A V Rajwade: Democracy and capitalism

WORLD MONEY

The two largest democracies of the world held national elections this year. The results have bewildered me. Regular readers might wonder what elections have to do with this column. Politics determines economic policies and the latter, in turn, affect the quality of democracy in a wider context.

Political democracy implies not just periodical voting but pluralism and multiple, competing power centres: the greater the concentration of economic, administrative and coercive powers with the state, the lesser the substantive democracy. Hence, the connection between democracy and capitalism.

Winston Churchill said, "America will always do the right thing, once it has exhausted all the alternatives." To my mind, last week's election results in the US suggest that the alternatives have not been exhausted.

It is perplexing that George Bush was re-elected despite an unparalleled record of deceit, incompetence, cronyism, Robin Hood-in-reverse economic policies, and pandering to the ultra-right wing Christian fundamentalists, some of whom blame the tolerance of homosexuality and feminism in the US for the 9/11 attacks! As somebody said, it was a triumph of "right-wing populism, of Christian fundamentalism and of anti-intellectualism".

The policy towards Iraq was the key issue in the election. The list of deceptions, outright lies, violations of human rights and international treaties on the issue is a mile long.

Saddam Hussein's Iraq had no connection with 9/11 (or indeed, with Islamic fundamentalism: in fact, Iraq was perhaps the most secular country in West Asia), possessed no weapons of mass destruction and was no threat to the US.

Yet, it was brazenly attacked with no plan of any kind about what to do after Iraq was conquered and occupied. A thousand Americans and 10-fold more Iraqis have died. Hundreds of tonnes of explosives have been stolen. And recruiters for Osama bin Laden and other Islamic fundamentalists are finding fertile soil. .

Bush's record on economic policies has been no less irresponsible. He has managed to swing the fiscal balance by 7 per cent of GDP from surplus to deficit; implemented a huge tax-cut to benefit the richest (certified millionaires received a bonus of $90 billion a year); and has become the first administration to actually lose jobs over a four-year period since the depression of the 1930s.

It is perplexing "how Bush could get away with, well, everything: a misspent youth, a lifetime of insider trading on the family name, a misfought war, a misleading inference that the invasion of Iraq had some vague relevance to 9/11, a presidency marked by rampant corporate cronyism at home and abroad" (Joe Klein, Time, October 20, 2004).

The answer lies, at least partly, in the fact that 9/11 was a cathartic, traumatic experience for the nation. Perhaps it needed someone who claimed to "know" what had happened and what to do, with a true believer's certainty; somebody who claimed that he became president because it was God's will; somebody who kept repeating a simple mantra that good will triumph over evil, America will prevail if he is in charge, never admitting a mistake. Even Goebbels would have many things to learn from the Bushies.

If the Congress gave a near-unanimous approval for the attack on Iraq on such claims, the fourth estate, another pillar of any democracy, did not come out with credit either. It swallowed all the lies and deceptions when the war was declared.

Some, like the New York Times and Washington Post, have since apologised to their readers about their failures. Even The Economist, such a staunch supporter of Bush, editorially favoured his opponent, admitting his incompetence, howsoever bashfully, just before the election.

Overall, Bush's winning the election makes me wonder about the ability of even educated electorates to choose wise and compassionate rulers.

If the US election proved that you can fool more than half the people for four years, the quality of democracy in its largest practitioner leaves one confused. Consider our acceptance of:

the complete lack of democratic pluralism, of multiple power centres in India's oldest, and currently ruling, political party, and its feudal and obsequious loyalties to the Gandhi family. Even the Communist Party of China resolved that Mao was 30 per cent wrong. Will our Congress ever accept that the Gandhis made any mistakes?

the party's "pro-poor" concerns when India remains one of the poorest countries in Asia, even after Congress ruled for 80 per cent of the time;

its "secular" credentials despite the massacre of 3,000 Sikhs in Delhi a decade ago, by family loyalists.

It is amazing how parties like the CPM, which sees the East India Company in the guise of every foreign investor, are so comfortable with a person of the European race acquiring supreme political power and that too with as much ease as Robert Clive did in the famous battle of Plassey.

But to come back to Churchill, he once said something to the effect that democracy is the worst form of government, but for all the others. (Paraphrasing Churchill, is Congress the worst example of a democratic party but for all the others?

Is capitalism the worst form of economic model "" except for all the others?) Clearly, Churchill did not agree with Plato, some of whose ideas were even more radical than Marx's and who hated democracy.

But cheer up "" we too may end up doing the right thing after exhausting all other options!

Email: avrco@vsnl.com