Boosting voter turnout could be as simple as making individuals see voting as part of who they are rather than as something they do. For the 2008 presidential election, the turnout rate was about 96 percent among registered voters who first filled out a survey asking “How important is it to you to be a voter?” compared with about 82 percent for those who were asked “How important is it to you to vote?” The study, led by Christopher Bryan of Stanford University, was recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA. “We offered people the prospect of claiming a desirable identity,” Bryan says. “That’s a very powerful thing.”

The distinction between voter as an identity and voting as a behavior that a person chooses to exhibit is interesting and consequential. If the goal is to simply have more people vote, then it makes sense to push people to identify themselves as voters and not simply as people who vote when appropriate. But I believe that more than making more people vote, the important thing is to push people to become involved in the democratic process — which goes beyond mere voting, and at a minimum means informed voting.

I do believe that identity matters and the exhibited behavior during voting is consistent with it. That is why the political parties bank on identity politics. But as I mentioned in my previous post, we have several identities. Which identity should be relevant to us when we participate in the democratic process depends on our personal preferences and the set of political choices we have. If one political party promises goodies to my specific ethnic or religious group, I will of course use my ethnic or religious identity to make my decision.

Unfortunately, the Congress Party invented and perfected “vote bank politics” — the practice of handing out goodies based on caste and religion — and therefore forced people to make their religious or caste identity the most relevant. Other parties quickly adopted the same strategy to compete in the race.

This has to be countered. We have to make people realize that it is in their self-interest to identify themselves as honest citizens of the country, and thus choose to vote for those who represent good governance. If a sufficient number of voters do this, political parties will respond appropriately.

Let me plug the “United Voters of India” idea once again. Back in August last year, I had two posts introducing the idea: Part 1, and Part 2. I hope you will take a few minutes to read it. And if you like the idea, perhaps you would consider visiting “UnitedVotersofIndia.com” and lending your support. Thank you.

Interestingly, the idea of voting en bloc is fairly intuitive, and others are also considering it. The Mumbai newspaper DNA has a short report (11th Jan), “Civic polls: Societies get together to vote en bloc”

Some housing societies and resident associations are planning to vote en masse for candidates promising to resolve their issues.

Thus far, candidates banked upon slum voters or communal vote banks to get elected. This also meant that they could ignore complaints made by sections of voters outside these vote-banks.

If the Congress wants to continue playing vote-bank politics, I suppose it is appropriate to counter them with vote banks.

During his speech, Paswan narrated how he had convinced Gandhi to give him party ticket. “I told him 50,000 people in Chauri Chaura are Paswans. Even if half the votes are polled for me, that’s 25,000 votes. He said the ticket is yours.”

(As an aside, someone pointed out that the title of the piece is at variance with the text of the url for the first part of the piece. The URL reads in part “overwhelming-crowd-seen-at-rahul-gandhis-first-meeting-in-chauri-chaura”, while the title reads “Organisers embarassed at tepid response to Rahul Gandhi’s first meeting in Chauri Chaura”. The URL of the later parts of the report reflect the edited heading. Clearly someone thought that there is a limit to sucking up to Mr Raul Vinci aka Rahul Gandhi.)

Talking of Raul Vinci, it would be impossible for someone named “Raul Vinci” to become the PM of India. For the same reason that Madhav Paswan got himself the Congress ticket, Raul Vinci as Rahul Gandhi has the “ticket” to become the prime minister. His accomplishment can be summarized in two words: lucky sperm. Other than that, hardly anything else qualifies him — not education, not deep insight, not intelligence (an area he is noted to be particularly lacking in), not some breathtaking deed, . . . To not put too fine a point on it, his accomplishments amount to zilch, zero, shunya, nada. It’s his identity as the great grandson of Nehru, the grandson of Indira Gandhi nee Nehru, the son of Rajiv Gandhi & the Italian mama Antonia Maino aka Sonia Gandhi, that totally sums him up and explains his appeal to a significant number of Indian voters.

Identity politics is not the only distinguishing failure of Indian democracy; the other failure has to do with the personality cult obsession of Indians. What else could explain the persistence of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty in Indian politics. Pick up any random political report on TV or in print (and let’s note that the Indian media focuses obsessively on three topics — politics, entertainment and cricket), and you will see that its almost always about personalities. It is never about ideas. Has Raul Vinci ever come up with any idea worth talking about, or even been moved by an idea even worth a khoti caudi? You bet your last shirt he hasn’t. Why then are journalists and reporters so fascinated by him?

I believe that one of the foundational failing of Indian democracy is the basic incompetence of its journalists and media people. As has been observed, democracy is not just about voting but about informed choice. But what does informed mean when those who are charged with informing are themselves astoundingly ignorant, untouched by ideas and are essentially incompetent to reason and report?

If the most celebrated journalists — Barkha Dutt, Rajdeep Sardesai, Vir Sanghvi, Sagarika Ghose, et al, come to mind — epitomize cretinous mental retardation and self-serving toadying, does the average person have any hope of being informed about political ideas and about what matters for general welfare and progress? It is said that great minds discuss ideas; mediocre minds discuss events; and small minds discuss people. Those journalists are forced to discuss people because they have tiny minds.

Lacking the information needed, the average voter is forced to the rely on her primitive instincts, and her vote is constrained by her identity and her atavistic attachment to personalities. The outcome of the political process is predictably awful. Crooks and criminals achieve and retain political power, while the country rushes headlong into disaster.

Actually, a person’s identity need not be a burden. Self-interested behavior is not immoral and in any well-organized society, a person’s identity-motivated actions need not be at the cost of social welfare. So also, a bit of hero worship or personality cult preference does not have to result in disastrous choices. If you had heroes worth worshiping and genuinely good personalities, a bit of looking up at them starry-eyed would be good for you and for society in general by providing you examples to emulate. The trouble is that the stars in the political firmament are the worst kinds of people.

Which raises the question — why are the most celebrated political heavy-weights almost entirely thoroughly corrupt and contemptible? This begs an explanation since it is just not possible that all 1,200 million Indians are so absolutely corrupt that any subset chosen must necessarily have absolutely corrupt members. India must have honest, decent, competent people. So why can’t Indians choose those good people to be in positions of power and responsibility?

As I have provided my answer to that question before on this blog, at the risk of appearing crass, I will quote myself.

The evidence is overwhelming that India’s political leaders are uniformly corrupt. It cuts across political party lines. Public corruption is not contained in some specific geographic region. It is not bounded by linguistic or religious divides. The percentage of criminals in the various state and central legislative bodies far exceed that in the general population. What’s more, that percentage has been increasing with time. And the magnitude of the corruption has also been increasing. The average corrupt deal was in tens of crores of rupees a couple of generations ago — small change compared to the deals these days which is counted in billions of dollars.

If Indians are not characteristically uniformly dishonest, how is it that India’s politicians are so acutely dishonest? Perhaps the system selects the most dishonest and the least principled.

Here’s how it works. The rewards of political power are enormous. Without loss of generality (as economists put it), let’s consider the position of an MP (member of parliament.) As an MP, a person has the opportunity to make $1 billion. Mind you, there’s no compulsion to actually make that amount of money — merely the opportunity. Now let’s ask who is likely to become an MP? Contesting the elections are A, B, C, and D. Of the four, Mr D is competent, honest, and hardworking. The rest are venal incompetent criminals. Mr D will not steal a penny if he were to become an MP, and therefore he cannot afford to spend more than whatever he can raise from his supporters. But A, B and C — they will make a $1 billion if elected. So they are willing to spend quite a bit of future loot, and this they can raise that from their cronies who will in essence be making an investment, the return on which they are assured post the elections.

The corrupt can outspend the honest in any elections because the former will recover the expenses (and more) upon assuming office. It should not come as a surprise that India has degenerated into a kakistocracy — rule by the most corrupt and the least principled.

It is the opportunity to make billions of dollars as an official of the government that is the proximate cause of the criminalization of the government. In turn, the proximate cause of the opportunity to make billions is that the government has control over vast areas of the economy. Being in government gives one immense discretionary powers — to grant or deny licences, to block and prevent legitimate economic activity, to extract rents wherever possible. The more powerful the government, the less power the people have. The larger the government, the less freedom the people have.

Dr Manmohan Singh was made the prime minister — not because of his competency as an executive (which is as evident as the testicles of an elephant) or his character (which is notable due to its absence) but because of his moral pliability and his ability to obey orders from his superiors without question. Removing him would be of little use because surely there are others who are equally compromised and would be happy to fill the chair. [Source: The Three-ring Anti-Corruption Circus is in Town Aug 2011.]

Public corruption is a reality in India. Pointing it out has exceeded the cottage industry stage and has reached the major multinational corporation stage in the form of Anna Hazare Inc. I am aware that I am flogging a dead horse in writing about politically motivated public corruption (and publicly motivated political corruption) but I would like to propose a solution. It goes thus. To make political office less lucrative (in fact, to make it zero lucrative), we have to transform governance such that the government does not have such a major role in the economy. If the government does not control the levers of commerce in the country, then of course being in government cannot provide one with the opportunity to steal. That would remove the motivation for the corrupt to occupy public office.

But therein lies the rub. How will those who have staked their personal fortunes on the current state of affairs ever change it to their own detriment? Why would they hurt their own interests by reducing the role of the government in the economy? The simple answer is that they will not. That’s a classic Catch-22 situation.

There is only one way out and that is through the ballot box. Getting back to the beginning of this piece, I noted the importance of identity politics in India. We have multiple identities: as family members, as people of a certain linguistic or religious groups, as workers, as members of society, and so on. It is true that for some people, their religious or caste identities assume primacy in their voting behavior. But for some others — I daresay for the present company — the identity that matters most during elections is our identity as responsible citizens. We care not about the identity or the personality of the candidate but rather what ideas and ideals the candidate holds and whether those ideas will lead to social welfare. We care about honesty and decency, about public order and private enterprise.

It is that identity of ours that we should wear proudly on our chests and act accordingly at the ballot box. We have to also realize that we are responsible for the outcome and that we can affect the outcome. That’s a duty that we owe to ourselves, our society, and the generations to come. We have to vote our values consistent with our identity as responsible citizens.

Voting is not such a hard task. To be more specific, individual voting is not such a hard task. What’s hard is informed voting. How do we know which person is the most appropriate? We have limited time and energy to spare for doing basic research into that question. But since we are all affected by the outcome of our collective behavior at the ballot booth, perhaps we could share the task. Let’s put our efforts together and unite as voters.

If we got together and as a collective pooled our understanding, we could achieve two things. First, we could get better information about the candidates. Second, we could by explicitly expressing our demand for good candidates, we would encourage good candidates to context elections and political parties to give tickets to good people. For this to happen, we have to make a commitment to vote and to vote as a collective. Consider this to be fighting fire with fire: identity politics has brought us to this sorry pass and we have to now express our identity and vote our identity.

The big assumption here is of course that there are sufficiently large number of Indians whose identity is that of an honest, responsible, informed and caring citizen. If that assumption is wrong, we do not have much of a future. But I am hoping that that assumption is valid, and it is that hope that motivates a group like the United Voters of India. Come, join us.

Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.

This works since Antonia Maino aka Sonia Gandhi is white and she appears to rule, suitably aided by her minions such as Manmohan Singh and Digvijaya Singh.

argentocracy – government by money

Plausible: the government takes in money through taxes and bribes, and then buys specific vote banks.

barbarocracy – government by barbarians

Definitely. The people at the top are the worst kind of people. Exhibit A: Kapil Sibal.

demonarchy – government by a demon

She Who Must Be Obeyed.

dulocracy – government by slaves

This works if you consider that the whole bunch at the top — Diggy, Manmohan, Sibal, et al — are essentially slaves to the White Woman.

foolocracy – government by fools

Arguably so. Manmohan Singh is a fool. Kapil Sibal is an idiot. And the list goes on. Fools, knaves, thieves, treachers, liars, robbers.

infantocracy – government by an infant

Not yet. But they are trying. Amul Baby, Pappu, etc.

millionocracy – government by millionaires

Not true because those in high places are billionaires — the money stolen from the people they rule over.

pollarchy – government by the multitude or a mob

Not quite. Anna Hazare is pushing for this, though.

xenocracy – government by a body of foreigners

India has had this kind of government for the longest period. Indeed so long that became a sort of a habit with some Indians. They had to go get an uneducated Italian to rule over them. Oh the crying shame.

And finally, the one that I like the best:

kakistocracy – government by the least principled and the most corrupt

India is a kakistocracy.

Fighting to lose it all

The central leadership on the other hand seems busy consuming large quantities of the party symbol, the lotus. In history, leaders change in every institution and new groups are born. Institutions that succeed do not cast earlier mentors into political winter, especially in a summer of discontent— mainly because experience guides enthusiasm. Mysteriously, the BJP headquarters has discarded the authors of the party’s popular, ideological and strategic prominence— Yashwant Sinha, Jaswant Singh and Arun Shourie. Once a party of titans, led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee who was never afraid to speak his mind and encouraged a spirit of civilised dissent within the party, these senior leaders have been sidelined because they refuse to be part of any group and possess independent minds. Gadkari’s biggest challenge is how to manage the cabals within. In Delhi, the duel between the two Opposition Leaders in Parliament—Arun Jaitley and Sushma Swaraj—continue to cause discomfort in the party rank and file. Political hostilities in Maharashtra went national when the BJP’s Deputy Leader of the Opposition Gopinath Munde rebelled against party chief Gadkari—an old Maharashtra hand—only to arrive at an uneasy truce.

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The satrap strife in the saffron party might end in the BJP squandering away a great opportunity to shape up as a credible alternative to the Congress, whose image has been battered by scams. . .

If that article is to be believed — and I don’t see any reason for it to misrepresent the facts — then the infighting within the New Delhi leadership of the BJP must be something unbelievable. The BJP’s ability to mount a successful (and sorely needed) opposition to the misrule of the Congress is inversely related to the degree of infighting within the BJP. The Congress party must be rubbing its hands with glee at the sorry spectacle.

What the BJP needs — and indeed what India needs — is a real leader. Someone who has the vision and the ability to motivate Indians to make India a nation of winners, not an India where the so-called leaders are whining toadies that the Congress party has promoted for so long.

While the first part of the Express Buzz article is depressing as all hell, the second part focuses on a hopeful sign for India. (It is a curiously divided article — it appears to end and then it starts off again.) That hope is a man named Narendra Modi.

His work culture in the party and in the state seems like a plan to establish credentials for a bigger platform—a worry for many in the party. BJP General Secretary Jagat Prakash Nadda says, “When I was with the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM), Narendra Modi was the in-charge. He remembers every task given to a BJYM worker, in the same sequence in which it was assigned, even after 20 days and asks for compliance reports.” As Chief Minister, Modi remains always unflappable. His message to the babus is clear: “Work has to be done. If you cannot manage, someone else will do it.”

Many senior BJP leaders feel insecure that at party conclaves, it is Modi who draws the maximum applause from the workers, with nationalist rhetoric and acidic barbs against the Congress. This, perhaps, explains why many BJP bigwigs are busy building bridges with other political parties. Hoping the NDA does well in 2014, the jockeying for support for the prime post has begun—Jaitley is assiduously cultivating Kumar, while Swaraj goes about wooing Jayalalithaa.

At the BJP National Council meeting in Indore in February 2010, when BJP President Nitin Gadkari formally assumed charge, Modi tore apart the UPA Government’s policy on national security, wondering why it was in a hurry to resume a dialogue with Pakistan. “As a mature democracy, there is even greater need to talk to the principal opposition party. Did they ever feel the need to talk to the BJP?”

In the BJP, it seems, the need to talk to Modi isn’t apparent.

I think the time will come when the BJP leadership will have to talk to Narendrabhai Modi. India needs an alternative to the Congress, and Indians don’t need a BJP which is just a Congress B-team. The BJP is the only other national party and it is time it realized that and behaved like one.

Let me conclude by quoting the concluding bit of that article.

Modi’s hits

■ Stable government; Modi is the longest-serving Chief Minister of the BJP
■ Consistently high economic and agricultural growth
■ No communal riots post-2002
■ Vibrant Gujarat summit attracts record investment which shows that Modi enjoys investors’ confidence
■ Administrative efficiency, modernisation
■ Gujarat, rated as best e-governed state, is set to usher in village-level e-governance
■ Swagat online grievance redressal that enables direct communication of citizens with CM besides steps like evening courts, Jyotigram electrification scheme, Kanya Kelavani Yojana have made Modi successful.

If Modi wins, India wins. So all is not lost since Modi will win. Modi has to win because I refuse to believe that India cannot get out of the hole that the Congress has dug for it.

. . . [the] conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet, we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved. So is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Things are getting bad in the US in this regard. Now perhaps they will start to do something about it. If there’s one thing you can say about the Americans, it is this: they get up and do stuff. They have a revolutionary spirit. Remember they fought for and won their independence from the British. They decided that they don’t want to be ruled by a king, or a queen. They wrote their own rules on how the people will govern the nation.

Things are getting bad in the US but people are once again gearing up for another revolution. Here is a small indication of that. I don’t necessarily agree with everything the presenter says. Indeed, I have a different take on one of her previous videos “The Story of Stuff.” The point that I totally agree with her on is that people need to organize and collectively fight for what is right. “Citizens United v FEC: Why democracy works only when people are in charge.”

Indians too need to collectively act to take back the country from the corrupt politicians. India should have been a democracy but has ended up being a kakistocracy — rule by the most corrupt and the least competent. We have become revolutionaries ourselves.

A few of us are working on creating an association we call “United Voters of India” or UVI. Our mission is to transform India by changing the kind of people who get elected to public office. More about that later.

Do check out the Citizens United web site.

It’s been a while since I contributed to “The Indian National Interest Review: Pragati.” I had to write a piece. I didn’t want the editor, Mr Nitin Pai, to get mad at me. It’s always best to be on his right side. Never get the press angry, is what I always say. Now if you know me, you know that it takes me forever to write anything. At the very mention of writing, I feel a writer’s block coming on. Writing is the hardest thing I try. But anyway, I dusted off the old keyboard, put on my thinking cap and pondered market failures, government failures, and what can be done about them. Here it is for the record.

(Click on image for a PDF copy of the issue.)

The Good Vote Banks

Atanu Dey. Nov 2010. For Pragati.

The institutions of markets and democracy are arguably two of the most elegant and useful creations of humankind. Like twins, they are often found together, and naturally share some features. They are alike since both involve collectives of humans behaving strategically. A study of markets and how they succeed or fail to deliver the socially optimal outcome can illuminate how the workings of a real democracy with its real failures can be improved.

Economists do it with models, often very elegant ones. Beginning with models of ideal markets, they have identified what are called market failures that plague markets in the real world. They have discovered ways to address those failures so that real markets can be nudged to grind out results closer to that of ideal markets. Consider Peter Diamond’s work, one of the three winners of this year’s Nobel prize in economics, which includes the study of labor market imperfections and their consequences.

Diamond’s insight, called the Diamond Paradox, involves the friction introduced by search costs in the functioning of labor markets. Workers incur the cost of searching for jobs, and firms incur the cost of recruiting workers. Add to that the matter of expectations, and the outcome can deviate from that of an ideal labor market. If the workers’ expectations are that firms will strenuously seek recruits, workers will put expend effort in job seeking; and if firms anticipate workers will carefully examine job opportunities, firms will put effort into differentiating themselves to attract the most suitable workers. The outcome, or equilibrium, will be good for all. Instead, if both parties’ expectations are that the other party will not bother much, then the outcome will be disheartened workers and uninterested firms leading to unemployment, or a bad equilibrium. The paradox is the existence of unemployed workers simultaneous with job vacancies.

The existence of multiple equilibria arising from expectations at the aggregate level can be easily understood through Diamond’s fun little “Coconut economy” model. It is set on an island far away where people consume only coconuts which they harvest from (where else) palm trees. Peculiarly, the custom is that a person can eat only coconuts that are obtained in exchange for coconuts that the person has picked. It is costly to pick coconuts since it means climbing a palm tree. If an islander expects no one else to gather coconuts, then it will be pointless for her to incur the cost of picking coconuts since she will have no one to exchange them with. This will be a rational expectation if all others also have the same expectation, and the predictable outcome will be starvation all around. Contrariwise, if everyone believes that a sufficient number of others will also pick coconuts, then a vigorous coconut market will evolve with full tummies all around.

Moving from markets to democracy (substituting voters for workers, and political parties for firms), we can see an analogous mode of failure for a democracy. Like for workers in a labor market, the voters’ rational expectations about the usefulness of their vote on the aggregate can lead to either a good or a bad outcome.

Democracy is not just about voting but rather about informed choice. It is costly for voters to inform themselves about political parties. Besides there’s time and effort required to vote. If the expectation is that others will not be making the personally costly effort of making informed choices, then the individual voter will rationally conclude that it is not worth the cost of informing himself about which party best deserves his vote and then voting – because his vote would not count in the outcome he desires.

Political parties, in their turn, noting that voters are not bothering to inform themselves, and/or are disinclined to vote, will rationally not put in any effort in differentiating themselves – which is costly for the political parties – to appeal to voters. The outcome will be disastrous: political parties that don’t have to put in any effort in attracting informed voters and a set of political parties that are hard to differentiate. The parties then don’t bother to address the concerns of voters and thus misgovern without fear of consequences. The desirable outcome would occur only if voters expended effort required for informed voting, and political parties responded appropriately to the voters’ efforts.

One mechanism to nudge democracy from the bad equilibrium to the good equilibrium readily comes to mind. That is, somehow change the expectation of the voter from one that says that his vote does not matter (which would be rational if he believes that others will not be voting) to one that says his vote matters (because others will also be voting.) Our voter will vote if he is assured that sufficient numbers of like-minded voters will also vote. This can be achieved by creating a coalition of voters who ex ante commit to voting, and this coalition choosing the party or the candidate to vote for based on a set of values shared by the members of the coalition.

Let’s consider this in the context of Indian educated urban voters. It is generally known that they largely choose to not vote, believing that their votes don’t count. With sufficient numbers of them holding this view, the expectation is rational since it amounts to a self-fulfilling prophesy. Political parties, in turn, also rationally respond to this by not even bothering to seek the votes of this segment of voters, and after elections, ignoring their concerns. This further alienates the urban voters. In essence this is voluntary disenfranchisement of the urban voter which partially accounts for the election of undesirable people to political office.

The remedy for this could be the formation of an association of voters whose members will internally decide on specific candidates (“primaries” so to speak) based on how closely candidates match the principles of the association, following which all members will vote, and equally importantly, vote only for those chosen candidates. This allows the association to make a credible claim that its members’ votes matter on the aggregate – both to every individual member of the association and to political parties.

In other words, this association of urban educated voters is an artificial “vote bank,” much like the existing vote banks that are based on other demographic characteristics such as caste and religion, and which currently have a baleful influence on the political outcome. Based on the idea that “if you can’t beat them, join them,” it recognizes that in a second-best world (one in which there are numerous distortions, as opposed to a first-best world in which there are no distortions), the introduction of another vote bank (which would be unthinkable in a first-best world) may lead to improvements.
Democracy as an ideal works flawlessly in an ideal or first-best world. But like markets and their failures, in the real world democracy failures lead to seriously flawed results that have awful consequences for hundreds of millions in a country like India. It is time that we honestly confront the reality of democracy failures and figure out a way to address them urgently and seriously.

A perfect democracy, a ‘warm body’ democracy in which every adult may vote and all votes count equally, has no internal feedback for self-correction. It depends solely on the wisdom and self-restraint of citizens… which is opposed by the folly and lack of self-restraint of other citizens. What is supposed to happen in a democracy is that each sovereign citizen will always vote in the public interest for the safety and welfare of all. But what does happen is that he votes his own self-interest as he sees it… which for the majority translates as ‘Bread and Circuses.’

‘Bread and Circuses’ is the cancer of democracy, the fatal disease for which there is no cure. Democracy often works beautifully at first. But once a state extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite, that day marks the beginning of the end of the state. For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or in its weakened condition the state succumbs to an invader—the barbarians enter Rome.

The parasites have long taken over.

First the cunning plan, though.

Raising doubts over whether the electronic voting machines are tamper-proof, Janata Party president Subramanian Swamy today mooted a new idea saying the election commission should modify the EVMs so that one gets a receipt after casting the vote as in the case of an ATM.

“That the EVMs are tamper-proof is a false claim. However, the machines can be modified on the lines of ATM wherein we will get a receipt after casting the vote which can be put into a sealed box,” he told reporters here.

Looks like a good plan. But here’s the catch. We know that votes are often bought and duly paid for by the crooks politicians who generally engage in this farce contest the elections. The voter is usually bribed with a bottle of liquor and perhaps Rs 100, and told to vote. The problem is that there is no certain way of ensuring that the voter indeed voted for the party that bribed him. So a lot of the bribes are wasted on people who end up voting for the other parties. With an ATM-like receipt, the voter can now prove that he has indeed kept his promise.

So here’s how it will go. Party pays Rs 100 up front and tells the voter that he will get Rs 400 upon production of proof-of-voting. (Somewhat like the proof-of-purchase you need to send in to get your cash rebate.) Said voter votes, pockets the little receipt, exchanges it with the party for Rs 400. Now that is called efficiency. The party now does not have to get cheated out of the vote that they bought fair and square (for sufficiently elastic definitions of ‘fair and square.’)

“Waitammit,” you may say, “Does not the party have a reason to not keep its promise now that the vote is cast?” Not really. If the party reneges on its promise, word will get around and the party will lose its credibility. There’s honor among thieves but only because of a reputation effect.

You may object and say, “But that ATM-like receipt is supposed to go into a sealed box. So how can the guy keep the receipt to collect his Rs 400?”

The box is sealed. How can anyone tell whether Mr Bribed Voter deposited it or not? He could as well deposit some other scrap of paper. He would have a reason to do so given that without it he stands to lose Rs 400.

The plan is bollocks. Voting machines are machines with software or firmware that can have malicious bits built into them. They can never be certified to be absolutely tamper proof. Or rather the manufacturer cannot credibly prove that the machine cannot be compromised. There is only one way for making it almost tamper proof: by publishing the software that runs the machines. Open source code has that advantage. Bugs and other concealed features are more likely to be detected by third parties.

All this electioneering and voting is a farce anyway in a country like India. Adding electronic voting machines whose source code is not revealed ups the degree of farce one notch. Adding little ATM-like receipts ups the farce even more. When will all this end?

Related Posts:

A Cargo Cult Democracy. May 2004:

In the case of India, we have a cargo cult democracy. It looks like one with electronic voting machines and election speeches and manifestos, with pollsters and pundits, with election commissioners and voting stations. Only the deep backend is missing. There is no understanding of issues of substance among the people who vote. Put up a name which is recognizable, and they would vote for or against that name. Promise enough freebies (free electricity, for instance) and they will vote for you, never mind that it may bankrupt the state and that eventually it will impoverish the same voting public. For democracy to work, you need accountability — both among those who vote and those who are elected. In an area where the government is seen as a source for endless handouts by the people, and the leaders look upon their stint in the driving seat as an excellent opportunity to steal from the public, democracy is not likely to work.

On Being Ruled by Toads. Dec 2004:

India is as I have maintained before a cargo-cult democracy. Centuries of being ruled by foreigners creates a culture of servility and powerlessness that is hard to overcome. In a strict sense, Indians deserve to be ruled by toads because they “elect” to be ruled by toads. Being ruled by toads has the ripple effect that finally culminates in an abjectly poor country that is euphemistically referred to as a “developing economy.”

Bardhan notes that “dignity politics” is one of the debilitating factors. He writes:

. . . even when the [lower classes and castes] come to power, the issue of basic social services gets low priority in comparison with larger symbolic issues of dignity politics (particularly in North India). A perceived slight in the speech of a higher-caste political leader resented by a lower-caste one will usually cause much more of an uproar than if the same leader’s policy neglect keeps hundreds of thousands of children severely malnourished in the same lower caste. The issue of job reservation for backward castes catches the public imagination more fervently than that of child mortality or school dropouts that afflict the majority in those communities. Thus the demand from below for those basic social services is as inarticulate as their supply from above is deficient.

About the demand and supply of basic social services — a missing market of sorts — I too have concluded that the demand arises from an awareness of what is excepted expected, which awareness depends on the basic education system. Public education — by which I mean the education of the public about matters of civic, economic and social importance — is missing. I think that the focus of the government-controlled education system is on raising the peak education level of an elite (the IITs, IIMs, IISc, etc) rather than raising the education level of the citizenry broadly. My cynical conjecture is that the political leaders do understand that they their feet will be held to the fire if the people become aware of the misgovernance.

A lot of books with rousing titles such as “Imagining India” and “India Unbounded” have become hits. Most of them studiously avoid mentioning the dysfunctional — perhaps out of concern for sales figures or perhaps from a fear of displeasing the political powers that be. What we need to do is to look at issues that most would rather sweep under the rug and pretend that they don’t exist. Corruption, for instance, is widely regarded as a problem but I would argue that it is a symptom of deeper causes which are intertwined with other deep causes which form the basis for a whole host of symptoms such as corruption, poor educational system, lack of accountability, the persistence of social conflict, etc.

Bardhan notes that India’s heterogeneity poses problems that don’t arise in more homogeneous societies:

In very recent years, there are some faint signs that good governance is being rewarded by the electorate in some areas. Collective action in demanding and ensuring good governance is, however, particularly tricky in India on account of the extreme heterogeneity of social and economic interests involved, which always makes unified movement on goal formulation, agenda setting and policy pressure difficult to achieve for diverse groups, who in anticipation of this difficulty often opt for populist handouts and clientelistic arrangements instead. As a society we are much more diverse than, say, Japan or China, and coordination on most issues is more difficult here than in those countries. Sociologists have pointed out that extreme social heterogeneity in India is also a major cause of hierarchical industrial relations with attendant mutual distrust and labour supervision problems, and relatively low labour productivity in Indian factories.

I think that the way out of this problem is for the state to be totally blind to the markers of heterogeneity. For instance, the state must not ever inquire about the personal attributes of a person that have no bearing on social services. Thus, the state must not discriminate on the basis of religion. Whether or not a citizen is eligible for economic assistance, for example, should depend on the merits of the case and not on what that person’s religious affiliation is. The moment the state privileges one group over another, it invites the social evil of group-based divisive politics and, as Bardhan puts it, “populist handouts and clientelistic arrangements.”

India’s governance is arguably bad. The party that has been almost exclusively in control of that misgovernance is the Congress party which has been the fiefdom of the Nehru-Gandhi family. The incompetence of the party and that family has been demonstrated beyond the shadow of a doubt. But as I have argued before, they are not there through some divine edict; they are there because the people of India find misgovernance by the Congress and the Nehru-Gandhi family acceptable. The fault, dear reader, lies in Indians and not in the leaders that they freely elect.

“Not all the time, but I do read the occasional newspaper. Besides, it’s a good reminder that the masses are complete idiots,” said CJ.

Sounds bad but I would take arrogance over stupidity any day. “Newspapers do chronicle to the minutest details what happens in a world which is of the stupid, by the stupid, and for the stupid,” CJ continued.

“So what do you think about the Indian elections? I hope that this election returns a government that is able to implement some good policies,” I said.

“What do I think of the Indian elections? I think it is the same dog and pony show it has always been. It’s what you would expect in a world which is of the stupid, by the stupid . . .”

“Yeah, I heard you the first time around. But what does by the stupid mean?”

“You perhaps know that the elected bunch are not the smartest people in the country. Nor are they pillars of moral rectitude. They are not known for their intelligence or their wisdom. Now lay those facts next to the fact that India is a representative democracy. The elected are representative of the people who do the electing. Surely you see the connection between the two,” said CJ.

“That’s a facile dismissal of a very valuable institution. Democracy is a great idea, and an idea that is as often associated with India as is its largeness. Democracy is a great idea, India is the greatest democracy, and therefore India is great. Indians vote and therefore Indians are great and India is going to be a superpower.”

“Nicely put. Quite off the mark but nice. But like I said, it is a dog and pony show. There is a man behind the curtain. The people feel that they are in control because they get to pull the voting machine lever. A nice illusion. The fact that it goes on year after year for decades on end must reveal something. What it means is that the illusion works,” CJ said.

“CJ, you cannot simultaneously claim that representative government is representative of the general characteristics of the population, and then also say that the act of choosing the representatives is a farce and an illusion. If the former is true, voting must establish a real connection between the ruled and the rulers. What is it then?”

“Let me see if I can draw the distinction between the politicians and the government. The politicians get elected and they are representative of the population that does the electing. So the attributes of the electorate is aggregated in some sense and reflected in the attributes of the elected. Broadly speaking, an electorate of wise and honest people can hardly elect myopic and immoral leaders. That is what representative democracy is. Don’t like it, get some other system.

“But politicians alone are not the government. The government is also a very large bureaucracy. That bureaucracy is the man behind the curtain. You don’t see them but they are there. They know. They have institutional memory. Politicians come and go. Bureaucrats remain. It’s interesting to watch the antics of the dogs and ponies but they are dancing for their meals. You think that if you don’t like their show, you would replace them. Sure you will. But all the lever pulling you do at the election booth is only your feeble control over the dogs and ponies — not the man behind the curtain.

“The bureaucrats are the real rulers of the country. And remember that you don’t elect them. They are appointed. By whom? By the bureaucracy. Isn’t that a cozy deal?” CJ said.

“But politicians are the masters and the bureaucracy is meant only as an institution to carry out the orders from the political superiors. So the control that the people have over the politicians is in effect a control over the bureaucracy,” I said.

“All this indirect control thing is true in principle but a lot of horse doodoo in fact. The politicians don’t really know anything about the ministries they are supposed to direct. The bureaucrats do. Do you really believe a guy who has absolutely no knowledge of aviation at all can run the aviation ministry? Or some country bumpkin run the massive Indian railways?” CJ said.

“So you claim that the bureaucrats are not accountable to the people. They are unelected. But why do we have this system at all? Isn’t this a bit of a sham if the elected are not really in control?” I said.

“History. The British colonial government put the bureaucracy in place so that it would execute the objectives of a colonial government. What objectives? To extract resources from the economy. How? By controlling every aspect of the economy. When they left in 1947, they handed over the bureaucracy — lock, stock, and barrel — to the new political masters. The white guys left and the brown guys took over.

“The brown guys saw the bureaucracy and realized it was one of the most effective ways of controlling the economy and the people. They loved it as much as the British. Every institution that the British had created was not just maintained, they were strengthened.”

“Be that as it may, change is on the way. The people are fairly fed up with the current crop of politicians and they will get better governance,” I said.

“Not really. Change is not something that arises out of random chance. If the underlying factors that motivate the electorate don’t change, the outcome will be the same. If party A promoted a certain set of policies as a result of a set of constraints, another party B will have to also adopt the same or a very similar set of policies as well. Why? Because the underlying reality is the same.

“When the BJP came to power, they did exactly what the previous government had done. The details differ in some but inconsequential ways. Then when the BJP went out and the Congress came back, they did what the BJP had done.

“The unfortunate fact is that India is trapped in what we should call a low-level equilibrium. India has the governance it has because that was what was handed down to India. Of the three freedoms — economic, personal, and political — that matter to people, some in India got some degree of political freedom with the departure of the British. It is not even very clear whether political freedom in the absence of personal and economic freedom has any meaning. If I cannot live my personal life without being dictated to by others, and if I am at the verge of chronic starvation, I don’t know what political freedom really means in this context, or what good it can do.

“By keeping the people economically imprisoned, but allowing them the right to vote, there is an illusion of change. That the jailers are different does not alter the fact that one is still in prison. Sure now you can shout a little louder and complain a bit more vociferously about the abysmal conditions of the jail — but you are still jailed and now you are a little hoarse and tired from all the shouting and the banging of your tin plates against the bars of your cell,” said CJ.

“You are dismissing the power of elections that people have in a democratic setup,” I said.

“No, no. In a truly democratic system, the people do have power to influence change and in the direction they want. But in India’s case, I think it is like the fake steering wheel for the 4-year old in the car. It is merely mounted on the dashboard and not really connected to the steering mechanism of the car. It gives the kid a feeling of control, while the real control is in the hands of the guy in the driving seat. Without the fake wheel bought from Toys-R-Us, the kid will be a nuisance. He will be demanding and cranky wondering if he was having fun yet and if we are there yet and where are we really going. Fake steering wheel in hand, the kid is pacified and the driver can concentrate on where he wants to go.

“It’s the illusion that keeps the game in play. If India were not so fascinated by the dog and pony show, if India were not distracted by fake symbolism, it would have seen through the sham.

“The power of illusions is under appreciated. It is not without a reason that people cling so tenaciously to religion — it gives them an illusion of control over things in a universe beyond their comprehension. The religion of democracy that the people so fervently believe in is as real as the other religions.

“India is once again preparing for the ritual of elections sacred to that religion of democracy. The results will be the same as before. As the American folk wisdom says, if you always do what you always did, you will always get what you always got. You cannot expect the outcome to be different this time around merely because you fervently hope so. Is there anything different this time around compared to the other times before?” said CJ.

[To be continued in part 2.]

NOTES:

[1] He held the view best expressed by Delos Wilcox who in 1900 wrote: But we must deplore and, so far as possible, overcome the evils of habitual newspaper reading. These evils are, chiefly, three: first, the waste of much time and mental energy in reading unimportant news and opinions, and premature, untrue, or imperfect accounts of important matters; second, the awakening of prejudices and the enkindling of passions through the partisan bias or commercial greed of newspaper managers; third, the loading of the mind with cheap literature and the development of an aversion for books and sustained thought. [Return]

Information and communications technologies present useful tools. The value of IT lies in the utility those tools afford. In other words, there is nothing of intrinsic value in IT – it is only valuable to the extent that the tools are useful and relevant in a given context.

To bring this matter into sharper focus, it is better to talk about “information technology tools” (or ITT) rather than about IT alone. The stress on “tools” helps us avoid the traps that lie in wait for those who confuse technology with what one is supposed to do — a confusion of means and ends.

Utility of Tools

Tools are useful. But their utility is circumscribed by the situation at hand, which determines whether the tool is relevant, effective and efficient. A hammer is very useful in the context of nails but quite worthless when you need to determine the temperature or do arithmetic. That is, a tool is has to be relevant to the need.

You could use a hammer on a screw but it would be better to use a screwdriver. A hammer is not as effective as a screwdriver in the context of a screw. Effectiveness of a tool is important.

Tools also have to be efficient. You could use a fancy weighing scale costing thousands with sensitivity in micrograms for checking your weight but why would you bother if you could get your weight to the nearest 100 grams on a cheap store-bought bathroom scales.

Once a situation is properly understood, two jobs remain. The first job lies in figuring out which of a large set of available tools is the best tool for the job in terms of relevance, effectiveness and efficiency. The second job is to acquire the ability to use the tool if one does not already have it.

Even if we have determined that a CAT scanner is the tool required in terms of effectiveness and efficiency, we still have to address the question of affordability. And finally, we need to have the expertise to operate the scanner and interpret the results. The ability to use a tool matters.

So in summary, technology sounds great but has value only in the utility of the tools it provides, and this utility is contingent on the relevance, effectiveness and efficiency of the tool. Furthermore, affordability has to be considered. Lastly, the ability to properly use a tool is a prerequisite to deriving utility from it.

All this is glaringly obvious but let’s just put it in there for the record.

Tools are Demand Driven

Since tools are a means and are not ends, the proper sequence of intervention in a particular situation is to first fully understand what the situation is and then look around for the appropriate tool. As I have argued above, the appropriateness of the tool is context sensitive and the ability to use the tool. This is another way of saying that the use of tools is demand-driven.

Demand driven means one does not have to promote the use of tools – one has to promote the desirable goal. Once the goal is sold, the demand for the tool will emerge automatically. Focusing on tools instead of specific goals is akin to putting the cart before the horse. Worse yet, it could be like pushing a string: silly and ineffective.

With this introduction, we are now ready to get down to the main point:

The Rational Information Technology Policy

Be totally blind, deaf and dumb on whether to use or not use IT tools.

There you have it. I have solved the problem of an IT policy.

There is no need for any specific IT policy. The use of tools is the outcome of a set of rational processes which arise from a set of rational policies that address rational goals. IT use is a derivative demand, not a final demand. IT and its tools are an intermediate input to a process whose end result is desired.

For the sake of completeness, here is a list of areas where IT tools may conceivably be of use: education, agriculture, industry, commerce, arts & entertainment, medicine & health, research & development in science and technology, and so on.

Let’s take education as an example. Suppose the education sector were liberalized. Investment will flow into the sector. Supply will expand to meet the demand. Firms will figure out the most effective and efficient ways of providing education. In all probability, IT tools will be used by the sector. Computers, the internet and other IT tools will spread around the country.

The role of the government in the education sector is limited to financially support those students who face financial constraints.

The major point here is that people who are in the business of education are much better placed to know which tools to use than some government bureaucrat who has little knowledge of what tools are most effective in education.

Conclusion:

The best IT policy is a non-existent IT policy because the less any IT policy prescribes the better it is. However, a non-existent IT policy means that there will be no need for a Ministry of IT. Without a ministry, there will be no need for huge multi-billion dollar budgets. Without multi-billion dollar budgets, there will be no profit in being part of the government. That’s unfortunately our destiny. A world with huge government and fat policies.

It’s all karma, neh?

I think that similar to market failures, there are democracy failures which arise when the conditions that are necessary for democracy do not obtain. For instance, what if there are information asymmetries or monopoly power? Democracy cannot grind out the socially optimal result in such cases. What if there isn’t freedom of expression? These matters are worth considering, now that the elections are around the corner.

Related posts: See Thoughts on Freedom of Expression and The Ownership Society.

As an urban Indian, I will vote for a party that promotes the values that matter to my country, my family, and me. I address this open letter to the political parties who seek my vote in the upcoming elections. Drop me a line if you can credibly demonstrate that you share the concerns and values that we have.

Here are my concerns.

1. Economic freedom.

• I want a government which generally leaves us alone. I don’t want a government that interferes in every aspect of our economic lives.

• I want a government that does not excessively tax my hard-earned money to fund wasteful expenditures.
• By chaining the economy, the government controls it to profit from it at the expense of the citizens. I want the government to liberalize the economy.

2. Personal freedom.

• I want a government that respects me as a citizen and not as a member of some religious, caste, linguistic, or vote bank group. I want to be treated equally and not discriminated against for whatever reasons.

• I want a government that does not dictate to me how I should live my life.

3. Education matters.

• I want my children to be educated. Government control of the education sector has crippled the system to the point that only the extremely wealthy can afford decent schooling. I want the government to get out of the education sector.

• I want a good education for my children because it is the only guarantee of success in an intensely competitive globalized world of today and the future.

4. Good governance.

• I see unimaginable corruption at all levels of government. Criminals routinely contest and win elections. I am not going to tolerate corruption any more. I will reject all parties that put up criminals as their candidates.

• I want the government to stick to the core functions and do them well. Primarily, I want the government to be responsible for internal security and I will hold the government accountable for the any lapses in security.

That’s all. I am not interested in GDP growth projections, on how by 2014 or whenever what is going to happen or not. I am not interested in empty promises about how India will become this or that superpower. I am quite capable of working hard and creating my own destiny.

I just want that the government do its job and I will do my bit. But I will not vote for any party that does not share my values and my concerns.

Since 2002, the major impacts of these campaigns have been on criminalization of politics, and transparency in candidate and political party assets. Leaders of both the BJP and the Indian National Congress have made public statements that they would not field candidates with criminal records even if they were likely to win in the coming Lok Sabha elections . . .

Interesting, isn’t it? I added the emphasis above because it is worth noting. That phrase is a recognition of the fact that criminals routinely contest and win elections. Let me understand that a bit more. That criminals contest elections is a choice that the criminals make. The laws of the land, for whatever they are worth, permit criminals to contest elections. That they win elections is the more remarkable fact. Contesting the elections is within the control of the criminals; winning elections is not. People — the much celebrated wise Indian voters — are the ones who vote criminals into power.

They at ADR could conference the whole day long till the cows come home, but I am afraid that the fault, dear Brutus, lies not with the criminals but with the people who vote for them.

If in your generally free and fair elections, you elect criminals as your political leaders, you might be a third world country. (Or in the case of the US, you might be aspiring to become a third world country.)

Institutions defined most generally are essentially ideas. They are big ideas, ideas that are persistent and which have a profound effect on the populations that evolve, and adopt, the ideas. Examples of powerful institutions – therefore powerful ideas – are easy to find: markets, state constitutions, legal systems, systems of governance, and so on. The institution called democracy is also an idea. The instantiation of an idea — its embodiment or implementation or incarnation – varies from place to place, and from time to time. How an institution is implemented depends on, among other things, preferences of the population and on the available technology. As tastes and technologies change, institutions can be implemented differently, and generally they are more efficiently implemented as time goes by.

Just as an example, consider the idea (which is not really an institution but let’s go along for now) of the Carnot cycle, the theoretical basis of a heat engine. Nikolaus Otto developed the first four-stroke internal combustion engine in 1876 and that was an instantiation of the Carnot cycle. As you can imagine, that engine must have been crude compared to what we have today in our automobiles. Technological improvements increased the efficiency with which the idea could be implemented.

The generalization that I am aiming at is that technology allows us to implement ideas more efficiently. But whether that technology is used or not depends on factors that are often not technical. For instance, if the improvement in the efficiency of the implementation of an idea goes against the interests of the existing power structure, that improvement will be blocked.

Democracy as Implemented

My thesis in this post (which is a follow up to the previous post on the subject) is that democracy is an idea which has been implemented in a certain way for many decades now in India. Now that technology has advanced since then, it is perhaps time to redesign it to make it more efficient and effective. It is time to make some needed changes. The most important of these changes is in giving citizens more control over how much the government spends on discretionary items.

Let’s just for the moment define discretionary items as those that are not public goods (such as law and order, national security, etc.) In the previous post I had mentioned three discretionary items: a grant to a foreign university, haj subsidy, and “earthquake relief” to a foreign nation. These are not public goods by any stretch of the definition of the term, and it is perfectly feasible for private citizens to make up their own minds whether they wish to contribute to those ventures. The government, by making those decisions on behalf of the citizens without their express and explicit consent, is violating their private property rights. This is not a trivial matter and this has to stop.

As an idea, democracy has its merits. But whether a particular implementation of the idea is socially beneficial or not is an empirical matter. In my opinion, democracy as implemented in India is seriously flawed. The most basic flaw in the implementation is that it is really imperialism in disguise: there are the rulers who have most of the power and consequently the citizens have little power. Here democracy basically means that one gets to vote occasionally and then too the choices are dismal: what’s generally on offer is a collection of criminals to choose from. That criminals routinely contest elections is a damning indictment of the flawed implementation of democracy I am talking about.

Degenerate Democracy

The democratic political system in India has degenerated into a criminal enterprise. We are really caught in a vicious cycle. The system attracts criminals because the opportunity for rent-seeking are tremendous; the more criminals enter the system, the more they increase their power and the rents increase and this attracts even greater criminals. Things have come to such a pass that if you are honest, conscientious, decent, moral, and ethical, you have absolutely no chance of ever holding political office.

Just to expand on that, let’s examine the public sector. The government runs railways, airlines, schools and colleges, broadcasting, telecommunications, banking and insurance related institutions, and other commercial establishments. It is not as if these activities cannot be done by the private sector, and done extremely efficiently. There is absolutely no reason for the government to do all this except – and that is the main point – that it gives those in government an opportunity for rent-seeking.

Let’s remember that the range of activities that the government has control over is wide. It of course has monopoly control over some, such as the railways, and until recently in airlines and telecommunications. Then in some areas where it is not the monopoly provider, it still has a presence and often the playing field is tilted towards the public entities and against the private participants. Finally, whether or not the government participates in the activity, it has near absolute control over all private participants, dictating who can enter and on what terms. That is the licence-control-permit-quota raj. The government is omnipotent and that is where the corruption begins.

Control and Corruption

So let’s examine absolute and discretionary control over something. Monopolists have control over the quantity that they wish to supply and hence control the price. That is how they extract what economists call rent – the economic profits that arise from the price being much above costs. Rent-seeking is the term economists use. It should be part of the lexicon of the average citizen because that is at the core of much government activity.

Let’s say that the government decides that education should be under its control. Regardless of the rhetoric employed, it is not that the government is the only agency which can deliver education effectively and efficiently. Indeed, the government is the last entity that can do so. The reason that it controls education is that it can extracts rents from controlling education. In India, the government decided who has the licence to run an educational institution. This is at the discretion of the political and bureaucratic apparatus. By limiting access, it raises the costs, and these are passed on as high prices. The rents can then be extracted by pricing licenses. The chronic shortage of good educational institutions is the predictable result.

If the government has the power to control the education sector, it implicitly has the power to extract rents. That applies for the scores of sectors that the government controls. If you add up all the sectors that the government indirectly or directly controls, it amounts to a very impressive deal. So therefore the opportunity to make a substantial pile of money attracts the most avaricious and therefore the fierce competition to gain political control.

Corruption in India, as elsewhere, is a direct consequence of the gain from control. So if we were to reduce the power of government, we have an avenue for reducing corruption. The technology exists for transferring that control from those in government to the citizens. We just have to implement that change.

In the next bit, we will explore this topic in some detail. In the meanwhile, be well, do good work, and keep in touch.

Newly educated and semi-educated classes – social or intellectual – seek positions in government bureaucracies or social advocacy rather than in industry and commerce where competence is inarguably measured at the end of every business quarter. The growth of bureaucracies needed to absorb these swaggering imbeciles is precisely opposed to society’s growth and development both as direct philosophical enemy and as infinitely hungry sump to resources otherwise needed to support productive endeavors.

From “Uncle Al” in a post on the usenet years ago. I spent years on the usenet, the grand-daddy of the world wide web. I like the phrase “swaggering imbeciles” — it describes a certain ruling dynasty in a certain so-called emerging superpower.

Underdevelopment, poverty, and all other ills that plague India are an unavoidable consequence of poor public policies and choices.

One does not have to know criminology to suspect that criminals cannot make good public policy makers. For support of this position, one has to look at the dismal record of the criminals in charge of public policy in India. It is not that every single politician in India is a criminal; only that a significant number of them are criminals. But it is unbelievable that even one member of the Indian parliament should be a criminal. That we don’t rise in revolt against this outrage shows that we have come to accept it as par for the course and have resigned ourselves to it. Worse, it could mean that the Indian population is so morally bankrupt that it finds crime so normal that it elects criminals to political power.

All this lends support to the claim that the people deserve the government they get. Perhaps because the people in general are immoral criminals that they accept — perhaps even promote — criminals to represent them. The resulting Hobbesian existence — solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short — the majority live is something that they are ultimately responsible for. Until the people change, there is no possibility of a change of leadership, and the consequent change in the circumstances.

But there is still some hope; as long as there is life, there is hope. India has not yet descended to the depths plumbed by its western neighbor because it still has as part of its civil society people who deeply care about the quality of leadership. One organization of note is the Association for Democratic Reforms. I got introduced to it when I met one of its founder members, Prof Jagdeesh Chhokar, in New Delhi last week.

ADR’s mission is “to work towards improving and strengthening democracy and governance in India.” I will leave you to take a look at their many achievements since they started in 1999. Here I would like to share with you some statistics that ADR has compiled. (Thanks to S Ramachandra for forwarding the files.)

Here’s an excerpt from a press release dated July 10th, 2008:

The coming general elections to the Lok Sabha do not forecast a bright future if the composition of the Lok Sabha 2004 at present is any indication. There are 120 MPs with criminal cases against them out of 543, or 22.1%. Among the major parties, the BJP has 29 MPs with a criminal record, the Indian National Congress (INC) 24, the SP 11, RJD 8, CPM 7, BSP 7, NCP 5 and CPI 2.

The number of cases of serious crimes is 333, with several MPs having multiple cases. If we look at violent crimes like murder, attempt to murder, robbery, dacoity, kidnapping, theft and extortion, rape, other violent crimes like assault using dangerous weapons or causing grievous hurt, the Samajwadi Party (SP) leads with 80 cases, followed by BSP 43, BJP 17, INC 16, RJD 9, CPM 5, CPI 1, NCP 2. Other crimes like cheating, fraud, forgery, giving false oaths to public officials and so on have BSP 23, RJD 22, INC 21, BJP 11, SP 11 and CPM 6. [Emphasis added.]

Becoming informed is the first necessary step to bringing about change. So do talk, write, blog, etc., about this. Spread the word. Most of all, blog about this frequently enough that it becomes impossible to not know about it. And put your money where your mouth is — for starters, you could help support ADR. They need Rs 3 crores (US$ 750,000) for the coming 2009 Elections campaign.

For the record, I am publishing their proposal below.

Strengthening Indian Democracy:

Proposal for the coming General Elections in 2008-09

Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR: www.adrindia.org)
July 8, 2008

About ADR

ADR was founded in 1999 by a group of Professors from the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Ahmedabad and some alumni to work towards strengthening democracy and governance in India by focusing on fair and transparent electoral processes. Since its founding, it has worked with over 1000 NGO partners around India, disseminating information on candidates and political parties to voters. ADR has also worked closely with the media, the Election Commission of India and eminent citizens around the country. Its founder was elected as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in 2008.

The major impact of ADR’s work is at four levels:

1. Lobbying lawmakers and implementers (various Courts, Election Commission, parliamentarians, etc.) to institute laws and procedures to increase accountability and transparency
2. Strengthen the monitoring of candidates and political parties on accountability, funding and for transparency.
3. Increase awareness among the public about important facts and issues regarding candidates, funding, political parties, elections and democracy.
4. Cause a shift in the profile of candidates winning elections towards people with clean backgrounds.

Sample Impact of ADR’s work

Here is a representative list of impact achieved by the activities of ADR:

1. ADR filed and won two landmark judgments on candidate disclosure of criminal and financial records from the Supreme Court in May 2002 and March 2003.
2. Made transparent the financial details of political parties using the Right to Information Act in 2008 after 14 months of persistence with the Income tax Authorities and the central Information Commission.
3. Has established a network of over a thousand NGOs around the country to do Citizen Election Watch for all major elections since December 2002, disclosing candidate background information to the media and the public.
4. Has initiated Civil Society non-partisan Election Watches in different states:
a. In the Lok Sabha 2004 Elections, 19 States and 5 Union Territories carried out Election Watches.
b. Have conducted Election watches in about 20 states
5. Bihar Election Watch in Oct-Nov 2005 resulted in intense pressure on the Chief Minister designate for the first time perhaps in decades to have a Council of Ministers without any known criminal record.
6. Clearance of lakhs of rupees of outstanding dues to the Government for rent, electricity, phone bills, etc. by Members of Parliament (MPs) before standing for (re)elections.
7. A measurable impact in the fielding of non-tainted candidates by applying pressure on political parties to filed clean candidates.

Objectives for Lok Sabha elections April-May 2009

The coming national elections in April-May 2009 provide a unique opportunity to leverage the network already in place, and the information already collected, to carry out a campaign to further improve democracy. ADR wishes to take a campaign to:

1. Improve the profile of candidates contesting elections: ADR has already achieved this in the past in state assembly elections, but we expect to take this nationwide through the proposed campaign. Political parties have started reacting to media exposure and have begun cleaning up their Act (e.g., see in Sample impact for Bihar)
2. Enable voters to make an informed choice: As of now, the information available to voters is limited, and the existing database of over 25000 candidates with ADR will be used to raise voter awareness significantly.
3. Help keep election expenses transparent and within the legal limit: Again, information dissemination is key.
4. Strengthen democracy by making candidates and parties more accountable to voters and citizens: Our experience shows that in pockets where dissemination was intense, the candidates and political parties did respond. The campaign will take this nationwide.
5. Create a platform or platforms beyond the elections to help citizens and Governments work more closely together: We will use our network of over thousand NGOs in the campaign to achieve this.

ADR has information on all major National and State elections in India since 2002. Specifically, ADR will disseminate information to voters around the country through following means:

1. Traditional print and electronic media,
2. The Internet (though its reach is still limited in India),
3. The network of NGOs,
4. Through mobile technologies(which has grown rapidly in the recent past) ,
5. And Voice technologies.

One time support needed for Lok Sabha elections April-May 2009:

ADR is currently supported for its establishment expenses by the Ford Foundation. However, it does not have financial support for next year’s general elections. This involves 543 seats to the Parliament (Lok Sabha), and involves around 670 million voters. It is the largest democratic election held anywhere in the world. We estimate that a modest $750,000 can help us do the campaign. We are looking for a one time support for these elections.

How the fund will be utilized

The broad strategy is to use the existing information base, supplement it with more research, and disseminate it steadily starting now until the general elections. As mentioned earlier, this will be done traditional print and electronic media, the Internet, the network of NGOs, mobile and voice. Previous experience of such limited campaigns in Gujarat and UP showed good results with positive reaction from political parties.

For instance, we will build Member of Parliament profiles, political party profiles, and election expense information from our existing data base. Dissemination will be done in English and Hindi (the major language that about 35% of India knows) at the very least. We also hope to do it in 7 other major languages.

Among those who hold the key to the survival or fall of the government on July 22 are six jailed MPs, some convicted on serious charges like murder, others accused of heinous crimes. Check out the men who both sides are seeking to woo to win that day.

1. Pappu Yadav alias Rajesh Ranjan

   RJD, Purnea, Bihar

   SENTENCED in Feb 2008 for life for murder of former CPM MLA Ajit Sarkar in 1998.

2. Suraj Bhan

   LJSP, Balia, Bihar

   SENTENCED To life last month for murder of a farmer in 1992.

3. Ateeq Ahmad

   Phulphur, Uttar Pradesh

   Charged in: 21 criminal cases, including some involving murder. One such was the murder of Bhartiya Samajwadi Party MLA Raju Pal in 2005.

4. Afzal Ansari

   Samajwadi Party, Ghazipur, UP

   Brother of Uttar Pradesh don Mukhtar Ansari. In jail facing charges in murder of Bhartiya Samajwadi Party MLA Krishanand Rai in 2005.

5. Umakant Yadav

   BSP, Machhlishahr, Uttar Pradesh

   Jailed for allegedly razing shops and houses while trying to forcibly occupy land in Azamgarh in Uttar Pradesh in 2007.

6. Mohd Shahabuddin

   RJD, Siwan, Bihar

   Convicted in: 3 cases between March and August 2007: life term for kidnapping leading to murder of a trader in 1999, 10 yrs for attack on Siwan SP in 1996 and 2 yrs for attack on CPI(ML) office in 1998.

I think it is a cargo cult democracy. I have long maintained that the Indian government is the real enemy of the people of India. This is not at all remarkable considering that it comprises mostly of criminals and other low life.

Evidently he is widely regarded as a spiritual guru. But however spiritual his claim to fame may be, I can’t help but wonder how can an adult who is clearly able to function normally be so mistaken about the nature of the world as to actually hold the positions that the article claims he does. Does spirituality or whatever it is that is his main calling so shield him from the everyday material world that he is totally and completely disconnected from reality?

According to the article, his goal is “to stop commercialisation, industrialisation and criminalisation of the political system of the country.” Fair enough even though I am not very clear what “industrialization” of the political system actually means. Quote:

“There are some good political leaders also, but the fact is that most of them lack vision and are steeped in corruption. Commercialisation and criminalisation of Indian politics is an insult to the freedom and democracy of the country,” he said.

One can’t argue with that. His solution?

“There is an imperative need to make voting compulsory. Given the fact that the literacy level in the country is not very high, the popular mandate is not genuinely reflected during balloting. It is then important that everyone votes,” he reasoned out.

That’s a jaw-dropping, absolutely astounding, brain-numbing recommendation! He talks about democracy but does not give any indication that he actually understands that democracy is not just about voting. If the idea of democracy has any content at all, then it has to be about informed choice. People who have no clue should not be allowed to vote because their voting cannot but make the system worse off. Uninformed voters are as likely as a group to choose wisely as a group of lobotomized cretins are likely to engineer a cybernetic system — that is, not likely at all.

[Note: I am not making the claim that illiterate voters are necessarily uninformed or unwise voters. I believe that being illiterate is likely to be correlated with being less informed. I make no claim about literate people being more or less wise than illiterate people either. In any case, I would not make wisdom a precondition for voting eligibility. It is hard enough to figure out if a person is informed; figuring out wisdom is probably impossible.]

There are two objections that I have to his idea of making voting compulsory. I suppose he makes the assumption that if everyone were forced to vote, then the winners of elections would more accurately reflect the choice of the population. I am OK with that assumption. But in reality, in a country of around half a billion voters, that is a costly exercise.

I don’t blame swamiji for not knowing this but there are simpler methods known for accurately determining the population characteristics than going to the expense of tabulating the entire voting population’s preferences. It is called statistical sampling. With a well-designed and properly conducted sample survey, one can make the sample statistics come close to the population statistics to any arbitrary degree of precision. The results of such a sample survey (where as little as 0.1 percent of the population is surveyed) will be no different from the result of forcing half a billion people to vote.

That first objection is a mere technicality, if you please. But the more substantial objection is that instead of making voting compulsory, voting should be a privilege granted to only those who demonstrate that they are qualified to make a choice on the matters under discussion. (In fact, I feel that if people were not given the automatic right to vote on turning 18 years old but had to actually qualify to vote, the outcome would be a rush to qualify and vote. You would not have to compel anyone to vote because it would be a badge of honor that one is qualified to vote.)

I learn from the article that he claimed that voting is mandatory in 32 countries. (I hope Rediff has fact checkers on its staff.) Perhaps in a small country of a few million people, one may be able to get away with it. But for a practical matter, even if you pass the idiotic legislation making voting compulsory, the cost of enforcing it would be prohibitive. Once again, I think that the good swami is obviously a man more at home with matters spiritual than with matters of mundane practicality.

But why does he want to force everyone to vote? Because “the corrupt political system can be made clean and transparent by making it mandatory for everyone to vote.”

What the heck was that?!

I fell off the chair when I read that. I suppose when he made that statement, his audience uncritically accepted his wisdom. They did not fall off their chairs. They did not ask why. That is par for the course, isn’t it? The gurujis and the netajis make totally asinine pronouncements and no one bothers to call them on it.

And the press? What do the press do? Let me compose a ditty in Hindi:

muh mein aayaa buk diye
jo bhi suna chaap diye

{Translation: (The high and mighty) say whatever comes to their tongue without reflection, (and the press) just print uncritically whatever they hear.}

How on earth is voting — even forced voting — going to solve the problem of corruption? Does the great swami know what is the cause of corruption? Can he please explain what his reasoning is for believing that corruption is a result of an insufficient number of people voting?

OK, I know that it is not my station to be giving lectures to gurujis, but as it is my blog, I submit this as my reasoning on the causes of corruption, and what should be done to fix it. Since I have already tried your patience severely going on and on about voting, I will keep this one brief. (Yes, dear reader, I can be brief when I want to be )

Corruption is related to power. I am not talking about Lord Acton’s famous observation that “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” I am taking about the power that one gets from controlling something and which control affords one the means to extract rents — and corruption is basically extraction of rents.

The cop at the corner has the power to extract something out of the wrong-doer. The bureaucrat has the power to extract rent because it is within his power to give or deny permission. The politician has the power to favor this or that industrialist and grant the license. Everywhere there is power to coerce, there is corruption.

The more things the government controls, the more power the politicians and bureaucrats — the people who constitute the government — have and consequently greater the corruption. Show me someone who has political power, and I will show you a person who is corruptible and most likely is corrupt.

The larger the involvement of the government in the economic affairs of the state, the greater is the reward for being a politician because the chances of raking in the moolah is all the greater. Therefore the larger the government, the more likely it is to attract precisely those kinds of politicians who have the greatest greed and therefore the most corruptible.

Socialist governments control the most and therefore they are the most corrupt. India’s corruption of the political class is a direct consequence of the socialistic government India has. The way to get rid of corruption in Indian politics is to reduce the size and power of the government to meddle in the affairs of the economy.

(Told you, I can be brief.)

In the tainted MLAs’ section, it is the Bharatiya Janata Party which leads the pack with 25 MLAs with a criminal record. The Congress comes second with 8 MLAs while the JD(S) has 7.

Out of the 25 MLAs in the BJP with a criminal record, seven are in the Cabinet. They are Krishnaiah Shetty, Sriramulu, Shobha Karandlage, Aravind Limbavali, S A Ravindranath, D Sudhakar (Independent) and Goolihatti Shekhar (Independent).

Among the 25 MLAs with a criminal record, three have murder or attempt to murder charges pending against them.

In the Congress, there are 8 MLAs with a criminal record, of which three have murder or attempt to murder charges pending against them.

Of the 7 MLAs in the JD(S) with a criminal record, two have murder or attempt to murder charges pending against them.

Isn’t the title of this post a contradiction in terms? How can criminals be lawmakers? Are they making laws or breaking them? Or are they “lawmakers” just so that they can get out of the reach of the arm of the law?

I just hope and pray that these MLAs got elected by fraud. Because otherwise I would be forced to face up to the reality that the criminality of these MLAs reflect the characteristics of the voters.

When a narrow, shrunken vision is preferred over a national outlook and national perspective, the Raj Thackerays emerge winners. What’s the difference between a Raj making Indians fight with other Indians and a UPA government sowing the seeds of distrust and hate among Indians on the basis of religious reservations for one community and assaulting the faith icons of the other? Or for that matter, ULFA in Assam killing Hindi-speaking Indians and outfits like Lashkar and Jaish-e-Mohammad murdering Hindu Indians in Jammu and Kashmir? Someone shoots from guns, another uses a microphone and the third does it by abusing constitutional authority. The result is identical – India is bruised and shrunk.

Here’s a bit more:

No politician has been ever held accountable for the national loss incurred because of his misdeeds, divisive politics and ill-governance. The more divisive and exploitative of pubic money and trust he becomes, the more votes he gets and he is hailed as a “seasoned” politician.

So why blame Raj Thackeray?

Those who get votes on the basis of dividing people and feel no remorse seeing youngsters burning themselves against their policies reap worse than the Raj Thackerays. It’s the failure of national parties and organisations that parochialism and narrow polity with a shrunken vision is allowed to play with national integration and peoples’ money. The game of de-listing, unlisting and enlisting on the basis of the colour of your thoughts divides more sharply than the buffoonery of the parochial players.

We have leaders of Yadavs, Gujjars, Jats, Brahmins, Dalits and tribals. We have champions of UP, Bihar, Bengal, Tamil Nadu and other states. If something happens to Tamils anywhere in the world, it’s the “sacred duty” of the Tamil Nadu leaders alone to feel their pain and speak up for them. When Malaysia’s Hindus of Tamil origin were persecuted, the only chief minister that spoke against it was Karunanidhi, not Lalu Yadav or Nitish Kumar. They were Tamil ‘nationals’, hence Tamils should support their cause, and similarly Hindi-speaking Indians get support from the ‘Hindi nation’ when persecuted in Assam or Maharashtra.

Raj Thackeray is not an aberration, he is the norm. The past masters of divisive politics have their names immortalized in the names of universities, railway stations, airports, national parks, industrial parks, roads, and towns. Raj merely wants his name to live on as well. In India, dividing people based on caste and religion appears to be the fast track to becoming a hero.

I recommend Tarun Vijay’s opinion piece.

Informed choice is not a matter that can be delegated to people who are not only not informed but for the most part cannot be informed even if you wanted to because the basic channels for information transmission are denied to them. Most of the electorate is illiterate to begin with and to add insult to injury, meaningful debate concerning the issues is entirely non-existent in the mass media. In the absence of substantial policy choices, it all boils down to names and faces. In every nook and cranny of the country, one comes face to face with huge billboards with the faces of people with names—never mind what they represent or what their accomplishments are.

This is bound to sound terrifically elitist. That is a pity, really. If the mere recognition of the distinction between illiterates and literates is perceived as elitist, things have come to a very sorry pass indeed. The fact is that in India the majority of the people would not be able to reason out whom to vote for and for which reasons. The majority are only capable of recognizing a face if it is associated with a name. It is a Pavlovian response to the stimulus of the Gandhi name in a significant percentage of the population. Which is why grown men and women with real world experience line up behind any Tom (Antonia), Dick (Raul), or Harry (figure this one out yourself) who have as much familiarity with governance as I have of the intimate personal habits of the Ming emperors of China.

The name matters over all else. And not just in India. All around India. A military dictator gets bumped off in one of those run of the mill coups, and his widow becomes the new ruler. She then gets bumped off, and her son gets to be the new boss. Bangladesh—check. Sri Lanka—check. India—check. Pakistan—check.

I do suppose you know where I am heading, don’t you? Benazir Bhutto’s father, Zulfi, gets hanged by a military dictator. Dictator gets bumped off (airplane crash) and Benazir gets to be the boss for a bit. She steals and mismanages and is replaced by sundry other corrupt politicians. In due course, dictator X takes over. Some more mismanagement and it is time for an election. Name brand enters the race. Bumped off before too long. Faster and heavier action than you see in a one-day cricket match. Scramble to get a new face with the same name. OK, here’s this guy. Name: Bilawal, son of Benazir Bhutto. OK, he’s the new leader of the party that wants to rule the state of Pakistan.

Now, let’s be clear. Pakistan is a third world desperately poor failed state whose hand to mouth existence depends on handouts from the US, China and charity from a gang of Islamic despots with pots of oil wealth. But come on. A 19-year old guy? Surely you are kidding. He has barely mastered the technique of jerking off to girlie magazines and knows as much about matters of state as he does about quantum mechanics.

But then, it is par for the course around here neck of the woods. Au pairs, airline pilots, retarded bureaucrats, rural illiterate housewives, movie actors, gangsters, crooks, scamsters—they all get to play the boss. So what is so astonishing about a 19-year old Oxford undergrad becoming the leader of a party that aims to rule Pakistan? Nothing remarkable at all. The cargo will surely arrive from the US, China, and those fine Arabic states—as long as the right incantations are made about democracy.

So here’s the latest cargo-cultish news about Indian democracy. A man who has been a cook to the Nehru-Gandhi family for decades has been rewarded for his loyalty by the Nehru-Gandhi family — his son has been given a Congress ticket.

Loyalty does matter. For some at least. In April 2004, I had posted the sad story of Mr Anant Gadgil. I produce a bit from that post:

India’s democracy is at best a cargo cult democracy. Here is a brief news item from today’s The Times of India page 3. The Maharashtra Congress Committee vice-president Anant Gadgil plans to switch to the Shiv Sena because he did not get a ticket for contesting the elections. He wrote to the chief Sonia Gandhi and said:

Our family is known for its loyalty to the Nehru-Gandhi family, and to the Congress since independence. We always remember the recognition given by Indira and Rajiv Gandhi to my father for his utmost loyalty. Please let me know whether loyalty has no meaning left in the Congress party.

If those words don’t epitomize what Indian democracy is all about, I don’t know what does. Here is a person who wants to represent the will of the people, his constituency. And all he has to show for his qualifications for that task is his loyalty to a particular family. He does not plead that he has served the people of his constituency competently, he does not point out that he is capable of helping his society do better, he does not say that he understands the problems that his people face and that he has solutions, etc. Most likely he has not done any service nor is he capable of doing anything for the people. In keeping with the prevailing customs of the political parties in India — especially that of the Congress Party — all that he has to show is that he and his father have always been loyal lap-dogs of the of the ruling family.

Mr. Anant Gadgil may be an ignorant wanna-be. But he is not alone. His sentiments are shared by practically all “leaders” of the Congress party, from Messers Manmohan Singh and Narasimha Rao to the lowliest party worker. All they have to demonstrate is unquestioned loyalty to the Nehru-Gandhi family and they will get the nod. As self-interested rational individuals their stance cannot be faulted. The tens of millions of ignorant illiterate voters will vote for the Congress party simply because they recognize the Gandhi name. Therefore all Gadgils and the Singhs and Raos have to do is to plead their loyalty and they will get a ticket and therefore get elected.

To Anant Gadgil: Yes, loyalty still trumps everything else for the Congress party. Sorry that your nose doesn’t appear brown enough, though.

India has a cargo-cult democracy because it appears to be a democracy on the surface. Like a movie set, the facade presents a reasonable facsimilie of the real thing, but behind it, there is little substance. The hundreds of millions go through the motion of expressing their preference. But uninformed preference expressed haphazardly in a system that is corrupt to the core is not a receipe for a system of governance. It is no wonder that India ends up with “leaders” such as Rabri Devi and Laloo Yadav and Sonia Gandhi.

Democracy does not work in India. That is not to say that the fault lies with the idea of democracy. As a system of governance, there are few alternatives, just as markets are the best way to organize economic activities. But markets are prone to failures if its pre-conditions are not met. So also, democracy does not work in India because its necessary conditions are not met.

The challenge is therefore to ensure that we address the many failures that impede the workings of a democratic system. Installing electronic voting machines will do nothing towards that. Nor will the endless exhortation for people to go out and vote change the outcome. Even if every one of us were to vote, it would still be pointless if the choice we have is to elect either Tweedledum or Tweedledee.

It is a long and hard road to the place where democracy has any meaning. The first step along that road is undoubtedly universal primary education. Universal primary education is a prerequisite for universal adult franchise. Without primary education, you cannot have a literate and informed adult. Without an informed electorate, you cannot have a meaningful democracy. Perhaps that is the reason for the neglect of universal primary education — for that would down the road mean that the feudal lords of the ruling families will no longer be able to rule based simply on loyalty and may even have to work for a living.

I was reading Tarun Vijay question “Where is the Citizen?” in the Times of India (sorry) and saw the same idea — that we are culpable for the crimes that the politicians commit — repeated. Go read it. And forward a copy to the Prime Minister and to Dr Singh.

Why do different societies end up with governments that differ qualitatively? The short answer would be that it is so because societies themselves differ qualitatively. People — not individuals — deserve the government they get. Leaders reflect the soul of the people they represent. A society’s leadership cannot be corrupt, morally bankrupt, myopic, unethical, illiterate and stupid unless the people as a collective are themselves so. Enlightened leadership is the lot of people who are themselves enlightened. Leadership is endogenous.

“Many countries, including the U.S., have lawmakers who run afoul of the law, and it’s not uncommon in developing countries for those fleeing the law to find sanctuary in political office. Brazilian legislators, for example, have been accused of entering politics to take advantage of a law that grants them immunity from criminal prosecution in office.

“Few countries, however, can match India’s numbers. Following the 2004 election, almost a quarter of the 535 elected members of India’s national parliament have criminal charges registered against them or pending in court, according to the Public Affairs Center, an Indian elections watchdog. Half of those with charges pending against them face prison terms of at least five years if convicted.”

That is from the Wall Street Journal article of May 4th which beings thus:

“Since late 2005, Mukhtar Ansari has been confined to this ramshackle town’s jailhouse, accused of conspiracy to murder. That charge and 27 other criminal cases lodged against him over 19 years have done little to derail a long political career.

“Now, the 40-year-old Mr. Ansari is running again for re-election in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state. He’s expected to sail back into office in elections next Tuesday, thanks to a potent mix of divisive politics and political largess. His brother, Afzal, locked up with him in the Ghazipur District Jail, is a member of India’s national parliament in New Delhi.”

So national and state legislatures have a large number of criminals. These people were not foisted upon the population; they were elected by the people. India has a representative government and the political leaders represent the people. The leaders reflect the basic characteristics of the people. These representatives then go on to elect the head of state, the President of India. The president then represents the collective characteristics of the elected representatives of the people.

Well you made your bed, now sleep in it, as my granny used to say. Good luck, people of India.

[This post inspired by the UPA and this.]

Ventatesh Rangarajan pointed me to a news item on IBNLive which says “Anti-Congress” Blogs blocked.

The block against various websites has been lifted but the ban is still in place.

It seems there is a definite slant to the websites that have been banned – a stance that is not anti-national, but anti-congress.

India’s Department of Telecommunications (DoT) passed an order to ISPs on July 14 to block blog sites, as they were said to be spreading anti-national message. The list of the websites to be blocked was confidential.

“We know what is good for you, and we will tell you what you should think,” says the mai-baap government.

Deva! Deva!

It would appear that the more perfect the democracy, the more its leaders reflect the inner soul of the people. India, I am told, is a great democracy. Looking at the leaders of India, one does wonder about the inner soul of Indians.

I see this is going to be the trend. Mr Bush will make stupid incoherent statements and the Indian press will go ga-ga over how amazing his words are. Pundits will analyze his ramblings as if they were the pronouncements of an oracle.

Americans — the non-stupid variety, that is — are smarter than the average Indian journalist. They see Bush to be what he is: a moron. A fine specimen of the American species but a moron nonetheless. So while you prepare to be nauseated by the outpourings of the Indian journalists on Bush’s upcoming visit, here is a video of an American saying it more like it is. Enjoy and remember that Bush’s inability to reason and to even articulate a simple grammatically correct statement has not stood in the way of his becoming the most powerful man on earth, simply because the average American voter is like most Indian journalists a moron.

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess of the public treasury. From that time on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the results that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s great civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to complacency; from complacency to apathy; from apathy to dependency; from dependency back again to bondage.

Sir Alex Fraser Tytler (1742-1813), Scottish jurist and historian, professor of Universal History at Edinburgh University.

A handful of members of parliament (MP) were caught taking bribes in a sting operation by a website called Cobrapost. Report of politicians taking bribes is as astonishingly novel as the news that bears do potty in the woods, or that Michael Jackson is weird. They are a seriously depraved lot (the politcians, not the bears) and it would appear that that level of depravity is not just mandatory but required. In India, real politicians are thugs and crooks. Those who are not are mere amateurs who don’t belong among the professionals. So Cobraposts revelations that MPs have accepted bribes to ask questions in the parliament is not news, merely detail.

What really astonishes is the reaction of the MPs to being caught red-handed. Only in the realm of fiction and satire would you normally expect that sort of reaction. In real life, you would dismiss it entirely out of hand.

Three days ago, the MPs have demanded that the media be investigated to determine what their motive was in exposing the mendacity of the MPs. The members argued that the media had no business to expose the greed of the MPs and thus lower the dignity of the House.

They said that that Cobrapost sold the report exposing the dishonest MPs to TV channels and therefore action must be taken against – and here is the astonishing part – the whistle-blowers. Gives an entirely new meaning to the Hindi saying ulta chor kotwal ko daten (instead the crook reprimands the police). They said that this expose attempts to defame the Parliament. The speaker of the House, Mr Somnath Chatterjee, said that “as the House is the most important body in the whole country … we have to maintain its dignity.”

Mr Chatterjee said that “we must see that the dignity of this House is never affected or prejudiced by anybody whether inside or outside. Therefore, if necessary we should do some self-introspection.”

Good idea even though I am not sure, if “introspection” means what I think it does, what “self-introspection” means.

Now it gets even more bizarre. So far we know that some crooked politicians accepted bribes and were exposed by the media. It takes a peculiar sort of brazenness to then claim that the media is at fault and is responsible for diminishing the stature of the House. And the action to be taken? Why, bar reporters from the Central Hall of the Parliament! That is what one MP recommended. And I suppose if we totally ban the reporting of any crimes committed by politicians in the country, the country will truly prosper.

In the US, I had heard of cases of perverted justice. For instance, a burglar while burgling, fell through the sky-light and hurt himself and then successfully sued the building owner for negligence. Or the drunken driver who went off the street and crashed into a electric-utility pole and sued the county, the city, the utility company, and the car manufacturer. The stuff of urban legends.

But to actually read about something as perverse in the newspapers totally baffles me. Which planet do these monkeys come from? I had heard that the Parliament was a circus but I did not realize that it is also a loony-bin. Have these people no shame?

Some time ago, I had proposed public flogging as a mechanism designed to fix some of the problems that plague India. That needs rethinking because public flogging may be too good for some of these critters.

In India, the government mandates certain days as “dry days” and disallows the sale of alcohol even in states where alcohol is legal, sort of like a “temporary-micro-prohibition.” For example, on the first day of the month—payday—liquor shops are closed in some states. I also found that sale and serving of alcohol is prohibited on some specific festival days, such as the final day of Ganesh festival.

Clearly the micro-prohibitions affect the poor unwashed masses, because the rich can always stock up on booze anytime they like. I suspect that they are also aimed at the poor and unwashed. It is part of that grand paternalistic vision that can be traced back to a feudal mindset of the ruling classes going back centuries but which was since independence promoted by the new political bosses, the ersatz British. The real British denied political freedom to Indians; the ersatz British denied economic freedom.

Banning the sale and serving of alcohol on certain days clearly indicates that the policy makers don’t trust the people to know what to do when. The people are like children who cannot be allowed the freedom to decide for themselves whether to drink or not to drink. Actually, if one closely looks at it, one sees the “can’t trust the people” attitude of the rulers pretty prevalent. Whenever the government prohibits some activity which is clearly not harmful and has no negative externalities, it is stating that the people cannot be trusted to know what is good for them.

What puzzles me is that the same unwashed masses who cannot be trusted to know whether to have a drink or not, who cannot be trusted to exercise judgment in many economic activities, these same people are trusted to figure out who should be elected to be the policy makers and rulers. If the people are so dumb as to not know what is good for them in a simple matter of a drink, can you really trust them with a vote?

Indian democracy, as I have argued before here, is a cargo-cult democracy (see here, and here.) Did you know that Ram Vilas Paswan used a Osama Bin Laden look-alike to woo Muslim voters? And that this fake OBL changed sides and is now with Laloo Prasad Yadav. That an OBL look-alike is a poster boy for two competing political parties in Bihar is a disturbing sign. It implies that the poster boy appeals to the Muslims voters, and that the Muslim voters consider OBL a hero. The same OBL who clubs India among the countries that need to be destroyed as the enemies of the one true god. So it comes down to the tacit admission on the part of these political parties that their Muslim voters have allegiances to parties and people who have India’s destruction as part of their agenda and therefore the Muslims are traitors. Should not both Paswan and Yadav be charged with sedition?

{Followup post: The government as big daddy.}

I think that we Indians have been brainwashed into worshipping an idol called “democracy” without an understanding of what democracy means and what is implied in terms of rights and responsibilities for the functioning of a democratic society. Democracy is definitely not an event such as periodic general elections; it is a process that permeates the fabric of the political lives of all its citizens. It has something to do with the people taking ownership of their own governance at all levels–from the neighborhood citizens’ group involved in keeping the streets clean to the national level where the matters relate to which party most effectively does the job that a government is supposed to do.

Merely having periodic elections full of sound and fury with totally clueless voters every so often does not constitute a democracy any more than having a very loud wedding full of hired guests consitutes a marriage. A wedding however lavish is merely an event and is not a substitute for the daily process of sharing and caring and coping that goes into the making of a marriage which is a process.

I have seen too many fancy weddings which end up as lousy marriages.

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The Russians were also extremely active in trying to influence Indian opinion. According to KGB files, by 1973 it had on its payroll ten Indian newspapers as well as a press agency. The previous year the KGB claimed to have planted 3,789 articles in Indian newspapers — probably more than in any other country in the non-communist world. By 1975 the number of articles it claimed to have inspired had risen to 5,510. India was also one of the most favourable environments for Soviet front organisations.

OK, so far so good. An instructive story indeed. But what lesson does one draw from it? That the Soviets tried but failed to influence India materially? Maybe. But I don’t understand the position of one reader of The Acorn when he wrote:

What an amazing story. One of the (then) world’s superpowers pumps in millions, and yet, our democratic institutions have been strong enough to withstand them.

The article says that between 3 and 5 thousand stories had been planted in the Indian press and that the prime minister had been bribed. The press and the prime minister’s office, I guess, are important democratic institutions. They were compromised. It hardly speaks to the strength of our democratic institutions.

Now the rejoinder may be this: “Yes, but don’t you see the Indian voter, so wonderfully perceptive, immediately saw through those thousands of planted stories and recognized the corruption of the Congress decided to vote them out of office? Amazing rectitude and foresight and perspicacity of the Indian voter, isn’t it?”

Indeed it would be, if only this were true. The average Indian voter did not read newspapers and therefore whether they contained planted fake articles or they contained the wisdom of the ancients is not material. The average Indian voter could not even know about the corruption at high levels, especially when it come to the party of Gandhi (happily ascribing the old man’s virtues to Nehru’s children). This was so because the average Indian voter was an illiterate rural voter who was as likely to read the doctored papers as I am likely to read the Pravda—hardly likely since I am illiterate in Russian.

What scared the holy crap out of the average Indian voter was the rumor that the government of Indira Gandhi was out to castrate him. It all started with the idiot Sanjay Gandhi forcibly administering vasectomies on some hapless poor people in a misguided but well-intentioned effort to stop the population explosion. To the above mentioned average Indian voter, castration and vasectomies are synonymous. It was their fear of losing their gonads and being turned into eunuchs that did the trick, not some imagined resilience of India’s “democratic institution.”

It is not hard to determine the source of the confusion about India’s much trumpeted democracy. It arises from the mistaken belief that democracy is about going to a voting station periodically to cast a vote for a party of one’s choice. True, democracy is about choosing who you want to give the power to govern you. But is it not just choice, it is about informed choice. How one can be informed about parties and people who are so far removed from one – geographically, socially, economically, psychically – and with the additional handicap of being illiterate, is a mystery to me. To me, democracy means a lot more than an uninformed horde putting its thumb impression on a symbol (most people cannot read) and the choice is sometimes dictated by a harmless petty bribe, and sometimes by the more pernicious promises of the politicians such as free power or job reservations.

Democracy is not about the periodic general elections in which the choice is increasingly limited to a gallery of the most corrupt thugs in the constituency. It is about democratic institutions such as a free and informed system of electing of public-spirited political leaders, a free market, an efficient legal system which recognizes property rights and enforces contracts without delay, a police force that prevents crime instead of doing crime, a rule of law that recognizes all its citizens as equals and is blind to religion and creed, etc, none of which are developed in India.

There is no reason on earth why we don’t have a good democracy in place. Or maybe there is a good reason. India’s feudal past could explain it to some extent. With a long history of being serfs and slaves, bending in servitude comes naturally. True, voting allows a person to choose, but serfs and slaves can vote the feudal lord into power pretty effectively.

We need democracy in India now. Since democracy is of the people and by the people, the people have to be at the very least informed and not ignorant. We the people have to become literate and educated before we can truthfully boast of being the largest democracy in the world. Until we become literate and educated, I would not speak too loudly of how great a democracy we are.

Ascribing the failures of the KGB to a mysterious maturity of the Indian democracy makes one feel good but lulls us into complacency that we have arrived and there is no need for any futher effort.

Related link: See the IndianExpress report “KGB paid Congress, CPI, media” for more gory details.

Alexis de Tocqueville said that “the only passions I have are love of liberty and human dignity.” This is the bicentennial year of his birth. He was only 30 years old when his Democracy in America was published in 1835.

Gary Galles’s article Tocqueville on Liberty in America at the Mises Institute is worth reading. “The bicentennial of Alexis Charles Henri Maurice Clerel, the Comte de Tocqueville, is an apt time to revisit the insights on liberty in Democracy in America.That is especially true today, since he recognized that liberty and democracy are not the same thing, despite the common modern confusion between them. Even more crucial, he recognized that democracy can be the enemy of liberty, and that of the two, liberty is far more important.”

Here, for the record, are a few selected de Tocqueville quotes from Galles’s article. People often talk very loudly about democracy. I wonder how many have considered what democracy actually means and what they mean by democracy. Indians, especially, need to think a bit about democracy and liberty.

• The Revolution of the United States was the result of a mature and reflecting preference for freedom, and not of a vague or ill-defined craving for independence.

• It profits me but little, after all, that a vigilant authority always protects the tranquility of my pleasures and constantly averts all dangers from my path, without my care or concern, if this same authority is the absolute master of my liberty and my life . . .

• The great end of justice is to substitute the notion of right for that of violence and to place a legal barrier between the government and the use of physical force.

• . . . the main evil of the present democratic institutions of the Unites States does not arise, as is often asserted . . . from their weakness, but from their irresistible strength. I am not so much alarmed at the excessive liberty which reigns in that country as at the inadequate securities which one finds there against tyranny.

• The only means of preventing men from degrading themselves is to invest no one with that unlimited authority which is the sure method of debasing them.
• If the absolute power of a majority were to be substituted by democratic nations . . .[men] would simply have discovered a new physiognomy of servitude . . . when I feel the hand of power lie heavy on my brow, I care but little to know who oppresses me; and I am not the more disposed to pass beneath the yoke because it is held out to me by the arms of a million men.

• The taste which men have for liberty and that which they feel for equality are, in fact, two different things . . . among democratic nations they are two unequal things.

• . . . democratic communities have a natural taste for freedom; left to themselves, they will seek it, cherish it, and view any privation of it with regret. But for equality their passion is ardent, insatiable, incessant, invincible; they call for equality in freedom; and if they cannot obtain that, they still call for equality in slavery.

• . . . public tranquility is a great good, but . . . all nations have been enslaved by being kept in good order.

• . . . the despotism of faction is not less to be dreaded than the despotism of an individual.

• . . . the species of oppression by which democratic nations are menaced is unlike anything that ever before existed in the world. . . . Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood. . . . For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of poverty and subdivides their inheritances: what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living?

• After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.

• . . . the people shake off their state of dependence just long enough to select their master and then relapse into it again . . . they think they have done enough for the protection of individual freedom when they have surrendered it to the power of the nation at large. This does not satisfy me: the nature of him I am to obey signifies less to me than the fact of extorted obedience.

The islanders had noticed that Europeans had some sort of powerful magic which allowed them to receive stuff from the heavens. The islanders decided that they too must make arrangements to receive stuff. So they faithfully reproduced the artifacts that they saw the Europeans use in magically making cargo appear out of the skies. They cleared a large area in the forest, lit bonfires around this, built a hut close by in which they put a box with antennae sticking out of it, made ‘headphones’ out of coconut shells, and spoke earnestly into a ‘microphone’. Then they waited for cargo to drop out of the skies, just as they had seen the Europeans receive during the war.

It is a fascinating tale and has wide-ranging implications. The islanders were not stupid, merely ignorant. They figured out what we could call the ‘front end’ of the whole enterprise. They did not know that there was a very deep backend to the deal. In their ignorance, they expected a facsimile to work and when it didn’t, they attempted to modify the front end to more accurately reflect the bits they had observed the Europeans use.

The cargo cult is an amazingly important metaphor for our age. Technology is increasingly becoming more complex and the effective use of this complex technology confers immense advantage. However, the more complex the technology, the more its use is dependent on a complex ecology within which it is developed. Transplanting the technology without the supporting ecology is a waste because it does not work as advertised. The technology — whether it is hardware, software, all sorts of institutions — co-evolved with other bits that form an ecological whole which make the whole system function whereas any subsystem in isolation will not work.

Let’s take an institution such as capitalism, for example. Hernando DeSoto in his book The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else outlines the missing bits in the case of capitalism. Another example: why did the shift to a market economy spell disaster for the former Soviet Union. A market economy has a very deep backend. That backend includes institutions such as the legal system which enforces contracts, a flexible labor market, a number of banking and financial intermediation institutions, and so on. Without the supporting institutions, the market institution is a non-starter. It is merely a cargo cult market economy.

In the area of digital technology also, we see the cargo cult mentality. The modern computer evolved in advanced industrialized countries (AIC). AICs have other systems that support the use of computers and these systems also evolved to keep pace with the rapid evolution of computers. Transplanting computers to a place where these systems don’t exist is silly because the computers are then like the props used by the South Pacific islanders. It is no wonder that they don’t work as advertised.

My final example of the cargo cult metaphor is the institution called democracy. Voting every so often to elect representatives that sit in a great big hall to decide matters of national importance is the front end. The deep backend requires an informed public at a minimum. Even under the best of circumstances, aggregating individual preferences is a risky venture as students of public choice theory will appreciate. (See Ken Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem.)

In the case of India, we have a cargo cult democracy. It looks like one with electronic voting machines and election speeches and manifestos, with pollsters and pundits, with election commissioners and voting stations. Only the deep backend is missing. There is no understanding of issues of substance among the people who vote. Put up a name which is recognizable, and they would vote for or against that name. Promise enough freebies (free electricity, for instance) and they will vote for you, never mind that it may bankrupt the state and that eventually it will impoverish the same voting public. For democracy to work, you need accountability — both among those who vote and those who are elected. In an area where the government is seen as a source for endless handouts by the people, and the leaders look upon their stint in the driving seat as an excellent opportunity to steal from the public, democracy is not likely to work. All the talk about the smart voter is so much hogwash that the mind boggles.

The Indian stock market is crashing. People are voting with their pocketbooks and sending an important signal. The signal, as I see it, is that the Indian economy is spinning around in the bowl and will soon be down the tubes as soon as the flush cycle finishes.

It is all karma, neh?

Social planners face a difficult task in the context of a ‘democratically’ run economically backward state. To win the mandate of the masses, they have to give handouts to the people. Given limited resources at the disposal of the government, the choice is often between doling out the resources to the masses for short-term consumption needs, and using the resources for investment for future growth. To the masses living close to subsistence, short-term consumption wins over long-term investment.

Alexander Fraaser Tytler wrote in his The Decline and Fall of the Athenian Republic (1776)

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years.

I am convinced that any social planner within a democracy who does not promise and deliver government largesse to the masses, is not going to hold on to his job for long. Will dictatorship follow inevitably? I am not sure of that. The next social planner will learn the lesson and to maintain his job, he will focus on the short-term and hand out goodies to the voters at the expense of long-term growth.

The lesson? Beware of boundary conditions and corner-solutions. When you hit the corners, the usual rules don’t apply. The function is not differentiable at that point.

Rajesh Jain’s blog has an item on lessons from India’s elections which got me thinking. The claim made by Shekhar Gupta of the Indian Express is that India’s voter has become smart.

Compared to whom? I ask. Compared to Shekhar Gupta?

I guess so since Shekhar Gupta claims that the Indian voter has become smart. For I don’t see any reason to believe that the Indian voter has changed in any substantial way. The Indian voter continues to be a narrow-minded, ignorant, casteist, bigoted, vacuous idiot it has always been.

Here is my reasoning.

• Exhibit A: I look at the politicians of this country. To a first approximation, they are ignorant, bigoted, casteist, vacuous idiotic criminals. These bunch of unspeakable criminals (where I use the word in its literal sense) are consistently voted into power by the Indian voter.
• Fact B: A population of wise, informed, well-meaning, broad-minded, intelligent voters cannot continue to vote a bunch of corrupt ignorant bigots as their political leaders.
• Major Premise C: Voters reveal their character by expressing their preferences at the polls.
• Minor Premise D: Leaders are endogenous to the group, that is, they emerge from within the group and so reflect the dominant traits of the group.

Mr Gupta writes that the voter is not swayed by charisma. Well, how would we know? We need charismatic people first and then if the voter is unmoved, we can say that it is true.

We do know that the Indian voter is swayed by “big names”, though. Why else would they trot out an uneducated chap (Rahul Gandhi) as the Congress mascot unless they were confident that the Indian voter will be swayed?

What else explains the tenacity with which the entire Nehru-Gandhi clan is totally into getting into the highest political positions? By their indomitable courage? No. Their astonishing brilliance in academics? None are really even educated. Their thorough understanding of the problems of development? Never done an honest day’s work. Their undying dedication to the hard task of nation building? Shirley, you jest. Their selfless sacrifice demonstrated by their social work? Not a bloody chance in hell.

What then explains the astonishing idiocy of the Indian voter to continue to vote the Nehru-Gandhi clan to power?

Let’s face the facts. I would have loved to report that we are a great democracy. We are not. If we were, we would not be facing the prospect of having an Italian aupair as the prime minister of a country of 1000 000 000 people. She says that she is loyal to her adopted country (never mind that she did not apply for Indian citizen for over a decade). Well, I would ask her whether she has any loyalty to the country that she was born in. No? If a person has no loyalty towards the land of one’s birth, I would not pay a tinker’s damn to any other oath of loyalty that the person takes. If you change your allegiance once, it is all too easy to do it once again. Indians who don’t understand that simple concept are idiots and I don’t care how accomplished they may be in their respective fields. If an Indian says that Sonia’s origin is not an issue for the prime minister’s seat, I would say that Indian is a moron.

I have met only a handful of politicians personally. I have known some of them well and all of them — every one of them to the last person — has accumulated vast sums of money through bribery and corruption. It is a random sample. I have no doubt that the vast majority of Indian politicians are corrupt. Politicians are endogenous to the population. They are random samples drawn from the underlying population. In other words, the sample characteristics give an indication of the population characteristics. The corruption of the politicians is the single most damning evidence that the voters are corrupt.

That is the law.

First, markets. One of the most important lessons mankind has learnt is that markets work. There are, however, very important pre-conditions for markets to work. When those pre-conditions are not met, markets fail. That means, the workings of markets in the presence of failures leads to socially sub-optimal, and even harmful, outcomes. Indeed, if the necessary conditions required for markets to function are not met, market fundamentalism can lead to positively disastrous results.

Markets allocate resources efficiently only if there are no information imperfections, there are no externalities, there are no public goods, there are no scale economies, and so on. Information imperfections such as asymmetric information lead to market failures such as pointed out by George Akerlof in his seminal paper titled The Market for Lemons. Scale economies allow monopolies to develop with its attendant losses and which then require regulation to address them. Public goods are a necessity in any economy and markets are notorious for under-providing them. Government intervention is a way to nudge markets to provide optimal amounts of public goods. Markets fail when there are externalities: markets over-provide goods with negative externalities, and under-provide goods with positive externalities. Again, regulation is required to fix these failures.

The important point is that markets work but only if certain necessary conditions are met. Consequently, imposing markets on a system which does not meet those often stringent conditions could result in unintended consequences.

Just as the market is a great organizing principle in the economic sphere, so also democracy is a great and noble organizing principle in the political sphere. Democracy works, provided its pre-conditions are met. The necessary conditions include at a minimum: full information, accountability, economic freedom, institutional memory, and so on. Democracy cannot work when the electorate is nearly totally uninformed, where there are strong vested interests, where the notion of accountability is non-existent, where voters can be intimidated and bribed, where the culture is steeped in feudalism, and where illiteracy, superstition and corruption is the norm.

India’s democracy is at best a cargo cult democracy. Here is a brief news item from today’s The Times of India page 3. The Maharashtra Congress Committee vice-president Anant Gadgil plans to switch to the Shiv Sena because he did not get a ticket for contesting the elections. He wrote to the chief Sonia Gandhi and said:

Our family is known for its loyalty to the Nehru-Gandhi family, and to the Congress since independence. We always remember the recognition given by Indira and Rajiv Gandhi to my father for his utmost loyalty. Please let me know whether loyalty has no meaning left in the Congress party.

If those words don’t epitomize what Indian democracy is all about, I don’t know what does. Here is a person who wants to represent the will of the people, his constituency. And all he has to show for his qualifications for that task is his loyalty to a particular family. He does not plead that he has served the people of his constituency competently, he does not point out that he is capable of helping his society do better, he does not say that he understands the problems that his people face and that he has solutions, etc. Most likely he has not done any service nor is he capable of doing anything for the people. In keeping with the prevailing customs of the political parties in India — especially that of the Congress Party — all that he has to show is that he and his father have always been loyal lap-dogs of the of the ruling family.

Mr. Anant Gadgil may be an ignorant wanna-be. But he is not alone. His sentiments are shared by practically all “leaders” of the Congress party, from Messers Manmohan Singh and Narasimha Rao to the lowliest party worker. All they have to demonstrate is unquestioned loyalty to the Nehru-Gandhi family and they will get the nod. As self-interested rational individuals their stance cannot be faulted. The tens of millions of ignorant illiterate voters will vote for the Congress party simply because they recognize the Gandhi name. Therefore all Gadgils and the Singhs and Raos have to do is to plead their loyalty and they will get a ticket and therefore get elected.

To Anant Gadgil: Yes, loyalty still trumps everything else for the Congress party. Sorry that your nose doesn’t appear brown enough, though.

India has a cargo-cult democracy because it appears to be a democracy on the surface. Like a movie set, the facade presents a reasonable facsimilie of the real thing, but behind it, there is little substance. The hundreds of millions go through the motion of expressing their preference. But uninformed preference expressed haphazardly in a system that is corrupt to the core is not a receipe for a system of governance. It is no wonder that India ends up with “leaders” such as Rabri Devi and Laloo Yadav and Sonia Gandhi.

Democracy does not work in India. That is not to say that the fault lies with the idea of democracy. As a system of governance, there are few alternatives, just as markets are the best way to organize economic activities. But markets are prone to failures if its pre-conditions are not met. So also, democracy does not work in India because its necessary conditions are not met.

The challenge is therefore to ensure that we address the many failures that impede the workings of a democratic system. Installing electronic voting machines will do nothing towards that. Nor will the endless exhortation for people to go out and vote change the outcome. Even if every one of us were to vote, it would still be pointless if the choice we have is to elect either Tweedledum or Tweedledee.

It is a long and hard road to the place where democracy has any meaning. The first step along that road is undoubtedly universal primary education. Universal primary education is a prerequisite for universal adult franchise. Without primary education, you cannot have a literate and informed adult. Without an informed electorate, you cannot have a meaningful democracy. Perhaps that is the reason for the neglect of universal primary education — for that would down the road mean that the feudal lords of the ruling families will no longer be able to rule based simply on loyalty and may even have to work for a living.