The`Passwan’ factor

Ram Vilas Paswan, we all know, is the ultimate populist, so much so that he should, perhaps, change the way he spells his name -- just add an extra `S' .

File photo of Ram Vilas Paswan | Pankaj Nangia | Bloomberg

Are you likely to be on Yashwant Sinha’s side or Ram Vilas Paswan’s on the question of giving away free phones to telecom employees? Are you with Mamata Banerjee when she doles out railway jobs and contracts to the jobless in West Bengal and, in her budget, promises to build a hundred hotels for rail travellers?

It’s all, you might say, a no-brainer. Paswan, we all know, is the ultimate populist, so much so that he should, perhaps, change the way he spells his name — just add an extra `S’ to make it “Passwan”, given his record of handing out railway passes. And Mamatadi? She is so cute, simple, always travels economy class. But could we give her a permanent seat on the opposition benches? Please?

There may be a different way of looking at the Paswans and the Mamatas than to perceive them as the cynical, old-fashioned sarkari gravy train drivers. Can we see them as genuine political animals who could make such a difference to the pace and quality of economic change if only we could persuade them to join the reform brigade?

Why should it make such a big difference?

Economic reform has so far been blighted by the hesitation on the part of the classical vote-gathering politician to accept it as a good thing for his career. The staunchest champions of reform have either been the WorldBank-IMF trained economists or economists-turned-gentleman-politicians.Manmohan Singh, Chidambaram, Yashwant Sinha are all members of a distinct,English-speaking, urbane, clean set of Johnnies-come-lately who strayed into politics from economics, law and the IAS, respectively. They have pushed economic change in isolation of the political mainstream.

Their personality and upbringing make them distant from day-to-day politics.They are great when addressing corporate India at CII, FICCI and Assochamand confabulating with the Fund-Bank mandarins, but make very little sense to Real India. At a pinch they may be able to convince middle class urbanIndia it is good for them if the government reduces the subsidy on the LPG they consume. But how can they sell the increase in fertiliser prices to the farmer, the reduction in the PDS grain to the poor and the shutting down of loss-making PSUs to the workers being laid off? To talk to Real India onthis you need real politicians.

In the scam age, politics has been in bad odour as a profession. But a democracy needs its politicians as much as it needs its civil servants,judges, policemen, soldiers. A military dictator can bring about changes in society and economy at gunpoint. A benign dictatorship, like Singapore, can even enforce through fiat, laws that curb such basic human freedoms as chewing gum. But in a democracy every new idea, every departure from the past has to be explained — and sold — to the people. That needs politicians, sometimes even the rabble-rousers.

The presumption that politics and reform don’t go together has harmed us. It is a disaster that much of the reform so far has not only been implemented in isolation from politics, some of it has, in fact, been deliberately implemented behind the back of the political system. Those who know the pulse of the people and the idiom in which to communicate with them have never been made part of the campaign. Take the example of WTO. It is no use a Chidambaram, a Yashwant Sinha or a Jairam Ramesh arguing endlessly through the pink papers and the glossies that global free trade is good for India when the poor farmer is convinced that it is a western conspiracy to pick his pocket.

Similarly, on patents, a very erudite R.A. Mashelkar, head of the Council ofScientific and Industrial Research, has, repeatedly and convincingly, argued that the new IPR regime, instead of enabling the West to steal our traditional knowledge actually helps us protect it. But it is no use if the entire rural constituency is abandoned to the vile charms of the jholawala brigade that says just the opposite.

The urban, educated, upwardly mobile India has already accepted the mantra of reform. If anything, its acceptance of economic change and globalisation is far too unquestioning to be healthy. But the poor, rural and real India, the Bharat that makes and unmakes governments in the elections, is still deeply sceptical. To persuade it to look at the picture differently, you need the Paswans, the Pilots, the Mamatas and the Mahajans, the Fernandeses and the Chautalas. For real India they are the “people like us”. They look less like agents of the World Bank and the IMF.

Why has this not happened so far? Under Narasimha Rao, reforms did,actually, begin stealthily, under IMF pressure. He was never an instinctive reformer and Manmohan Singh was a latter-day convert. They were in a minority of two in the cabinet until some of the ministers, holding infrastructure portfolios, figured out the spoils in calibrated,discretion-laden and selective opening up of their respective sectors.

The subsequent Third Front governments had even lesser commitment to liberalisation. It was full of old socialists and new Lohiaites who could barely stand Chidambaram. Yet, he was able to carry on because Deve Gowda in his own rustic way had come to accept change. He did not quite comprehend  its scope. Nor did he have the personality or the articulation to market it.But he had the foresight to leave Chidambaram free. But he had to proceed in silence, almost stealthily.

More was expected of the BJP. But it came to power in the midst of confusionon its economic policy. It was battling the swadesh is within its own parivar. Besides, having opposed the WTO, insurance Bill and so many other reformist steps in the past, it now had to make a quick turnaround. It is only now that, led by Sinha, Jaitley, Kumaramangalam and Mahajan, it is shaking off that hesitation. Reform can only gain momentum if you have aFernandes selling the benefits of the VRS to the workers, Mamata justifying the liquidation of the IISCO and Chautala and Badal telling the farmers why fewer subsidies but better infrastructure is good for them. It may sound unlikely, but is not impossible. These are tough, earthy, cynical politicians. But they are not morons. Once they understand their stake in change they could transform the equation and, in turn, make the jholawalas look like blabbering, bored memsahibs.

On a recent visit to Bangalore one of the big dads of the high-tech industry made an interesting comparison between Naidu and S.M. Krishna. Naidu, he said, was going to be more successful because he was more of a political animal. Krishna, he thought, might not be able to move so fast.

“But he should know what he is doing,” I asked, “after all he is a Fulbright scholar.”

“That is the problem,” said this maharaja of market cap, “How I wish he washalf-bright and at least half-a-politician.” At the end of the day, he explained, you have to sell your policies to your people, get work done inDelhi.

This is why we have to learn to see the Paswans in a different perspective.Is his logic behind free phones a bit like the Employee Stock Options(ESOPs). Except that nobody has perhaps reasoned with him like that. Aren’tChautala and Badal, now going back on their free-power-to-the-farmer promise the likely new spokesmen for the reform process? Now what do we have to do to bring Mamata and Fernandes also on this bandwagon?