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April 24, 2009

LETTER FROM INDIA

Big Election, Teeny, Tiny (if Any) Ideas

By ANAND GIRIDHARADAS

VERLA — “This time the DMK alliance is a truncated one and includes the Congress and the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK). Jayalalitha’s AIADMK has stitched up a coalition that includes the PMK, MDMK, CPI and the CPI(M). She claims she has an ‘unbeatable combination.’ With the CPI, CPI(M) and the MDMK moving over to her side, all indications are that the AIADMK will get ahead with a majority. The DMK alliance, though, may not be demolished completely.”

I know, I know. The beginning of a newspaper article should be gripping, and comprehensible at the least.

Sorry. You see, with election fever roiling India, I thought you might like a taste of the great contest of ideas under way in the biggest election on the planet.

Well, as it turns out, there are no ideas in Indian elections anymore.

So I thought I’d give you the next best thing: a sample of the nonsense that Indians must imbibe (this nonsense from Outlook, a respected English-language news weekly) as they wait for their politics to become less soul-crushingly trivial.

Most of the world ignores India until it (a) takes their jobs or (b) chooses a leader. Outsiders love its elections. The foreign-correspondent Standard Narrative is dusted off for its quintennial tour: “The world’s largest democracy is having the world’s largest election, like, ever!”

But, even as foreign reporters pour in to tell that prefabricated story, it is difficult to fight the feeling that this big, big election is in fact pitifully small. The understanding of democracy is small. The candidates are small. The conversation is small.

The quoted paragraph distills this election well: no ideology, no larger-than-life leaders, no causes, no principles at stake. Instead, just alphabets, this lot siding with that lot and these people with them — a process resembling a children’s game show, not the solemn selection of leaders for 1.2 billion human beings.

This large ritual of democracy is easy to celebrate if we define democracy in the smallest possible way. If democracy is voting every five years, then Jai Ho! But if it asks something more, if it implies a certain way of life, then we must keep the Champagne corked.

Perhaps democracy means leaders not asking you to cast votes according to your caste. Or citizen confidence in the rule of law. Or a police force that you trust will solve your burglary instead of stealing more of your stuff. Or civic enthusiasm vigorous enough that educated people follow traffic rules and even choose public service over private gain. Or empathy for the nation’s hungry other half.

Perhaps it means the democracy of the day-to-day: equality not just in a constitution, but also in quotidian human interactions: the waiter and the customer, the chauffeur and the driven, conversing rather than barking and meekly taking orders.

The candidates are as small as the definition of democracy.

There are the old-guard leaders like Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Lal Krishna Advani, the major contenders to run India. At 76 and 81, respectively, they would appear to make wonderful grandfathers, with soft laps and lots of tales to tell. But they simply cannot connect with one of the youngest populations on earth, buzzing, fired up and ready to go.

As alternatives, there are younger state-level populists like Kumari Mayawati and Narendra Modi. They have impassioned flocks, but they are small in their own way, narrow-casting to particular religious and caste cohorts, alienating others. Their broad-based appeal is questionable.

There are the so-called young MPs, but their youthful achievements are diminished by the fact that they are usually the sons of important men.

And there are the new candidates from the educated elite, who seem decent, who campaign vigorously on Facebook, but who struggle to convince anyone that they really care about latrines and rice subsidies.

But it is, above all, the smallness of the national conversation that baffles. The debate never rises above the battle tactics of who is with whom, and who ditched whom, and who said what in reply to what the other one said. The politicians, seemingly incapable of ideas, are wise not to attempt any. But the press, whose task is to challenge them, plays along, writing drivel analyses like the analysis with which I began, treating the thing like a sport, tit-for-tat, tat-for-tit, until it is time to go home.

India’s election must rank with the least ideological elections in the world. Which thinkers have inspired each party’s philosophy? What are their core principles? Why do politicians switch parties so effortlessly, without having to explain their shift in positions?

I have asked politicians these questions. It is like speaking to them in Creole, because the questions are not phrased in the only language they understand, the language of whether the ABC will merge with the XYZ to form the EIEIO.

Beyond the realm of government, it is a dizzyingly exciting moment in India, one of those rare moments in the life of a nation when everything remains to be decided, when a hundred alternative fates are possible.

What do Indians want to do with Pakistan, their nuclear-armed rival that is also like a younger sibling in rehab? What is their solution to stubborn, blood-curdling poverty? How can they balance growth and greenness? What of the old culture should they keep? What brand of capitalism do they favor, a borrowed market-is-god dogma or an approach bespoke for their situation? What values will they champion abroad?

These questions matter. They matter to Indians; they matter to the world, because every sixth human is Indian.

But they will not be answered in these coming days of frantic electioneering or, if these days are any guide, in the five years of tragic banality that lurk just around the bend.