Wednesday 25 November 2015

Will Constitution Day become something to celebrate or to rue?


Today is Constitution Day, so I post here the article which will be published in my Guptara Garmagaram column in the next issue of The International Indian magazine (Dubai):

The Government of India has recently announced that November 26 would from now on be marked as “Constitution Day”. The question is of course: how come this government, which has done less than any other government in our history to uphold the Constitution, has seen fit to make this move?

Is the move entirely cynical – to provide opportunities to raise questions about the Constitution, and thus subvert it?

Or does it show Modiji, perhaps as a result of the defeat in Bihar, finally moving in the direction of the Constitution?

Time will tell.

Meanwhile, it is worth considering that the Indian Constitution is a counter-cultural document – it was created by our Western-educated elites who were seeking to meld together into one nation what had been diverse and even opposed groups of people.

Not only were there hundreds of independent kingdoms to persuade, bribe, cajole and even blundgeon into joining the new nation of India, there was the enormous challenge of reforming our culture.

Throughout history, Indians had owed primary loyalty to their own family, kinship-group, or caste. How to move them into identifying primarily with the alien notion of a nation?

In our third generation of being an independent nation, it is clear that the project of creating a nation has made huge progress.

Bollywood has played its role, and educational and administrative institutions have played their role. More important, ordinary citizens have played their role, in treating fairly (e.g. in relation to jobs and even marriages) those belonging to other people groups.

But, as all of us know, not all Bollywood films have supported Constitutional norms. Not all educational and administrative institutions have been scrupulous about maintaining fairness and equality. Not everyone has upheld liberty, equality and fraternity.

Some individuals and groups have surreptitiously or openly subverted our Constitutional values. Indeed, some have fought with violence and openly false propaganda against the consequences of the Constitution’s drive to weaken and abolish the prevalence of caste and gender disadvantage, and the restriction of behaviour, thought and other liberties which were so firmly established in our traditions.

In view of all that, it is also worth remembering that the Indian elite which was most involved in the debates in our Constitutional Assembly had considerable differences of opinion. That is clearly evidenced by the records of these debates from December 1946 to January 1950 – fortunately the records can all be easily consulted at http://parliamentofindia.nic.in/ls/debates/debates.htm.

But, if you don’t want to wrestle with all those debates, just consider that the “father of the Constituion”, Dr B. R. Ambedkar resigned from the cabinet in 1951, when parliament stalled his draft of the Hindu Code Bill, which sought to enshrine gender equality in our laws of inheritance and marriage.

He was merely taking forward the principles and values of the Constitution, but was opposed by the same sorts of conservative forces as had violently opposed, a century earlier, the introduction of English as a language of instruction.

No wonder the Constitution has been described as 'first and foremost a social document. ... The majority of India's constitutional provisions either directly … further the aim of social revolution or attempt to foster this revolution by establishing conditions necessary for its achievement” (Granville Austin, historian and authority on the Indian Constitution).

How was this so? Because Ambedkar’s text provided, in the Constitution, guarantees and protections for citizens’ liberties, including the abolition of untouchability, freedom of religion, and the outlawing of all forms of discrimination. The system of reservations for scheduled castes, scheduled tribes and Other Backward Classes was directly embedded in the Constitution by Ambedkar as a way of eradicating or at lessening the socio-economic inequalities and lack of opportunities for India's oppressed peoples.

The strife, tension and chaos we see in Indian politics today is the result of a clash between three things: first, the civilising momentum of the Constitution; second, the reaction of traditionally privileged groups upset at losing their privileges, and so fighting with tooth and claw to try to maintain their privileges for as long as possible; and, third, the assertiveness of those who had been conquered, subdued and suppressed, and who find in the Constitution a promise that is rarely fully delivered but which they now have the liberty and the means to try to insist is in fact delivered.

The government’s move to create a Constitution Day will play a momentous part in either ensuring that the Constitution does deliver liberty, equality, fraternity and well being to all Indians, or in finally killing off our historically unprecedented experiment of creating a nation.

So far, our Constitution has served us well.

Even though there have no doubt been abuses here and there, we would do well to support it, not merely somehow marginally acknowledging it’s existence, but also supporting it fully by our words and our deeds.


Friday 13 November 2015

Impementation: work versus magic


An article in a particular publication says that our Prime Minister is talking a lot all over the world but not doing enough about implementation at home.

Here is my response:

Arre Bhai, why are you talking about unimportant things like implementation?

Don’t you realize the power of sound?

We only had to change the name of Bombay to Mumbai, and it instantly became a world-class city.

Didn’t you notice the huge improvement in quality of life when we changed Madras to Chennai? Bangalore to Bengaluru? Calcutta to Kolkata?

No? You did not?

Then it is hardly surprising that you lack belief in Modimagic.

Stand in the dunce’s corner and repeat to yourself 5000 times “I will believe in Magic-ji, I will believe in Mantras-ji, I will believe in Modi-ji.”


Sunday 8 November 2015

On Prime Minister Modi's embarrassment in Bihar and the future of tolerance in India


Here is the latest of my Dadu columns, which is to be published in the next issue of FORWARD Press Magazine (New Delhi):

Dear Dadu

After the rising tide of intolerance following the election of Modiji, does the triumph of the Grand Alliance in Bihar represent a victory for tolerance?

Is our tradition in fact tolerant or intolerant?

Love

Shanti


Dear Shanti

We have indeed seen an incredible rise in intolerance in India following Modiji’s elevation to the Prime Ministership. However, why it was that he and the BJP lost so spectacularly in Bihar is not entirely clear. It may have been partly a vote for tolerance, but it was also certainly at least to a certain extent the lack of a credible local Bihari leader of the BJP, and it was no doubt also partly coalition arithmetic.

The upshot is that the BJP needs reject its dependence on RSS, so that it has some hope of becoming a mature party which represents the entire nation rather than a party focused only on the interests of a particular set of people. Though the RSS and BJP claim to be “majoritarian”, in fact they do not represent the interests even of all Hindus. RSS/BJP represent the interests only of those upper castes who think that India should become Hindutvan.

Hindutva is merely the latest (from the early 20th century AD) expression of an intolerant strand of Indian tradition which goes back at least to the 6th century BC – you may recollect that Mahavira and the Buddha were both anti-casteist, and were both violently opposed for that reason. The Buddha’s death may have been due to poisoning, and certainly the way his cremation site was treated showed extreme intolerance of his views for centuries. In India, intolerance has historically had little to do with religion. It has mostly been about caste. But of course caste and religion are inextricably connected. Over the last century, we have tried to disentangle the two – with only very little success.

By contrast to our intolerant side, we have also had an extremely tolerant side to our traditions, not only because of the continuing influence of Mahavira, the Buddha, and other thinkers and leaders within India but, since the sixteenth century because of the influence of the colonial powers. In the case of most of the colonialists, the tolerance was for the same reason as most Indian tolerance today: we are prepared to tolerate anything, provided we can retain our privileges, and continue to make money!

However, in the case of some of the colonialists (and some of us Indians today), we are committed to tolerance for its own sake. Modern Indians may not know that the tradition of tolerance among the colonialists arose from the Bible, where God reveals Himself as tolerating our rebellion and even sin – but He tolerates these for the purpose of our realising our stupidity and returning to a relationship with Him. That is what gave rise to the tradition of tolerance in the West – though that is now being infected by “tolerance for the sake of keeping my privileges and making as much money as I can”. In the Bible, too, God asks us to be tolerant of many things as well as intolerant of many things.

So there are further questions raised by your question: Why should we be tolerant? Tolerant of what? Are there things of which we should be intolerant? When should we be tolerant and when intolerant?

In this letter, I will take only the first of these questions: Why should we be tolerant?

There are of course many reasons, but here are some key ones.

First, because we do not know everything. Indeed, we know so little that even our wisdom might prove to be mere foolishness or even darkness (as Jesus the Lord pointed out in the biography written by Luke, chapter 11, verse 35).

Second, because others may know more than us, or at least they may know some key things that we don’t know. It takes only a little bit of ignorance about the facts to reach completely the wrong conclusions.

Third, because intolerance shuts people down – they don’t start thinking like you do, they simply continue thinking the way they were thinking, but now they don’t speak up. Resentment and demotivation don’t make for outstanding performance. So intolerance leads directly to an underperforming society and economy.

Let me put my answer to that question in the following way: intolerance is the use of power to impose my own view on someone else. It arises therefore from stupidity as well as from the misuse of power.

The right use of power is to encourage people to flourish. No two flowers are alike. No two humans are alike. Diversity is a divine gift.

Finally, let me conclude this letter with the following questions to you: How much intolerance do you see in our society around you? In our families? In our educational institutions? In fact, how much intolerance do you see in yourself?

In myself, I see a perennial temptation to misusing power and to imposing my own views. God wants me, rather, to be humble, to be a learner, to offer whatever wisdom I might have in the spirit of sharing food, as one beggar might share it with another.

Love

Dadu

Monday 9 March 2015

The Death of Modinomics


N.B.: This is my latest "Guptara Garmagaram" column, which is due to be published in next issue of THE INTERNATIONAL INDIAN magazine (Dubai).

With the election of Prime Minister Modi, it was clear that most Indians thought that his “Modinomics” would transform India.

But what is (or was) Modinomics? Basically, having an apparently incorrupt political leader who could make the bureaucracy efficient, encourage development of infrastructure to support industry, and work successfully with investors (foreign and domestic) to implement business projects within deadlines.

So is Modinomics in fact dead? If you look at this government’s achievements, you might be tempted to think that it is alive. Consider that ordinary Indians’ welfare payments are now going to be paid directly into their own bank accounts in order to reduce corruption, Foreign Direct Investment is currently running at Rs 1000 crores a day (inflows have crossed $11 billion), the Spectrum auctions have bids worth Rs 86,000 crores (around $13 billion), there has been 10% greater devolution of financial resources to India’s States, and so on. On the other hand, the government’s main economic roadmap for the next year, the 2015 Budget, is best described as “half-hearted”: the promised “big bang” has failed to materialise.

This simply continues what has now become the hallmark of this government: its promises continue to be broken, just as its lies continue to be exposed. The government has now confessed it cannot fulfil its promise to cut the nation’s fiscal deficit to 3% of GDP by 2016-17, just as it has admitted as a deliberate lie its promise to bring back all black money it claimed was deposited abroad and so to pay Rs 15 lakhs into the bank account of every single Indian within 100 days of election.

The new way of calculating economic growth which has been inaugurated has left even the nation’s chief economic advisor Arvind Subramanian "puzzled ", while RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan did not "want to say anything about the numbers until we understand them better". That was over a month ago and, as the Governor has not said anything till now, it can only be surmised that he does not understand them any better after a whole month of study.

Now, even Modiji’s corporate sponsors have begun to doubt him: on the day I write this, a survey published by ASSOCHAM, the Associated Chambers of Commerce of India, which claims to be India’s oldest, leading, and largest Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said a large majority of CEOs and CFOs find the revised GDP data of over 7 per cent growth "too good to be realistic".

What killed Modinomics?

Was it the Kejriwal backlash? No Modinomics had already become merely empty noise by then – and that was at least one important reason for the backlash. Moreover, Modi’s own personal commitment, as well as his involving all the big BJP guns in the election campaign in Delhi, backfired because people got the impression that BJP was more interesting in gaining power at any price than in delivering actual performance – the big guns should have been blazing away at real national problems, not attacking Kejriwal. By contrast, people remembered that AAP had actually delivered on its promises during the almost unbelievably short 49 days that it was allowed to have power in Delhi.

Was Modinomics killed by the RSS’s idiotic campaigns such as Ghar Wapsi, and attacks on mosques and churches? Did that reveal the hard face of the RSS after hopes that the national mandate would cause them to become more responsible? Were Hindus finally coming out with our vaunted religious neutrality? All these may well have played their part.

Or was the reality that Modinomics is a mere mirage in which people were foolish to have put their trust in the first place?

Under Modi, consider Gujarat’s actual record :

- in the 1990s, its economy grew 4.8%, compared to the national average of 3.7%; in the 2000s it grew 6.9% compared to the national average of 5.6%. That meant that the “Modi effect” increased the difference between Gujarat's growth rate and the national average increased by only 0.2 percentage points (from 1.1 percentage points to 1.3 percentage points). Sure, good, but hardly worth a song and dance. Especially when one compares Gujarat to Maharashtra, which improved its growth rate from 4.5% in the 1990s to 6.7% in the 2000s, so the difference between its growth rate and the national average increased by 0.3 percentage points (from 0.8 percentage points to 1.1 percentage points). Or compare Gujarat with Bihar: the difference between the latter's growth rate and the national average increased by a whopping FOUR complete percentage points (from 2.7 percentage points BELOW the national average in the 1990s, to 1.3 percentage points ABOVE the national average in the 2000s).

- Meanwhile, Gujarat's performance on the Human Development Index actually declined: it had been above the national average in the 1980s & 90s, but decelerated in the 2000s and came down to the national average.

- The level of inequality in Gujarat was less than the national average in the 1980s and 90s, but actually rose above the national average in the 2000s

- The largest poverty reduction of the past decade was achieved by Tamilnadu, not Gujarat.

So, if the last national election had been based on facts rather than hype, the winner should have been the Chief Minister of Bihar or the Chief Minister of Tamilnadu.

I conclude that the sad fact is that our people believe what they want to believe.

As sentiment moves against the Modi government, the danger is that its real contributions to India’s development will be ignored, just as the real contributions of the last government were ignored. That is the problem with our being a nation committed to myth and sentiment rather than truth and facts.

ENDS