Our Government and Us

This Republic Day I could not but help meditate between the increasing disconnect between those who run the State- the politicians, the bureaucrats, the judiciary, the police etc – and we the ordinary people.

Is it only because we perceive most everyone in “Government” as corrupt and/or inefficient?

Or does it go deeper and also have to do with what we perceive the government’s role in our lives to be?

I believe the perception of Government of our intelligentsia is shaped by a Western world view.

A view that is shaped by a desired primacy of the individual and hence Government as a necessary evil constantly to be watched and kept in check.

This paranoia results in everybody in government to be seen, by the ordinary man, as ‘alien’- somebody outside and separate from us.

But is this the only possible view of Government?

Consider what Martin Jacques, author and China expert, writes in this week’s Newsweek:
“Government is seen by the Chinese not as an alien presence to be constantly pruned back, as in the West, especially the US, but as the embodiment and guardian of society. Rather than alien, it is seen as an intimate, in the manner of the head of the household. It might seem an extraordinary proposition, but the Chinese state enjoys a remarkable legitimacy among its people, greater than in Western societies. And the reason lies deep in China’s history. China may call itself a nation-state (although only for the past century) but in essence it is a civilization-state dating back at least two millennia. Maintaining the unity of Chinese civilization is regarded as the most important political priority and seen as the sacred task of the state, hence its unique role: there is no Western parallel.”

Is there an Indian parallel? Should there be one?

The Hindutva mantra of BJP has a ‘guardian of civilization’ ring to it but suffers from very poor branding fundamentals that unnecessarily limit the appeal.

We all instinctively know that there is an “Indian” identity that is not defined by religious or ethnic identities. Amartya Sen in his brilliant book “The Argumentative Indian” makes a well-researched case for it.

Is it then possible that India could be the first great society that marries democracy, capitalism with an uniquely Eastern view of the State?

More pertinently is that our only way to achieve the greatest good for all our people?

Do we need a political revolution that begins not with the form or function of our State but in our perception of the role of our State?

Could it be that the rot in our system is because of a counterproductive fusion of the worst of the Western framework of Government and the basest of Eastern instincts of individual and narrow interests?

Questions with no easy or simple answers but worth posing, I would think, as another 26th of January passes by and we wonder what the next 60 years of being a Republic holds for us.

Lost and Found: One Number Happiness Touchstone

I was a happy kid.

People who know me from back then recall a quiet somewhat taciturn boy. My memories are of years filled with wonder and discovery.

Someone said the child is the father of the man. In that sense, I feel born again and have re-discovered the secret.

The secret is in three realizations.

Realization One: Human situations, like time and space, are relative. The same situation can be read very differently by different people and each one of them would be true and right in their reading (the classic Kurosava film “Rashoman” illustrates this meta-truth with breathtaking impact).

Realization Two: In every situation that any person faces, there is framework of perception available to that person that generates and supports the feeling of ‘all is well’.

Realization Three: If you practice perceiving whatever situations you face through the ‘all is well’ framework it gets easier and easier to do so. It is almost as if life itself is responding to and harmonizing with your happiness.

Actually the secret is no secret.

It is just hidden in plain sight as we struggle with ambition, greed, envy and all sorts of other, as my physics professor back in IIT Bombay would have called, ‘inappropriate frameworks’.

Watch the visceral recognition that audiences greet the “all is well” anthem in the movie “Three Idiots” and you will know what I mean.