Amartya Sen on India's elections

Social Choice theory- of the mathematical sort- can seriously mislead if applied to actual elections. This is because the actual choice facing the voter is inchoate. Attempting to analyse it leads to 'framing' effects which can give rise to a 'money pump'- i.e. intransitive preferences.

What voters actually want is a good Ruling Party kept in check by a smart Opposition which can provide a viable alternative in a few years time.

An economist, however, might easily get the wrong end of the stick and, depending on his own prejudices, offer foolish advise because of a 'framing effect'.

Thus in the recent elections in India, some thought the issue was Modi in vs Modi out. Consequently they thought all Opposition parties should form a coalition. The problem here is that such parties have to compete among themselves otherwise they become inefficient and lose touch with voters. Furthermore, there is a genuine need for data about voter preferences which is needed for consensual seat sharing. In this context, the work around is for there to be some competition which focuses on 'vote splitting'- i.e. 2 opposition parties may limit their competition- so as to get an idea of their relative strength- by choosing candidates who will split the vote of the dominant party. Obviously, this is more an art than a science. But it is an art which Indian politicians must master in order to deliver what voters genuinely want.

Mathematical economists, or normative political political philosophers have no inkling of this art and add noise to signal. Thus it is important that political leaders disintermediate them.

In India, it is thought that Rahul Gandhi listens to 'public intellectuals'. This may go some way to explaining his abysmal performance.

Turning to the most venerated of our public intellectuals, let us examine an article in the Indian Express where Amartya Sen offers

a few simple thoughts about the organisation and use of our electoral system...

From the British, India has inherited a system of choosing the electoral winner on the basis of plurality — the candidate with most votes — who quite often does not have support from a majority of voters.

What India inherited from the British was a restricted franchise with nominated members. It did not inherit the current system. That was created after Independence. The Constitution of India declares itself autochthonous on the Irish pattern. Thus there can be no question of anything being inherited from the Brits.

Why did India choose a first past the post system? The answer is that it had smart people- like Ambedkar- who understood why proportional representation on the French pattern would have been a recipe for anarchy.

Why is Sen pretending the stupid Indians accepted some poisoned legacy from the Brits without understanding what it was?

The BJP won a majority of parliamentary seats, but it received only 37 per cent of the votes. Did the Opposition parties appreciate the difference between majority and plurality adequately?

Of course they did. Yet none have ever demanded Proportionate Representation in the manner that the Liberals in Britain have been demanding for many years. Why? It's because they aren't as stupid as Sen. After all, unlike Sen, those guys have to live in India. They don't want it to be ungovernable.

The alternative voting method- which would involve elimination rounds so as to get a pairwise comparison- would have given Modi and the BJP a bigger margin of victory.

Given the relative strength of the Bharatiya Janata Party, should there have been more alliances among the Opposition parties?

Not really. The Mahagatbandhan didn't do so well and Akhilesh is getting stick from his Dad for having given too much away to Mayawati. However, if Mayawati dies, Akhilesh has a shot of claiming her legacy. Neither Mayawati nor Mamta has a child and it is not clear if a nephew or other relative could inherit. In the case of Bengal, Rahul's failure to make nice with Mamta is puzzling. After all, she started off in Congress and he could promise to look after her nephew if anything happens to her.

However, a moment's thought and a look at the map suffices to resolve the puzzle. Congress did tacitly participate in the coalition and only ran candidates in seats it wasn't targeting so as to split the BJP vote.

Should the Congress have had more coordinated agreements with other anti-BJP parties, such as the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh?

With hindsight, no- of course not. Rahul losing Amethi means there was an anti-'pappu' wave. After all, he was the only other guy angling for the top job- or so it seemed. It now looks like he didn't even want his own job and tanked the election so he could quit politics and get to spend less time with his family.

Should there have been an alliance between the Aam Aadmi Party and Congress in Delhi, or between the Congress and Prakash Ambedkar’s party in Maharashtra?

In both cases, the upstart hopes to feast off the carcass of the Grand Old Party. Ambedkar splitting the Congress vote certainly did help the Sena/BJP. But, this time round, Ambedkar was concerned with showing his 'splitting' potential. This does not necessarily mean he is in the pockets of the BJP.  The long term plan would be to supplant the old left which means, sooner or later, gaining intellectual ascendancy over the 'useful idiots'.

Should the Rashtriya Janata Dal in Bihar, which did make alliances, have gone a step further in not denying room for the youthful national leader, Kanhaiya Kumar, in Begusarai, without worrying about Kumar being a potential rival to the leadership of the 29-year-old RJD leader, Tejashwi Yadav (a consideration that, it is widely alleged, led the coalition to decide on fatally splitting the anti-BJP vote)?

Sen is being silly. The BJP vote was a lot bigger than the combined RJD, CPI vote.

Why would Tejashwi worry about Kanhaiya who belongs to the old pro-Moscow Communist Party of India which has only 3 MLAs compared to RJD's 79? Even if he quits the CPI- a dying party- being Brahman, he is no threat to the Yadav dynast. Moreover, Kanhaiya had touched the feet of the RJD supremo to gain his protection while facing sedition charges. He could only be a client of the Yadavs.

Still, Kanhaiya being a Bhumihar, like the BJP candidate, could split the sizable Bhumihar vote because of the national publicity he had received, thus helping the RJD candidate who was Muslim- the next largest community after the Bhumihars.

Muslims are not very happy with the Communists because Communist China is currently persecuting Uighurs. However, Kanhaiya got show-biz support from big names like Javed Akhtar & Shahbana Azmi which split the Muslim vote which should otherwise have gone to the RJD candidate.

 Giriraj Singh, initially miffed at being shifted away from a safe seat, saw his chance to play up his nationalist credentials so as to get the anti-Muslim vote without getting into hot water with the Election Commission. Bashing Kanhaiya was understood as bashing 'anti national' Muslims. He also took the opportunity to bash Kanhaiya for violations of the Bhumihar code which, in the light of his victory, burnishes his own standing within his caste.  Thus he romped home and instead of resenting Amit Shah, feels grateful to him for being shifted from a safe seat and thus getting a chance to flex his muscles and gain all India publicity.

Could the outcome have been different? Sure. The RJD should have made this an anti Bhumihar, not an anti Modi, election. The CPI does have a solid vote-bank and should have chosen a less controversial Bhumihar so as to make Giriraj sweat for his victory.

There are many such questions to ask, at the individual as well as aggregative level.

These questions were asked by people far smarter than me or Sen- viz. politicos in that district. Sadly, their calculations were thrown off by the 'useful idiots' from the metros who unthinkingly split the Muslim vote and consolidated the Nationalist wave.

No less importantly, should the coalitions that actually emerged have worked towards an agreed vision, and not been satisfied merely with the fact that the parties are “all anti-BJP”? I have argued elsewhere (in an opinion piece in the New York Times, May 25) that while the parties against the BJP were vocal enough on their shared dislike of the party, there was relatively little discussion on the basic ideological differences between the BJP’s perspective (particularly the philosophy behind the dominance of a religious identity — in this case, the “Hindu identity”), and the integrated vision of a common identity of Indians across the country (irrespective of religion).

This discussion occurred ad nauseam in the Nineties. However the subsequent Governance we witnessed was truly appalling. That is why Nitish Kumar was able to break the RJD's hold on power in Bihar. To do this he had to ally with the BJP. He then broke away but had to come back because he doesn't have an heir. Since Modi was good at 'last mile delivery' irrespective of caste, the Nitish-Modi alliance prevailed.

What about the Muslims? On the one hand, they do benefit from the last mile delivery, on the other, they feel insecure because of the 'anti national' tag. The problem here is that it is the Hindu Left which is pretending that they are so enraged or driven to desperation that they will actually become 'anti national'. The safer course is to kick the Left to the curb and try to get Muslims elected irrespective of party. Since Muslims are patriots, their visible actions will give the lie to the Left's narrative.

Indeed, the reasoning behind the powerful Gandhi-Tagore-Nehru vision of a united India, which had contributed to keeping India together for decades, received rather little attention.

Is Sen utterly mad? Does he really not know that Partition occurred? The Gandhi-Tagore-Nehru vision survived only in Hindu majority areas and some disputed borderlands where the Indian Army has a strong presence.

Back in the Nineties, there were coalitions designed specifically to keep the BJP out of power. That was when the 'reasoning' Sen speaks off predominated. Much good it did.

Had Jyoti Basu- the long serving Communist Chief Minister of Bengal become P.M (as he himself wished), then a Left Front of some sort would have become a truly National alternative party. But the CPM politburo forbade Basu taking the top job for some stupid ideological reason. The 'circular firing squad' of the ideological Left- which featured plenty of 'reasoning' and 'discussion'- has led to its long drawn out suicide and current almost complete annihilation.

In Kerala, the Communists decided that, for some reason, women must go to a particular Temple. The local Congress party opposed this and thus was able to steal a lot of seats from the Communists. God alone knows what 'reasoning' or 'discussion' led the Commies to the absurd conclusion that making women perform an arduous pilgrimage to propitiate a Male deity was a good and salutary thing.

A positive vision can play a constructive and inspiring role, going well beyond negotiated, possibly ad hoc agreements — what can be called, in Hegelian language, “negation of negation.”

This 'positive vision' existed in the Nineties. Everybody got sick and tired of it because it just meant more and more corruption and criminalization- especially in Bihar under the RJD. After 2001, the entire world agreed that Islamic terror was a nuisance. The Indian Left alone had to pretend that there was some equal and opposite 'Hindu terror' which must be persecuted so as to demonstrate a commitment to even handed secularism. What was the result? Pragya Thakur has trounced Digvijay Singh. Rahul Baba is sitting at home refusing to meet anyone save his sister and Mummy and now young Sachin. He insists his resignation be accepted while there are rumors that Sachin too will quit and rebel against Gehlot.

Turning now to the BJP, the winner, it has excellent grounds to be happy with the election results on May 23. And yet, the BJP leadership, and especially its highly talented and exceptionally ambitious top leader, Narendra Modi, have reasons to be disappointed by global reactions to the BJP victory.

The global reaction that concerns the BJP has to do with NRIs. Are they happy or sad? The answer is they are ecstatic.

There has been widespread criticism in the news media across the world (from the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Guardian, the Observer, Le Monde, Die Zeit and Haaretz to the BBC and CNN) of the ways and means of securing BJP’s victory, including instigation of hatred and intolerance of groups of Indian citizens, particularly Muslims, who have every right to be treated with respect (as under the Gandhi-Tagore understanding).

Does Sen really not understand that only wealthy NRIs have exposure to such media? What they read there drives up their blood pressure and increases the amount they donate to the Sangh Parivar.

This talk of 'Gandhi-Tagore' has led to an extraordinary situation where the people of Bhopal have elected a woman who says that Godse, Gandhi's assassin, was a patriot. Why? She was falsely accused of being a Hindu terrorist (a type of creature no one in the world has seen) and put in jail and tortured for 8 years. At least this was her election pitch. She won by a landslide. Why? Hindus feel that they themselves weren't being treated with respect. They have taken their revenge on stupid Leftist 'public intellectuals'.

Winning cannot be the only concern in fighting an election.

Quite right. The other main concern is not losing in a manner that makes one look an utter fool.

It makes a big difference how the winners are viewed in the post-election world.

The same is true of how the losers are viewed. If, like Modi, you are viewed as having won because the people are with you then that makes a big difference. If, like Rahul or the Communists, you are viewed as having lost because the people think you are stupid, incompetent and harbor an irrational hostility to the creed of the vast majority of the people, then that makes the difference between whether you continue to have a career in politics or have to reconcile yourself to a lifetime of drudgery writing shite articles like this.

A well-wisher of the BJP would have had reasons to desire more than just a win for her favourite party.

Quite true. We'd want the BJP to win despite adverse economic or other indicators on the basis that the Opposition is utterly shit. This is what has happened. Hopefully, idiots like Sen and Harsh Mander & Pratan Bhanu Mehta will just fuck off to Amrika and never be heard off again. That way, stupid dynasts like Rahul won't screw up so badly and we'd have a better Opposition in India so as to keep the BJP on its toes.

What about the people at large? India is, in many ways, a successful democracy, which — until recently — had an excellent reputation for treating different political parties with symmetry and equity.

Sheer nonsense! It was derided as a dynastic country- autocracy tempered by assassination- where the son or daughter of the PM would become PM and then jail the opposition and suspend the Constitution if faced by an adverse Court judgment.

However, in the 2019 elections, there have been reasonably convincing allegations of unequal favours received by the ruling party.

As there have always been. Under a previous Administration, all sorts of trumped up court cases were used to defame opponents. The Ministry of External Affairs permitted the CM of a State to be labelled a mass murderer and denied Visas on that basis.

These concerns have been partly related to the assessment of some of the decisions taken by the Election Commission, but they relate also to the unequal opportunities offered to the different parties by state-owned institutions (for example, state-owned Doordarshan gave the BJP about double the broadcast time in the crucial pre-electoral season, compared with what it offered to the Congress).

But Congress had less than a quarter the seats of the BJP. It has to share time with rival Opposition parties.

If India has to retain — and in fact regain — its past reputation for offering a level playing field to different political parties, these asymmetries would have to be removed, which is particularly important when the favoured player happens to be the ruling party in office, which appoints the administrative heads of state-owned enterprises, and which also has a bigger role in the appointment of the Election Commission.

God knows which planet Sen has been living on all these years. Anyway, if there are genuine concerns then a PIL should be launched. But you need hard evidence to present to Court.

Going further, the amassing of assets useable in elections of the different political parties has clearly been extraordinarily unequal in 2019. The BJP had many times more money and resources for electoral use than all its rivals, including the Congress.

Because the BJP is better than its rivals. The cure is not far to seek. Other parties need to stop doing stupid shit. They should do smart and useful things. Then they'll get not just money but votes.

The need for effective rules and regulations for reducing such huge asymmetries is very strong indeed.

Sen is being foolish. The BJP will be in control of both Houses of Parliament before the next election. Now is the not the time to make existing, or new, rules and regulations effective because it would freeze up current asymmetries.

This is similar to Sen's demand for 'autonomy' for Nalanda even after it had become an RSS stronghold.

This is important not only for the democratic credibility of India, but also for the way the victory of the electoral winners is judged, globally as well as locally.

How India is judged locally or globally does not matter in the slightest. Why? Only very stupid people sit around making judgments. Expectations, on the other hand, matter. We often hear people say 'all dem bankers be krooks'. That is a judgment. Those same people queue up to pay their money into their Bank accounts. Why? It is because they expect the Bank to keep their money safe and give it back on demand.

India does not lack people with moral courage.

Nor does it lack people with moral cowardice. In fact, it does not lack people, period.

Even though the resistance to injustice — economic, political, social and cultural — is easiest to articulate during electoral campaigning, the fight for fairness and justice is, in many ways, a continuous phenomenon in our country.

The fight for fairness and justice has, in many ways, been wholly counter productive. Why? Moral courage may express itself in stupid and ignorant judgments- the sort Sen himself always makes. Moral cowardice may express itself in having Rational Expectations- in other words fearing to talk worthless judgmental shite as opposed to doing your actual job properly.

But so are the attempts by the government to repress resistance.

Stupid types of resistance lead to a backlash which, during election season, the Government may profit from.

New restrictions have been imposed on the liberty of speech, which has included the imprisoning of people by branding dissent from the government’s super-nationalist beliefs as “sedition”.

Sen is being foolish. The fact is, people like Hardik Patel and Alpesh Kathiriya are 'super-nationalists' and yet face sedition charges. Why? They said that some policemen should be killed so as to get more publicity for their cause- which involves getting reservations for their own community.

Sedition has to do with inciting violence against policemen or soldiers or other employees of the State. It could also involve suborning them from their duty.

In the case of Kanhaiya Kumar, it is certainly true that 'resistance' has helped the BJP. However, whether a restriction is legal or illegal is a matter for the Courts.

New categories of offence have also been invented, such as being described as an “urban Naxalite” on the basis of utterances that the government determines are dangerous, leading to house arrest or worse.

Again this is a matter for the courts. However, it affects only a very small number of elderly 'useful idiots'.

The Indian courts have often intervened to restrain the government, but given the slow speed of legal processes in India, relief — even when it came — has taken a long time.

So Economists should propose ways of speeding up legal processes. That could be useful.

And a number of intellectuals have been murdered for expressing views that the Hindutva movement finds objectionable.

Again, this is a matter for the Courts.

The credit that the ruling party can get for winning the elections is seriously compromised by such repression.

Credit with whom? Sen himself? But who gives a toss about him? When was the last time the Stock Exchange or the Exchange rate or anything else people care about was affected by the sort of stuff mentioned in this article?

The victorious side has to consider what kind of regime it wants to run — and how it is viewed across the world.

No it doesn't. All that matters is whether people expect it to be stronger and more prosperous or weaker and poorer.  How they view it doesn't matter in the slightest because 'soft power' does not exist. The wise fly settles on the sugar not the honey.

It is not hard to appreciate that democracy demands more than the counting of votes.

It demands the Rule of Law. This means that 'Law & Econ' can be useful whereas 'an idea of Justice' will just add noise to signal.

In the NYT, Sen wrote

Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India has led his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party to a major victory in the country’s general elections, winning more than 300 of the 543 parliamentary seats and five more years to run the country.
This is an impressive achievement, but how has Mr. Modi been able to do it? And why has the Indian National Congress, the old national party, been restricted to a mere 52 seats? In attempting to answer these questions, some have been tempted to seek explanations in the realm of ideas and ideology, in particular in the dominance of Hindu identity in India.

This makes sense. There are a lot of Hindus in India. They view India as a Hindu country. The BJP shares this view. This gives it the edge.

We are told repeatedly that India has changed and that the old, pluralistic and secular ideology of the Congress Party and of India’s great leaders — Mohandas Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, Jawaharlal Nehru and Maulana Abul Kalam Azad — is no longer an effective option.

That ideology proved hollow. The country was partitioned on Religious lines.

There might be an element of truth in this line of thinking.
After all, though about 200 million Indian citizens are Muslim — more than 14 percent of India’s total population — political support for the victorious B.J.P. comes disproportionately from the Hindus.

Political support for any victorious party would have to come disproportionately from Hindus.

But ideas do not live in isolation.

Ideas don't live at all. Some people may get paid a little money, or have no better way to amuse themselves, then to talk about ideas but the thing does not matter in the slightest.

Are there not things happening in our actual lives that influence our ideas?

Yes. Those things also influence our bowel movements. So what?

This way of looking at politics starts the inquiry at too late a stage, avoiding the question of why the B.J.P. today has many more loyal supporters than only a few years ago.

We all know the answer to that. Modi was and is better than his rivals for office. We see this and act accordingly.

There can hardly be any doubt that Mr. Modi is an exceptionally skillful and charismatic political leader. To seek a part of the explanation there might appear to some to be a lazy thought, but there is nothing wrong in trying to examine the role of Mr. Modi in the startling rise of his party.

There is something wrong in trying to do something if you don't actually do it.

A fiery orator, he has been able to influence others’ thinking with his striking readiness to make political use of hatred and loathing — for people with different ways of life (leftists, rationalists, liberal intellectuals) and for those with different origins and religious beliefs, such as Muslims.

If Modi can influence others' thinking and if thinking is related to action why the fuck would he need to get elected to office? All he'd need to do is sneak into the bedrooms of important people and start haranguing them, using hatred and loathing, for people with different ways of life (terrorists, hedonists, academic economists who have made a career of stupidity) in order to carry out his political program.

Former B.J.P. leaders, like the unaggressive Atal Bihari Vajpayee, would certainly be unable to compete.

But Vajpayee did become P.M. and did appoint Modi to the Chief Ministership of Gujarat.

If Mr. Modi used his charisma in electioneering, he also poured money into electoral spending — many times more than the Congress Party and all the other political parties.

Modi has no money. Other people poured in the money because if Modi lost, the Economy would turn to shit and they'd lose much much more money. This is purely rational behavior.

The surge of nationalism after Mr. Modi ordered airstrikes inside Pakistan following a Feb. attack in Kashmir on Indian troops by a Pakistan-based terrorist group also helped the B.J.P. immensely. In fact, India’s general election was dominated by scaremongering rhetoric, used very effectively by Mr. Modi.

Sen may not feel scared by Pak-based terror strikes- but then he isn't in India a lot. Why should Indians not feel afraid of a real and present danger to their families?

We can see a change in Mr. Modi’s own evolution here. When he won the election five years ago, in 2014, his campaign greatly benefited from his promises of a well-functioning market economy free of red tape and corruption, plentiful employment opportunities for all, fair sharing of the fruits of speedy economic expansion, and ready availability of primary health care and school education.
In his recent campaign, Mr. Modi could not brag about his achievements: He has accomplished little of what he had promised. Unemployment is very high, a 45-year peak, economic growth is faltering and uneven in its impact, elementary health care remains comprehensively neglected, and there has been no striking decrease of red tape and corruption.

So Modi acted rationally by focusing on his superiority to his rivals when it came to National Security- which Indians like- and being pro-Hindus- which the majority of Hindus like because they are Hindus. Since people had good reason to believe that Modi had done better than any one else would have there was a Modi wave in many parts of the country.

Instead, Mr. Modi focused on the apprehensions and fears of Indian citizens: fear of terrorism, fear of sabotage by Pakistan, fear of apparently terrible deeds perpetrated by hostile elements within India.

Terrorism exists. Sabotage by Pakistan occurs. The Pulmama incident actually happened. Naxals really are murderous bastards. Modi showed he was superior at dealing with these genuine problems. Since he was also as good if not better at everything else, this put him over the top by a considerable margin.

Just as the Falklands War in 1982 shored up support for Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of Britain, who dramatically gained in popularity, the border battles with Pakistan in February helped Mr. Modi immensely in the elections.

Yes. Pakistan contributed to Modi's victory. But only because Modi had sufficient intestinal fortitude to take the battle to the enemy. Thatcher showed similar strength of character and was rewarded for it.

These factors fill up the story of what has been happening in Indian politics. Many might prefer the account that the B.J.P. won what is called “the ideological argument” against the Congress Party.

Rahul Gandhi said that his was an ideological (vichardhara) struggle against Modi.  He seems intent on resigning. It appears Rahul prefers precisely this account.

But there has been no particular victory for the philosophy of Hindu nationalism and no noticeable vanquishing of the idea of inclusiveness and unity championed by Gandhi, Nehru and Tagore.

Nor has there been a noticeable vanquishing of the idea that it is nice to be nice, nor of the idea that one should breathe in after breathing out even if they weren't specifically championed by Gandhi, Nehru, and Tarzan the Ape Man.

What is clear enough is that during the past five years of B.J.P. rule, India has become much more divided along religious lines, making more sharply precarious the lives of minorities, particularly Muslims.

But Hindus have become less divided on caste lines. This is good for Hindus.

The Hindu nationalist movement has won something in terms of power but nothing particularly serious in the battle of ideas. Pragya Thakur, a B.J.P. activist, said recently that Mohandas Gandhi’s assassin, Nathuram Godse, was a patriot. This embarrassed even the B.J.P., which made her formally apologize.
However, Ms. Thakur, who was campaigning for a seat in the state of Madhya Pradesh, went on to win and will be a lawmaker in the Indian parliament. That is victory in terms of power but not in the battle of ideas.

Modi thought that Thakur would lose because of the Godse remark. She won by a landslide. Modi himself, as a Gujerati, would not praise a Maharashtrian who killed the most famous Gujerati ever. But others can now do so. This does represent a climacteric in the battle of ideas.

It is regrettable that this larger battle has not received more emphasis even from the opposition.

No it isn't. It would have been a waste of time.

There is need for much more engagement there.

Because what India really needs is more pious platitudes.

But the first thing is not to confuse the two battles.

Sen confuses 'the battle for ideas'- which senile NRI professors are welcome to indulge in because everybody enjoys laughing at their non sequiturs- and the 'battle for power'. Modi does not. He understands that Expectations matter but that ideas of Sen's type are wholly vacuous. He has gained power because he has created the expectation that he will wield it more effectively and to some better purpose than the dynasts and their caste based parties. Sen may think Modi very naughty. We may think Sen very stupid. But there is no confusion here.