Sunday, January 5, 2014

A skeptical aam aadmi

I am what most people might call a skeptic (with the grand exception of technology, where I seem to be an early adopter of most things), but I like to keep an open mind for new things, provided they give a good argument in their favor. Quite simply because doing anything new is hard, so some leeway should be granted. It's illustrative to think of this as the hump:
Yep this one, no pun intended
I was lucky enough to find a pic that illustrates the phases too! I maintain the most interesting things happen in phase 2, cause honeymoons are fun and easy (or so I've heard...). Humps are hard, because going up slopes is hard. That may sound like an obvious fact, but that's the reason trails take a long route up, mountain roads have bends, and you have to take a few degrees to get to active research. And quite simply, there is no easy way across the hump and anyone who promises you such a way is most likely a liar (think diet pills and their no-exercise-weight-loss promises). This is an accepted fact in sciences, barring quantum tunneling. Lets leave that out for the time being, cause I won't be talking about quantum things here. The jump I'm claiming here is that most real world challenges also fall somewhere along this curve. People spend years making slow, creeping progress towards a solution, building momentum. And when you hit the peak, you know that the trend has reversed and you'll see a sudden flood of progress. I'd postulate that gay rights in USA are approaching that peak. Why? Cause simply put, it's a battle for minds, as soon as you have a critical mass of people believing in your solution, you have the majority and the majority can convert others much more quickly.

This is where I'll pivot to the point I want to discuss. The AAP (Aam Aadmi Party for the uninitiated), is offering a panacea to the problem of corrupt governance. Their manifesto has a definite socialist tilt, but they claim to have solution that works. So yay, we're at the peak of the hump. A lot of their supporters say this is why they must be given more leeway than other parties. I'm willing to accept that to a limit, but there seems to be a general misunderstanding of what it means to be near a peak. To get near this peak, a large number of people have devoted their lives and effort. In this case, quite literally lives have been lost to highlight corruption and try to steer the country away from it. So when someone claims to be capable of crossing the hump, they carry the wishes and dreams of a lot of people past and present. Secondly - and this is the part I see gross ignorance of - they're near the peak, not past it. A mistake here has the potential to start an avalanche of momentum away from the desired outcome. Why, you might ask, cause future governments can point to their failure to shoot down progress. If you want examples, just look at the current problems the Obama administration is facing from mistakes in the healthcare rollout.

The two arguments that might detract from me having any say in this are that I'm technically not an aam aadmi, and that I'm not even in Delhi right now. Yes, I've used a good combination of luck and hard work to get where I am, so I might not be like most of the middle class AAP represents, but I'm still there, and I've lived through the spectrum, through my experiences and my family's. As to the fact I'm not in Delhi right now, well, that gives me some objectivity simply from being outside the problem I'm supposed to be looking at (I spent a whole post discussing that, so look it up :) )

So finally, here is the primary thing I'm skeptical about: Why dole out the results you expect to come down the line? I'm inclined to believe there is corruption in power and water distribution, but why not let those inquiries complete with actual facts. I don't care where you studied, IIT included, because most IITians themselves will say it's dangerous to assume that your predictions will always be correct. Even experts fail periodically, and you're still new to this game. This is where that danger of rolling backwards comes into play. A mistake here will reverse the momentum in the blink of an eye. The same parties AAP accuses of favoritism and corruption will come back and point fingers, destroying their hard-earned credibility. Because, unlike some who feel this is a victory, I think this is just the beginning of the test, one in which they have to ace every question to be successful. Doing that requires slow prudence and maturity, not rushed populism.

Even now, negative articles are propping up about Kejriwal and his perceived heavy-handedness in matters. How raising questions and pointing out possible flaws seems to be anathema. There's only so long (that honeymoon period), that AAP can hide behind the label of being new. After a point they'll have to start answering questions, biggest of which is how they intend to pay for what they've already given away. Because no matter how corrupt the previous government was, in the decade or so Sheila Dikshit was CM, I saw the power situation improve, pollution go down, and transportation improve by leaps and bounds. When I was a kid, the word "blueline" warranted terror similar to Gabbar Singh. People knew what "folding cots" were, cause we slept on them a lot of times thanks to there being no power. Pollution was so bad that smog was a daily occurrence. Thanks to, in spite of, or independent of, the Congress government, power cuts went down, buses became better and safer, a metro was finally built, and pollution is going down thanks to CNG. Those are achievements, big ones at that. Delhi still has problems, and almost all of them can be traced back to the massive influx of people it sees everyday. I once sat through a lecture (by an expert on the topic, mind you) on how you can't possibly plan for such an influx because there aren't enough resources. And now AAP, which doesn't have so many experts, is claiming it can. I'm not inclined to believe them unless they offer hard proof. And they seem to be on their way to delivering that, with audits of power companies etc. Instead of fast-tracking these audits, they went on a promise making spree. Temporary as these promises might be, taking something away is always exponentially harder. Remember when reservations were only meant to last for a few years?

If it was unclear from the last para, what I'm trying to say is that governance is built on hard-won victories, not shoot-from-the-hip promises which play to the masses. AAP had the potential to do the former, and still does, but they seem to be going for the latter, which is what disturbs me. Because while you're focused on this particular hump, don't forget the other hump, the one of dictatorship. If you're confused, read about Herr Hitler's rise to power.

ps: I know some of you are going to lose it about the last line, so let me clarify that I don't think AAP is going to become the next National Socialist German Workers Party, only that small missteps have the potential to have big repercussions. Because the steps from National Socialist to Nazi aren't that many if we follow anything like mindless drones without asking questions to the contrary.