Development is daily work

State, Market, Society

If employees at a company went to work only occasionally, they’d probably soon not have jobs. If you paid attention to your relationships and friendships only rarely, you’d not have them either. Clearly, the market and society are spheres that are only nourished by everyday actions, and without them, there would be a dramatic resetting of the table. But governance and development are different; they operate by a different clock, as far as anyone can tell.

There’s a lot of election coverage these days. And what that coverage tells us is that various leaders are going about helter-skelter in a frenzy of campaigning. In the midst of that, a number of titbits of news emerge and these are reported breathlessly for a few hours, until they’re replaced by the next set of titbits, which are also transient.

But while they all pass quickly, they do have a connection to a more persistent, larger question -- which political party is going to win? And, as a corollary to this, which group within society is going to have more power, since the whole exercise is lined up that way. Sometimes, a little before the election, it becomes apparent what the answer is. And at other times, it’s a close call, and there’s nothing to do but wait for the tallying to see what the voters actually did.

Throughout this time, millions of people talk to each other about the polls and which way the wind is blowing. A lot of political figures keep jumping ship, which provides plenty of material for these chats. And, of late, elections don’t seem to be the only way to decide who wins. Too many elections have been followed by rounds of poaching to realign the interests of winners, quite often without any regard to what the voters may have wanted.

All of this adds to the spectacle, but it also adds to the feeling that the polls are just a game, and that their original purpose is now incidental. The idea that voters get to choose not only who should lead them, but also set a course for development and governance that is preferred by them, is only marginally in the picture. Most voters in most elections believe that between one government and the next, there is not likely to be anything that is new and meaningful.

While elections are pivots around which we seek progress, their role in helping us come to decisive answers to the challenges of development have become quite dim. The cost of a high pitch during the few weeks leading up to an election is an appalling inertia for another five years. As a result, we find ourselves near the bottom of nearly every development indicator that matters, and are even being overtaken by nations that we used to look down our nose at.

This shouldn’t surprise anyone; we can’t possibly excel at something that we only rarely pay attention to.

The state of our public education, the disarray in our healthcare system, the creaking infrastructure, the mounting burden of debt that millions of families face, the deteriorating environment ... these things ought to be front and centre, frequently, in our lives. The institutions of government, and the people we elect to public office, should be held accountable regularly for better outcomes. Without this persistence, the once-in-five-years tambola is just a game.

To ask, “Who will win the election?” is a very limited question. We should be able to tell what will be different when elections are won by one group instead of another. And if the answer to that is that “nothing will change, because they are all the same,” that’s not the failure of the political class, it’s our failure as citizens.

Daily engagement with development makes elections meaningful. We’ve always known this, but we’ve also become comfortable with going on as though we don’t know it. We tell ourselves that this is “too hard”, and it’s not our job to do things that public officials and elected representatives are supposed to do. That’s actually not correct -- there is no workable model of democratic governance in which the people don’t have an active role.

There is no shortage of things one can do, with this mindset. In fact, there are those who are striving against very high odds to make things better. We could easily begin our engagement with development by helping them. A couple of years ago, I said to someone that “within 500 meters of your home, there is already someone working to make the neighbourhood better, to help those in need, and to be a better citizen.” Finding people to work with isn’t hard at all. But wanting to find them, and getting around to helping them, is a completely different thing.

Voting makes sense when the non-voting homework is also diligently completed. That’s not an optional part; it is integral to any goal we seek to achieve through voting itself. The quality of candidates that we’ll see on the ballot machine depends very heavily on how well we’ve done this homework. If we’ve failed our part, there’s not much chance that those we elect will succeed.

(Ashwin Mahesh Social technologist and entrepreneur, founder of Mapunity and co-founder, Lithium, wakes up with hope for the city and society, goes to bed with a sigh, repeats cycle)