I readily confess
to a fascination with the “theory of unintended consequences”. But, a
small clarification before anything further is written. My interest is
not in the certainty that everything that may go wrong about a policy
choice/decision is bound to. Confronted by almost six decades of inept
and often cynical management of this economy, it is to be expected that
we have come to associate “unintended consequences” with “negative
outcomes”.
In truth, put this
way, my central narrative is but a variant of Murphy’s Law. Instead, my
enthralment is with the benefits, losses, or wrong signals arising from
a particular action, but which were not conceived of in or intended as
part of the original action plan.
Newspaper headlines
on workers’ day, May 1, were all of one flavour. In their addresses to
the different labour rallies, state governors all pledged to implement
the new minimum wage. Not too long ago, the same persons had argued
that their state government budgets could not bear the extra financial
burden from paying the new minimum wage. What had changed since then? I
could think of only one proximate explanation: the events of late
April, this year.
On balance, the
last polls in the country appear to have moved the social engagement
envelope several notches up. The “voice” of the people was heard loud
and clear, amidst the din of many a strong man’s battered ego. That was
the intended consequence of the clamour over the years for a democracy
in which every vote is counted, and every vote counts.
To the extent that
it acts as counter-weight to the dominant culture of impunity that has
come to define our polity, a representative democracy ought to improve
both the collective capacity to choose, and the different cabinet’s
will to execute.
Perverse results
However, to the
extent that politicians interpret “re-election” as the main challenge
of a democracy, then even the best voting process could have perverse
results. One such result is the rise of populist politics. Because the
masses may now have the power of the vote, what is to stop unscrupulous
politicians from pandering to its basest instincts? To take but a few
examples, a thin line separates the need for higher taxes on the
affluent in aid of society’s redistribution responsibilities from a
restraint on commerce as part of an ill-advised process of
democratising poverty; a no less blurred space sits between the need to
protect employment for locals and xenophobia.
A less than honest
treatment of the policy choices at the heart of these two examples
could lead politicians in a race to the bottom of the dump yard; more
so in a democracy where people have only just begun to savour the power
that rightfully belongs to them. Our best bet is a lot more conviction
at the top. For leadership is not solely about bending resources and
capacity to the discharge of the popular will. It is more about shaping
the choice space. Agreeing a desired destination, and selling this to
the electorate. It is, in this very narrow sense, a question ultimately
of shaping the popular will. Of leading it down paths where only
visionaries have travelled previously.
Again as between a
visionary leader and a demagogue, the thinnest of lines demarcate. So
we arrive at the point where we must agree that even under the best of
representative democracies, the threat of continued misrule in this
country does not evaporate overnight. This danger is heightened by the
prevalent low levels of education in the country, both of the classroom
variety, and of the civic one, which can only come from a long thriving
civil society.
In the absence of such a society, then, our hopes for a better
tomorrow, in the short-term, at least still depend on the quality of
leadership we get. In the absence of a functioning democracy, a
benevolent caudillo almost became a popular fancy. One, who,
understanding the need for progress along modern lines, a la Singapore
and Malaysia, rammed that vision through society. Once we change the
rules of the game through trying to run elections properly, we deny
this possibility. Instead, the new need is for conviction politicians,
prepared to argue their corner as strenuously as the most modern
constitution permits, while eschewing popular lines.
