When at this Convocation you see degrees conferred upon engineers, doctors, surgeons, lawyers and other professionals, you cannot fail to be struck by the grim irony of the situation where the one job for which you need no training or qualification whatever is the job of legislating for and governing the largest democracy on earth."

Through several such passages Shourie compels the reader to sit up and think of the dangerous manner in which we select our political masters; even the head of the Executive or the Prime Minister is selected by `lottery'. "Recall how Charan Singh, Chandrashekhar, H.D. Deve Gowda, I.K. Gujral and now Manmohan Singh ended up as Prime Ministers." And in selecting the Cabinet, competence comes at the bottom of the ladder; the "controllers" of each coalition party decide who will be their Minister in the Cabinet.

The author raises the relevant question that 15 years ago many Indians hadn't even heard of N.R. Narayana Murthy, Azim Premji, F.C. Kohli and Ramadorai or Sunil Mittal. "And under Ratan Tata, the Tatas today are completely different from what they were even 10 years ago. How is it that such leaders are bursting forth in industry, not in public life?" On the contrary, the politicians were only taking governance levels further down, he comments.

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They divide... to rule