The Hindu : The presidential election

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Saturday, Jun 22, 2002

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The presidential election

By Supriya RoyChowdhury

A head of state would need to embody a persona that could stem the receding tides of the nation's faith in its own moral integrity, and, of course, in the state's moral right to rule.

NOW THAT the dust has settled on the murky politics of nomination of candidates for the presidency, one could take a moment to think about the broader issues that this presidential election has thrown up. The essence of political leadership in democratic politics is the leader's association with the public, via ideas, institutions, and the rough and tumble of competitive politics. In the case of a titular head of state, such as the Indian President, perhaps participation in competitive politics may be less important a criterion than the selection of individuals with demonstrated capacity for leadership through vision.

In India, particularly at this moment in time, there is a crisis of faith on every front. In Gujarat, the state has turned upon its own citizens. Externally, the state holds out the threat of a possible nuclear war. During such a time as this, a head of state would need to embody a persona that could stem the receding tides of the nation's faith in its own moral integrity, and, of course, in the state's moral right to rule.

The average middle class citizen knows A.P.J Abdul Kalam as the head of India's missile establishment. He is also known as the person who presided over Pokhran-II. But the most outstanding fact about Dr. Kalam's candidature to the presidency is that his politics is completely unknown to us, the ordinary citizens. This leaves us with no option but to deduce, from the snippets of information recently made available, what his possible politics might be.

Since Dr. Kalam is a candidate of the BJP-led NDA, one has to conclude that his politics is at least not fundamentally opposed to what the BJP stands for ideologically. Then again, there is the fact that Dr. Kalam is a member of a minority community. While it may be politically useful to have a Muslim candidate at this point in time — a fact that has been already widely commented upon — for the ordinary citizen, two facts would seem to stand out here. First, Dr. Kalam had made no statement, or taken any kind of a stand, on the communal riots in Gujarat before he was nominated. This fact cannot be ignored, for every event of national political relevance in the present and in the near future is necessarily framed by the darkness in Gujarat. Second, as a member of the minority community, Dr. Kalam has accepted the presidential candidature supported by a political party widely acknowledged to be responsible for the Gujarat riots. Dr. Kalam, however, has said in a recent public statement that he believes that the nation is superior to the individual. But would that imply becoming a presidential candidate with the support of a political party which is avowedly committed to building a Hindu state? Sections of the media have reported on Dr. Kalam's vegetarianism, and on the fact that he is widely known as Kalam Iyer. In that sense, Dr. Kalam is being portrayed as a minority community candidate par excellence, i.e., one who sports all the insignia of the majority community: quotes extensively from the Bhagvad Gita, is proficient in playing the rudra veena, and has a commanding position in a scientific establishment which is known for its predominantly upper class, Brahmanical profile.

But if Dr. Kalam's politics is unknown to us, and he has now been selected as the country's future President, this pushes to the surface certain features of our political life. First, there is the somewhat odd fact that now it is necessary to look outside of politics to conceive of a statesman-like person. In other words, the professional politician is no longer someone who can be placed in the nation's highest position of honour and authority. This has two implications. One, that the quality of leadership in professional politics is either mediocre, or corrupt or both. The second implication is that in looking towards extra political personages, a fundamental tenet of democratic politics is being flouted, in that, a person whose politics is unknown or undefined, is being inducted to play a political role. The President may be the ceremonial head of state, but his role is nothing if not political. The President plays a political role even by his silences. Effectively, therefore, in the induction of a politically unknown person, there is an element of cheating the ordinary citizen.

The induction into the presidency of a technology person, of a manager of science, is a positive development, it is said. For some time now, our politics in general has taken a dualistic turn. In the realms of democratic mobilisation, it is more and more useful to appeal to caste, religious, and ethnic identities.

On the other hand, in the era of liberalisation, policymaking, particularly economic policymaking, has become increasingly a technical exercise, spearheaded by a core group of techno-economist policy intellectuals and led by successive Finance Ministers with a commitment to a technocratic/pragmatic, as distinct from ideological, definition of economic policy making. Economic policy is now shrouded in a technical/technocratic language that is well beyond the understanding of the layman, leave aside the country's large majority of people with no access to basic education.

A President with a high profile in technology management can only accentuate these tendencies, for good or for worse. What is more worrying is that as the erstwhile high priest of the nuclear regimen, the future President may well preside over a process where the Indian state attains a more menacing profile as a nuclear power.

And all the time these processes may be shrouded in a technocratic language inaccessible to the ordinary citizen. Thus, the fact that the Indian state spends as much as 2.38 per cent of its GDP on defence, and a mere 1.58 per cent on social sectors, may be important to the ordinary citizen, but may well be a non-issue as far as techno-managerial considerations of policy are concerned.

As a counter point, there is Lakshmi Sahgal, known for her long association both with the freedom struggle and with the Left movement, particularly the women's movement. As a doctor and a social worker, she is recognised for her service to ordinary citizens. Capt. Sahgal's credibility as a public figure is beyond question. As Capt. Sahgal has the support only of the Left parties, by the CPI(M)'s own admission her candidature is more symbolic than real.

The weakness of her candidature, however, not only drives home the well-known point about the Opposition's fragile unity. The more important consideration here possibly is that given the rushed and unprepared manner in which the Opposition candidate was put forward, the Left's credibility slipped a little further down in public perception. To whom, then, shall we look?

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