Why is Democracy a Good Thing?

Nilakantan Rajaraman asks. Well,  because it provides stability…

…for the ruling class. Dictators can get deposed and they can get executed, especially by other dictators.  Bad rulers like Mayawati, Lalu Prasad Yadav or Y S R Reddy can at worst expect to lose the next election and continue to enjoy their ill-gotten gains. Likewise, if you are running a major political party and you aren’t a strong and charismatic leader like Indira Gandhi, allowing intra-party democracy at the local level is a good bet to protect you from the convulsions of periodic splits and rebellions. 

It is debatable whether a dysfunctional democracy like India is good for its citizens, but I rather think that India’s democracy has been better for the Nehru-Gandhi family than Pakistan’s system has been for the Bhutto family.

The Road to Democracy

I have pointed out earlier that adopting democracy is like nuclear disarmament – there are serious costs to being the first one to do it. This does not mean that it is impossible. One possible approach is to have dictatorship at the central level, but democracy at the local level. This is best done when the central leadership is neither too strong nor too weak. If it is too strong, the central leadership has no incentive to allow democracy. As it gets weaker, allowing local democracy is a good way to contain discontent and preventing rebellion. But the central leadership should not be too weak. It should be strong enough to make a credible commitment that it can enforce the rules.  BJP might be in that situation:

Bihar BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi held on to his job as Deputy Chief Minister after an unprecedented secret ballot, allowed by the party leadership, showed he enjoyed support of majority party MLAs and MLCs in the state. (Indian Express)

The other example I can think of is.. China, but I am not very sure of it.

Of course, allowing local democracy is the first step; the ultimate goal is to have democracy at the central level too. But I am not sure if there is a next step that is not dangerous.

How Do You Find Good Schools?

In a curious response to my post, Ravikiran Rao points to an earlier post that draws an analogy between blogs and educational institutions. In particular, it should be easy for people to start educational institutions — just as it is easy for people to start blogs. You have heard about the death of set-up costs, haven’t you?

Students will be able to discover for themselves where the good institutions are, and they will flock to them — just like readers discover good blogs now. Death of transaction costs, too!

Ravikiran Rao seems very confident that he has found a clever solution to our higher ed problems.

Just imagine the possibilities of this wonderfully costless world: our students will be able to sample a whole bunch of colleges / courses for two minutes each. Or, they’ll just need to discover one or two good colleges, which will point them to many other similarly good colleges. (nanopolitan)

I did not intend to claim that I knew the solution to all the problems of higher education. I was merely pointing out that regulation is part of the problem, not part of the solution.  Regulations impose barriers to entry and they tend to penalize the honest the most. Being snarky does not free you from addressing the point.

His second point is of course, quite valid. If it weren’t for the government certifying the quality of schools, the only way to find out their quality is by enrolling in them and studying in those schools for two minutes. It is because of the regime of school inspection that has freed us from the burden of selecting schools for our children. It is a proven fact that middle-class parents who have to choose schools do so by draw of lots. It is also a fact that there is a social taboo against speaking about how good or bad your school is, which makes it impossible for parents to gain any information about the quality of schools.

Private Players in Higher Education Are Corrupt! How Horrifying!

Our current problem is not that there are no private players, but that they have among them too many crooks, politicians and thugs whose primary motive is demonstrably something other than education. So the real issue is this: What changes do we need in our regulatory structure so as to attract the ‘right’ sort of private players — philanthropists — to enter the education sector in larger numbers? How do we keep the undesirable kind from poisoning the pool? (nanopolitan)

Bzzt. Already answered. Next question please.

Pragati in June

The June 2008 edition of Pragati is out and I shamefully realise that in the last two months I have announced the publication of Pragati without making an atrocious pun. How could I have not made a pun in May? Anyway,  please grab your copy of the June Pragati before it becomes Juna.

All the articles are awesomely good this time, even though one of them has been written by Aadisht. I will never forgive him for sending an article on the importance of Financial Sector Reform that was double the nominal word limit. I deserve a medal for cutting it down to its current size, so don’t make my effort go waste. Go read it.  It explains the Percy Mistry and the Rajan committee reports very well. More importantly, he explains very lucidly why financial reform is important if we wish to reduce inequality and enable inclusive growth.

Difficult Democracy

Karthik extends my point about intra-party democracy to point out that the same problem applies to countries too. He is right. On the same note the Dilbert blog talks of the problems you face if you  have ended up as  the dictator of a major country. You do not have a career path and you cannot retire. Yes, it is hard to sympathize with dictators, but think of someone like poor Kim Jong Il, who has had dictatorship thrust on him. There is really no easy way out, especially if you are also incompetent.

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The Decline And Fall of the Indian National Congress

This post will probably come back to haunt me. Later this year, there will be elections in BJP ruled states, and there is a chance that anti-incumbency will bring the Congress back to power there. Next year there will be a general election and the Congress may yet win it, and you guys will come back to this post and mock me for it. But what the hell, here is my view. For what it is worth, I held the same view after the 2004 elections.

I believe that the Congress is in irreversible decline. It may win one election and lose the next, but the trend is towards a decline. In a decade, it will be like Saltanat-e-Shah Alam: Az Dilli ta Palam. (The Sultanate of Shah Alam, a latter day Mughal “emperor” that stretched all the way from Delhi to Palam – then a village on the outskirts.)

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Urban Predictions

 “…the impact of this [delimitation] commission on India’s politics  will be at least as far reaching as that of the Mandal commission.”  

Now that we have seen the impact of the delimitation and increased representation for urban areas in the Karnataka election results, there will be increased talk of this phenomenon, but I just want to place on record that I had talked of this back in January 2008. I am not sure if I was the first one to talk of this, but just in case I was, let the date be noted.

I must also point out that I am not sure what the impact will be.  I have been speculating quite a bit and much of the speculation will prove to be wrong. I am more likely to be correct about generalities (“national parties will benefit”) than about the particulars (“BJP will benefit”). My reasoning is more likely to be correct than the conclusions, because a small error in reasoning is likely to result in large errors in conclusions.  But I am most confident about the statement made above – i.e. in time, the impact of urbanization on India’s politics will be as large, if not larger than the impact due to the Mandal politics introduced by V P Singh.

Non-migration of Maharashtrian Food

I had wanted to give this response to Gaurav’s post, but Neel has already done it. Gaurav thinks that the lack of Marathi migration explains why the Maharashtrian thali has not become as popular as the Gujarati thali. But, as Neel points out, his theory does not explain why Maharashtrian food has not become popular even in Mumbai outside the Marathi dominated areas. More interestingly, Maharashtrian food has not moved out of its downmarket niche, even though there is a strong Maharashtrian middle and upper class. This last fact brings us back to the Marathi non-entrepreneurial spirit theory. It suggests to us that owners of Maharashtrian restaurants are content with what they are and do not want to scale up. This is the most likely explanation, but two alternatives are:

  •  Maharashtrian diners are different from Gujju diners, in that when they dine out, they aren’t looking for Maharashtrian food.
  • There is something about Maharashtrian food that does not lend itself to moving upscale – I think this last is very unlikely.

Rajiv Gandhi and Hindustani Classical Music

Today is the anniversary of Rajiv Gandhi’s death, an event I would have blissfully ignored if the cable had not gone out in the morning and we had to switch to Doordarshan for a brief period. Entirely coincidentally, today I decided to change the CD in my car’s music system that was playing the same set of Kishore Kumar songs again and again. I felt like having some Hindustani vocal. That naturally brings up the question: How much damage did the government do to Indian classical music by switching to it during periods of “national mouring”?