Oh Ye, Of Little Knowledge!

Beni says inflation’s good for farmers. Shivpal says to eat Nilgais. Our politicians - jacks of all trades, masters of none.

WrittenBy:Dr. Ashoka Prasad
Date:
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“A politician, by virtue of the varied experience available to him, is blessed with more opportunities than anyone to study, learn and educate himself and should never lose the motivation to do so. When a politician ceases to learn from experience, he loses the essential pre-requisite to remain a public servant although he may continue to be a politician.”

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Those were the golden words uttered by Tomas Masaryk, one of the political giants of 20th century Europe and a versatile genius. He is one of the very few political successes to have acquired a reputation as a thinker and philosopher. Being born to parents who had no formal education, it was sheer industry and brilliance which saw him acquire dizzy heights as an academic and was appointed a full professor of philosophy at a very early age. Later on, as a politician, he made seminal contributions to the formation of Czechoslovakia and won admiration from his contemporary international politicians.

I was reminded of Masaryk when I listened to the pathetic statement that had emerged from an Indian politician, a Union Cabinet Minister no less, in which he applauded inflation as a blessing for hard-pressed farmers. Even more troubling was the attempt by another Cabinet Minister – Salman Khurshid – to defend the indefensible.

Beni Prasad Verma has had a chequered career. His political gaffes are just about as frequent and predictable as his political somersaults. But has he ever bothered to learn from his experiences? The answer would have to be a resounding negative – at least that is the way it seems.

Not that that has ever come in the way of his getting top positions in the political hierarchy in many governments. One may even argue that there is no motivation for him to learn if he is getting rewarded without putting in any effort.

It would I believe be unreasonable to expect Verma to be an expert on the subject that he has been assigned, ie Steel. I am not sure whether he would be able to conduct an informed decision on Bessemer and I am also doubtful if he would be able to hold his own on the technical aspects of his department. After all, he is not a technocrat. And being a politician, he can always call upon the experts for meaningful advice. And that is what Masaryk described as an opportunity that politicians have which no other profession enjoys.

There have been loads of instances all over the world where politicians have been assigned departments about which they had no known expertise or understanding. Many after having served in those capacities have acquired enviable expertise in that field.

Take Denis Healey, now Lord Healey. He had worked in the Foreign Affairs Department of the Labour Party in the UK in the Fifties when that party spent long years in the Opposition. When the Labour Party came to power in 1964 under Harold Wilson, he was appointed the Secretary of State for Defense – an area he was totally unfamiliar with. Healey’s calibre was demonstrated when the Indonesians occupied Borneo, and like a very seasoned politician he kept the situation firmly under political control, in the process angering many hawks in the armed forces – including it is rumoured Lord Mountbatten. The result was a resounding success for the Wilson government. Indonesia withdrew and armed conflict was averted. By popular consensus, Healey, now 94, is respected as the best Secretary of State for Defense Britain has had in the post-War years.

During Wilson’s second innings as the Prime Minister, Healey was again not given the Foreign Ministry but made the Chancellor of the Exchequer – the equivalent of the Finance Minister in India. Again an area in which he had no special expertise. The oil crisis was on the horizon and Healey’s political acumen again came to Britain’s rescue. It was only when Labour was relegated to the Opposition benches that he was asked to act as the Shadow Foreign Secretary and undoubtedly his mettle was there for everyone to see.

And this is what Masaryk said was the essential quality one should look for in any politician.

But do we see this quality in the Indian politicians? Verma has “mis-spoken” to use the colloquial employed by Jay Leno to describe the accident-prone Dan Quayle. And it is a fair bet that Verma is not going to be penalised for this.

In all fairness, it needs to be pointed out that India in recent years has cultivated a tradition of yokel politicians. They are neither experts at anything, nor do they have any urge to acquire expertise and learning from the opportunities they get.

Very recently we were witness to the most unseemly spectacle of a Cabinet Minister in Uttar Pradesh giving the green signal to his bureaucrats to steal. Leave alone face prosecution, he remains in the Cabinet. He has little expertise in the portfolio he has been allocated, and if his pronouncements are any indication, neither has he shown any inclination to learn anything. Was it not this man, Shivpal Yadav who advised people in a speech to consume Nilgais as they made excellent kebabs!

The unfortunate fact in the Indian polity has been that people are not allocated portfolios according to merit, but owing to other extraneous considerations. This state of affairs has been in evidence ever since Independence. Even a person of Nehru’s stature was not immune from this tendency as evidenced by his appointments.

The classic example was that of Sardar Baldev Singh who used to be the Sikh representative during the independence negotiations. A remarkable man he certainly was, but his disinterest in the area of defense made him a curious choice for the Defense Minister. Brigadier JP Dalvi in his book The Himalayan Blunder adumbrates the harm this
appointment did in the long run. Not that the Sardar was not a brilliant man, but defense was an area he was least interested in and consequently made no real effort to acquire any degree of expertise in.

The same was true for VK Krishna Menon. A genius he certainly was, but defense was not an area that he was inclined to get adequate insight into and as a result most of his decisions were the outcome of his authoritarian whims – and proved disastrous.

But it was Indira who truly commenced the tradition of rewarding individuals for servility to herself and her coterie rather than any merit. And it is this tradition that has continued till date by governments of almost all shades. We had to suffer the embarrassment of Raj Narain and his clownish antics as the Health Minister in the Morarji Cabinet. And subsequently, it became  accepted that merit was not going to be a factor in Cabinet formation.

Our founding fathers, if the debates in the Constituent Assembly are any guide, had foreseen this difficulty and for a while debated whether the US system where the legislature is almost completely divorced from the executive would be preferable. The high degree of consensus at the time was to stick with the Westminster model and the Irish model. But the Westminster model came into its present form only after centuries of experience, and the Irish who borrowed largely from it benefited from the British experience because of the proximity to the country and shared history. Constitutional experts from Britain like Norman St John Stevas and Sean Lamass from Ireland have both commented that the constitutional schemes in their countries would be rendered unworkable if the principle of accountability was not adhered to by all concerned – the voters, the representatives and the executive.

And it is the last aspect that we need to pay attention to the most in India. Despite the hullabaloo about the Right to Information Act, its enforcement has not brought down significant levels of ministerial and political cowboy-ism that we witness daily, and the frustration we feel over our inability to change the status quo.

And this status quo involves not just politicians, but an unholy cartel of all the active political players which include bureaucrats and journalists as well. Thus far, the judiciary remains free but there are enough grounds for trepidation.

And unless we take the bull by the horn and do something about this entire cartel, we must be prepared to put up with the likes of Beni Prasad and Shivpal Yadav in power.

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