Not just Nilekani: Why are wannabe MPs running as local candidates?

One of the less-remarked aspects of this general election is the kind of issues parties are raking up – or not raking up.

Almost all candidates for parliament are taking up local issues – water, garbage, roads. Nobody epitomises this more than Nandan Nilekani, the Congress candidate from Bangalore South, who has been talking about how much he can do for the city , and how little his rival, Ananth Kumar of the BJP, has.

State-level and national leaders of all parties are delivering scare stories about Narendra Modi – which is hardly something they can do anything about. From Rahul Gandhi to Mayawati to Nitish Kumar to Mamata Banerjee, all leaders have talked about Modi as Frankenstein. Even assuming he is, is this something an MP or party at the centre can do anything about?

What nobody is talking about – except the BJP, which too is talking about it only peripherally – is the macroeconomy, defence, foreign affairs, and devolution of power.

This is what Nilekani said soon after his nomination. “As a co-founder of Infosys, I know how to create jobs … I have created lakhs of them. Heading the UIDAI, I have been responsible in providing a social identity to 60 crore people. I am also aware of the nitty-gritty of local urban governance as the chairperson of the Bangalore Agenda Task Force from 1999 to 2004.”

The reason why I find this incongruous is simple: what is being talked about is irrelevant to a national election, what is not being talked about is what is relavant. Nilekani was able to create jobs in Infosys or issue Aadhaar cards to all and sundry was because he was not focused on Bangalore’s local issues. Becoming MP of Bangalore, assuming his people elect him, is not going to work for the city because Nilekani is not going to become boss of the Brihat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) – which is the key body for city governance.  If Nilekani wants to focus on Bangalore, he should not try to not be focused on becoming MP, but get on to BBMP. Either he is fighting the wrong election, or the wrong issue.

Take the issue of urban water supply or city roads and garbage. Can members of parliament really do anything significant on this issue? Is this an issue for municipal elections or national ones? While it is true that MPs have a Rs 5 crore budget to spend on their constituencies (the MP Local Area Development Scheme), this is just an anachronistic scheme that may die a slow death at some point. Rs 5 crore is not going to solve any constituency’s woes, and nor should the centre be wasting money to mollycoddle MPs with this pocket money. While MPs can certainly raise local issues in parliament, the politicians who can actually do something about these concerns are at the state and municipal levels. So why are these issues so big in a national election?

Next, consider the fear-mongering about Modi – and the counter-fear-mongering by the BJP to consolidate the Hindu vote, something we have seen happen this time in Uttar Pradesh. All parties think this fear-mongering may be necessary to win elections, but can MPs elected to parliament do anything about it when law and order is a state subject? If there is a communal polarisation and people are at each others’ throats, can the centre do much? We saw the Muzaffarnagar and Assam communal riots in 2012 and 2013, but what could the centre really do about them?

Again, MPs can raise such issues in parliament, but the problem can only be tackled at the state level. If UP does not act to prevent a Muzaffarnagar, can the centre do it? Are these issues to be raised nationally or at the state and regional level? Instead, the wrong solutions are being proffered as essential. The Communal Violence Bill is seen by some as an antidote by giving the centre some powers to intervene in states, but the only thing it will achieve is further antagonism between centre and states. The solutions to law and order issues have to be found at the state level – not the centre.

Now, consider the issues barely raised – the economy, jobs, defence, foreign policy, and devolution of power. Everybody knows these are issues the centre can do something about – and thus ought to take centre-stage in a parliamentary election. But barring some references to these issues by the BJP and Modi, none of the opposition parties wants to talk about the economy, jobs, nuclear policy and defence. This could be because the economy is a weak point with the UPA, and all the parties supporting it, but no one wants to discuss defence or foreign policy either – except at the regional level, where Tamil Nadu wants to cock a snook at the Sri Lankans for human rights violations. But once again, this is purely for regional consumption, and is not a robust foreign policy issue even in Tamil Nadu.

The BJP has talked about treating states like partners in progress and also emphasised their role in boosting foreign trade, but the idea is so skimpy on detail that it is practically not an issue in these elections.

The bottomline is this: this national election is being fought on the wrong issues – issues on which MPs can do little, and issues which are often not the centre’s job.

However, there is a good reason why non-issues have become issues: wrong distribution of power between centre and states. Currently, economic power is concentrated with the centre while political power has shifted to the states. This is why state-level leaders dream of going to the centre – when what they actually want is to control the purse-strings.

In fact, Modi’s rivals ought to ask themselves this: why does a Modi, who has been enormously successful in Gujarat, want to become PM, where he could be far less effective as head of a multi-headed coalition? One part of the answer would be that if the centre is going to keep harassing him – politically or economically – he has a vested interest in trying to grab power at the centre. On the other hand, if he didn’t need the centre’s indulgence in Gujarat, and he was effectively PM of Gujarat, why wouldn’t he want to make his mark in Gujarat, by making it the next China?

There is another reason why state leaders want to become powerful at the centre. It is actually easier to rule in Delhi than in Ahmedabad, or Chennai or Kolkata.

In India, beyond basic macroeconomic policy, defence and foreign affairs, it is the states that have to deliver everything – from basic law and order to agricultural growth to jobs and governance. The centre may have the money, but it is the states that have to distribute it and make it work for them.

Unlike the centre, where the bureaucracy is efficient and has a fixed set of issues to grapple with, at the state level leaders have to cope with raw issues, grassroot politics, caste and community alliances, et al. It is tougher to be CM than PM in India. It is easier to be India’s FM than a state’s finance minister, given the limited resources you have at your command. The centre also makes policies for various sectors – thus complicating the job of state-level ministers handling industry portfolio.

When infrastructure needs land and sensible environmental policies, why is it necessary for the centre to legislate in these areas? Policies made in Delhi are harming the states – at least some of them.

The only logical way to deal with this economic and political asymmetry is to devolve economic power from centre to states, and then further from states to local bodies. Currently, the economic power asymmetry between centre and state is mirrored in the state-local body relationship. State urban development ministries, for example, are more powerful than municipal corporations even in big resource-generating cities like Mumbai. Just as the Centre does not want to let go of its control of resources, the state wants to control the resources of cities.

Power is, quite simply, in the wrong hands both at centre and state capitals.

The fundamental thing we need to change about our constitutional arrangement is that the centre’s economic powers need to be curtailed and restricted to macroeconomic policies - fiscal and monetary – defence, foreign affairs, etc.  The states should do the rest. The states should decide agricultural and industries policies subject to broad guidelines on environmentBut even they should not decide local bodies’ priorities.

The only issue central to India’s growth is empowerment of states and local bodies. But this is the one thing nobody is discussing.