The UPA now has an unprecedented opportunity to secure the foundations of India?s long term prosperity. Parliamentary arithmetic favours a stable government. Political opposition both from the Left and the BJP is, at the moment, so diminished that the government is now in a position to think long term, rather than beyond the next few months. The only thing that now stands between UPA and success will be its own hubris or lack of imagination.
The one word that is used a good deal in interpreting the mandate the UPA has received is ?freshness.? A lot of expectations are packed into this vague word. But if the UPA manages to unpack some of those it will do the country a great favour. The first expectation of a politics of freshness is to take advantage of the possibility that we might be genuinely entering a post-Manual, post Hindustan phase of Indian politics. This implies that public policy should not be an instrument of symbolic divisiveness, in a way that reinforces identity politics in the name of caste or religion. The focus now should squarely be on expanding opportunities for all citizens in a manner where their identity becomes less relevant for political mobilisation. Identity politics, of the sort we practised in India, while empowering in some limited sense, impeded the emergence of a politics of accountability. Now we have an opportunity to move beyond that paradigm and concentrate on genuine public goods.
The second aspect of freshness is to stem the decline in institutions. There was a growing sense that political parties, for instrumental ends or short term gains, were ready to compromise with the credibility of public institutions. The integrity and autonomy of a whole range of institutions from the CBI to the police, from the judiciary to independent regulators, have been consistently compromised. Restoring credibility to these institutions is important for three reasons. First, these institutions do the job of mediating social conflict and expectations; the more credible they are, the easier it is to avoid conflict. Second, these institutions are the necessary conditions of a vibrant investment climate. Third, these institutions are also instruments of public accountability.
The third aspect of freshness is radically new thinking about the state itself. Unfortunately the term ?reform? is now associated with only a limited set of market friendly reforms. There is some space for further reforms in this direction. But the importance of these reforms pales in significance in comparison to the more urgent task of reform: reforming the state itself, along several dimensions. Most of the reforms that are needed in this area are not dramatic or eye catching and will probably not even get much public attention. They require an attention to detail. They are about nuts and bolts. They require a rethinking about the hundreds of quotidian ways in which the Indian state seems so distant and difficult to most of its citizens. Government procedure must be driven, not by a fetish of process, but by a clear understanding of how the process furthers particular objectives. To be governed is, as Proudhon once reminded us, ?to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorised, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished.? What is the rationality and equity that underlies these operations? Can we alter the experience of our interface with the state? Will this interaction be more efficient and respectful of our dignity as citizens?
The fourth association of freshness is a new architecture for the delivery of public goods. There has been, over the last few years, lots of experimentation with different centrally sponsored schemes, some more successful than others. Can these now be woven into an efficient and integrated architecture? We can endlessly debate convoluted development economics. But the simple truth is that if we can provide adequate nutrition, keep children in school for at least ten years, keep them healthy, and provide the background conditions like roads and power, there is nothing stopping India. But these are things the government has to facilitate if not do directly. What is the delivery architecture that will make it happen? The most important thing in thinking about this architecture is that different elements of it must complement each other, not work at cross purposes. For instance, if we think that decentralisation is an important element of this architecture, we need to invest in building those institutions over the period of a decade, not do a series of haphazard interventions that oscillate between centralisation and decentralisation. In parallel on the revenue side, can it put the state on firmer fiscal foundations by introducing an integrated GST? In short, this is the time to build the state, not let it drift.
Building states is difficult. It will require not just top down direction, but enlisting the energies of people at different levels of society. Even during its last tenure, many of the reforms UPA failed to carry out ? in power, in infrastructure, in education ? had very little to do with political compulsions. The Left was often a convenient alibi for a refusal to exercise leadership. The demand for freshness is a demand to overcome the inbuilt complacency within the Congress; in short, it is demand to fight its own recent past.
But finally freshness is about youth, energy and innovation. It is about empowering younger faces, who will have to live with the consequences of what they now do. It is about altering a sense of what lies within the horizon of possibility. India is undergoing a revolution on several fronts: a revolution of rising expectations, a revolution that is seeing innovation in all kinds of unlikely places, a revolution that does not seek the noblesse oblige of the state but genuine empowerment. How can these large scale transformations be channelised into a sense of common purpose? To what ideals will this energy be consecrated? Who will articulate their true character? Who will begin a new conversation about what India was, is and can be?
?The writer is President and Chief Executive, Centre for Policy Research