What India needs now are Smart States, not Cities!

The current NDA government in India has been making quite a lot of noise about the hundred smart cities that it wants to build. All this noise is uncalled for in a federal democracy. In fact it appears to be signaling the formation of an ecosystem of governance where the States are conveniently expelled from their place between the Centre and the people!

(Courtesy: districtoffuture.eu)

Smart Cities Council, a portal where global companies and city stakeholders discuss smart city ideas, hosts this infographic that explains the nitty-gritties of smart cities. According to it, a smart city is that which is nearly self-sustenant and whose public policy and data are transparently available to people for scrutiny and other uses.

The idea of smart city strives to make legislation and policing minimal by letting advanced technology assist, if not replace them. More importantly, at the heart of these smart cities, is the idea of governance by least hops and the idea of self-rule. For cities in India, the closest tier of an elected government is either a municipality, corporation or the panchayat. The central government is far-fetched and impractical on this count. Attempts like these being made by the Urban Development ministry in GoI, therefore, are desi to fail.

If self-sustenance and local governance are the mantras for smart and efficient living in the modern world, then Smart States, not cities are what India needs primarily and urgently. These smart States would have to be more self-sustenant, self-reliant and self-driven than they are allowed to be in India today.

Having some cities under the direct regulation of the central government burdens it with additional fiscal responsibility but brings in revenues that the States need and deserve more, thus denying those cities and States the attention and resources they need and deserve. Given the nature of horizontal fiscal devolution prevalent in India, such centrist ideas of building cities could siphon funds away from well performing cities into the non-performing, yet enumerated cities. This corrupts fiscal performance equation of States and also creates an unfair and uncompetitive environment in the nation.

Amidst all the diversity in India a State is the real unit of governance that needs to turn smarter, not the city. It is a smart decision to respect the diversity and embrace the challenges it offers, for a solution agnostic of diversity is not smartness, it is brutal rudeness. That is the real federal way of imbibing smartness, for smartness of a democratic and diverse nation like India really lay in its Federalism.

(This post was originally published on Karnatique, run by my friends at Banavasi Balaga)

The Fun in Bollywood & Hindi Imposition happening Underneath!

I had been to the Village restaurant in Bengaluru recently on a team outing from office. During one of the celebration activities therein, I was requested to witness a celebration of the young(er) people, dancing their minds off to some Hindi movie numbers. I was shocked to see how the dancers teamed up as though ignoring the vulgarities in the songs being played and displayed a fictitious oneness in gender by their rather erotic moves. And when the song ended, no wonder, there were cries of once more.

The youth is being made to "want" more of what it "wants"; in the process it wants less of what it "needs", perhaps.

But beyond this thought, ever thought why Hindi movies tend to carry more dance & frolic driven songs and thereby tend to carry away the young audiences into its reverie?

Its an entirely orchestrated drama. An orchestra arranged by the central government and Hindi movie industry. Why else would Hindi movie artists so easily get the Ratna awards?! Here's an explanation.

It isn't difficult now to say that Bollywood (the Hindi movie industry) and the central government have worked hand-in-hand from a long time - worked to drive the Indian nationality theory into young, unassuming, minds; worked together to successfully impose Hindi on the widely spread, linguistically diverse Indian population.

It is fun & frolic, after all, that the youth likes; after these programmings by the film industry-govt nexus, it is what it craves and demands. Anything that is mundane and more serious, like some of the really thought provoking movies from the non-Hindi industries carrying songs of serious introspection, doesn't carry the cool (or hot!) factor to attract the young audiences. This further catalyzes the Hindi Imposition projects of the central government, but worse still, it seriously erodes the impression young minds have about non-Hindi works of art and non-Hindi forms of entertainment altogether. No wonder, the latter are making only those attempts that make it more resemble the Hindi counterpart, by remaking and dubbing alike.

On the flip side, why there is more frolic in Hindi movies is worth investigating as well. Just like the Hindu Gods are always portrayed to be amid happiness, which in turn makes people flock towards their idols and images seeking their own happiness, the Bollywood industry lets go of 'boring' social messages that it needs to convey and loudly advertises tempting lewdness and conveys messages of fun & frolic to the youth.

It is also the Hindi industry and the Hindi people that are the ultimate beneficiaries in the Indian union, what with all the pro-Hindi policies of the central government and its machinery. With this backdrop, if there's one film industry in India that can really celebrate all through the year, it is the Hindi film industry. And this industry is taking most Indian youth by hypnotizing them towards a virtual state of happiness, night after night.

So: for everything serious, there are non-Hindi movie industries. For everything fun, cool & hot, there is the Hindi movie industry, and that is where people will flock to. Kudos to the creativity of the Hindi imposer!

We should have State Constitutions, shouldn't we?

Having one constitution, such as the current one, for the entire Indian nation and not letting States to have their respective constitutions is like taking a set of jigsaw pieces and pressing them to fit within a shape of player's choice! No, the pieces fit in only one way, and that way is only decided by the pieces themselves.

Presence of a Constitution of India (COI) on top of suspended State constitutions is perhaps the root cause for those umpteen amendments India has made to the COI and for the prevalence of dire problems in India's socio-economic landscape. For instance, the number of appendages made to Article 371 - the special status gimmick - displays the finicky and fluid state of vision over national policy. Such piecewise approach to making modifications in COI not only provide a reason for its bulky nature but also explain why and how it has failed to perform its original intended duty in this democracy. The very size of the constitution and the vast demography that it intends to acquire under its purview makes it increasingly untenable given the increasing awareness in people about the sovereign and republic nature of this democracy.

The year 2014 is turning out to be an year for the States to reckon with. Chief Ministers of multiple States - Delhi, AP and, just this afternoon, Bihar - have expressed anguish at the alleged misdeeds committed by the central government against the wishes of people living in their States. These can be directly attributed to a rather convolved Constitution of India that often lands even constitutional experts in moments of introspection and doubt; a doubt that shatters the confidence of people in their nation, and also its large, bulky constitution.

This bulky constitution resembles a big fat balloon with multiple punctures - you just cannot say where it will fly, meaning where this constitution will lead India to cannot be predicted easily. The mirth is higher when you have smaller, yet a more colourful bunch of balloons in your hand than one large punctured balloon in flight. You get the analogy, right?

In another State, Tamilnadu, the CM expresses her desire to free a set of convicts who've been in prison for nearly two decades, but the constitution by some weird combination, which too is figured out after much deliberation among experts, makes her seek the Centre's approval despite the fact that Police is a State subject as per Schedule 7 of the Constitution of India itself! Instead of having the Schedule 7 dictate what the States must govern and what the Centre must (& can), wouldn't it be rather more convenient and more appropriate for the States to have their own constitutions and the COI address subjects left behind unattended by the State constitutions? Wouldn't that be real decentralization and real federalism? Wouldn't that be in line with the real spirit of a democracy where the degree of delegation of governance droops with distance - both physical and representative.

The repercussion of this constitutional arrangement is also felt on the linguistic diversity of India. With regards to language planning and policy, Constitution of India is mired in controversy - controversies based on assumptions that go squarely against the nation's linguistic diversity.

The official language act, for instance, which is a statute law spun off from Articles 343 & 344 of the COI, forbids usage of any Indian language apart from Hindi at the Centre. This is a clear violation of human rights happening right under the aegis of a constitution that lays the political framework of this nation. This violation could have been precluded had the language policy of the nation been a linear summation and intercourse of the language policies of all States.

As the famous quote goes, people of India live in their States, and the Centre really need not have any business directly with the people. With such a natural arrangement of business, it is implied that there is very little need for such an all-encompassing constitution at the Centre whereas the need for such a constitution certainly exists at the State level. Time to write one?

Indian Democracy: The Highness of Lows?

A DEMOCRACY should ensure people don't live at the mercy of a single person. Also, Democracy should be about questioning the contemporary and about being able to shape one's tomorrows oneself. This is equity characteristic of a democracy, isn't it? From the way the Telangana episode is unfolding, that equity appears to be denied, perhaps by means of the constitution itself, and in doing so, the President of India, sitting at the apex of the Indian Democratic Republic, seems unquestionable, till now.

If the President's office, occupied by a person with recorded political loyalty to a party that's in power at Centre, agrees to hand over a State Reorganization bill to the parliament, discounting the State's aspirations, the President is indeed portrayed as unquestionable because the rest of the country can only watch, quite literally though! Because the State and its millions of people are absolutely at the mercy of the President's office and the President's decision in this regard. Can such living in the mercy of a single person be called a democracy?

Something in this episode tells me there's an unwritten assumption in our constitution that people are expected to believe the President is unquestionable, and it is better that way for the nation! It is unfair & even unreal to expect an entire nation to assume that one human being in this nation will alone remain unquestionable, even in matters that directly affect the lives of millions of people spread across vast stretches of land - matching that of some countries in the EU! In fact the celebrated office of the President enjoys more constitutional allowances than a democracy can actually afford. For instance the Presidential Ordinance offers an easy route for a favourable political party in power at the Centre to enforce law without opposition, albeit for a maximum of six months.

While the constitution does provide solutions to overrule an unruly or insane President, it does not equip people with a solution to a problem that could arise out of a hidden nexus between the President and a few parliamentarians, who could use the President's political superiority and immunity of sorts to siphon party gains, and subsequently, individual gains.

Talking about living at the mercy of an individual - applying such observations to the Telangana episode India will come across to anyone as that democracy in which people live with the least number of total people that collectively represent them, yet the highest number of total people that don't represent them but are 'empowered' to express their voice for or against them.

That is perhaps a new high in lows among democracies.

People who have seen democracies in action in other parts of the world may see something fundamentally wrong in this setup. The idea of representation has been infected with a virus at birth - a virus of assumption that the newfound idea of representation would work, an assumption that people, hailing from ages of monarchy, would know how to handle representation and get what they need. This assumption has cost the Indian peoples very dear; it has cost them a constitution that is unable to sustain the nation as well as would be desired. This assumption has pushed people to now question its very sanctity and relevance. It has forced people to have the weirdest representation formula that doesn't work for people, but works to pull more power to the Centre. Its time those questions were asked out in public, even if it were addressed to the President.

(After deciding to post this, #PepperSpray has shrouded Parliament. What else could happen when an entire people's identity is so brutally trampled upon?)

The Anti-Incumbency Inherent in the Constitution!

ROOT causing Congress party's decimation in the recent State Assembly elections, especially in Delhi, and a similar decimation of the BJP in Karnataka earlier this year, one can find that quite a lot of blame of lacklustre performance at the State level is being attributed to the lacklustre performance of the ruling party at the Center. Said in other words, people heard lauding Congress' good governance under Sheila Dikshit in Delhi last 15 years are attributing this December election defeat to the poor governance by Congress at the Center.

This blaming scheme probably has its roots in the Schedule 7 of the Constitution of India, which distributes such subjects of governance to the Center that had rather been in State control so that a performance or failure of a State government can clearly be attributed to the State government alone. This arrangement of subjects - while it gives more control to those that run the Central government - creates a confusion among voters while assessing the performance or failure of their incumbent State ruling party, thereby rendering them clueless about which party their vote must go in current elections.

Whether this confusion is the genius of the Constitution or of the people that reserve the right to remove such confusion is an easy question to answer. Its the people, who hold the right to amend the Constitution - the legislators, that need to act and amend the Schedule-7 so as to re-arrange subjects of governance between the State and the Center. These people include elected members of State assemblies apart from MPs, for according to Art 368 an amendment to Schedule-7 needs approval from more than half of the State assemblies.

Now, in the interest of those political parties that have aspirations at both State and Central level politics I believe there is value in picking up this cause of an amendment to the 7th Schedule that is also long pending. There are some parties like the BJP, of course, that would like to keep the 7th schedule that way, what with the manufactured image of some of their larger than thou candidates whose projected national image is expected to win them State elections also. But is it really going to help once they gain Central power and continue to be subject to the same Constitution that is bound to pull them down, eventually?

Isn't it time we realized why people get bored of incumbent political parties even if, for a moment, we assume those parties were doing the right things? Isn't it time we saw the anti-incumbency inherent in our Constitution?