Of Bad Songs, and Bad Governance

I spend my morning hours listening to popular music channels. Music has a great capacity to alleviate the suffering of one’s morning walk (or run, for the more capable), or even the general pain of leaving behind that fine nest one’s bed becomes by the time the rooster crows. Music gives a perfect background to shower and the breakfast, and to that dreaded drive to the office – throwing at us God knows what unknowns. (Mercifully, since the time I have demitted the Magistracy of Meerut, unknowns get thrown at me only once the office starts, unlike then, when they could be thrown at one as late at 2 am and as early as 4 am!)

Recently, there has been a song, coming up with a rather alarming frequency – “Pyaar ki Maa ki”, from Housefull. For the non-Hindi people, it really translates as “F**k the mother of love”, but instead of saying “F**k” you say ‘worship’ (in Hindi the words come in the opposite order, and hence the puerile, schoolboy joke is transformed into a ‘song’!)

It feels like crunching on an egg shell while eating omelette, and the frequency of the song is so high that it feels that the whole shells have been deliberately mixed in the egg! Why is such a travesty of anything that is beautiful being polluting our airwaves? Why do such talented persons as Ritesh (watch him in Ek Villain to know what I mean), Akshay Kumar (Airlift recently, and many more), Lisa Haydon (Queen, and her views on rabid feminism), and Abhishek Bachchan (having such a talented father – at least) find themselves on the screen, dancing to this stupidity? Simply – because it sells. They are putting their mouth where the money is. All those mindless movies and songs that these actors and their producers are guilty of, is simply a result of responding to the incentives, and pandering to the masses.

Pandering to the masses. Well, isn't it something the Civil Service community, especially at the field level, can identify a lot with, at the professional level. Similar to our silverscreen stars, most of our officers come from highly educated backgrounds, with the best institutions in India and abroad glittering on our resumes. Our friends, or friendly acquaintances, work in the best organizations, and based on their facebook timelines, they are highly successful at what they do! Most of my service colleagues will acknowledge feeling a little embarrassed when questioned or ribbed about many policies of the organization we work for - the government. Not unlike the way are stars are seen giving dodgy answers to critics and the discerning audience.

Originally it was not this way. The structure of governance in India was majorly administrative at its beginning - in the times of the Raj. Thereafter it gradually started developing a thin political shell, beginning with the Councils Act and the various Government of India Acts. Yet, the core remained administrative. In their infinite wisdom, the Honorable Constituent Assembly not only retained this core, but also enshrined the Services in the Constitution itself (in face of much internal opposition, and based solely on the advocacy by the Ironman of India Sardar Patel himself).

Thus, Constitutionally, the Indian Executive, at all 3 tiers of our federated polity, is classified in two parts - the political executive and the permanent executive. The former was expected to frame the broad policies (with the advice of the latter) and the latter, to get them implemented and enforced. As the years passed, the political body matured and gained confidence. Soon, the aid and advice part of the policy making was dispensed with, as far as the feasibility and reasonability of the policies was concerned. Of course, the "quality" of the policies was the casualty. Policies beyond 5 year gestation period stopped being looked into. Then, as the Assembly and Parliamentary elections started getting out of sync, and elections to various local bodies started filling the voids therein, we started having some or the other election every 3 months. Thus most policies started factoring in just as much. Our social peers may sneer at us for their obvious short sightedness. However, for the purpose they are framed, they are quite logical.

The trouble with public judgement is that while private organizations are expected to work as per incentives, public institutions are expected to work 'for the greater good'. While that may be feasible for the institutions themselves (which are permanent monopolies with no competitors to survive against), the constituents of the same are not so immune. Infact they face the toughest competition in the world. I am not writing about the Civil servants here, who may come in through one of toughest examinations, but are largely not at peril once in the clear. I am speaking about the political persons, who face an unreasonable electorate, whose intellectual capabilities have risen, no doubt, but have not kept pace with their assertiveness. It is one of most stressful performance appraisal, as, with the traditional deference for the powerful vanishing fast, the crowd can be vicious in sarcasm and condemnation. The motivation capability of this pressure is so much that those in power try to manipulate the pens of the officers by covert pressure, and those not in the power, do so overtly on the grand theatre of the Indian Streets. Policies ceased to be guided by mere benevolence long back. Nowadays, even day to day administration is heavily encumbered by politics of a similar length of sight.

In all the preceding paragraphs, I have commented upon the issues with the eye of a critic. However, a very important question remains unanswered here. Can we make a judgement here, without clouding ourselves in our own 'middle class' biases? Are we (the class of persons referred as the peer social group to which most Civil Servants belong) having any legitimacy to decide what is good and what is populist and retrograde?

Democractic form of government, within the confines of Constitutional norms, is essentially a rule by the majority. Whatever else may be wrong in this country, no one can challenge the fairness of elections. (I would differ with the intellectuals on the issue that though intimidation is no more allowed in the elections, enticement still happens, and hence it is not a fair system. In my view, once there is no threat of violence troubling the electorate it is a free system.) Hence, if such policies ensure political survival, they must be democratic.

Politics is more of an art, and is not so apparent in its logic. Hence, it is not very accessible to brains primarily dedicated to simple logic - non veterans in the Services included. We know that of recent, there has been a steep spike in the number of individual beneficiary related government schemes, to the obvious disadvantage of ‘open for all’ infrastructure related expenditure. It may be that the government layout for both forms of expenditure is increasing. Still, whatever is spend on subsidizing individuals could have gone to subsidize the whole community. Now, there is never enough budget to cover all the individuals, even the ‘qualified ones’. Only a handful in a community – the ones who know the rights and rules, and the ones with strong local political connections, would corner them all, the latter more often than the former. It would lead to heartburn among the majority who believe they have been denied the largesse unfairly. This surely could not be beneficial politically. Contrast it with expenditure, say, a bridge, or road, or power station, which could have benefitted the whole community, leading to a general contentment – not generating the levels of joy to a few that a subsidized or free house might bring about, but also not generating the commensurate jealousy and heartburn in all the majority of the neighbours. Surely this should pay a richer dividend politically. If we leave out this logical reasoning, then also we may rely on academic texts, as reproduced in the book on Indian Economy by Uma Kapila, which clearly says (in case of agriculture), that infrastructure expenditure has a multifold better outcome as compared to individual subsidies. Still, despite all these reasons to the contrary, the number and the volume of individual beneficiary schemes keeps on rising every year. Are the politicians acting against better sense? Clearly not. It is told that after analysing the body structure and wing designs of a dragon fly, engineers pronounced that it would be impossible for it to fly! Reality is much larger than the part of it accessible to mathematical analysis. May be it is the fractured nature of the Indian electorate at every level – right to the village level, that permits such tricks to survive. Even by cornering a small but consolidated minority, and peppering them strategically and surgically with individual benefits, can lead to just enough goodwill to survive. For the mass of the electorate places a lot of weightage on individual schemes. Ask it from any Administrator, who has had to peddle much better, livelihood enhancing schemes like the National Livelihood Schemes (Which involves handholding and guidance, but no spoon feeding.) The competition from the free housing and free pension schemes is just too much. Potential beneficiaries are just unwilling to listen to self-help, viability, and scaling up, and want us to talk business – can we get them a house or a pension! No wonder that unofficially the better schemes have had to be implemented in a draft like mode!

Incidentally, this was one of the reasons that a body of professional civil servants was retained and even empowered by the Constitution. To ensure that technical correctness is not totally overlooked in favour of popularity. To ensure that that there remains an advocacy of equity to oppose the untrammeled vote-bank calculations. More than one governments have called names to the civil servants – arguing that they are putting spanners in their ‘plans for development’. The services have been painted by political executive as the ball and chain impeding their initiatives. The services, however, like to think themselves as the heavy flywheel – a stabilizing influence on the engine, whose strokes vary so violently at the slightest hint of an electoral gain!

However, all is not well this way, even in the services camp. The bollywood parallel may be taken further. The biggest stars are not the better actors - of course exceptions may be there. We may have been blessed with Kay Kay Menon, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Irfan, and their likes. Still, none of them matches the stardom and fame of a Salman Khan. There is nothing wrong about Salman, too. Once, in an unguarded moment, he told the press that he had once ventured to make a sensible movie like Khamoshi, and not even a dog came to watch it! The way media carried this story is a lesson in itself on the pernicious effect contemporary media is having on the politics and the very fabric of the nation in this era. In the same mould as the star actors, we have we have started upon a generation of star- officers, who endear themselves to the masses. Since the resources are much the same hence, in addition to hard work, of course, it takes disproportionate allocations, unreplicable pilot projects, or the plain old face time on the media (which incidentally is not much different from the movie stars doing cameos on news channels and comedy shows) They must be doing many things right, but what gets them fame is not what is right, but what is popular – even if the popularity may come at the expense of resources, including time, which could be better allocated. It also signals to the younger officers – that Khamoshi does not sell, and they need to come up with a Kick or Wanted to be appreciated.

When needled too much about the quality of cinema, the peddlers of mindless popular servings such as Houseful have one final answer - the fact that these movies make money - a lot of it, infact. Check out the box office collections of last decade, or a decade before that – it would be rare to find a cerebral offering among the top grossers. Hence, the question of popular cinema or good cinema is answered quite well by the box office - filmmaking is a private enterprise, and hence, the money flow decides the products. However, whether to have good policies or popular ones? This question may not be so easy to decide. Governance has to be both good and popular. And if push comes to shove, none other than Mahatma Gandhi has said, "Under my proposal, they (the British) have to leave India in God's hands – but in modern parlance to anarchy, and that anarchy may lead to internecine warfare for a time or to unrestrained dacoities. From these, a true India will rise in the place of the false one we see". Another of his quotes makes the meaning clearer – “For me the only training in Swaraj we need is the ability to defend ourselves against the whole world and to live our natural life in perfect freedom, even though it may be full of defects. Good government is no substitute for self-government.” So the political superstructure of the country is clearly cast by the Founding Fathers themselves. Hence the civil service knows quite well the side of the bread which is buttered. The question of good versus popular can only be resolved amicably if the gulf between the two is narrowed. It can be narrowed by better information of the masses by their better off kin. So, instead of simply sneering at the initiatives of the government and the competency of the services, our social peers may be better occupied by raising the general zeitgeist to the levels of their own understanding. Borrowing from Kipling, this is the "better off man's burden" in this age. Plus, who knows, in the bargain, we might even better the quality of movies we get to watch and the songs we get to listen to!