Commentary/Dilip Thakore

Politics is business because politicians are
incapable of succeeding in any other vocation

These are but some of the scams and scandals which are grabbing the headlines as with the long overdue judicial spring-cleaning the worms of the socialist order come crawling out of the nation's crumbling woodwork.

And at the risk of being accused of repetitive, let me reiterate that these scams and scandals are but the proverbial tip of the iceberg. Even as you read this an estimated 40 million (2 per public servants) scams, great and small, are being visited upon the exchequer and the public.

Yet at long last, thanks to the courage and uprightness of the judiciary and the media, the only institutions of democratic governance to have survived the ravages of post-Independence India's unique Midas-in-reverse political class, the details and mechanics of the more colossal frauds practiced upon the nation are being exposed to public scrutiny and horror.

Consequently no useful purpose other than to reiterate the magnitude of the perfidy of the political class will be served by dwelling on the fraud of the Constitution and the nation. However it might prove illuminating to focus the searchlight upon the antecedents, class composition and characters of the dramatis personae neck-deep in the great scams of recent origin which have outraged all right-thinking members of society.

Though this assertion is likely to greatly annoy proponents of the gospel of political correctness, the truth is that the great majority of frauds and tricksters in public service are of lower middle class backgrounds with pronounced rural antecedents.

An understanding of the motivations, character and self-enrichment methodologies of this aggressive class which is systematically destroying the institutions of governance is a prerequisite of cleansing the Augean stables of this high-potential nation.

The motivations of the new lumpen bourgeoisie which dominates Indian politics are transparent. Insufficiently educated to succeed in a meaningful way in business or the professions, this class has transformed the formerly noble vocations of politics and public service into the nation's most lucrative business.

Unfettered by ethical constraints which are the by-products of sound education and/or a study and absorption of the tenets of the world's great religions, post-Independence India's mofussil politicians have exploited all the weaknesses of democracy and the dogma of socialism to transform politics and the public services into businesses managed with the objective of serving the narrow interests of kith and kin at the expense of the wider public. And unfortunately for the nation in this great grab-fest principled and honest politicians have been marginalised and reduced to a small minority.

It is important to also bear in mind that the rise of the nation's lumpen bourgeoisie to positions of power and responsibility in public service has been aided and abetted by the educated middle class which has virtually succeeded from politics and latterly from the civil services.

Moreover, the educated middle class which still dominates the media and the judiciary has been consistently guilt-tripped into creating political space for ill-educated rural and mofussil politicians advocating positive discrimination for the 'backward'.

The clearance of the pernicious recommendations of the Mandal Commission (which stipulated that over half of the public sector employment should be reserved for backward castes as a measure of empowerment of the underprivileged) by the Supreme Court, was born of a liberal impulse.

But unfortunately it has had the effect of fracturing the carefully nurtured unity of this polyglot nation and breathing new life into archaic caste politics.

Abstractions such as national unity and the emergence of regressive particularist politics apart, at the functional level the nation and the general public has had to pay a high price for the adoption of caste-based positive discrimination.

There is a direct nexus between the dramatic deterioration of public - especially civic - services and the acceptance of caste-based quotas in the public services. At a time in world history when technology and human resource efficiency have coalesced to deliver dramatic breakthroughs in productivity, it is disastrous to fill institutions of public service with people selected on criteria other than merit.

Moreover soft-state attitudes and liberal promiscuity have had the ground-level impact of lending legitimacy to and sanctifying illiteracy and ignorance.

Latter day politicians sprung from the subaltern classes tend to wear their ignorance and lack of formal education as a badge of pride and qualification for ministerial office.

And this absurd presumption has been encouraged by guilt-ridden liberals within the intelligentsia and the media.

The consequences of artificially empowering the subaltern classes by injecting them into institutions of government are visible in the utter poverty and chaos which characterises contemporary India.

Unlike leaders of the subaltern classes (such as Dr Ambedkar) who struggled mightily against their historic disadvantages and transformed themselves into highly educated individuals who rose to high positions on merit and contributed handsomely to the national development effort, contemporary backward caste leaders are characterised by quasi-literacy and lack of principle. And their major contribution to the nation is the culture of corruption, electoral malpractice and violence.

Consequently it is high time that the nation's soft-headed intelligentsia grasped the reality that for subaltern class politicians, politics is a business for the simple reason that they are incapable of succeeding in any other vocation.

At least not to the same extent. This hard-headed attitude of subaltern class politicians to politics and public service explains the spread of the corruption cancer to an unimaginable degree within the body politic.

Yet to be fair it must also be conceded that the culture of corruption is not the monopoly of the newly empowered subaltern classes. The leaderhsip of the Congress party after the death of Lal Bahadur Shastri was hardly of the subaltern class.

Both Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi were products of the upper middle class though it is disputable whether they were sufficiently educated.

But it is not clear that they played a major role in encouraging and institutionalising corruption in politics if not the public services. However, it is my argument that the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty was exceptional.

I still maintain that it is only the educated middle class which understands cause and effect sufficiently and has the managerial capability to cleanse the nauseating pig sties of Indian politics.

Against this backdrop, the new unsparing attitude of the judiciary and the media towards members of the political class who have dipped into the public till is as welcome as it is overdue.

As politics and the management of the institutions of government become more complex, there is need for a wider awareness of the inherent limitations of the mofussil politicians and the subaltern classes in general.

It is in the national interest that there is a growth of this awareness which will prompt the ending of the romance between the liberal intelligentsia and the subaltern classes and terminate the unsustainable idealisation of the backward.

Dilip Thakore is the founder-editor of Business India and Business World and former eidtor of Debonair.