The private corporate sector is increasingly considered an ideal problem-solving model for India’s governance issues. Its professional, “result-driven” work culture, it is thought, precludes the kind of corruption and inefficiency that plagues the chaotic world of Indian public administration. The “corporate approach”, thus, is sporadically applied to the political sphere in desperate hope that structured, objective methods will provide solutions to the complexities that are India.
Rajiv Gandhi was one early adopter of this belief, filling his famous “baba-log” Cabinet with friends and associates from the corporate world, demanding that discussions on critical issues be précised into presentations (agonising for bureaucrats in the days before PowerPoint) and launching a raft of technology “missions” (analogous to the “corporate project”). Chandrababu Naidu was another adherent, styling himself Andhra’s “Chief Executive” and aligning himself with the infotech boys. Towards the end of his chief ministership, Jyoti Basu described himself the chief marketer for West Bengal. Both Narendra Modi in Gujarat and Nitish Kumar in Bihar have corporate-style feedback mechanisms to keep them informed on the progress of designated schemes.
Did it work? Mr Gandhi’s one five-year term was too brief to gauge the success of his approach, and he died before he had a chance to extend it. Mr Naidu’s CEO-ship stumbled on the sword of rural neglect in Andhra. As for Bengal, well…. And for Mr Modi and Mr Kumar, corporate-style governance is just one element of an extensive programme that is rooted in solid grassroots work.
Yet the belief persists and nothing reflected this yearning for the corporate approach in public life better than the first municipal polls in Gurgaon, the glass-and-concrete global city that’s been superimposed on a rural template. Inevitably, it was corruption that dominated the discourse with each candidate offering Gurgaon’s middle class professionals a haven of smooth roads, green belts, law and order and continuous water and electricity supply. A subject like child labour, so glaring on the construction sites, was never mentioned and few spoke to the city’s substantial rural population (which turned out in larger numbers on polling day). Several candidates pushed their MBA or American university degrees, appropriate for a city that has developed around foreign direct investment.
My ward presented a microcosm of this corporatist wishful thinking. Enclosed with the newspapers was a dossier from an organisation called Citizens for Clean and Corruption Free Politics (CCCFP). It urged us to vote for one Mr Manish who had, we were assured, scored the maximum “points” on a weighted matrix of 11 parameters.
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Mr Manish’s election symbol, we were told, was “stool”, which along with the short form for the defunct Democratic Indira Congress (Karunakaran), DIC(K), now ranks as my favourite piece of election trivia. But the parameters and points system in the matrix were even more entertaining. There was Age, Qualification, Elected posts held in the past, Residence in ward, Occupation/income, Perception of general public of his stand and record on corruption (from a sample of “25 random people”), Personality, Social Activity Record, Is the candidate likely to change after getting elected?, Family background, Time candidate shall (note the emphatic verb) be able to spend after getting elected on his duties.
No doubt the unalloyed comic value of the matrix with its hilariously arbitrary judgments escaped its creators. For instance, it deemed that anyone between 36 and 45 years would score a perfect 10 (a candidate over 60 would score -6). Mr Manish scored 8, which puts him between 30 and 35 years.
In terms of occupation/income, a “well-off” candidate scored 10 and an “average” occupation/income got 5 — but there was nothing to indicate what CCCFP defined as “well-off” Occupation/income. Anyway, Mr Manish is “well-off” so presumably immune to the loaves and fishes of office.
Yet neither he nor any other contestant scored the highest marks 10 (“Impeccably clean”) in public perception, the parameter that carried the most weight (30 per cent). Most scored 7 (“clean”) and a couple 5 (“neutral”, whatever that means).
On “Personality”, Mr Manish scored a seven (“Good”). Only one contestant made it to 9 (“V. good”) but no one touched 10 (“Excellent”). But on how these judgments were made or who made them, the voter was unenlightened. Since honesty was considered separately, did a “Good” personality indicate that Mr Manish is even-tempered? Hard-working? Intelligent? Approachable? Brave?
The parameter Family Background was even more mysterious. Mr Manish scored 8 (“V. good”). Does “V. good” specify caste, social standing, religion, legitimacy, non-criminality? We only know that a 4 meant a candidate’s background is “Not known” (no one hit rock bottom here). So we can assume that Mr Manish’s “V. good” Family Background is, at the very least, “known” to somebody.
Tragically for Mr Manish, the voters were unimpressed by his 7.3 weighted points. The winning candidate, who recently sent us “A Big Thank You!!” together with a flier of Chawla’s Fine Dining Restaurant, didn’t figure in this matrix. But maybe he’ll get us 24x7 power supply yet.