Flogging a Dead Dinosaur

The main impetus behind this blog is to try and encourage some diversity in mainstream political commentary. What is sad is that, with the decline of the left-nationalist position of Nehru, all we have for political options are from the blatantly neoliberal Right, which come in either CII/FICCI or BJP flavours. This is by no means to romanticize the utter elitism and naive scientism of the Nehruvians, but merely to bemoan the fact that the sclerotic nature of the dinosaur Left has seemingly poisoned the well of all Left-of-centre critique. This leaves the ground open for liberals of all stripes to feed their shallow triumphalism by repeatedly flogging an ideologically (if not, sadly, politically) dead dinosaur.

The latest rendition of this comes from Dhiraj Nayyar's Op-Ed in yesterday's IE, "Left Behind...by Kamal Nath." His contention is that on both grounds of dinosaur-Left concern, the state's immunity from special interest capture at home and Indian sovereignty abroad, liberal economic and political policies have done better than anything proposed by the Left's worn out ideology. Specifically, economic reforms have led to amazing growth which has in turn strengthened India's geo-political hand, as witnessed by both the nuclear deal and the collapse of the WTO talks.

This main indeed be true, but it is an exaggeration to claim that "[t]he fact — and again let’s face it — is that the biggest threat to the autonomous functioning of the Indian state comes from actors within the country, not outsiders. It is the push and pull of coalition politics, which extracts the heaviest price, in policy (concession) terms, from the Indian state." The solution, so sorrily predictable, is to scale back the state to the point where "interest group capture" is minimized into insignificance.

This standard Right-wing line, phrased in the faux common sense of all second-hand dealers in ideas, is based on some very convenient oversights. First, to reduce something as complicated as international relations to a "win" in the nuclear deal and a "win" at the WTO is simply boyish. There is little doubt that emerging powers have more leverage in international fora than at perhaps any time in the postwar period, but to go from that to a claim that the major blockages to autonomy are internal is to paint all elected opposition as enemies of the state! Surely this is a slippery slope to fascism? Neoliberals want a small state, but they want it to be their state none the less.

Secondly, economic growth has been radically unequal, and on the whole there has been little net job creation. Inequalities have consequently multiplied. It is precisely this growth in inequality that has given licence to such blatantly one-sided opinions. Therefore for Kamal Nath to pose as the champion of the farmers is more than a little rich. What Nayyar calls special interests are in many cases countervailing forces reacting to this rising inequality, despite the fact of expression in the venal idiom of Indian politics.

The state is the only mechanism the economically and socially deprived have to redress their condition; the market works for those with these assets. Indeed, for any size of state, the asset-rich will have disproportionate access to its resources. The smaller the state, the less access for everyone in proportion, which still means greater access for the well-off. It is to counter-balance these special interests that the Indian state has expanded to its current bloat.

It is not simply that inefficiency is the price of democracy, it is that access to the state comes from years of political mobilization. Access may have gone too far in the direction of inefficiency, but to call for a minimal state is to bat for special interests in a manner that would over-correct in the disastrously opposite direction. The call for a minimal state may either be an elitist fantasy or a strategy to ask for a Ferrari and settle for a sedan, but either way it avoids serious talk of reform. It also scores very cheap polemical points for a very narrow position by impaling the stuffed-shirt socialists on their own folly.