The concept of opportunity costs seems to be non-trivial, in the sense that most people don’t seem to get it. When I first learnt it as part of my Economics course at IIT Madras, I thought it was fairly common sense. However, looking around at a variety of people, it doesn’t seem to be that common.
Category: politics
Fuel price hike
So petrol prices have gone up by a whopping 10%, and LPG by an even more whopping 16%. It’s quite ironical that the government, which in the name of the aam aadmi had rolled back a number of reforms has had to do this in the final year of its reign. They say that the prices have been moved up by an amount more than necessary, so as to leave room for a Yashwant Sinha-esque rollback. Nevertheless, for the price of a government-controlled commodity, the increase is significant.
On introducing democracy
Ravikiran Rao argues that the reasons most Indian parties are afraid to embrace inner party democracy is that the people who are in charge are afraid that if they introduce democracy and lose the first election, their opponent might destroy the democracy and just keep the power with himself.
Isn’t this the case everywhere? Be it Indian political parties or African countries or even the local club. I mean, if you want to introduce democracy (by which process you are giving away something), you should be convinced that the opponent plays by the rules. However, in most cases, it is tough to find an opponent who is guaranteed to play by the rules. However, if democracy is introduced and works successfully for a few years without anyone trying to misuse it , in that case, it will stay for good.
One implication is that you try to introduce democracy when you know that you will win the first round. Given that you want to introduce democracy means that you aren’t THAT power-hungry and are willing to give away a bit in order to secure long-term systemic gains. Which means that you are likely to play by the rules in your term as power. And once you can ensure that, democracy is likely to get embedded in the system, after which even if you lose one, you know that your opponent won’t be able to do much to blindly hang on to power.
When countries become self-governing after an independence-struggle, the party that is in charge will usually be the one that has led the struggle. And it is usually confident that it can win the first couple of rounds. Hence, most countries that became independent in the 40s to 60s started off as being democracies (that many of their systems have broken down is another story) – it was useful to gain brownie points with the US, UK , etc. and there wasn’t much threat to capture of power.
However, when you have got power through other means – say by some kind of an inorganic process, then there is no guarantee that you will win the first round, or second round, or ever. Hence, you have some countries that came out of the Eastern Bloc and Central Asian countries that have never made an attempt at democracy. The people in power know that once they try to bring in democracy, their power is effectively over.
On a similar note, countries that have moved away from democracy (Zimbabwe immediately springs to mind) have no incentive to bring it back – again the first round victory is not guaranteed. Yes – there have been efforts such as those in Pakistan to reintroduce democracy, but it’s being done under some kind of special circumstances – such as Musharraf’s party not being allowed to contest, etc. Also it has been done under considerable supervision of the US, so self-interests of Musharraf can’t be so blatant.
Ministry Formation – Comments
Earlier today, I wrote about some theoretical aspects regarding ministry formation – talking about incentivising, regional/community balance, etc. Here are some pertinent observations about the ministry itself.
- There have been some rumblings about three leaders from Bellary (two Reddy brothers and Sriramulu) who have less than ten years in the party have been accommodated. My argument is that these guys have built up a whole base for the party from scratch. Bellary was a zero district for the BJP till 1999, when Sonia contested from there. From that kind of a situation to practically sweeping the state does take some kind of effort. Apart from Bellary, the trio are supposed to have been a big factor in the Gadag sweep too. I think the reward is fair. The only thing is that these guys should be kept far away from the Mines and Geology portfolio – so that there is no conflict of interest.
- A number of districts have gone without representation, including a number of strong BJP districts – as I’d pointed out earlier today. Shankar Linge Gowda (4 time MLA from one of the Mysore constituencies) definitely deserved a berth, as did of course Jagdish Shettar. Nothing can be helped about some 5 districts in South Karnataka where the BJP didn’t open its account. But all other districts need their share. Bidar was supposed to be represented by Basavaraj Patil Attur, but somehow he disappeared at the last minute. Also, there is no representative from Mainland Tumkur (the only representative of the district is an independent from Pavagada, which is just an island surrounded by Andhra on all sides).
- Apart from Shankar Linge Gowda and Jagadish Shettar, a number of other three and four-time winners have been denied, whose supporters have promptly rioted. There is A Narayanswamy of Anekal and Yogish Bhat of Mangalore South. There is also Appachu Ranjan of Coorg. The last named was probably left out since Coorg contributes just two seats. Yogish Bhat and Narayanswamy lost out in the caste calculations, I think. Narayanswamy was also not helped by the fact that he’s from Bangalore
- Most of the independents supporting the BJP are SC/STs. This has crowded out SC/STs from the party. They have still given ministries to three SCs (Limbavali, Karjol, Revu Naik) and one ST (Sriramulu) but people, especially Narayanswamy, are not happy. The BJP has worked hard to gain acceptance among these communities. It should be careful not to lose it all now.
- Bangalore has 6 people in the ministry. And there’s Katta Subramanya Naidu who is yet to join. One reason why Bangalore numbers look bloated is because two MLAs from here – Arvind Limbavali and Shobha Karandlaje – are not natives of the city, and have moved here only for elections. Again, because of this, other local Bangalore? guys have got crowded out. However, the presence of a number of first time MLAs from helps – they need not be given anything just yet.
- Another problem with the BJP is that the community composition of its top leadership doesn’t reflect the community composition of the state – they have too many Brahmins and Lingayats. Hence, they won’t be able to follow the strict community quota rules that the Krishna and Deve Gowda governments followed.
- The new real estate lobby that has been instrumental in these elections hasn’t got anything in terms of ministry (I’m talking mainly about Kote Nandish Reddy (K R Puram) and Satish Reddy (Bommanahalli) here).
- The BJP is lucky that some new entrants such as G T Deve Gowda and Benki Mahadevu lost, else they would’ve been sure shots for ministries. That would’ve taken the number of new entrants to an unacceptable level – from the point of motivating the cadres.
Anyways, let’s hope that the government somehow survives and lasts its full term. There are a large number of challenges ahead of it, so hopefully they should be able to get over their differences quickly and get down to work.
Ministry Formation – my theory
So Yeddyurappa has been finally sworn in as the CM of Karnataka, this time hopefully for a longer period. Some 29 people have already been sworn in with him, leaving just four more slots (there is a limit of 34 on the size of the ministry). Trouble has already started brewing as some senior leaders and long-term MLAs (such as Jagadish Shetter, Shankar Linge Gowda and A Narayanaswamy (Anekal) ) haven’t been accommodated in the ministry. There are reported to have been protests all over the state yesterday regarding this.
Public enemy number one theory for Indian politics
I think the last thirty years of Indian politics and policy can be explained using the “public enemy number one” theory. It all started off with emergency, when the Congress easily became the enemy. For the elections in 1977, an alliance of non-congress parties was quickly cobbled up with the sole intention of keeping the congress out. As expected, it collapsed soon enough, and the Congress got back to power. And maintained its status.
Continue reading “Public enemy number one theory for Indian politics”
Can I play with elasticity?
The government’s latest gimmick to keep petrol prices unrealistically low is to impose a special additional levy on income tax and corporate tax in order to finance the deficit. Basically a scheme to rob peter and pay paul. Make the higher-income guys pay for the excess oil consumption by the lower income guys.
SM Krishna etc.
A couple of months before the elections, the Congress realized that the absolute non-performance of the Dharam Singh government might prove costly to it. In a quick move, they asked S M Krishna to step down from the Maharashtra Governorship and to take over the campaign in Karnataka.
Congress fooled by randomness?
It seems like.
They decided to extrapolate based on one data point – Tejaswini Sriramesh beating Deve Gowda – or there might be another which I can’t recall right now and they came to the wonderful conclusion that the Deve Gowda family will get defeated when faced with women candidates. They even got an astrologer to endorse it. And put up two hapless inexperienced women to take on the ghataanughatis? that are Deve Gowda’s sons.
In vaguely unrelated stuff, I wonder if the results of the elections would have been any different had the order of polling been reversed. The main concern for most voters this time round was a stable single-party government – having learned the lessons from two horrible coalitions in the last four years.
Now, considering the BJP’s performance in North Karnataka, and assuming that the exit polls didn’t do too badly, people in the south and center would’ve realized that voting for the BJP would give them the best chance of producing a stable government. And the BJP would’ve won comfortably, without having to bother about haggling with independents.
And also it seems like the Congress and JDS will try and hijack the independent MLAs and somehow cobble together a slim majority. It’ll be a great tragedy if that happens – especially given that we’ve seen how these two parties have worked together before. As it stands out, I expect the BJP to buy out the three MLAs it needs to form a government.
Local bodies and elections
Last evening, my neighbour, who is also the president of the local resident’s welfare association, briefly dropped in to hand over my mother’s voting chit. And dropped in a line asking us to vote for a particular party. “This guy has done excellent work in his previous term as MLA”, he said, “and we’ll all benefit if he is gets elected”.