The Constitution of India, which is celebrated every year on the 26th of January as Republic Day, does three things:
· Firstly, it puts the people of India and the public good CENTERSTAGE in all government policy
· Secondly, it delineates the moral framework for the government’s functioning, by asserting its faith in the universal values of liberty, equality, and fraternity
· Thirdly it provides a template for good governance, ensuring efficiency, effectiveness, participation, accountability, responsiveness, transparency, inclusion, equity and rule of law in the day to day functioning of government and its various institutions, while encouraging all policy making and legislation to be through a consensus negotiated and arrived at by the country’s Elected Representatives
I have made Republic Day the occasion on which I take a look at issues of governance in the country, and this time I am appalled to find that governance in its fullest sense has virtually disappeared from the Indian scene and been replaced by politics.
When governance becomes pure politics the country is in trouble. Let me explain.
As outlined in the Constitution, one of the key roles of any government is to ensure equality and fraternity by enabling the DEVELOPMENT of the people in every sense of the word – by providing them with education, livelihoods, housing, health care, infrastructure, services and social security. However, when this aspect of governance is reduced to politics, we witness the unedifying spectacle of all political parties literally buying votes with tax-payers’ money by promising ever growing and increasingly unsustainable freebies before every election. As the intended beneficiaries are also the largest voter block, the party that ‘promises’ the most manages to win the election. They are feeding the poor for a day by giving them a fish (politics) and not feeding them for a lifetime by teaching them how to fish (governance).
If this is the politicisation of governance at the bottom level, there is an equally pernicious process happening at the top – not just in India, but globally as well. What commentators call the OCGFC (Owners and Controllers of Global Financialized Capital) are increasingly deciding the domestic and foreign policy across the world, and as the largest benefactors of political parties, the OCGFC inevitably politicise international relations.
India won the respect of both superpowers, USA and the Soviet Union, as a founding member of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) which oversaw the demise of the Colonial era, and kept India out of the conflicts of the Cold War era, allowing it to work exclusively for the public good of its vast, impoverished population. However, post-liberalisation, India has witnessed not only the privatisation of its public assets but also of its policy and decision making. Instead of non-alignment India’s foreign policy in recent years has literally fallen between two stools, precisely because it chose to protect private interests at the cost of public ones.
· First, it allowed private companies to bypass the sanctions imposed by the West after the Ukraine conflict, and import vast quantities of Russian oil. (News item: Russia’s Rosneft has pledged to supply private Indian refiner Reliance with about half a million barrels of crude a day. At today’s prices, this will generate $13 billion annually for Russia). This naturally upset the US and its allies.
· Second, the ruling party in India has been vehement in its support of Israel (despite the growing distaste for its genocidal policies across the world), partly to protect the investments of another capitalist crony in Israel’s weapons and industry and port infrastructure, and partly for ideological reasons. This has thoroughly alienated India in the global South and among Arab and Muslim civil societies worldwide. In fact, India has never been so utterly marginalised in the international community as now, and even in BRICS+, of which India was a founding member, the letter ‘I’ has increasingly come to stand for Iran, rather than India. What a shame!
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However bleak the outlook, I have great faith in the will of the Indian people, and feel that the situation is still redeemable if: both the Government and Opposition get out of their perpetual Election mode; Policy making insists on consensus rather than the confrontation that is the staple of the Indian Parliament today; and the much delayed National Census is conducted ASAP to enable informed decision-making and planning for the larger public good.
Development and Governance 