Temple trusts that once controlled thousands of bighas of land and maintained elephants by the dozen have lost their riches. Even pricey oxen have become undesirable, as plowing has been mechanized and bullock carts have mostly been replaced with tractors. Cattle fairs have almost disappeared. But old-timers still reminisce of agents that would frequent their villages at the end of the planting season and prompt them to sell their livestock to tide over expenses until harvests came in. New heads could always be bought in April-May from the local cattle fairs before the next plowing began.[break]
The marketplace of politicos opens from the day national elections are announced. On sale is often a track record, a list of likely supporters or sometimes even a recognizable name. Expected payoffs vary. Some want a ticket for the next polls. A few are angling for nominations or appointments. Proximity to centers of power sometimes brings untold rewards for those who know how to play the guessing game of not asking for anything directly in lieu of shifts in their loyalty but expecting more than what they deserve.
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Transactions can go awry once in a while, but the trade in fidelity towards an ambitious individual, a worthwhile cause, a dedicated group, a disciplined party, or a winning campaign is nearly as old as other commercial deals dating back to the age of exchange and barter. Mahatma Gandhi once quipped that those who thought that religion could be separated from politics understood neither religion nor politics.
Something similar can be said about post-1990 South Asia: Those who think that business can be separated from politics understand neither business nor politics.
The politics of business is openly profit-based. Entrepreneurs don’t have to pretend that their efforts would lift mankind out of its misery. Weapons, alcohol, drugs, tobacco, junk food, education, health, banking, insurance, entertainment, energy and transport are some of the most lucrative businesses in the world. Businesses endeavor to offer choices to consumers; empowerment of the people is not their concern. In comparison to the politics of business, the business of politics needs a different breed of dealers: It requires that its dealers pay at least lip service to selflessness and the welfare of the masses.
Herders and hunters
After a certain talk program, someone wanted to know the surname of Aristotle. Such questions are not as outlandish as they appear. Many Indians have overcome their surname fixation, but Nepalis sometimes choose to have two instead of one-family names but refuse to let go of the caste marker. Aristotle couldn’t be called Upadhaya because he didn’t confine himself to teaching scriptures. He was certainly not merely a pundit for he taught Alexander the Great the art and science of statecraft. He performed no rituals and couldn’t have been a Sharma or something. Maybe he was not a Brahmin at all but a learned Kshetriya, Vaishya or Shudra who had watched householders from close quarters. Aristotle somewhere groups animals into social and solitary kinds. Only an elitist, yet rooted, sage could have been so clinically detached in the analysis of fellow beings.
Social animals—be they bees, birds or mammals—are hard working and docile. They can be herded and domesticated because they prefer to conform. They are preyed upon in the wild. In captivity, they work hard and are sacrificed. Solitary animals are lazy, but difficult to tame and impossible to domesticate. According to Aristotle, human beings are political animals; the connotation perhaps being that they are the herd and the herder, the hunter and the hunted, and the social and the solitary, all at the same time. Little wonder, dealing with this strange creature has flummoxed all the great dealers of politics at one time or another. However, some of their techniques are recognizable.
Like many other quotable quotes, “Leaders are dealers in hope” has been attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte. French translation somehow lacks the combination of stimulation and sadness intrinsic to the English statement. Hope can only be hawked to those who know the exuberance of expectation and the apathy born out of despair. Perhaps the realization gave birth to the conviction that crisis—a period when hope has been lost—becomes an opportunity for the birth of leaders. Polls too create a marketplace to peddle hope, but buyers have to have faith in the sellers of promise.
Herders need some practice in perfecting their skills. Only someone with a hard head, tough heart, steely determination and single-mindedness of a pursuer can become a hunter.
The problem with both kinds of “solitary animal” is that they fail to inspire confidence. In an oligopoly, herders and hunters can be very successful entrepreneurs in the business of politics.
However, plurality requires a different sort of dealers. They have to hawk hope tinged with realism. Throughout history, such shepherds have always been in short supply. Perhaps that partly explains the persistence of misery in human life.
Human instinct
While it is true that humans are two-footed animals with overdeveloped brains, which allows them to outfox the fox and hunt them into extinction, and an ability to laugh at their own foolishness, there is yet another trait that has made homo sapiens (wise beings) fall and become homo economicus (self-interested beings). When everyone looks after one’s own interests, which one would look after the interests of those who can’t look after their own interests? That is where the quality of leadership comes to be tested. But no one precisely knows how a leader is created.
According to the Great Man Theory, leaders are born and are gifts of nature. A society has to deserve to get a Gandhi or a Mandela or be accursed to endure a Hitler, a Stalin or an Idi Amin. Crisis theorists believe that a situation throws up leadership. Father Ludwig F. Stiller hypothesized that the “Silent Cry” of the peasantry in the mid-mountains of the Gandak region made the rise of the Gorkha chieftain Prithvi inevitable. However, a prefect crisis failed to help Gyanendra prove himself.
Bureaucratic leaders work through and manipulate the system to reach to the top where the structure sustains them, irrespective of their effectiveness. No other explanation suits the likes of Sushil Koirala, Jhalnath Khanal or Bijay Gachhedar. Entrepreneur-leaders manage resources—men, material, money and management—to get results, which is to serve their personal or group interests. Along with Pushpa Kamal Dahal, most of the post-2006 politicos probably fit into the last category.
There is yet another kind of leader who preaches and practices change with a combination of integrity, inspiration, initiative, and innovation. This kind of guide—rahbar in Urdu and helmsman in Maoist-speak—does not just deal in hope but prepares the flock for the frustrations of the journey. Winston Churchill was once asked what he considered the most important quality in public life. The fiery orator is said to have uttered just one word—mettle—and returned to whatever he had been doing. Mettle is defined as “a person’s ability to cope well with difficulties or to face a demanding situation in a spirited and resilient way.” BP Koirala preferred the term “moral fibre” and observed that all you needed was uprightness in order to run a family or the country.
In the recently published book, “Nepal Votes for Peace” (Foundation Books, New Delhi, 2013), its authors, Bhojraj Pokharel and Shrishti Rana, record Girija Prasad Koirala telling them, “I tried to bring all forces together but it was difficult. I don’t know how to manage it further. Prachandjee and Baburamjee come here…They agree about something, but then they do the complete opposite. What can I do, Prachanda’s decisions change a lot.” The book has equally compelling anecdotes about influential actors of contemporary Nepal. The honorific ‘jee’ added to the names of Koirala’s nemesis adds one more feature to the requirements of motivational leaders: Respect for the opponents.
There is little sign that impending elections would throw such a leadership. It may just prove to be a marketplace for dealers of despair (Nepali nationality was never as much in danger ever before!) or peddlers of triteness (Marxist, Maoist, Monarchist or Market utopia waiting to be embraced just round the next corner!). Whatever Comrade Baidya may say, withdrawal from the market sounds like a self-defeating option. The best way perhaps is to muddle through the fair with the hallowed principle in mind: Buyers beware!
Lal contributes to The Week with his biweekly column Reflection. He is one of the widely read poliitical
analysts in Nepal
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