Indian Growth Story and Coalition Ahead

There are two sides of the debate: apologists of non-coalition single large party-led government with a super powerful leader at the helms, and the apologists of multi-party governance by consensus and compromises. Let us look at both the sides before drawing a conclusion.

Votaries of Strong Government with Powerful Leadership

The apologists of a government with a strong leader hinges on the premise that you need a decisive leadership to shepherd India to a presumably 20 trillion dollar economy by 2047, which will have huge returns from Indian manpower, IT industry, satellite telecom, defence production, and services. It believes that the creativity of India, the scientific knowledge of India, and the ancient traditions of India are what the world needs. And when the world looks at us, we should not look like some ragtag army of dwarf leaders in a vested coalition, we should look like a stable country with the stable leadership and serious agenda to make India grow. We can't see regionalism, parochialism and personal agendas dominate a national agenda. There cannot be a situation where the incumbent government can fall any moment, or when bombs go off in the marketplaces or when we have terrorists attacking us. When the only response to such situations was: we will use all diplomatic means necessary in our command.

The votaries of non-coalition strong government also believe that there have been 8 crore fraudulent beneficiaries of Indian governance and state power who have to be weeded out, not necessarily only by technology but also by an exercise of political will. There is another class which has been rendered unemployed particularly in Lutyens Delhi. That's the class called the middlemen and brokers.

There are certain countries where because of the vagaries of the electoral system, you always have coalitions. Germany is one, Israel is another. You cannot probably envisage a situation where you don't have coalitions. We also have certain situations where, in the past, we have had two or three member parties who can put a veto on an entire system. In India, like in any other democracy, lobbies exist. But when that lobby exercises the power of veto, which is what coalitions end up doing, the growth story takes a back seat. That difficult choices cannot- under the given coalition culture in India- be exercised with diverse and contradictory forces in governance together.

Coalition of dependence is what you have to avoid. What is happening in Madhya P today is that, you have Congress with 114 seats along with one seat of SP and one seat of BSP. That is the worst kind of coalition because you are depending on two individuals for your government to stay in power. So, for the future of India, it is imperative that we do not ever have coalition of dependence. If you have different ideologies together and if you think you are forming a coalition, it is not going to work. It is not a question of moving in one direction.

Also Read: Karnataka: BJP’s Desperation and ‘Petty Politics’ of the Coalition Government

Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh could not have been more candid describing his own predicament when he admitted that he had to make some compromises on the reintroduction of DMK’s A Raja into the cabinet in 2009 as Telecom Minister despite complaints against him.

Let's look at the life-spans of coalition governments – the Charan Singh phenomenon could not face the Parliament and went out in 6 months; the next coalition of VP Singh lasted a mere 11 months; Chandra Shekhar’s was even more short-lived - four months before he lost his majority. HD Deve Gowda’s and I K Gujral’s were short-lived governments as well. Atal Bihari Vajpayee talked about the coalition dharma. The mature prime minister after him, Manmohan Singh talked about compulsions of coalition. But Kumaraswami’s contribution to the lexicon of Indian politics in Karnataka is coalition depression. In 2008, weeks after he was inducted as the CM, he burst into impetuous tears, talking of the pains of coalition.

Hence, those who are against coalitions anyhow believe in politics of ideological proximity, as what they believe there exists between the Bharatiya Janata Party, Akali Dal, Shiv Sena and Janata Dal (United) and all in the union cabinet. They believe that India's growth story needs a leader like Narendra Modi whose leadership stands in stark contrast to the three preceding decades when India was managed on one hand by the Prime Minister who was remote controlled constitutionally and a coterie of unaccountable advisors on the other.

Votaries of Governments with Coalition Through Consensus

I think one of the great lessons which we can learn from our past is that things are never black and white. There are always many other shades in between. If you are talking about parties coming together, committing themselves to a common programme, working in an united manner, then coalitions in a diverse country as India is for the good of the nation.

In 1961, when a friend of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, an American who was working for the media, told him ‘after working in media for 35 years now I realise that there are not only two sides to a story, but we are many shades in between’ and the prompt response of Panditji was ‘welcome to Hindu view of life’. Even HD Golwalkar has said India has always had infinite variety. For Unity, we need harmony not uniformity. Nature too abhors excessive uniformity. So, the point is that India has this genius of creating Harmony out of diversity, unity in diversity. We should not be afraid of getting into coalitions. We should not deride the coalition.

Frankly, both coalitions and strong single-party governments can fail. The issue is the political culture of the country and the needs of the country which can decide this. Interestingly, Italy is the perfect example of what is wrong with coalition government because the average life of Italian government has been one year over the last 50 plus years, and it has always had a coalition government during that period.

There are damages that one party dominant government can inflict in our country. Two good examples are: Emergency by Indira Government and Demonetisation by Modi Government. “The Raj Dharma,” Vidur (a character from the epic Mahabharata) says, “is that the only imperative for a ruler is to help the people,” and the kind of pain that the Emergency and demonetisation had brought to our country, despite all the touted benefits, prove that those governments were in the wrong. The license permit and inspector raj, which was created by the strong single-party government forged by Rajaji, was another such challenge to good governance.

The point here is that neither coalition government nor single-party government can insure you the delivery of tasks, both can make mistakes.

Now, the liberal democratic state has three pillars. One, it should have an effective executive that can act quickly and get things done. Two, action should be under the rule of law and that action can be accountable to people. Lastly, what we lack today is state capacity and the ability to take firm decisions. That's why the biggest problem of this country is not really economic reforms, but governance reforms.

One, why should it take 15 years to get justice in the courts? Why should the bureaucrat who often works one hour a day be rewarded and promoted as a bureaucrat with the same bureaucrat who works for 12 hours a day and is hugely effective? Why should the ordinary citizen be afraid of going to a police station? Why should the police be the hand-maiden of the chief minister? So these are the governance issues of the country and neither the the single-party government nor coalition per se can make it better, unless we change the system and its culture.

Also Read: India’s Educated Unemployed Prefer Govt Jobs To Private Ones, Finds New Survey

India is not a bipolar country. Look at the 2014 election results, the BJP got 31% of the votes, the Congress got around 20%, which means that 50% of the people voted for the two biggest national parties together. And there are 282 seats for BJP and 44 for the Congress, the two biggest parties. They have only 50% of India's popular vote but control 326 out of 543 seats. So, we actually expose our ignorance of the very country we live in, when we say that majority rules. Around 51% of the people, even in 1984 when the Congress got 404 seats, did not vote for it. So, khichdi (porridge made of rice and lentils), with a bit of ghee and papad, is our favoured cuisine, on the plate and in governance.

Ten years of United Progressive Alliance provided a growth rate of 8.35% over the entire period and that period included one of the worst recession in 2008, with oil prices touching $140 a barrel. The growth during Modi-led National Democratic Alliance government is 7.3%, and oil prices touched $29 dollars a barrel. In addition, what did they give you - demonetisation, anger, a flawed Goods and Services Tax, inequality- where 1% of India owns 60% of its wealth and above all, they give you hate and violence.  Further, the distressed UPA coalition passed the Lokpal Bill, but a powerful NDA government never put it into practice till the very last quarter of its tenure. Another fact, during the time of UPA 1, the stock market growth stood at 74%. UPA 2 gave a stock market growth of 131%, in contrast, the NDA has given 62% so far. It's not about the formation, it’s the intent.

We have a single largest party with a majority, under the leadership of Narendra Modi, with unemployment reaching a 45-year-high, by figures of National Sample Survey Organisation, the government body. When we talk about external debts, we were at Rs 37.44 lakh crore in 2014 (already very bad) and it is Rs 43.72 lakh crore today. The farm growth story has also come to a standstill, from a 3.8% growth that we were tracking in 2014 to a 1.9% growth trajectory that we are seeing today. Against the promise of 2 crore jobs a year, it is 8.08 lakhs per year today.

Also Read: Elections 2019: Jobs Failure Will Sink Modi

Poverty reduction has increased or health patterns like maternal mortality have got down, in the coalition years that we have had. The Right to Information, Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) for rural employment and the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) for rural health are all legacies from when 'weak' Congress coalitions ruled the nation. Let’s not forget the nuclear deal that India got for itself was also because of the intent of a coalition government.

The most diverse societies are the most creative ones. It is diversity input that helps creativity. For example, Silicon Valley, which is a perfect example of diverse society people starting from south of America to northern parts, Japanese, Koreans, Indians and Chinese. It’s not only technology but also the creativity that flourishes there.

Governance should also act with same kind of ethics. When we talk about government and politics, it’s not true that coalition government were not strong. It is also not true that they ended in short durations. You have Narasimha's minority government running full five years, even Vajpayee spent full five years as NDA PM.

Historically speaking, even in the pre-independence days during 1946, there was an interim government which had leaders from the Muslim League, Congress and Akali Dal. It’s not a concept that came into existence post-Emergency. But the first coalition government at the national level, in post-independence India, was the 1977 government, of course. After that, we had various coalition governments and from 1989 to 2009, there were 7 consecutive Lok Sabha elections. In all the seven elections there wasn’t a single political party that got a mandate and they all were coalition governments. Coalitions are here to stay, hence. But speaking from an economic perspective, India had one of the best periods as far economic growth is concerned, from 1991 to 2014. During these years, we had various global let downs, and we had a small war with Pakistan, even then the Indian economy performed well including double digit GDP growth; and now when we have a full majority government, post-2014, the economy hasn’t performed that well, despite the global economy performing better.

Therefore, it’s about the leadership and not about the formation of the government. Also, in the Westminster System when you have a single party, when you have voting under a whip and when you have a strong Prime Minister, it often turns into a constitutional dictatorship.

The author is a media academic and columnist, and currently the Media Dean of Pearl Academy, Delhi and Mumbai. Views expressed by the author are personal.