politics

Of Referenda and Loaded Questions

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Reading this excellent review essay by Mohammed Hanif, I realised that when you are a dictator and you want a veneer of legitimacy, you can always conduct a referendum. And to be sure of your victory, you can ask an extremely loaded question with a binary choice.

Sample this question that ‘sought endorsement’ for Zia-ul-Haq’s Islamisation programme in 1984.

Do you endorse the process initiated by the President of Pakistan, General Mohammad Ziaul Haq, for bringing the laws of Pakistan in conformity with the injunctions of Islam as laid down in the Holy Quran and Sunnah of the Holy Prophet (peace be upon him) and for the preservation of the ideology of Pakistan, and are you in favour of continuation and further consolidation of that process and for the smooth and orderly transfer of power to the elected representatives of the people?

There’s no way that anyone is going to answer a ‘no’ to that question with such a framing. I’m actually surprised that 1.5 percent answered ‘No” to this question. Maybe it was Zia’s men at work lest anyone accuse the referendum of being unfair.

Then Musharraf also held a referendum in 2002 to seek approval for a five-year extension to his rule. Check out how that question was framed:

For the survival of the local government system, establishment of democracy, continuity of reforms, end to sectarianism and extremism, and to fulfil the vision of Quaid-e-Azam [Great leader – ie Pakistan’s late founder, Mohammed Ali Jinnah], would you like to elect President General Pervez Musharraf as president of Pakistan for five years?

Another loaded masterpiece to say the least.

Further reading: An excellent question on why the Brexit referendum question was unsatisfactory.

Beyond petty politics

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A few days ago my office folks had a long debate on the morality of voting. This entire conversation was ignited when one of the colleagues questioned how non-voting is considered to be a lesser moral position that voting. The conversation that followed was a like a strong debate where both sides had valid arguments. On one hand came the argument that supported non-voting as a lesser moral activity since it’s about the aggregates impact that registering the discontent has as opposed to not voting. On the other hand, it was argued that going to the voting booth to cast a NOTA (None Of The Above) vote was as good as showing dislike for all parties and emphasised on how little an impact a single vote has in such situations. I supported the latter. 

All of this conversation reminded me of a brilliant book by José Saramago called Seeing. Here’s the brief summary from a review:

The story begins with those ordinary citizens, who not so long ago regained their sight and their tranquil day-to-day lives, doing something that seems quite unconnected with vision or lack of it. It is voting day, and 83% of them, after not going to the polls at all in the morning, go in the late afternoon and cast a blank ballot.

We see the dismay of bureaucrats, the excitement of journalists, the hysteria of the government, and the mild non-response of the citizens, who, when asked how they voted, refuse to say, reminding the questioner that the question is illegal.

I will not ruin the book for you but it was interesting to remember how the story shows that coalitions and disagreements between parties is a much smaller problem for a democracy compared to apathy of the people. The citizens in the book were not just indifferent to who came to power but did not see how the person who did come to power would make any difference to them. This stark realisation brings forth the significance of governance and institutions structures that secure the incentives and relations between the civilians and their governments, beyond the rigmarole of political terms.

While the Congress and JD(S) government come into an agreement over Karnataka’s election, it is time to see beyond the petty politics and realise that although there has been just 0.9 per cent of NOTA votes this time, it is more than six smaller parties in Karnataka, including two parties with a nation-wide presence. 

PS: I would also highly recommend Death at Intervals by José Saramago.

Pashtun Protection Movement: A Radically Networked Society in Action

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If you have been trawling the internet in search of reliable news and opinion about the Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement (PTM), there’s some good news. Beena Sarwar has an excellent backgrounder in Scroll.in. 

What caught my attention was the social media’s role in mobilising widespread support given that there is a blanket censure  of PTM by all major media houses in Pakistan. Sarwar describes this role as follows:

Their (PTM’s) demand for constitutional rights directly challenging Pakistan’s powerful security establishment was blatantly censored from the mainstream media. The pattern has continued with subsequent rallies.

But in this digital age, news of the Swat demonstration could not be suppressed. The social media activists or citizen journalists who trended the hashtag #PashtunLongMarch2Swat included gender studies lecturer Tooba Syed from Islamabad. Making the four-hour journey to Swat by road, she movingly documented her experiences on Twitter.

Without social media, “the movement would not be possible”, said one of its leaders, 34-year-old lawyer Mohsin Dawar, a former student activist associated with Left politics.

The rapid rise of social media in Pakistan (17% internet penetration, growing fast) and mobile phone subscribers (over 70%) makes television coverage (73%) less crucial than before. But censorship still violates the people’s right to know, as a statement endorsed by over 100 journalists in April emphasises. [Scroll.in, 6 May 2018]

So, the PTM is a textbook example of what we call a Radically Networked Society (RNS) — a web of hyper connected individuals, possessing an identity (imagined or real), and motivated by a common immediate cause.

In PTM’s case, the Pashtun ethnicity provided the common identity, Naqeebullah Mehsud’s cold blooded murder by the Karachi Police became the immediate cause, and Twitter, WhatsApp, Signal, and Facebook enabled the movement to scale. 

The oppressive and all-powerful Pakistani State has ensured that media houses have no reportage of the protests. And yet, it has been unsuccessful in stopping the spread of information via the RNS route. This typifies the nature of information flows — information propagates rapidly in networked societies, at a pace too fast for hierarchical states to arrest.

From past instances of RNS mobilisations, we know that governments tend to use excessive force in desperation if extended internet shutdowns do not work. And Pakistan Army has a long history of using force on its non-Pakistani citizens. Unfortunately, looks like this is likely to be the next step. Watch out for the Karachi rally that the PTM has called for on May 13th.

 

No sermons, no carrots, only sticks

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The Reserve Bank of India on April 6th prohibited banks from:

dealing in Virtual Currencies or from providing services for facilitating any person or entity in dealing with or settling Virtual Currencies.

This is not strictly a ban on people from mining bitcoins or possessing them. Perhaps, it’s not even possible for RBI to enforce that ban given the decentralised nature of cryptocurrencies. Nevertheless, prohibiting banks from dealing with any cryptocurrency is symptomatic of how quickly governments resort to blunt policy instruments in India.

Carrots, Sticks, and Sermons has a wonderful classification of policy instruments. It argues that any government primarily has three policy instruments available to it: information (moral suasion, transfer of knowledge, communication of reasoned argument, advice, and persuasion etc), economic instruments (grants, subsidies, charges, fees etc), and regulation (absolute bans, prohibition with exemptions, obligation to notify etc).

Now, which of these three policy instruments should governments choose? The book has this to say:

All other things being equal, in most cultures at least, the use of coercive power is more alienating to those subject to it than is the use of economic power, and the use of economic power is more alienating than the use of information and exhortation. Or, to put it the other way around, exhortation and information tend to generate more commitment than economic instruments, and economic instruments more than regulatory instruments.

The book says that even politically, it is rewarding if these three instruments are applied in a sequence:

politicians have a strong tendency to respond to policy issues (any issue) by moving successively from the least coercive governing instrument to the most coercive. The idea is that over time a policy problem is tackled in three different ways: first by the provision of information such as uttering a broad statement of intent, subsequently by the application of selective incentives, and lastly by the establishment of regulations accompanied by the threat of sanction. The underlying notion is that in solving social problems the authorities employ instruments of increasing strength in successive stages.

But is this order followed in India?

It would take a thorough study to investigate this. But if the regularity of prohibitions is taken as an indicator, it appears that even if this order is adhered to, the predilection in Indian policymakers is to pick the coercive option fairly quickly. And this says a lot about India. It can be taken as a proxy for how liberal political philosophy is stillborn in India. A liberal society would default to a minimal constraint principle – cause as less trouble to the populace as possible. Policy instruments are ends in themselves as they determine the style of policymaking in a polity. So, a high number of bans and prohibitions indicates that at the margin, greater government control is the default in India. Seen through this lens, the RBI note does not surprise.