Make ’Nobody’ Indian Prime Minister

"Keep away from politics and electricity," cautions an Ethiopian
proverb. Anyone from India would know the implication very well and
appreciate the ancient Abyssinian wisdom. With the increasing
privatization of both politics and electricity, Indians should be even
wearier about these two dangerous but inevitable things.

Let us start with the easier and less dangerous one, electricity. The
Chairman of Atomic Energy Commission, Dr. R. Chidambaram, has just
announced that private sector participation in nuclear power
generation "will be welcomed." He contends that India has the
technology and industrial infrastructure but lacks the money to
produce more electricity. In order to produce 20,000 MW electricity
by the year 2002, we need almost Rs. 80,000 crores. What do we do for
this kind of money? Chidambaram's prescription: privatize! So, being
rich will mean owning NPP and being really 'powerful'! And being poor
will imply being powerless. If we look more positively though, the
poor will be 'radiating' the neuclearized hope of development and
prosperity.

The political front also calls for privatization. We need a Prime
Minister for the country rather urgently. And for that we need 272
MPs first. To follow the Chidambaramanian logic, India has the
political system and governance structure but we lack money to produce
enough number of MPs every six months or a year.

According to the Election Commission of India, the country incurred a
humongous expense of Rs. 520 crores running the 1996 general
elections. The expense increased to Rs. 664 crores to organize the
1998 general elections. Going by these figures, one can expect an
additional expense of at least Rs. 100 crores if we were to have an
election this year.

Since our poor country can ill afford this exorbitant expenditure
every six months, we should think about other options. How about
privatizing the elections? Rich people could own private election
commissions and conduct elections in their own allotted states or
constituencies. The winning MPs become the company's own serfs and
act accordingly in policymaking and of course, profit-making. I know,
I know, there are serious dangers involved in this set up. But we are
not shying away from private NPP just because of the inherent dangers?

Or how about privatizing the MPs themselves? There is nothing new in
this proposition. After all, our political parties have practiced
this art for the past five decades. One of our 'honorable' Prime
Ministers has even faced criminal charges for buying some MPs in order
to retain his government. Even now the Telugu Desam Party in Andhra
Pradesh is crying foul that one of their MPs has been 'bought' by the
Congress Party.

Following the spirit of liberalization and privatization that we have
gladly embarked upon, we need to introduce some reforms in the sale of
MPs also. How about this! The moment somebody wins in an MP
election, the wining candidate becomes the property of that particular
constituency. In a moment of crisis such as the present one, the
people of the constituency can put up their MP for sale. The highest
bidding political party can buy the MP and the people could use that
money for developmental activities in their constituency.

After all, Indian politics is being steadily privatized. Forming the
national government used to be in the public realm until recently.
People had direct participation in deciding which political
party/allies they favored to rule at the Center, and who they
preferred to be the country's Prime Minister and so forth. For the
past few years, however, the whole democratic process has been reduced
to the whims and fancies of our political feudal lords.

One old Congress party cashier gets the fantasy of becoming the Prime
Minister and pulls down the government. A Harvard-educated nutcase
takes revenge on the ruling party and its government just because he
was not given the post of Finance Minister. Another Poes burglar
wants to escape from all the criminal cases and fiddles with the
central government and almost 1 billion people's lives and their
development. Another fodder thief who is supposed to be in a
maximum-security prison has been deciding who should rule the
hardworking honest Indian nation. Casteist thugs who used to fell
trees and destroy public properties in Tamil Nadu are national leaders
today. Throwing their political principles to the air, a grand old
Dravidian party conducts politics for the one woman they hate and not
for the Tamil people they claim to love. Then we have the wretched
communal elements and the aimless dynastic daughter-in-law posing to
be our political "leaders." These elements huddle together and decide
our next government, leader, national priorities, vision and future.

So Indian politics has already become a very privatized affair. The
only hitch, however, is that nobody has 272 MPs right now. If nobody
has that many MPs, then nobody should become the Prime Minister of
India. After all, nobody will not hurt the Indian polity more than
the aforementioned "leaders". We are back in square one. Which is
more dangerous: having one of these fellows as our PM, or having an
NPP in our backyard? The wise Ethiopians would say, both!