In ancient polities political disorder used to be best measured by linguistic disorder. In the Mahabharata, a sense of moral vertigo is induced by no one knowing quite what key moral terms mean any more. Thucydides conveys a sense of political disorder and chaos by telling us that words themselves have lost all meaning. Confucius thought that a well-ordered society required “fixing names.”
On that measure most of the key terms of our political Constitution are now profoundly disordered. The traditional associations of those words don't make any sense; but the new ones are not fixed. Perhaps the path to moral clarity lies through first recognising and fixing meanings. Only then can we understand that we are in the midst of a new constitutional regime, where old words need new definitions.
Let us begin with our constitutional order.
Office of the prime minister: The weakest office in the cabinet.
Cabinet government: Each minister for himself or herself.
An opposition party: A party guilty of exactly the same things it accuses government of.
Federalism: A system of government where the Centre takes credit for growth and blames the states for poverty.
Member of Parliament: Marginal players in the system, whose sense of worth depends upon major pandemonium.
Supreme Court: The only office whose majesty cannot be redefined. (Any redefinition risks incurring a contempt petition.)
Office of the governor: Like an imperial regent in princely states. Can meddle if necessary.
Civil liberties: Something you might just get -- if you can have Ram Jethmalani as a lawyer.
Coalition politics: When there is always some other party to blame.
Separation of powers: When each branch of government thinks it can do the other's job better.
Then there are two curious words associated with government. These are curious because they mean themselves and their opposite. Is it a coincidence that they are used in connection with our government? The first is scheme: both a benevolent government project to help the people and something conspiratorial. In government the two meanings unite to make benevolence a conspiracy. The second is sanction: it can mean "giving permission" or "reprimanding." When sanctions are given or refused, which speech act is being undertaken?
Then there are some new words that signal political change; words that promise a new revolution and imagine new utopias.
Governance: During revolutions, new slogans are coined. "Power to the People!", "Liberty!" and so on. Now our war cry is "Governance!" Fourteen prominent citizens have even petitioned the prime minister to take this seriously. A powerful revolutionary slogan, inevitably, has several meanings. It poses a real semantic challenge. Is it a noun or a verb? Is it a problem or is it a solution? Is there a path to governance or is governance the path?
But here are some competing definitions. 1) The word polite company uses when it doesn't want to directly blame the government for not taking decisions. 2) The word the PM uses to explain why he cannot take decisions. 3) The word used by people fed up with politics. 4) The word used by politicians fed up with bureaucrats. 5) The word used by civil society fed up with everybody. 6) The word used by people who wish they were living in China.
Independent institutions: Another revolutionary re-imagining of our institutions. What form of government does it mean? 1) Where people have the illusion that they can bypass politics. 2) Where people want to duck the question "Who guards the guards?". 3) Where the solution to a breakdown in every institution is to create another one. 4) One which bureaucrats and judges love, since they get more power.
But perhaps we should not complain. After all, all utopias are fuzzy and vague. And seriously, can there be a more energising war cry than "Governance"?
But we don't just have an emerging utopian political imagination. Even some of our old institutions have taken on new roles. Consider:
Income tax department: The department that raids individuals when the media does not do a good enough job producing gossip about film stars.
Central Bureau of Investigation: The agency the Supreme Court trusts, just because the court is monitoring it.
Civil society: That part of the establishment that does not like the establishment but is too afraid to come out on the streets.
Ministry of defence: The ministry that defends India against its greatest enemy: not Pakistan, not China, but corruption. No decision, no corruption.
We even have a new economics to go with a new political system.
Inflation: The only economic phenomenon that government can blame on the weather.
Public-private partnerships: More efficient rent-seeking arrangements between the public and private sectors.
Interest rate: The thing the RBI has to fiddle with when the government closes off all fiscal options.
Inclusive growth: The kind of growth that gives the government an excuse to launch more schemes that it claims it has no capacity to implement.
Free market: When government discretion and tariffs are sold on the market.
Then there are serious redefinitions of major political challenges:
Kashmir: The place the BJP needs to plant a flag when it is bored with other problems.
Northeast: The place where ethnicity and elections are synonymous.
Maoism: The political phenomenon that the Trinamool thinks will be easier to fix than the Railways.
The list could go on. After all India has arrived at the world stage. It must have a new global vocabulary.
Strategic thinking: The decision we take when we have given ourselves no options.
This list is admittedly incomplete and random. More skilful linguists could come up with deeper and profound changes. Our language is breaking under the weight of our political and economic innovation. We are talking at cross-purposes because we don't know whether we are using words in their old or their new meanings.
Since language is an inherently social enterprise we will all have to contribute to the reconstruction of our language. But how can one possibly make sense of our times, when words and institutions lose all their meaning? In uttering them, we conjure up merely unmeaning shadows of their former referents.
The writer is president, Centre for Policy Research, Delhi
Source: Indian Express
Let us begin with our constitutional order.
Office of the prime minister: The weakest office in the cabinet.
Cabinet government: Each minister for himself or herself.
An opposition party: A party guilty of exactly the same things it accuses government of.
Federalism: A system of government where the Centre takes credit for growth and blames the states for poverty.
Member of Parliament: Marginal players in the system, whose sense of worth depends upon major pandemonium.
Supreme Court: The only office whose majesty cannot be redefined. (Any redefinition risks incurring a contempt petition.)
Office of the governor: Like an imperial regent in princely states. Can meddle if necessary.
Civil liberties: Something you might just get -- if you can have Ram Jethmalani as a lawyer.
Coalition politics: When there is always some other party to blame.
Separation of powers: When each branch of government thinks it can do the other's job better.
Then there are two curious words associated with government. These are curious because they mean themselves and their opposite. Is it a coincidence that they are used in connection with our government? The first is scheme: both a benevolent government project to help the people and something conspiratorial. In government the two meanings unite to make benevolence a conspiracy. The second is sanction: it can mean "giving permission" or "reprimanding." When sanctions are given or refused, which speech act is being undertaken?
Then there are some new words that signal political change; words that promise a new revolution and imagine new utopias.
Governance: During revolutions, new slogans are coined. "Power to the People!", "Liberty!" and so on. Now our war cry is "Governance!" Fourteen prominent citizens have even petitioned the prime minister to take this seriously. A powerful revolutionary slogan, inevitably, has several meanings. It poses a real semantic challenge. Is it a noun or a verb? Is it a problem or is it a solution? Is there a path to governance or is governance the path?
But here are some competing definitions. 1) The word polite company uses when it doesn't want to directly blame the government for not taking decisions. 2) The word the PM uses to explain why he cannot take decisions. 3) The word used by people fed up with politics. 4) The word used by politicians fed up with bureaucrats. 5) The word used by civil society fed up with everybody. 6) The word used by people who wish they were living in China.
Independent institutions: Another revolutionary re-imagining of our institutions. What form of government does it mean? 1) Where people have the illusion that they can bypass politics. 2) Where people want to duck the question "Who guards the guards?". 3) Where the solution to a breakdown in every institution is to create another one. 4) One which bureaucrats and judges love, since they get more power.
But perhaps we should not complain. After all, all utopias are fuzzy and vague. And seriously, can there be a more energising war cry than "Governance"?
But we don't just have an emerging utopian political imagination. Even some of our old institutions have taken on new roles. Consider:
Income tax department: The department that raids individuals when the media does not do a good enough job producing gossip about film stars.
Central Bureau of Investigation: The agency the Supreme Court trusts, just because the court is monitoring it.
Civil society: That part of the establishment that does not like the establishment but is too afraid to come out on the streets.
Ministry of defence: The ministry that defends India against its greatest enemy: not Pakistan, not China, but corruption. No decision, no corruption.
We even have a new economics to go with a new political system.
Inflation: The only economic phenomenon that government can blame on the weather.
Public-private partnerships: More efficient rent-seeking arrangements between the public and private sectors.
Interest rate: The thing the RBI has to fiddle with when the government closes off all fiscal options.
Inclusive growth: The kind of growth that gives the government an excuse to launch more schemes that it claims it has no capacity to implement.
Free market: When government discretion and tariffs are sold on the market.
Then there are serious redefinitions of major political challenges:
Kashmir: The place the BJP needs to plant a flag when it is bored with other problems.
Northeast: The place where ethnicity and elections are synonymous.
Maoism: The political phenomenon that the Trinamool thinks will be easier to fix than the Railways.
The list could go on. After all India has arrived at the world stage. It must have a new global vocabulary.
Strategic thinking: The decision we take when we have given ourselves no options.
This list is admittedly incomplete and random. More skilful linguists could come up with deeper and profound changes. Our language is breaking under the weight of our political and economic innovation. We are talking at cross-purposes because we don't know whether we are using words in their old or their new meanings.
Since language is an inherently social enterprise we will all have to contribute to the reconstruction of our language. But how can one possibly make sense of our times, when words and institutions lose all their meaning? In uttering them, we conjure up merely unmeaning shadows of their former referents.
The writer is president, Centre for Policy Research, Delhi
Source: Indian Express