Indian politics is up for disruption.
Disrupt
verb: to stop something happening as or when it should
Like elsewhere, politics in India is also an industry. And like all industries there is a conventional wisdom on how things are done in that industry. You organize people and divide them around caste and religion, polarize them and reap the rewards. Or you offer them freebies depending on the state in which elections are being held and status of the citizens, essentially buying their loyalty for yourself. Elections are won and everyone forgets and its business as usual.
The old system is not working
Unlike the developed countries our politics define our future, our progress. In USA Obama was elected and nothing spectacular was achieved in his 8 years and the Trump was elected and nothing major disruptive happened. During Obama’s term US grew at 2.38% on an average (taking out 2009), and during Trump it grew 2.5% (taking out 2020), not much of a difference. In India the economy gets shot or healed as we move from one government to another, and in places like Bihar, West Bengal and UP, nothing really changes, ever. In India coalitions don’t work, and neither do majority governments.
Our politics has got so fragmented that it has resulted in a situation where 36 chief ministers of India come from 16 different parties. Its like we are back to British era where almost every district was a different principality. Each of these chief ministers have a view on how governance should be done and how they want to deal with the central government. What we get is a patchy governance all across the country, some people get free electricity, some get good healthcare, some get free food, and some get nothing.
Traveling from one state to another feels like traveling from one country to another. Even traveling from South Extension to Burari, both in Delhi, feels like we have moved from a developed nation to a third world country, such is the disparity.
Not one of these chief minister thinks of the country — India as a whole, everyone has their own view on what India is. Nobody knows where are we going as a country, what is the future of the youth, women, children, rich, poor nobody knows. If you were born in Kerala, you get to live and if you were born in Bihar, well good luck. If it were not for TikTok clones, WhatsApp and YouTube there would be a civil war erupting on the streets of India.
This system is broken, it is not working.
We need a new system
We need a new system, a system that works the same for everyone. Every Indian should know that they will get the same kind of governance, same level of healthcare, same level of education, same level of safety and security, same level of social security, same level of income, same level of infrastructure. A system where the per capita income of someone living in Goa is not 10 times of someone living in Bihar, and where we don’t have reservation in a state for only the citizens of the state. For reference the difference between the bottom state in US and the top state in US is 2.
We need to reach an administrative level where the country as a whole knows that we are going forward that every one is safe and that everyone has a bright future. Even if we have multiple parties we should all agree that we all have common goals and we all believe in India, and are not just parochially focused on their own states.
If this is not possible then we need a new system all together.
Disruptors are needed that change politics forever
Traditionally disruption changes an industry forever, the ways of doing business changes forever and it demolishes the traditional players and either puts them out of business or marginalizes them. Uber, Airbnb, Tesla, Amazon all disrupted their industry, Uber turned the traditional cab business upside down, most people cannot imagine hailing cabs any other way, such is its impact on the industry. Airbnb converted people’s homes into vacation rentals impacting the hotel industry. Tesla changed the car industry forever and accelerated the move towards green energy the world over. Amazon, well, it reimagined retail and is continuing to do so.
All these people didn’t come from the industry, Travis Klanick, founder of Uber was a technologist, Brian Chesky founder of Airbnb is an industrial designer, Elon Musk founder of Tesla is a computer engineer and Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon used to work for a consultancy. All these people entered an unrelated industry and changed the industry forever.
Similarly Indian politics has run its course, its rotten to its core, we need someone who will come and change the way politics is done in India. In India we need a disruptor, a genuine disruptor who changes the way politics and administration is done in India, one who can reimagine this whole thing anew, afresh.
We need sustained disruption
A lot of people will say Arvind Kejriwal was a disruptor, well he was, yet he floundered. He did not reimagine politics, he acted as an opportunist, grabbed the opportunity created by Nirbhaya, made populist promises the same way it is being done in every state of India since times memorial and nothing changed in Delhi. Nothing fundamental. And if you see his recent utterances and tweets, he is slowly drifting to become another opportunistic self serving, nation dividing, caste and religion game playing politician.
We don’t want a disruptor who would come and promise things would change and then change themselves and become more like the old political warhorses that are there. We need someone who holds the vision for the country and the methods of administration and politics and sustains it for years in face of all kinds of onslaught and attacks.
We need such a person and we need it now.
