Lok Satta Party President Dr. Jayaprakash Narayan (Dr. JP) has underlined the need for ensuring that the best of people enter politics since never before in India’s history the opportunities for resolving people’s problems are as many as they are today. “There are no problems, which are really intractable any longer, except old age and death, and perhaps taxes. In fact, most problems are amenable to simple, practical solutions, if only we leverage our strengths”.
Paraphrasing Charles Dickens, Dr. JP has said it is the best of times since we have the means and technology at our disposal to resolve people’s problems and it is the worst of times since we do not have many people who enter public office with competence, commitment, and integrity and with a passion for public service.
Addressing a gathering of software professionals and others on ‘Leadership in 21st Century India – Opportunities and Challenges’, Dr. JP today bemoaned that the conditions in India are so rotten that an eminent person like Dr. Manmohan Singh, roundly defeated in the 1999 Lok Sabha elections, had to go to distant Assam to become a Member of the Rajya Sabha by a false declaration of residence.
Dr. JP said: “We, as a society, have enormous strengths. But as a society, building, nurturing, and developing leadership is certainly not one of them”.
Dr. JP said large sections of people feel that everybody in government -- politicians, bureaucrats, judges -- is a scoundrel -- and generalize that all rotten people in the country go into politics and all good people stay back. “Shunning politics and public office with such notions is, however, unwarranted and irrational. There are some very fine people in government just as there are very fine people in other walks of life. It is, therefore, absurd to conclude that scoundrels enter government and saints stay away”.
“Politics is perhaps the noblest of all endeavors because it is about reconciling the limited resources with unlimited wants, and reconciling seemingly irreconcilable conflicts among various groups in society, particularly in a very diverse and complex society. Without governments many things that are vital cannot be done.
“But unfortunately, politics has become the playfield of people who do not deserve to be there. Some are there because of their pedigree while many are there because of their money power or caste or muscle power. Strange circumstances catapult some others into high office.
“Such leaders rule the roost not because Indian people are stupid or irrational but because the problem is systemic. In the past 25 or 30 years, we have created disincentives for the right kind of people, and huge incentives for the wrong kind people, to enter politics”.
Dr. JP pointed out that there are answers to most problems. “Leadership is about identifying those answers, leveraging our strengths, and dramatically transforming the situation in the shortest possible time”. Dr. JP added that great changes in history all over the world had been wrought only when middle classes, the elite and the media joined hands, built appropriate platforms and launched concerted movements. “Do not expect the masses to be at the forefront of historical changes.”
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Dr. JP specifically dwelt on certain sectors, which call for transformational leadership.
Electoral system: While most of the countries, including Britain, are giving up “first-past-the-post” electoral system, we stick to it validating Macaulay’s observation, “Indians are the last living Englishmen”. It is time we switched to proportional representation.
Healthcare: We have one of the most disgraceful systems where public health expenditure is 17% and out of pocket expenditure, mostly by the poor, 83%. We rank with Cambodia, Burma, Afghanistan, and the Republic of Georgia all of which are at the nadir. We can introduce National Health Service as in Britain to provide access to quality health care to every citizen. In China, doctors in hospitals are paid their salaries from a county-level health fund. The people have the choice of going to any one of the 20 or 30 hospitals in the county. You have to attract patients and provide services to earn your salary. Money follows the patient.
Education: The failure of higher education has now hurt school education very badly. We have people with degrees like B.Ed’s and M.Ed’s but they cannot teach. Although we have one or two per cent of degree holders who are a match to the best in the world, the average university degree holder does not hold a candle to an average graduate in most of the civilized countries. We allowed this decline because of lack of leadership. We choose vice-chancellors based on their caste or region.
Dr. JP concluded by saying that we have to build incentives and institutions to change people’s attitudes. “Leadership is about creating institutions, identifying solutions institutionally and finding those things that work in the circumstances in which we are placed. We are not doing too badly despite all these impediments. But we can do much more.”
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Why there is a demand for criminals
Lok Satta Party President Dr. Jayaprakash Narayan said today there is a market demand for criminals in our society because justice is so inaccessible. "People have to create criminals to get rough and ready justice through devious means. Or else, they have to swallow injustice and suffer silently".
Addressing a gathering of IT professionals, Dr. JP said, "Criminals are legitimized and seen as Robin hoods by many because they render privatized justice. For a price, of course. And from there, they graduate into politics."
Dr. JP said: "Our judiciary is in shambles. We are all being very polite, partly because we do not want to destroy the one remaining institution with some semblance of authority and credibility and partly because we are afraid of the contempt of court law. But the reality is, the judiciary is as appalling as other institutions of the State".
Dr. JP said: "Nobody in India dares to go to a court of law unless one wants to stall some decision by way of a stay order or to harass someone. If you have the misfortune of going to a civil court and if you have the good fortune of getting a verdict delivered during your lifetime, you must be lucky, goes the folklore in Andhra Pradesh. If you lose the case, you lament in public and if you win the case, you cry in private. It is a tragedy for both."
Dr. JP said that building a quality justice system, accessible to ordinary people costs Rs.500 to 600 crore a year. "Such a system is necessary for small cases because it fosters a culture of law, a rule of law".
The three unwholesome traits
Dr. Jayaprakash Narayan in his address to IT professionals dwelt on three peculiar traits of Indians, which need to be corrected. The first is that we have no sense of equality. We accept inequality by birth as a natural condition of human life. There is no moral outrage at this inequality. It is not an issue of morality. We cannot live in a modern democracy, in a market society, without respecting labor, and human beings for what they are.
The second is lack of trust. Trust is required in dealing with people and across groups. It is there inn a caste or religious group. In a profession, it is there as a trade union. But across groups, it breaks down. We cannot afford that because it ultimately undermines all of us. We require leadership to build bridges and institutions for trust.
Finally, we lack a sense of common fate. Nothing can be better illustrated than by our practice of keeping our homes clean and dumping the rubbish on the road. What you give comes back. There is no choice and that is why we have spotlessly clean homes and filthy streets. We fail to recognize that injustice anywhere will affect us in some form or the other everywhere. There is no escape from that.
