The difference between leading and leader<i>baazi</i>

There is a memorable quote from Mark Hanna: "There are two things that are important in politics. The first is money, and I can't remember what the second one is".

I can tell you what you already know about the second thing. It is called bullying. It is an open secret that certain kinds of services are co-opted near the election time by candidates. These have to be called, for want of a better phrase, goonda services.

Goondas are part of society; they are one of us. They are a floating resource, to be hired, for a sum. Their skill is intimidation. Their wherewithal, via money, of course, and often via narcotics as well, is the illegal firearm. By an estimate, which is slightly dated now, there are not one million, not four million, not 10 million but at a conservative estimate, 40 million illegal small arms floating around all over the land. The Election Commission has to be congratulated, thanked, embraced, for being as fearless as it is, despite all this. Our uniformed services, headed by the police and various para-military agencies, need to be thanked and saluted for keeping law-breakers, law-twisters, law-manipulators and law-defiers in check.

But who is to check the collapse of true, far-sighted leadership and its degeneration into leaderbaazi?

• Leaders are too few now, leaderbaazes, innumerable.
• Leading looks at the far horizon, leaderbaazi, in love like the house fly with its own nose, sniffs at the offal of instant gains.
• Leading rises above the small, leaderbaazi wallows in the small.
• Leading cherishes candour; its language is brutal, honest, frank.
• Leaderbaazi values popularity. Its language is candied sugar.
• Leading has colleagues. Leaderbaazi has fans.
• Leading overcomes personal hatreds, rises above rivalries, leaderbaazi feeds on it.
• Leading strides, leaderbaazi swaggers. Leading will stop at a traffic light, leaderbaazi will cut it.
• Leading will not swerve from principles, will not finick on detail. Leaderbaazi will do deals on principles, provided the details of its convenience are protected.

We are, as I said at the beginning of this lecture, seeing the blooming of an election. But let us not celebrate that without being aware of the fact that there is a strange stillness in the air. Marine geographers have a word for it - the Doldrums. The word signifies a stupor, in which everyone and everything is listless, stagnant and immobilised.

Dictators have been wafted up by people voting democratically. The ballot box can receive the faith of innocence and emit a genie. It can receive trust unseeingly, disgorge its betrayal unblinkingly. That receptacle, now a machine, is neutral to the ethics of its arithmetic. It is concerned only with numbers. Let us realise that the Doldrums feeling is true but is true only as a feeling. In actual fact, beneath the surface stillness, there is a great frenzy astir, a frenzy to bring to India's helm, the reign of an ethnic majority, of a sectarian bigotry, of a denominational autocracy. And all in the name, the very specious name, of "strength".

And here, I must say that sections of the media have become trumpeters of what they see as the coming change. We had heard of paid news. But this is free advertising. The high noon of the free press in India makes its own eclipse-by-ink and through the small screen. So, this best of times for democracy can become the worst of times for democracy as well.

Our economy is startling if you do not want to see its other side. If you see that side, you will see it is schizophrenic. Corporate greed has crossed all bounds, as has of corporate tastelessness. We used to talk of black money as a parallel economy and so it continues to be. But Reliance is a parallel State. I do not know of any country where one single firm exercises such power so brazenly, over the natural resources, financial resources, professional resources and, ultimately, over human resources as the company of the Ambanis. From Ambedkar who spoke of economic democracy to Ambani who represents a techno-commercial monopoly of unprecedented scale, is a far cry indeed.

Who is to ask why, in such a situation, farmers commit suicide by the hour, disposessed rural poor migrate across the country looking for livelihood like cattle in a drought do, looking for water, why infant mortality, infant malnutrition, childbirth related deaths of mothers and femle foeticide remain the stubborn ogres they are? Who is to ask that?

Yes, the mobile telephone is a fantastic asset. But while we make the calls, someone makes the money. The 2G Spectrum is a description that arouses deep pride and deep distrust. And as for Indian science, that pride of India, is there something missing, something amiss? I believe there is, and it is called a transparent and accessible science policy. Today, science policy is seen as something of a mystery, a State secret, almost. Its nurturing is as if in an SEZ, a privileged area, gated and cordoned off. This is singularly unfortunate because science has worked wonders for us, reduced drudgery, enhanced ergonomic ease, improved productivity on farm and fishing fields, saved lives like that of fishermen out at sea who, thanks to satellite warnings, can turn back when the weather grumbles into a storm or rages into a cyclone. And yet, science policy remains beyond the ken of us, simple folk, abstruse things like the 123 Agreement, of course, being high Sanskrit. I am reminded of a poem, a nursery rhyme, really, without a known authorship. It goes: We have a secret, just we three

The robin and I and the sweet cherry tree
The bird told the tree and the tree told me
And nobody knows it but just us three.

Of the holy priest, it has been said that he holds the Divine Secret in his closed fist, his gyana-mushti. Time has come for the scientist to open his vigyana-mushti. We cannot be in awe of that closed fist.

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Edited excerpts from a speech by Gopalkrishna Gandhi, former chairman, governing body, IIAS, Shimla, "Eclipse at Noon: Shadows over India's Conscience", New Delhi, April 15, 2014