Meanwhile, Back In India

The sheer magic of the Obama wave makes Indian democracy look shabby. It'snot just the visual impact of a picture perfect family making their way to theWhite House. It is the manner in which Americans have risen over differences ofrace, class and region to vote for the first black president in their history.They do believe they have voted for a better country. We Indians too will have achance to cast our vote for a new government in the next few months. And this iswhere our problems begin.

Many of us have lost faith in the electoral process altogether. The choicefrankly is between Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Each party looks as bad if notworse than the other. True our polity is different from the Americanpresidential system and we do have vast linguistic variations. But is that theonly reason for the pathetic standards in our public life?

It is not surprising that the most powerful nation in the world will havemore stringent standards than a developing nation like India. Moreover, there isa structural difference in their democratic apparatus. The primaries in the USsystem put potential candidates under a vigorous scrutiny. Their performance,poise, views on foreign policy, economy, public health are all under themicroscope. What does an Indian need to win an election? Lineage, caste ormuscle and preferably all three. Little wonder that the chattering class ofIndia stopped identifying with the voting classes years ago. Politics, many ofus think, is for the poor who know no better.

Conversely, the great message of the Obama win is social inclusion. Allsections of American society, white, black, Hispanic, rich and poor voted forObama. His wonderful acceptancespeech embraced all Americans. That is the great failure of Indian politics.Far removed from the Gandhian-Nehruvian ideal we are today parties to exclusion.The BJP excludes minorities. The Congress is a pale reflection of its formerself. The regional parties appeal to specific caste/social groups within theirarea of influence. There is no one inspirational leader who can possibly unitethis country. Worse, even the rhetoric of politicians is about exclusion.

Parties like Lalu Yadav's RJD that emerged from the social justice movement are,by their very nature, opposed to the upper castes. Indeed, the nature of ourpolity and society divides, making it unlikely that we would ever see an Obama-likephenomena in India. Today, an older wiser Lalu is far more polite to allsections of society. I recall visiting him in Patna in the mid-90s at the heightof the Mandal movement. On a hot summer day, he sat on a charpoy in a vest.Standing in attendance were bureaucrats in jackets, sweating and clutching theirfiles while Lalu calmly ignored them and chatted with me. He was making thepoint that he had arrived in spite of the "machinations" of thebureaucracy that in those days he openly mocked as being "uppercaste".

Today, the caste logic in India has come full circle and we have seenMayawati successfully reach out to the upper caste in Uttar Pradesh. The lady isalso expected to be decisive in any government formation in the 2009 elections.But will she ever be gracious in victory and defeat as we have seen Obama andMcCain be at the conclusion of the US elections? Mayawati who has clawed her wayto the top, viciously feuding with all parties in the process, will only demandher pound of flesh. She will have no time for pleasantries. When the numbers arecounted in 2009, it will be hard bargaining shorn of any pretence of civility.

There will be another lady at the helm of affairs yet again in 2009. ButSonia Gandhi will continue to stonewall the media and the Indian public. At bestwe can expect a deadpan delivery of prepared campaign speeches and carefullywritten statements from the Sonia-Rahul Gandhi duo. Compare this with the USpresidential debates, the candidates' openness to questions. Recall the quickrepartee or considered answers by Obama. Comparisons are usually described asodious but in this case are downright depressing.

Finally there is the hope, youth and change that Obama represents. Sadly, weshall have more of the same in India. Lalu's older but still the most colourfulpolitician on the Indian stage. Cine-star Chitranjeevi may add a dash of noveltyto the Andhra Pradesh election. Rahul Gandhi is older and has still not made hismark in politics (though he has purchased two showrooms in the glitzy andupmarket metropolitan mall in Saket, possibly as his retirement plan).Karunanidhi and Bal Thackeray are hanging in there, politics their apparentlifeline. L.K. Advani at 80 pursues his prime ministerial dreams. Prime MinisterManmohan Singh is described as a decent man but, politically, he is a nonentity.

Spent forces are going through the motions of participating in the electoralprocess. Why should any Indian get excited about the upcoming polls? The 2009election will perhaps be the most lacklustre in recent Indian history. Themandir and Mandal era of the 90s had its own special atmospherics and energy.The parties spawned by Mandal remain players with specific areas of influencebut the old caste formulations are no longer so rigid. Change is certainly notthe mantra of the breed spawned by Mandal. The Amar Singh-Mulayam Singh Yadavduo now symbolise decay and decline, not hope and change. Yet Yadav does havehis area of influence and will be another player who will demand his pound offlesh once the numbers are counted in 2009. Jaded politicians hanging on totheir vote-banks. That is now the enduring image of politics in India. 

The Obama win is a timely reminder that democracy was meant to be the mediumof change. Americans have united behind Obama with a great deal of idealism andhope. As a regular visitor to the headquarters of national parties in Delhi overthe past decade, I am struck by the decline in standards, There was a time whenthe BJP headquarters in Delhi's was buzzing with ideas and projections for thefuture. Today it is a dead office, occupied by aging pracharaks or irrelevantdriftwood. It is not the loss of idealism alone that must be mourned. There isnot a single bright idea emanating from the political class. Compared to thepoor show now routinely put up by our politicians, the Obama performance waspure magic.