Thursday, November 25, 2010

The Bihar Diaries

Writing for the first time after i joined IIM Indore and it takes a big event to move me out of the state of being silent on the blog.. the big event is my fascination with a geography and society called Bihar.

The election results of Bihar have sparked a multitude of thoughts within me. I am reminded of Lord of the Rings and the Star Wars or the Matrix trilogy as Nitish Kumar clearly emerges the Hero on whose shoulders there rests the hope of almost everyone in society around him. All hopes rested on one person .. there were many forces he was up against... and most of the hopefuls were unsure of how many forces will combine in his support and i stop the analogy there.. we have a HERO in the chief minister of Bihar. We have a story to tell and a moment to rejoice.

We the people of India have shown our commitment to development and to growth in action at the grassroots and not mere rhetoric of India Shining. The politics of India may seem to be in a far from ideal state but the election results in India are as good as it can get.

Why do i say so.. ? This is based on a partial understanding of Indian Politics and that comes as a disclaimer of a theory in the motions of formation.

The myth about elections:

1. Most of us educated anglophone urban individuals carry this impression that the rural individual, who actually votes and does not merely indulge in rhetoric like this blog entry, is illiterate and naive and exploited and first of all UNAWARE.

2. The politics is so decrepit that only money and caste equations drive politics and the objectives are narrow to individual vested interests.

My view of the truth about elections : as this is my view it is an interesting conjecture , a conjecture for being a viewpoint and interesting cause it comes from me .. an optimistic cynic as my friend Deepak Iyengar will like to call me.

My view of the elections and specifically the results:

1. India is not shining. the voters across the nation rejected the argument or belief of a shining India long back . We can still claim that those vote do not live in the India or are not connected or do not benefit from the India that shines. More interestingly , we can pursue the thought that India is not shining but the glitter of a lot that was not Gold has been last and so the shine on India is only comparative and hence most likely short-lived. That should be scary for many of us who have forgotten what it is to travel in Sleeper Class railway compartments and State Transport Buses but that proves the point that the voters know their stuff very well. Better than we know ours maybe.

2. Mere Rhetoric is not the modern mantra. Rhetoric needs to be backed by action. Voters are discriminating between mere rhetoric and a planned vision and following concerted action. The responses to the three seem to be very clearly different. ( Is that a hypothesis worth checking or is there enough evidence to prove that?). For a teacher of MBA students the nearest imperative is Where do the b-plans that i see in competitions and assignments lie on this continuum of mere rhetoric - planned vision - concerted action. Clearly less than 1 % reach the right extreme of the continuum. ( If not noticed.. then please notice the intended pun in using the "right" extreme of the continuum.). Sadly most of us miss out on this pun and hence never move in this direction of the continuum. As far as voters are considered, given an option mere rhetoric is neither necessary nor sufficient .. it is simply archaic and needs to be buried in its rightful place.

3. What is development?

This is the most interesting and debatable of the conclusions i draw.
The development sector, it seems, will perennially seek to figure out what development is and in that effort continually fail and strive for a better definition and in the process keep getting developed itself.

Clearly this development is about gaining depth , Accumulating Diversity and allowing it to thrive, resisting reactive actions and events, and of a straightforward action-oriented approach that is not restricted to few or that move closer to being holistic and simplistic.

I think this is the simple understanding of development that emerges from a development driven script of the elections and their results and we must bear in mind this was scripted by none other than the voter.

4. A Development Driven Script

As more and more people wrote about the vote for development i was thinking and questioning why do we say so and how can we be so confident about it ? As a researcher i was taught to believe nothing that was told to me and to ignore nothing that was told to me.
(This is the most crucial part of my blog and the only part where i say something that i think is intelligent).

The voter did not align on caste equations - i am unsure about that. I think we still have a caste formula that worked with the breaking of the M-Y combine and the focus on Mahadalits. If i go back to the voters understanding of development then the focus on Mahadalits makes perfect sense but there is greater meet in the realignment of the caste combine.

Earlier the Political affiliations decided what I gained and that decided in turn on what side of the beneficiary-non-beneficiary divide I existed as a voter. Now the alignment of castes is driven by development and my choice to be on what side of the beneficiary - non-beneficiary divide is determining my influence on my caste alignment. This radical shift in the thinking, in the minds of the voter, maybe .... subtle and unrecognized, has delivered that now caste alignments are based on how to bring greatest hope for development. and this is as traditional as it can get.

Only now we can link up that the definitions of development is different and more sharp in the minds of the voter and more localized too it seems. The development is not mere rhetoric but followed by a planned vision and even concerted action in some cases, the voters ability to give a clear mandate is recognized and the smart politician focuses on serving this mandate. And for politics in India in the post -independence and especially the post economic-reform era, this is as non-traditional as it can get.

Clearly the mandate of the people of Bihar ( the voters are supposed to represent them) is very very clear and enabling for a Chief Minister who understands it. However the pitfall that the CM has to avoid is his own casting as a HERO. Everyone now looks up to him and he runs the danger of developing a megalomaniac ego or a focus on enjoying the fruits of his hard work. I guess the Civil society has to understand the mandate that the vote is still for the hope and the evidence seen in the past but it is a mandate for continuing the hard work on the ground and the grassroots. The mandate is for the realignment of castes in new combinations that give hope to promote development powered by society and not by the schemes of the government. This subtle but radical shift is what in my opinion will determine a third term or a new government.