T C A Srinivasa-Raghavan: The 'towel over armpit' story

OKONOMOS

Political fixers perform several vital functions and are far from being parasites.

From now on, this column, which is about 250 weeks old, will endeavour to go beyond economics. The reasons, briefly, are given below.

During this time, I have read or scanned well over 2,000 papers in economics. Five things have become clear to me as a result.

One, what passes for research in economics is research only because economists benefit by defining it as such. Very little of it goes beyond the mechanical observance of the entrenched rituals prescribed by the orthodox priests.

Two, the idea of seminal research doesn't seem to exist any longer. This becomes clear from the citations. Only a few are more than three years old. Little of what went before appears to be regarded as relevant. The result is a constant reinventing of many an old wheels.

Three, the obsession with data "" have data, will publish "" has almost completely displaced intuition and insight. The result is a mind-deadening sameness. The terms "robust" and "robustness" have become certificates of validity of thought, whereas in fact they are only certificates of the validity of econometric methods.

Four, no economist ever reaches a conclusion by finally committing himself or herself. All papers end with exhortations for further research. So there is never any closure by the pronouncement of something definitive.

Five, the worst perpetrators of all this are the public policy research- wallahs. Their research is intended to help public policy but seldom does. On the contrary, it merely confuses the issues.

Reason enough, I think, therefore to diversify this column into other areas.

So here is the first offering from a book published earlier this year*, edited by Ashutosh Varshney. The essay most worth reading in the volume is by James Manor, an old India hand. He is not given to waffle and he writes with unusual clarity and insight.

His essay* in this volume deals with three important aspects of local politics. One, the need for intermediaries in such large constituencies; two, the incentives systems that keep these chaps going; and three, the need for "fixing".

Manor credits M N Srinivas with drawing his attention to the term "towel over armpit" as the way locals in Karnataka describe these small-time fixers. He also says that only one previous study of these fixers exists, the one by G Ram Reddy and G Hargopal in 1985.

Actually, another person who had spotted the same phenomenon and even written a wonderfully amusing book about it in Hindi in 1980 "" Netaji Kahin "" was Manohar Shyam Joshi. Pronab Sen of the Planning Commission gave it to me to read. Joshi later wrote the script for the hugely successful 1980s TV serial, Hum Log.

Joshi's book began with the line, "Netaji ka nirdharit lakshya, ek karod" (The fixer's objective, one crore). He focused throughout on the corruption aspect of the fixer phenomenon.

But Manor is more charitable and takes a larger view. He says these fixers perform several vital functions and, far from being the parasites as suggested by Joshi, they are essential to the democratic process in India. And, of course, they operate at all levels.

"Fixers", says Manor, "bring three important things to the political process "" knowledge, skills and attitudes." They know about the conditions faced by people at the bottom of the layers; their skills consist of manipulating the system so that some of the benefits of what the nobs at the very top have dreamed up reaches the nether regions; and their attitudes, a little harder to define, are defined by their understanding of the relations between the local and the higher-ups.

Having established how these chhuthbhaiyas are important "" Manor describes them from seven states "" the next question is whether and how to replace the fixers. Manor says one of two things would have to happen before they are displaced.

Either political parties would have to become cadre based or panchayati raj institutions would have to become much stronger. Neither is likely to happen soon, he says, leaving us with the thought that chuthbhiayyas are here to stay.

To which I would like to add another thought: how long will it be before NGOs become chhutbhaiyas? And if they do, what will be the consequences?

"Towel Over Armpit": Smalltime Political Fixers in India's States in India and the Politics of Developing Countries: Essays in Memory of zMyron Weiner, Sage India, www.sageindia.com