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Regrettably, the answer is no. Indian politics is feudal, driven by divisive agendas of caste, ethnicity and religion. It is also nepotistic, fuelled by ties of kinship. The political class has no ideology, except knee-jerk responses evoked by flawed and leftover notions of socialism, secularism and nonalignment. The system that has grown out of the cloud of an opaque democracy is chaotic and plutocratic. It exploits the twin sores of poverty and disparity. Politicians tend to be kleptomaniacs, who seek rents for providing governance by exception. Their supporters are primarily favour seekers, and in this ethical morass, conformity and sycophancy are valued over innovation and competence.
The amorphous world of Indian politics is currently in focus because state elections are at hand. Driving around my assembly district, I see newly established offices of the Congress, the BJP and the BSP. Just one look into them and it becomes evident that they serve as hangouts for unemployed, uneducated youth, who sit around hoping for a handout of a few rupees to get them through the day. In sharp contrast, American campaign offices are a productive buzz of volunteers and party staffers, churning out voter lists, poll data and demographic profiles.
Thus, Barack Obama came out of nowhere, a young mixed-race individual from a broken home, the son of an immigrant Kenyan father and a peripatetic white mother from Kansas. He has lived in Hawaii, Indonesia and midwest USA; attended the finest universities on the east coast and graduated with high honours in political science and law. He taught at the University of Chicago Law School and then spurned an academic career to become a community organiser in the city’s impoverished and mostly black South Side. Over the years, he rose through the ranks of city and state politics to be elected a US senator in 2004.
In 2007, he announced his candidacy for the presidency of the United States and launched a superb campaign focused on a message of change. He used information technology to build a network of support groups across the country and to raise funds in small denominations, accumulating the largest ever campaign treasury in the history of American presidential elections. He exudes coolness, compassion and an intellectual brilliance that won him not just votes but the deep admiration of youth, Latinos, women and black voters. Indeed Obama has fired the imagination of the whole world. As such, when he is sworn in on January 20, he will become America’s first global president.
The stark contrast between the grass-roots operations and the political aspirations of the world’s two largest democracies speaks volumes of the difference in governance. In the US, governance tends to be positive and enlightened. Roads are well maintained; there is round-the-clock power and water (that you can drink straight from the tap). There are excellent government schools and well-stocked community libraries. Local governments operate and maintain parks and recreation services. They also provide a variety of social services for the aged and the handicapped, as also efficient mass transport.
In India, there is little or no governance. Except for Lutyens Delhi, home of the power elite, most of India is rubble-strewn, unkempt and unfinished; pocked with inadequate roads, erratic power and water supply and virtually no law enforcement, let alone education or healthcare. The random manner in which civic authorities operate shows how kleptocracy works. Roads are patched rather than re-done; of a 10 km road approved for funding, just half gets built and the rest remains ragged and jagged. Arterial bridges collapse immediately after they are built.
Outsourced as it is to an increasingly rusty ‘steel frame’ bureaucracy, governance has very little to do with the delivery of public goods and services. Instead, it has become a muscular exercise to plunder money from the public treasury and keep the citizenry at bay. Even a third-rate politician like Mayawati travels in an envelope of Black Cats security cover, directed less at personal safety than at making a power statement to her impoverished Dalit supporters. With her warped understanding of politics, she strives to impress her base with such over-the-top displays.
Meanwhile, swarms of self-serving and venal bureaucrats at all levels of government, excavate age-old laws and regulations with a view to extorting bribes from citizens. Not too long ago, some of them visited my office and informed the manager that on the basis of something done by a long-dead former owner, the building was in violation of some code and therefore illegal. We haven’t heard from them since, but they may well have “opened a file”, giving them the option to harass us whenever they choose. Maybe they need to fund a wedding in the family, or whatever. Nobody in the political world can rein in democratic India’s marauding bureaucrats. That’s because no politician even thinks of governance. It’s all about power and pelf, unmindful of the citizenry.
No, a Barack Obama cannot rise in India. A Nero, a Hitler, a Stalin, a Mao… maybe.
(Rajiv Desai is president of Comma Consulting and a well-known Delhi-based columnist)