Towards a New Polity

Towards a New Polity

Rajaji Birthday Lecture, 1993 — by Abid Hussain

Summary

Towards a New Polity is the 1993 Rajaji Birthday Lecture, delivered by the civil servant and diplomat Abid Hussain and published as a booklet in Bombay by the Project for Economic Education and the Friedrich Naumann Stiftung (copyright The Rajaji Foundation). Honouring C. Rajagopalachari — whom he calls an “intellectual colossus” and Gandhi’s conscience-keeper, an outstanding representative of a class of principled politicians now virtually extinct — Hussain deliberately turns from the economic questions he knew best to political ones. His central worry is that even as India’s economy is being reformed, its political system is being deformed: an outward-looking, futuristic economic policy, he argues, cannot coexist with obscurantist ideologies that fan caste and religious hatred and pit Indian against Indian. Unless the political order is overhauled soon, the reforms will carry India only so far, and the country risks becoming an “economic waste-land.” Invoking Joan Robinson’s line that all economic answers are political questions, he calls for a political vision as bold and over-arching as the new economic thinking.

The first pillar of his new polity is a reaffirmation of India’s pluralism. India, he says, is a mosaic and a kaleidoscope whose tolerance of diversity in language, culture and religion has let its civilisation survive three thousand years — but which is now in danger of becoming a “boiling cauldron.” Strikingly, he locates the assault on this pluralism not among the poor and illiterate but among the urban, educated and intellectual classes, for whom advancement has enslaved rather than liberated the mind; it is the deprived and disadvantaged, he notes (citing Uttar Pradesh), who have swung the balance back toward compassion, democracy and diversity. He couples a renewed secularism with a warning against caste politics: affirmative action to undo centuries of discrimination is necessary, but not the pandering that turns an election into “voting your caste,” and its benefits must reach the genuinely needy rather than being monopolised by a few. Faster economic growth, and an open, dispassionate debate on questions such as a uniform civil code protecting all women, belong to the same agenda.

The heart of the lecture is a case for a minimal but strong State. India’s political disarray, Hussain argues, springs from over-centralisation, gigantism, intrusiveness and a “pathological attachment to secrecy,” alongside institutions too weak to implement good policy. He wants government cut down in size — distinguishing gross size from effectiveness, since a large government is rarely a strong one — into a “federation of small but efficient governments” that invest in infrastructure, public health and education rather than micro-managing the economy. Transparency and a free media, he insists, are indispensable assets to good governance, not enemies of it. He extends the argument to the map itself, calling for a second States’ Reorganisation Act to break up over-large states (“Dilli dur ast” — but for a Garhwali hillsman, “Lucknow bhi dur ast”) in the name of decentralisation, accountability and civic virtue.

Hussain closes with linked reforms of elections, representation, the political class and the courts. He wants money, muscle and mafia power purged from politics through a decent system of financing elections; legislatures that are purposive rather than “talk-shops” where lung power is at a premium and reason at a discount; and the professional and intellectual classes drawn back into public life as they were in the age of Gokhale, Tilak, Patel, Azad and Rajaji himself — a task he entrusts to idealistic young men and women in a country where half the population is under forty but the political establishment is over sixty. Judicial reform completes the picture: with some sixteen lakh cases pending, he argues that over-regulation, not a shortage of judges, clogs the courts, and that scrapping outmoded laws such as rent control would do more than adding benches. Building a new polity is hard, he concludes, but attainable if Indians put their shoulders to the wheel together — a goal worthy of Rajaji.

Key points

• The 1993 Rajaji Birthday Lecture by the civil servant and diplomat Abid Hussain, published in Bombay by the Project for Economic Education and the Friedrich Naumann Stiftung (copyright The Rajaji Foundation).

• Central thesis: India’s economy is being reformed while its political system is being deformed; without deep political reform the reforms will stall and India risks becoming an “economic waste-land.”

• Calls first for a reaffirmation of India’s pluralism — a “mosaic” and “kaleidoscope” — locating the attack on it in the educated urban classes rather than the poor, and pairing a renewed secularism with a critique of caste-based politics.

• Argues affirmative action is justified to undo centuries of discrimination but must reach the genuinely needy, not be monopolised by a few or reduced to “voting your caste”; backs faster growth and an open debate on a uniform civil code protecting all women.

• Core proposal: a “minimal but strong State” — a federation of small, efficient governments investing in infrastructure, health and education instead of micro-managing the economy, ending over-centralisation, gigantism and official secrecy.

• Champions transparency and a free media as assets to good governance, and calls for a second States’ Reorganisation Act to break up over-large states in the name of decentralisation and civic virtue.

• Seeks electoral reform to purge money, muscle and mafia power, more purposive legislatures instead of “talk-shops,” and the return of the professional and intellectual classes — especially idealistic youth — to politics.

• Ends with judicial reform, arguing that over-regulation (e.g. outmoded rent-control laws) clogs the courts more than any shortage of judges; concludes a new polity is a goal worthy of Rajaji.

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Ingested 2026-07-21 from the CCS source archive. AI-drafted summary awaiting editorial review.