Author and former diplomat Pavan K. Varma with Bhutan King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck and Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar

Elections are not scheduled until next year, but electoral politics is very much in the air. Two of the country’s top English-language news channels are already running polls to predict who will form the next government at the Centre.

These channels tend not to agree if they can help it, so it is telling that both of them have been forced to conclude that as of now, neither the Congress-led United Progressive Allian-ce nor the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance is likely to win a majority in 2014. The numbers would probably favour a third front, if it existed.
Pavan K. Varma, an author and former diplomat who is now an advisor to Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar, agrees that neither of the major national parties may be in a position to form even a coalition government, but feels the talk of a third front is still premature. All that can be said now, according to him, is that regional parties may have a greater say in the formation of the next government at the Centre.
At the moment, he is critical of both the Congress, which he accuses of populism, and the BJP, which he says has “by narrowing its leadership, narrowed its chances”.
The food security bill, which sparked off heated debates, including one between eminent economists Amartya Sen and Jagdish Bhagwati, is among the examples of populism that Mr Varma mentions. Dr Sen, when he speaks of creating greater equity, cannot be faulted, says Mr Varma, but the problem is with the instruments that will be used to achieve the goal. “If you are going to use the same rotten public distribution system and the same genocidal Food Corporation of India then we have to wonder, will it work?” he says.
The idea, according to Mr Varma, is to “improve delivery, not question the goal”. If pushed through without fixing delivery mechanisms, the food security bill becomes mere populism. Mr Varma cites the example of the Right to Education, which is now law, to say that creating new rights will not work without providing adequate resources or thinking about the means to implement the idea.
The problem of populism in governance is something that arises out of the compulsions of coalition governments with precarious majorities, says Mr Varma.
“Our Constitution makers had not foreseen the situation we see now,” he says. He characterises it as a contest between the imperatives of governance and democracy. The larger project of governance is being neglected, he says, because governments are spending all their energies on their own preservation. Long-term solutions have no place in the thinking of such governments that survive from day to day; they cannot have that vision, he says.
One measure that would help in this situation, according to Mr Varma, is to do what the Election Commission has recommended more than a dozen times, and make it mandatory for coalitions to be declared before elections. He says this is necessary so voters can vote for identified coalitions with declared agendas rather than find that the party he voted out has come back into power with help from someone he voted for as an alternative. There is at present a lot of “political heat without light”, says Mr Varma. Electoral reform is needed, but it is not happening. “Talk of electoral reform is almost as old as Manmohan Singh,” he says.
The key reform that would clean the mess has to do with political funding. “The seed of all corruption in this country is the lack of electoral reforms leading to financial transparency in election funding,” he says.
The loophole that political parties exploit, according to Mr Varma, is a rule that allows contributions below `20,000 to be made anonymously. “Today it is possible for all transactions to be made through banking channels. And what is wrong if this part of the functioning of political parties comes under the Right to Information?” he asks.
Mr Varma, whose most recent book was on the teachings of Chanakya applied to the crises of contemporary India, notes that the ancient Indian thinker believed kings ruled for the welfare of their subjects. Justice and the rule of law were important for that. “There has to be a nexus between crime and punishment,” he says.
At present, the delays in justice are legendary, and Mr Varma makes mention of a certain politician from Bihar (Lalu Prasad) who was involved in a scam related to “what cows eat”. Eighteen years on, a verdict in the case is still awaited.
Mr Varma has a prescription for this. The Supreme Court has legitimised fast track courts for certain types of cases, he says. Why not implement them in cases involving senior politicians?
Considering that senior politicians never stand in queues like ordinary mortals, it seems only fair that they should jump the queue of pending cases in courts as well.