#151 The Wrong Kind Of Convergence
Yabi Lali
Description
India Policy Watch #1: Imitating The Enemy<br/><br/>Insights on burning policy issues in India<br/><br/>— RSJ<br/><br/>Pranay made an interesting point in the last edition on how India should avoid mimicking China if it were to position itself as a counter to them. The core idea was we often fall into the trap of behaving like our ‘enemy’ when we compete with them. This hurts our long term interests. I was thinking about it in the context of Indian politics and how often this has turned out to be true. A classic instance of this is West Bengal where the TMC ousted the Left, then picked up their playbook of party capture of the state and did one better on them. Even the BJP that never missed an opportunity to talk about ‘high command’ culture and lack of cooperative federalism when the Congress was in power, now runs a highly centralised government of two, with a powerful PMO. On the other hand, Congress and AAP have gone down the path of what’s called soft Hindutva as they try to keep pace with the BJP. The interesting, and somewhat, ominous thing to note here is none of these parties tries to emulate features that could further liberal democracy. The incentives for winning power and retaining it supports only imitating the bad ideas in the short run.<br/><br/>The ‘Party State’<br/><br/>This is what worries me as I see the coalescing of the opposition forces in the run-up to 2024. It is not the differences between the BJP and the opposition, in the shape of TMC and others, that's important. Those differences on secularism or the definition of nationalism will be used for narrative wars that will continue to deepen the schism in the society. But I don’t see them changing how India will be governed. It is the similarity, where the ‘enemies’ emulate each other that has me worried. <br/><br/>And what’s the similarity? To put it simply, it is their belief in running a ‘party state’ model of governance. What the Left built in West
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#151 The Wrong Kind Of Convergence
Yabi Lali