The Primary Red of Secular Right India proposes to build a secular-right front in India.
We need clarity of objectives. If our objective is to re-orient India in a secular-right way, that is undoubtedly achievable without the burden of running political parties. If our objective is to capture power through the electoral process, then we should immediately abandon ideology and sign-up at the cult of whatever's-working-now. These are entirely different games.
....
Political parties should be viewed only as highly effective machines to raise and deploy campaign funds for elections. They are not designed to be the petridish where political ideas are innovated. To the extent they talk of ideas, it's only for the purpose of raising campaign funds.
...
In contrast, ideological campaigns (like PNAC) operate across parties and social affiliations; they end up creating unexpectedly refreshing alliances. They are led by a small group of people devoted to their ideas, not to claiming power. As it turns out, if they succeed in converting millions to their way of thinking, they become powerful by proxy. This is a far quicker and less expensive route than the traditional political party approach.
...
Given this, the real tactical question before secular-right Indians is whether we can identify and network a 100 or so like-minded -- and relatively young (mid 30s, early 40s) -- people who are also independently influential in their lives and professions. These people can then leverage their personal and professional credibility -- and intellectual strength -- to make passionate and convincing political arguments that few in the party system dare make.
This seems like a good idea! Additionally, we can encourage existing and new libertarian professionals in fields of law, economics get get appointed or elected for high-level constitutional posts! In India, people have great respect for learned judges, presidents, election commissioners and so on!
Such appointments are generally for a long term and they have independent power that goes above and beyond the hustle and bustle of day-to-day politics. They don't have to face popularity contests (otherwise knows as elections). And when such authorities take a strong action against politicians such as by done Mr. T. N Seshan, they are highly popular! The fact that he lost the election afterwards suggests that such people cannot handle popular politics but can do a fine job of controlling corruption and reforming politics!
The idea is to convince highly talented and educated professions and beaurocrats, who are strongly libertarian, to specifically target getting elected to the constitutional offices!
It will help if there are two strong political parties which are idelogically opposite (such as in US). In such cases, libertarians can naturally present themselves as compromise candidates who are neither psuedo-secular nor religious bigots.
There are many such people currently in the public sphere. For example, P. Chidambaram, Manmohan Singh, Arun Shourie, N. Vittal, and many others!
We can target posts such Governor, RBI, Election Commission, Lokpal, Supreme Court justices, Solicitor General, President and so on.
The twin assault of ideological campaign and having good people at higher constitutional posts will go a long way in ensuring political reforms.
Comments