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Your news, my way Left, or left out? A special responsibility War, for no particular      reason Representation, not      reservation

The road never travelled

Dear Prime Minister,

This week your political party, with friends in tow and foes ranged against, will be at the hustings, attempting to convince voters in key states that your leadership still merits recognition. More importantly, I am sure, you will be eager to assure voters in Uttar Pradesh and Punjab -- really the only states where the outcomes matter, considering Uttaranchal's natural leanings towards your party and Manipur's small importance to national politics -- that the state-level governments they have experienced under incumbent administrations deserve another chance.

Like all combatants in politics, you must be hopeful that the messages you bring to voting audiences is relevant to their hopes and aspirations. As someone who three years ago viewed your prime ministership as a genuine opportunity to forge a different India, however, I offer this contrasting opinion. Namely, by important measures of administration your government has largely failed, and absent the correction in course that should have been evident prior to these elections your political party will likely fare nowhere as well as needed in order to retain the semblance of a government that speaks for all of India.

Although some would regard this as a turning point, in reality this is an unremarkable event, significant only in light of your promise to provide a different sort of administration from the ones we had historically become accustomed to. Whether in rejection of that claim, or despite your best efforts to provide supporting evidence, voters have, in the past year and a half, simply turned away from your government and its allies. As you go to the polls, you must be acutely aware that beyond the boundaries of these few states, there are not very many places in the nation where your political party holds sway. Outright disillusionment with your government is real; whatever the results from this election, I hope that message is counted among those you will take away from it.

Political commentators, such as many of my fellow columnists at rediff.com, are wont to ask why your fortunes have fallen this low, and find answers in ways that baffle me. Alliances with the right parties, seat-sharing, vote-bank politics, trade-offs with allies, and other such minutiae that no doubt play a role in the eventual outcome typically appear foremost in their consideration. Indeed, sympathetic opinion-makers will no doubt find much to admire in your government, notwithstanding the repeated messages from state elections that you have periodically received.

The details of such political nuances are, however, not responsible for this moment, and of that there should be little doubt. Your fortunes have plunged because the party promised much and delivered little. Your political party has been unable to rise above the appearance of similarity to its predecessors in government.

A sympathetic media has blamed you very little for this, arguing instead that you simply do not have adequate friends in circles that matter to move India along your own chosen paths. Perhaps. The average citizen, however, does not seek such explanations for the inertia he must contend with; instead he regards this as a failure -- on your part -- to initiate and further the processes by which his empowerment may be obtained.

As your administration began, I expressed the hope that you would champion the unhindered enterprise of ordinary Indians, freeing us from the decades of government-knows-best that had brought India to her knees. This expectation gradually diminished, as it became evident that the BJP was not attempting a radical transformation of Indian society except in very polarizing circumstances.

Busying yourself with rewriting textbooks, dispossessing tribals of their lands, nuclear posturing, and other plans at odds with the public interest eventually brought us to Tehelka, whereupon the comparison to the sleaze of past decades under Congress rule was complete. You should have taken that to be a sign -- that you were about to be judged for the vigour with which you would dismantle the institutionalized sense of lordship that pervades our government.

That judgement is now upon us, at least in part. Without a viable alternative, and despite a complete lack of meaningful leadership in the largest opposition party, the Bharatiya Janata Party finds itself no better placed than others. The magic political moment wrought by the appearance and profession of piety, service and cultural assertiveness has passed. In its place, we now find the old cynicism towards all things government, and the same considered judgement the Indian voter has rendered throughout the last two decades. With every political organisation consigning the public interest to the dustbin immediately upon assuming office, elections offer the only opportunity for payback.

I write not with the expectation that the ruling party shall receive a drubbing, nor with the anger that it will be deserved. The inevitable accompaniment to voter disgruntlement with government is the recognition that what is gained or lost from the ballot box isn't really worth celebrating or mourning. Whether you prevail or fail will decide little more than the course of political fortunes for a few people in India; its significance beyond that pale bears no examination. The next Punjab and UP chief ministers will make the usual unintelligible noises, these will be discarded for the inanities they are, and life will continue as before. Politics for public service has long been in decline; regrettably your administration has not demonstrated an ability -- or even the desire, many would claim -- to reverse that.

The small gains at the prosperous end of the political spectrum may be laudable, but it is unlikely that they represent political goodwill. The world of lending institutions and leaders of developed nations may salivate at the 4 per cent and higher growth rates on offer in our land, amidst nearly universal economic uncertainty elsewhere. Those who inhabit that world, however, understand only poorly the connections between economic and social realities in nations where the poor outnumber the comfortable and the rich. Largely middle-class Europe and America don't really offer models of development suited to the gruelling economic skew in our nation; the praise of their stewards hasn't kept anyone ensconced in Delhi.

At the other end of the spectrum, in slums and villages, failing in government is not seen as a political event; instead it is a social catastrophe. How you fare in office may well determine the course of millions of lives, but that is not to confuse the positions you or your political friends hold with the purpose of civil society. For every school you do not build, there are hundreds of children whose lives do not see the opportunities that learning can bring. For every health-care facility that is missing, there are many lives disfigured or lost. Each earthquake victim is more than a statistic amidst lost shelter and jobs; instead s/he is a person who must live with the agony of displacement, and confront the entirely human challenges that brings -- frayed families, poor nutrition, inadequate sanitation, and many other unexpected demons thrust suddenly into their lives. Each soldier who dies is someone's son, someone's husband or father, and surely leaves behind more than the "acceptable losses" we measure at the frontier.

To really provide a government with a difference, Prime Minister, you must accept this crucial distinction between this reality on the one hand and the view from Race Course Road on the other. At the beginning of your tenure, the expectation that you would seize upon this was enormous, and a great optimism flowed from it. A few years into that expectation, however, it is unlikely that significant numbers of the people hold such faith anymore. Perhaps in recognition of this, the ruling party too has returned to the routine of political jockeying for power, rather than finding genuine support from an approving public. Once the expectation of reward by voters is cast aside, the old skin quickly resurfaces.

Mercifully, the genius of free societies relies in large part on an ability to endure its leaders. With or without your active participation, it is certain that the people of India will seek and find ways to better their lives; a combination of personal responsibility and the apathetic state forces such ingenuity. The question for you has always been whether you would accelerate such change, and whether in doing so you would bring betterment to the lives of the many, and not just the few who have never needed you. That poser having already been answered in the negative, only the political affirmation of it now remains.

And so we approach another stop along a meandering political journey whose moment in the sun may have passed without light. Fasten your seat belt, Sir. I would ask you to remain seated too, if I didn't already believe you have no intention of rising.

Regretfully,

Ashwin Mahesh

Elections 2002: Full Coverage