Conventional wisdom would have it that the drumbeats of change that followed the Mumbai tragedy will mute; that memories will fade and life will return to business as usual. The cry for change that dominated TV and press for the first few days after the tragedy will in short be left unresponded. The changes that do occur will address the symptoms and not the root cause. It will be symbolic not radical.
I have to admit that in the six weeks since 26/11 there is much to support conventional wisdom. The drumbeats have quietened. And perhaps understandably so. The challenge of shifting the needle of governance in a polity riven by the conflicting demands of multiple political groups does appear insuperable. The issue is whether it is impossible?
A flash back review of 2008 would suggest that conventional wisdom can and indeed has been turned on its head. No public figure foresaw the near collapse of the world economy and the fading lustre of the liberal-capitalist model of economic growth and social development. Few if any professional economists predicted the resurrection of Keynesianism. Only a handful of political seers expected Obama to clinch the Democratic Presidency (not at least until it became obvious). And certainly no oil company executive forecast that oil prices would run up from less than $50/bbl in January to just under $150/bbl in July and then collapse again to below $50/bbl by December. What conventionalism did suggest was that the world economy would slow but not hit the brakes; that the financial crisis would be severe but not engulf the global real economy; that oil prices would oscillate but within the bounds set by the fundamentals of demand and supply and that whilst Obama was a candidate of rare talent the traditional determinants of race, experience, and incumbency would ultimately scupper their political ambitions.
Hindsight gives us some idea as to why the conventionalists got it wrong. They were peering into the future through lenses that focused unduly on the tangible. The view subordinated the qualitative for the quantitative. It did not capture the collage created by the combination of individual creativity, market dynamics and information technology. The financial crisis was seeded for instance by the whiz kids of Wall Street. They concocted the alchemists brew that turned sub prime mortgages into triple ?A? rated financial instruments. The brew tasted good in moderation but when driven by greed and on the back of integrated markets and information technology, it became the drink of the global financial community and caused a systemic dysfunction.
It would be na?ve to argue that the events of 2008 mark a radical watershed. But it would be a mistake to ignore the signals that they emitted. If nothing else, the signals suggest that the world does not revolve around an axis of only scientific principles and deterministic trends; that the future is not hostage to precedent. The votaries of change post Mumbai should pick on these straws to sustain their efforts to buck the conventional trend.
One idea for instance that has been floated but which conventionalism would rubbish can gain credence from such signals. This is an idea premised on three assumptions. Coalition governments in the Centre are here to stay; no single party will have the numbers to ride roughshod over its coalition partners and a cohesive group of 50-60 parliamentarians could well therefore hold the balance of power. The idea is to identify and then somehow get elected such a number of individuals of integrity and public spirit and for them to use their disproportionate clout to check public venality and executive incompetence. The conventionalists would dismiss the idea as impractical and infeasible. Elections require funds; candidates need to be backed by organisations and whilst integrity is a fine word it counts for little in the hurly burly of our electoral battles.
These are solid reasons for jettisoning the idea but only if the signals of 2008 are totally ignored. But if they do hold out straws then it is one that invites experimentation. After all, could not a Trust be set up to finance the election campaigns of such individuals? Could not the Trust draw on the Obama campaign tactics and use the Internet to raise money from an ?angry? public? A contribution of say Rs 100 from even a part of India?s so called middle class could put over Rs 100 crore into the Trust. Could not the Trust be managed by a cross section of eminent non-partisan citizens who would also identify and select the candidates bearing in mind of course the socio-cultural-economic realities of the electorate? The effort may come to naught but if it did not and some candidates were elected through such a process, it could galvanise a significant challenge to the present conventional narrative of governance. And if that happened, the needle would shift not simply in the direction of symbolism but towards systemic, durable and positive changes.
?The author is chairman of the Shell Group of Companies in India. These are his personal views
