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The complicated legacy of YSR

The tragic death of the Andhra Pradesh chief minister has achieved what had seemed impossible only a few days earlier: displacing BJP from news headlines. In an era of 24/7 news channels, it was almost inevitable that a search for a missing copter which went on for over 24 hours would dominate the news cycle. While the media covers YSR’s career and death from every angle conceivable, two larger points need to be made,

First, YSR’s rise to political prominence  (a heavyweight regional satrap in the Congress party is a breed which is almost extinct), represents the culmination of a process in which strongmen and warlords  are no longer content to serve as the lackeys of the regular politicians–providing muscle power in return for preservation of economic interests and safety from legal consequences. Instead, they wish to capture the political power for they realize the rewards are much higher when they are their own bosses. While YSR’s dynamism and popularity is undeniable, what deserves to be mentioned in equal detail is the sordid side of his rise: Not just the violence and murders which were his preferred companions in his younger years but the ability to leverage state’s economic apparatus for personal aggrandizement. Much like the Reddy brothers of Bellary who virtually bankroll the BJP in the state, and in the process, have benefited enormously from capturing mining interests, YSR exploited his political rise to become perhaps the most prominent of that breed which is a recent phenomenon in Indian politics: businessman-politician. Inevitably, this crony capitalism is most effective in sectors where the state retains monopoly powers: land, mining, and  infrastructural projects. Indeed, a more sophisticated example of the same phenomenon is the battle between the Ambani brothers currently underway in the corridors of power in New Delhi.

Now, of course, these leaders have won elections. They are almost invariably populists who rather than building sustainable institutions, have bought popularity by handouts: free power, rice at 2rs per kg and lately even insurance schemes for the poor. While a large section of the poor benefit to some extent from these populist schemes and they, in turn, vote their benefactors back to power, not only the financial viability of these myriad schemes but even the their long term positive effects are doubtful. More importantly, electoral success provides cover for the corruption and the loot.

And that brings us to the second point: While elections are an important part of democracy, and leaders who cannot win elections are unlikely to influence public policy, they cannot be the end all of the democratic process. Lately, the media, or specifically the electronic media, has a adopted a template in which success in elections seems to wash away all the sins of a leader. (Except for one, of course.) Perhaps, it is the need of television punditry which rests on certitude–when was the last time a television pundit confessed that he did not know an answer?–or the requirement for instant heroes and villains, but measuring leadership and achievement merely by elections is fraught with danger. For it reduces the entire democratic process to a five year ritual. Yes, in a democracy, elections are the calculus for judging popular support, but should a political entire career be reduced to merely that? The effusive eulogies which have followed YSR’s departure seems to have entirely missed this point.

Recently, the Financial Times had warned the danger oligarchs present to the Indian democracy. While the FT’s view may be too alarmist, the rise of the the likes of YSR signals that it is a danger which Indian democracy must guard against.

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