During the run-up to the 2014 general election, there was both Modi hysteria and anti-Modi paranoia. Modi as a Nazi Hitler equivalent and Bharatiya Janata Party as a desi version of the Schutzstaffel (SS) were over the top, hyperbolic constructs stemming from fear and prejudice. There is a similar paranoia that Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and Arvind Kejriwal’s spectacular win has set off – that of communism.

This has also been articulated eloquently by my friend and colleague here.

This is a recurring theme in various discussions and op-eds currently.

Disclosure: Arvind is a friend whom I have known for over a decade and I’m a founder trustee in his non-government organisation (NGO), which was the secretariat for the India Against Corruption (IAC) movement for the Lokpal. I was one of those IAC members who voted in favour of the movement evolving into a political party (AAP) even though I did not formally join it myself.

The purpose of this piece is not to convince anyone that X or Y is a communist or capitalist, or not. Those very definitions are obsessive and retrograde while describing governance and economic systems, today. We live in a post-ideological (on economic systems) age.

The Cold War is long over and there have been too many seemingly contradictory policy prescriptions across the world in the past few decades, which make classification of new political formations in robust democracies along ideological lines inaccurate.

No one is saving anyone from communism or capitalism or any ism any more.

Economics is a discipline that brings together statistics, arithmetic and that very fickle unquantifiable – human behaviour. Which is why economists who don’t venture out of their data tables and matrices into the real world should be taken as seriously as travel experts who become explorers by watching Discovery Channel.

This is why a good economist needs to be a good politician and not necessarily the other way around as academic discourse would have you believe. Experiencing and exposing oneself to as much of the huge canvas of humanity where parallel realities exist makes an informed politician (and economist).

When Adam Smith wrote his Wealth of Nations (published in 1776) it was a different world and when Karl Marx came up with his Capital: Critique of Political Economy (published in 1867) it was too. (Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-first Century is a more relevant read). Both Smith and Marx were from a time where technology was in the Stone Age compared to what it is now.

There have been more innovations and inventions (in technology and models of governance) in the last 30 years than there have been in the last 300 years (even more in the last 100 than in the last 1,000 years). Technology and connectivity have altered human behaviour, the most important ingredient of economics. In this scenario, to tout political models and economic systems from the dark ages is unwise. That being the starting point, I’d like to point to the folly of defining policy prescriptions in ideological terms.

Here are a few examples from the last few decades that beat any such ideological definition.

Is Singapore’s housing board a communist or socialist programme? Does that make one of the most consumer-fuelled, hard-core “Capitalist” societies in the world (with one of the least regulated financial markets) “Socialist”?

What about Roosevelt’s post-Great Depression intervention – The New Deal? “Socialism”? Did it turn the beacon of free-market capitalism into a “Communist” country?

Did Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s call to woo private capital and industry while rejecting “Socialist” prescriptions make the Communist Party of India (Marxist) the “Capitalist” Party of India?

Was the stimulus that saved the American and the world economy from post-Lehman doom “Socialism”? Many popular right-wing commentators (unwisely and to much ridicule) have argued it was. Did that make America socialist? And evil?

The United States of America supported dictatorships in South America (including Cuba before the revolution) that pushed private corporations reaping rich rewards at the cost of the local population with disastrous results. Did that make those countries “Capitalist” and evil/good? I could go on and on but you get the idea.

There are enough checks and balances in a democracy that trump traditional ideology, and India is evolving into a very robust democracy in the last decade. So let’s all calm down. No Fuhrer is making us a fascist state and no Pol Pot is making us communist either – I’ll quote Roosevelt here, the architect of the New Deal, even as he faced the “Socialism” paranoia: “Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

In today’s day and age any system is as good, bad or effective as the environment it exists in. A rotten environment will give us rotten outcomes – read corruption. Corruption has destroyed free markets and private enterprise as swiftly as it has nanny states and welfare schemes.

Any economic system works if people are good, fair, honest, selfless, humble, responsible and so on. But people are none of those things most of the time. Which is why private enterprise needs regulation. Societies need free markets to encourage innovation, entrepreneurship and the most efficient use of resources. Governments need decentralisation of power.

Preserving the environment needs policy frameworks and every citizen needs to have the right to vote, thus, accepting and rejecting any or all of the above. None of this is a static space. It is constantly evolving.

The architecture of investigating agencies determines how corruption is tackled. Rules that minimise conflict of interest, crony enterprise and nepotism are imperative (and non-existent in India). Robust anti-corruption laws determine how a political (economic) system performs. All that, and symbolism that goes with setting examples at the top.  Optics matter.

To hold up one policy prescription and project that as an ideology is to ignore governance in India and the world. And I use the word “governance” seriously, not how it’s thrown around like an ill-conceived cliché, such as “good economics versus good politics”.

India will not go down the way of libertarians or neo-libs would like and neither down the way of communism as many relics would like. Just like it will not be “ruled” as opposed to “governed” by some Hitler-like fuhrer.

In a country that ranks 85^th on the corruption perception index with countries ahead of us, a fact that will make any proud Indian cringe, I’d say corruption is a big deal. The Biggest Deal. If that appears as a sideshow to a sexier political idiom like reform, capitalism/communism, decisiveness, Make in India and so on, then I’m afraid any endeavour across the economic divide is doomed to fail.

In such an environment, if someone says challenging corruption and tackling it is the first thing on his or her agenda (which includes a Lokpal and a citizen’s charter) it’s enough for me to say that’s the way to go. With corruption down, “Capitalist” ideas like special economic zones, land acquisition, capital markets and industry and entrepreneurship can thrive.

With corruption down “Socialist” ideas like the Food Security Bill, subsidised lifeline services and the public distribution system can work way more efficiently.

There may be many reasons to attack and criticise AAP but to turn this into an ideological or class war can only be described as extreme prejudice. To construct the way forward on behalf of AAP with the kind of certainty I see is surprising. Even mathematicians don’t have such certainty and that’s a pure science, unlike economics or politics.

I will happily reject an idea when I see it fail, but to do so on a narrative written in someone’s head that is yet to play out while the very same mindset ignores the colourful history of corruption, murder, loot, riot and carnage of other political parties and leaders that has played out and been documented, is inconsistent and unfair.

If there is one thing the last few years of political churn have demonstrated it is that we live in a post-ideological economic age. Political parties clinging to traditional ideological positions are making as big a mistake as commentators trying to define an entire movement or political formation through conventional -isms.

Many have tried their hand at predictions, writing the last act of the Kejriwal saga from the days of Right to Information agitations to the Jan Lokpal movement to AAP’s government formation. All appear clumsy now.

There have been obituaries to Kejriwal’s politics and then some more. Below are just a few. The most unrefined of Google searches throw these up. I recall reading ten times the number below across mainstream news media.

http://blog.tehelka.com/fasting-into-oblivion/

http://archive.tehelka.com/story_main53.asp?filename=Ne180812Coverstory.asp

http://www.oneindia.com/feature/arvind-kejriwal-biggest-enemy-of-our-democracy-1395491.html

http://www.niticentral.com/2014/11/25/arvind-kejriwal-staring-end-road-says-tavleen-singh-246738.html

Notice the certainty with which the “analyst” and host speak of the most fickle of all things – human behaviour. The funny thing is, many analysts continue to find space on prime-time news panels. Why blame credit rating agencies who gave AAA ratings to junk bonds causing the worst economic crisis of our time thanks to “Capitalism” and then saved by “Socialism”.

But it is healthy and good for a democracy to have people venturing into conflicting narratives.  Even if one commits oneself to a hypothesis, and it fails and doesn’t land like one had anticipated. You can always say later – Ok, I was wrong. I’m sorry. It works – ask Kejriwal.