Mind the gap
You know something is rotten in the state of India when Reuters puts out a report stating that the government of India has bought 140 air purifiers for the Prime Minister’s Office and at least six other government agencies. Why should this be news? Perhaps because it is an unwitting reflection of the growing distance between Indian officialdom — politicians certainly, but bureaucrats too — and the hardscrabble realities of living in India.
These machines, designed to improve indoor air quality in a National Capital Region (NCR) that chokes on all manner of air pollutants, is unavailable to the majority of Delhi’s citizens. In a sense, they represent the failure of a region that boasts the residences of a prime minister and three chief ministers to craft policies to clean the air.
At the risk of sounding dramatic, this sort of unequal resourcing goes to the heart of public policy-making in India. Those who are responsible for shaping policy for Indian citizens mostly don’t live like most middle class Indian citizens, forget the poor.
Admittedly, it would be curmudgeonly to deny the governing establishment decent working conditions. The real question to ask is how far an MP or bureaucrat’s lifestyle should differ from that of an ordinary Indian. This is not to suggest that everyone should emulate Manik Sarkar, Tripura’s recently ousted chief minister, who appeared to have made his fabled humble lifestyle an end in itself (though the fact that the media chose to hype the fact is revealing).
But there is no doubt that India’s governing establishment rarely faces the same problems that beset the ordinary urban dweller, a factor that contributes to India's increasingly shambolic process of urbanisation. The air purifier, together with water filters, power back-ups and air conditioners are the standard accoutrements for the rich and upper middle class. The air-conditioned car (preferably an SUV) and private home security service complete the barriers that India’s affluent build for themselves against the India that is Bharat, so to speak.
Indian politicians and bureaucrats enjoy all this and more — on taxpayer dime. Red lights and sirens may have been banned on official cars, but squadrons of police personnel ensure that the multitudes can sweat for hours in buses and cars so that MPs enjoy a smooth ride to their place of work. It is unlikely if any of them use the aam aadmi’s public transport provided by the city bus services or even the increasingly crowded metro network or negotiated with villainous auto-rickshaw drivers. They rarely run the risk of drinking contaminated water or occasionally sweating through long hours of power cuts.
Then, too, they enjoy the benefits of subsidised housing to an extent that distorts housing markets for home buyers. You begin to understand why people raise an outcry when the Maharashtra housing authority reserves a proportion of “affordable housing” for former MPs, MLAs and MLCs. Or the rumbles of discontent when the finance minister doubles the basic salary of MPs to a modest ~100,000 a month in the Budget, just two months before an automatic revision rule was to kick in.
A taxpayer-supported lifestyle that is accessible to a minuscule proportion of the Indian population means that policymakers do not feel it incumbent on themselves to address the average Indian citizen’s access to basic amenities. In many European democracies, particularly the “happy” Scandinavian ones, MPs use public transport and access broadly the same healthcare systems as most of their citizenry. Partaking of the same experience as electorates is a healthy way of understanding its problems. In the West, politics can occasionally mean a lifestyle diminution (even Donald Trump complains that the White House is a “dump” compared with the gilded luxury of Trump Tower).
Our Cabinet ministers only need to be stuck in jams regularly for traffic flows to improve. The public healthcare system is catastrophic principally because MPs and civil servants enjoy access to privileged medical care (including in expensive private establishments). Visiting a mohalla clinic for treatment may yield policy choices that give Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s flamboyant healthcare programme a better chance of success.
In several jurisdictions, notably the US, people’s representatives have research budgets rather than housing. In India, the MP allowance is just enough to maintain an office peon, let alone spend on research, which could well enhance the quality of policy-making (we might even get some informed debate in the Lok Sabha!).
The upshot is that in public perception, the profession of politics in India is regarded as a means to accessing a superior lifestyle rather than a mode of public service. Ironically, this is one characteristic of colonial rule that independent India retains with extraordinary fidelity. We do not grudge Mr Modi and his officers air purifiers. If only ordinary Delhi-ites could get to breathe better air too.
The profession of politics in India is regarded as a means to accessing a superior lifestyle rather than a mode of public service