Voting for expertise

Technocrats seeking election will bring greater accountability

It has been reported that the ruling Congress party is considering nominating Nandan Nilekani, currently the head of the Unique Identification Authority of India, or UIDAI, as its candidate from the constituency of Bangalore South in the next Lok Sabha elections. No announcement has been made to this effect, and it is not known whether Mr Nilekani has agreed to be so nominated. But, nevertheless, a great deal of understandable interest has been sparked. For one, Bangalore South has long been a constituency of note, associated more with "New India" than most - with an electorate perceived as young, mobile and dominated by the services sector. Mr Nilekani, who achieved fame as one of the founders of Bangalore-based software giant Infosys, is from the same world. For middle-class India, this would then be a significant nomination.

If it happens, it would also be relatively rare. Few major figures from the private sector, or lateral entrants into politics from other fields, choose to subject themselves to the hurly-burly of real electoral battles. After all, it is typically easier to lobby the top leadership of a political party into giving the well-known face a seat in the Rajya Sabha, which is not popularly elected, instead. Even India's most powerful technocrat-turned-politician, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, has fought only one Lok Sabha contest, which he lost. Since then, he has sat in the Rajya Sabha, a decision that has been the source of considerable criticism. The desire to avoid the whirlwind and compromise of real constituency politics means that those who have real expertise sitting in the Rajya Sabha do not have to deal with the accountability and issues thrown up by the average campaign for a direct election. This is not a healthy trend; it leads to a divorcing of non-political expertise from realpolitik, of analysis from accountability.

Mr Nilekani has already blazed a trail for the private sector in one sense, by choosing to depart the corporate world entirely and lose himself in the bureaucratic maze that is project execution in New Delhi. For a former head of Infosys, "lateral entry" into government meant a Cabinet rank and the support of the leaders of both the Congress party and the government. While not in any way minimising the import of Mr Nilekani's decision to join the government, this is nevertheless an insulated position. In other words, were Mr Nilekani to contest an election as the nominee of a major political party, he would blaze another trail - not just for the private sector, this time, but for all para-state policy analysts and technocrats. Rather than demanding positions of power on the basis of their knowledge and expertise that are sheltered from the pressures of electoral politics, more of India's technocrats should actually take the plunge and become candidates. They should go out and seek votes, and explain reform and big ideas to India's electorate. If there is too much wrong with India's politics, then India's technocrats should help change it.