Month: September 2013

Politics in Urban India needs a reboot: an exegesis

India is rapidly urbanizing as cities expand into the hinterland and form urban mega clusters like the National Capital Region and the Mumbai Metropolitan Region among others. Even Kolkata has a ‘New Town’ and Rajarhat to contend.  Cities are economic engines of growth with densely packed spaces and brimming with activity.  By the year 2030, as per an influential Mc Kinsey Report on urbanization states that, India will be predominantly urban.  Most state capitals are urban agglomerations, and provide most of the revenue for the state. Mumbai contributes India’s lion share of corporate taxes but gets peanuts in return from politicians whose voter base is hooked on ‘sugar’ in Western Maharashtra. Mumbai is a Cash Cow for these rural politicians to milk Mumbai dry in order to fund their ‘Pork Barrel’ projects (sorry borrowing an American Political Nuance 😛 ). Mumbai on the same lines as Delhi will not be given autonomy for this very reason as other backward regions in Maharashtra are financially on a drip line called Mumbai. Cultural reasons apart, the devolution of power to Mumbai is difficult only for the cash question in contention.   As a third generation Marathi speaking Mumbaikar, who has lived in first world capitals in our very own Asia; am honestly appalled by the traffic quicksand which I face at the bottle neck at Ghatkoper and Saki Naka everyday when I travel from far away Navi Mumbai.  Mumbai is currently going to have a Mass Transit Line soon; unfortunately we are two decades late.  A commercial backwater (or an art centric vanguard which ever pov one looks at) such as Kolkata had a Metro System way back in the 1980’s.

The urban voter’s needs are neglected. Municipal Corporations are archaic institutions with no teeth; no policing prowess and normally short changing on financing options.  A government in a union territory like Delhi has no jurisdiction over Law and Order and Land Issues and has two to three Municipal bodies with the Central Governments over arching Big Brother attitude. It is quite a quagmire of overlapping scope of work in Consultant Speak. With the rest of NCR either lying in Haryana (Gurgaon) or UP (NOIDA)- Urban Governance needs a new operating system.  

The Mumbai Metropolitan Region has the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM), Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation, Kalyan-Dombivali Municipal Corporation and Vasai-Virar Municipal Corporation as its stakeholders with Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) as the focal point for Infrastructure development in this megapolis.  The MMRDA is under the Maharashtra State Government’s Urban Development Ministry which is under a Congress Chief Minister, the Public Works Ministry with its unfriendly coalition partner NCP and the MCGM is under the control of the Opposition BJP-Shiv Sena. The MCGM’s budget is more than many a budget of a smaller state like Goa and Manipur.  These political conflicting turfs make for haphazard planning and execution of mega infrastructure projects.  There should be a single window clearance mechanism for such projects which reshape the economic landscape.

India needs a new social contract with its urban citizens. Parliamentarians from urban India are not able to reflect the aspirations of a rapidly globalizing youth. The Politics of this nation is stuck in 1970’s with Right to Food, Education and other welfarist legislations. Social Infrastructure public sector initiatives are fully supported by the author but in order to power these projects, one needs the cash, hard cold cash. The cities are the growth incubators. Empower them with good politics. Effective governance is tied in to good politics.  A new politics is required for reform;  new operating system which captures the aspirations of urban India. The existing parties are terribly falling short. A Milind Deora or a Sandeep Dixit is great, but we need a sea of them.  We need the ‘Citizen Elite’ to rise and usher in a new wave of caste neutral development centric urban politics.

Politics of the Urban Voter is not new. The Swatantra Party, the Jan Sangh and especially the Mumbai and Marathi centric identity politics of the Shiv Sena. The Right Wing Parties with their emphasis on free market and physical infrastructure focus have been better at capturing the urban imagination.  The Swantantra Party decayed and declined in the 1960’s as socialism became the voice of economic thinking during Nehru ji and Indira ji. Even the Congress has appropriated some of these tactics to win in Delhi and Mumbai over the past decade.  Sheila Dixit with the Delhi Metro is a case in point where urban development has worked for a left of centre Congress in a totally urban electorate.

 The Shiv Sena is a ‘Made in Mumbai’ urban ideological product. The Shiv Sena founded by cartoonist turned Hindutva icon Late Balasaheb Thackeray in 1966 at Shivaji Park, Dadar distilled the grudge of native Marathis in Mumbai against the ‘Outsider’ over the decades till it reached its zenith of power in 1995 when they reached Mantralaya in the aftermath of the 1993 riots. Although the urbane politics of the Shiv Sena was narrow and parochial; they transformed Mumbai City with 72 flyovers in five years from 1995-99. The Mumbai-Pune Expressway was a signature project of the regime.

The Aam Admi Party with Civic Society Activist Arvind Kejriwal has transformed a volunteer led citizen movement in to a political fighting force. In the opinion polls in the run up to the Delhi Assembly Polls it is poised to do phenomenally well for a first time entrant. If they succeed, they are poised to be India’s first and truly urban political voice. Lok Satta is another one down south. Such actors are needed, as microbes in the governance gut to clean up the digestive system known as politics.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why Arvind Kejriwal will transform Politics in India?

India has now reached the inflection point in which the post liberalization generation who have not experienced the License Raj economic climate of the days of ‘Hindu Growth Rate’ demanding a scale up. Economic Reforms 2.0 have taken a back seat of sorts as the Congress led coalition focuses on delivering Welfare measures as it concentrates on Main Street than Mint Street. A ‘chowraha’ or a four point crossing-intersection, emblematic of a town centre like Sangli or Anantapur is an image that conjures up in my head. The electoral politics of the Congress dictates a pro poor orientation (which the writer full heartedly endorses as welfare is an enabler for the poor) and the urban voter base is not the target audience which it normally courts. Although the Congress dispensation, has been ruling urban Delhi over the last 15 years.  It is quite ironical but Sheila Auntyji has been doing a good job with Infrastructure in spite of the CWG Scam and poor security for the better gender.

Discontentment with the current government has reached a tether. The economy is tanking although ‘Governator’ Rajan has started off with a bang. The encouraging development in this state of political churning is the role which the educated middle class is playing in shaping the political discourse in a small but critical fashion.  The National Advisory Council is the best illustration of an Educated Citizen Elite contributing to construct policies.  While Aruna Roy and Harsh Mandar spearheaded the Right to work Program Bill, Jean Dreaze and Prof Amartya Sen extended intellectual legitimacy to the Right to Food Act.  Welfare Legislations help in transforming voters into citizens as democracy is not only about voting but about governance.

 The idea of the Citizen Elite was sparked while reading the famed Indian Sociologist Dipankar Gupta’s new book “Revolution from Above: India’s Future and the Citizen Elite”. A breakthrough read, Prof Gupta enunciates the concept of the Elite of Calling’s role in creating transformational change like bring universal healthcare and suffrage in 19th Century Victorian England. Closer home, Sati practice abolition was an act of the educated elite who thought of the greater good of the ‘public’.  Remember Raja Ram Mohun Roy and the Bramha Samaj Reformation Movement?

The educated intelligentsia usually confined to the civil service and the academia has found a voice in think tanks and the electronic media. Legions of bloggers-online writers such as me write on topical issues to generate a conversation in communities we reside in rising above discussing mundane ‘Big Boss’ and ‘Grand Masti’. It is the Citizen Elite who has the bright and the right set of ideas for masses even if they might not be popular at the moment. The masses do not have the time or the resources to agitate. Even if they do, it fizzles off as the ruling class throttles the oxygen for the masses to survive.  It is easy to harass the activist bunch in India by accusing him of tax evasion and something more heinous that even.

The Jan Lok Pal Agitation is an ideal case study to illustrate the soft and symbolic power of the Caravan reading Indian cultural elite. Aided by the 24×7 beast called as the electronic and social media to fuel the rage, Anna Hazare had his Nelson Mandela moment as the political totem symbolizing the dearth of moral leadership in this nation. Much diluted ombudsman legislation was ratified in a shoddy manner, but that was a victory for the ‘Elite of calling’ lead by civil society leaders as Mr. Arvind Kejriwal and Ms. Kiran Bedi. The Jan Lok Pal Team is a bunch of Moral Entrepreneurs with an exemplary track record.  Mr. Kejriwal, a Magsayasay Awardee led the movement for the Right to Information Act.  Shazia Ilmi, an excellent journalist who traded positions to be the media contact person for the Jan Lok Pal Agitation.

These people had good ideas, went to elite educational institutions, worked in the top echelons of civil service and corporate sector to bring those skills to the advocacy and political conversations. More importantly, they had a profusely keen sense of destiny that they can make the world a better place.

That is the differentiating element between the ‘Citizen Elite’ and current crop of political leaders who are political entrepreneurs; second generation legislators or business tycoons who buy their way through Rajya Sabha like Bellary Mining Tycoon Avinash Lad or the revered Dr. Mallaya. A Jay Panda is a parliamentarian of the Citizen Elite Genre. Naveen Jindal, although an Industrialist has pioneered the path for a common man to unfurl the National Tricolor sans inhibition.  

The Prakash Jha directed ‘Satyagraha’ starring Amitabh Bachchan is a cinematic take on the Jan Lok Pal Movement with Bachchan portraying a loosely caricatured Anna Hazare taking the lead over an anti corruption movement.   The former Jan Lok Pal Team apart from Kiran Bedi has formed the Aam Admi Party which is creating a flutter before the Delhi Assembly Elections.  Lok Satta Party’s Dr. Jayaprakash Narayan is a former civil servant turned MLA from Kutapally, Andhra Pradesh who stands for a clean political discourse. He had put up exemplary candidates for the Karnataka Assembly Polls although none of them won. The entire point of the exercise is about signaling a change.

In the rough and tumble of politics in India, ‘the Citizen Elite’ are slowly gravitating from the periphery to the epicenter of elections. I hope for more Jairam’s and Kejriwal’s to join the conversation.

 Only the Citizen Elite can bring the Change. Yes, We Can.