A week in politics is a long time - Politics in Britain and India

I’ve followed the 2009 general elections in India with interest, fascination, and since I am an Indian, with pride. Here was the world’s most populous democracy coming together to elect the 14th Lok Sabha, to choose how and by whom it will be governed for the next 5 years. Never mind all the hyperbolic statistics so beloved of western journalists, the results were what would matter for all of us.

At the same time I watched with increasing dismay and not a little sadness the goings on in the Palace of Westminster. MPs twisted and bent the rules on expenses for personal profit. Not just a few bad eggs, but almost everyone was in on the game. There were guidelines, yes but hey, what the hell, rules may be enforced but guidelines are there only for those who chose to follow it. Just don’t get caught.

Now that it’s all out in the open, everyone has a view of how to reform the system. No doubt some new system will emerge and surely if slowly politics can return to some semblance of business as usual.

The contrast between the two apparently unrelated events could not be starker. On the one hand a raucous, noisy election in India hailed as a great success, and on the other a mature democracy (the mother of Parliaments and all that) suffering from an acute loss of confidence in the very fabric of the parliamentary system of elected government.

In reality, the truth for both countries is somewhere in between those two extremes. The Indian election may have filled me with pride but maybe that’s just because of the view of it that I got from NDTV. Our politicians are no less venal than they ever were, some are even convicted criminals, there’s very little in the way of ideology that separates the main parties, there are scores of regional parties that serve the interests only of the local thug, and caste and religion appear to pervade the whole process. We feared major violence and the best result we dared hope for was a hung parliament leading to an unstable short-lived Government.

It turned out differently and how! The Election Commission pulled off a Herculean feat of organisation and logistics to deliver a free and fair vote; the security services ensured a largely safe election – albeit there were 60 deaths due mainly to Maoist violence. But the real prize goes to the people for returning a clear verdict in favour of continuity, and against a creed of religious intolerance and persecution of minorities. In their favour the politicians too acted honourably – the losers were quick to concede defeat and accepted the verdict with good grace; and the winners acknowledged their victory without humility and without hubris.

So where does this leave us in India? Well, after all the euphoria dies down, it will come as a sobering shock that none of the massive problems facing us has gone away. The poverty, the economic policy dilemmas, the mess of our education system, the degrading lack of basic amenities, the denial of fundamental economic and social freedoms - all remain to be tackled.

Contrast that with what happened in the last couple of weeks in Britain. MPs’ claims for expenses were published and we learned that they were claiming for a whole lot more than just legitimate expenses. It was sad to see a senior figure like Menzies Campbell being boo-ed and heckled on Question Time. Most British politicians are decent hardworking people – okay they sometimes throw away their convictions and act on the basis of whatever they think will make them popular but that’s practical democracy for you. Their crime in claiming expenses for things that were not ‘wholly, necessarily and exclusively’ in the pursuit of their parliamentary role, was small indeed compared to the things politicians in other countries get up to. And yet there is a mood of anger, of disgust and revulsion at what our MPs have been up to that is out of all proportion to the consequences of their actions.

Why is there so much public anger in Britain at such a seemingly inconsequential violation of the expenses rulebook?

Perhaps it is all down to our expectations. In Britain we expect better from our MPs. We expect basic honesty. We expect them to be morally upright. We expect them to level with us.

In India we expect little from our political institutions and even less from our politicians. And so when we get a decent election and politicians behave half intelligently, I am elated, hopeful of brighter days ahead for India, proud that India is coming of age.

In Britain we expect a lot from our politicians. So when they fiddle the system and when we learn how the system allowed it for so long, I feel let down, fearful of difficult times ahead for Britain with the threat of extremist parties finding favour with a disillusioned electorate, dismayed that Britain is sliding backward.

Perhaps there is a lesson here for India’s democracy. The 543 new MPs in the new Lok Sabha in New Delhi had better take note.

The death of a child in a Delhi School

Earlier this week a school girl died in a large well-endowed school in Delhi. Medical help came too late. She had asthma; eminently treatable and not a condition you would expect a young person to die of.

Allegedly there was negligence on the part of the school. The administration came in for a lot of criticism: there should have been better medical facilities in the school, some said; all schools should have a doctor and nurses available, teachers and others should be trained in first-aid. Parents and pupils marched in protest; they called for heads to roll and the school had to be closed for a couple of days.

I heard the discussion and debate programme on NDTV. Everyone seemed to agree that the rules governing schools should be tightened to ensure that this does not happen again.

So why am I blogging about this? To bring a rational alternative point of view. Not about the specific case; I don't know enough about it and even if I did I would hesitate to say anything at all for fear of intruding on private grief. Any loss of life is sad; more so when it is avoidable, and it is particularly tragic and devastating when it is a young person.

My take on this is rather about the reaction and the hasty ill-judged calls for rules to be changed. Hard cases make bad law, it is said, and here we have a tragedy that may well lead to ill-considered actions that may be misplaced for two reasons.

First, they may not achieve the intended purpose. After all good intentions are never enough to achieve positive change for the better. The next medical emergency in a school may be beyond the capability of whatever medical resources are put in; and the calls for action entirely miss the point that children spend their lives in a variety of settings; what about vacation time? holidays? school trips? What about schools in smaller Indian towns and villages? its hard enough to get medical help under any circumstance never mind for someone who becomes seriously ill during the school day.

Second and more important, all the commentators seem entirely to have forgotten the role of prevention. Schools in India present scores of hazards for children: many children die or are injured each year in road crashes during the journey to and from school; once in school they face a heavy burden of rote learning that denies them opportunity for play and robs them of a true rounded education experience. They have to put up with bullying, harsh punishment from teachers, poor or absent toilet and hand-washing facilities. And thats just for those who are lucky enough to have a school to go to and parents to send them there.

Schools can do a great deal to promote the health of their pupils and prevent harm. But providing top-notch medical facilities that can deal with unusual and rare occurrences of serious illness in children cannot be the role of a school. Schools don't exist in a vacuum. They are part of the society and the community they serve. If the community has poor access to medical facilities then it is illogical to expect the school to provide it.

The recent case in Delhi highlights the role of schools in promoting the health of pupils but not in the way most commentators seem to think. Its a responsibility hat cannot and must not be seen as the sole responsibility of schools.