Tag: election commission

Mr Chawla must go

He should not have been appointed to the Election Commission in the first place

Let’s be clear: if the institution of the Election Commission is becoming politicised, and if the controversy over Navin Chawla’s continuance in that office leads to a constitutional crisis, the entire blame lies unambiguously at the door of the Congress Party.

Just how hard would it have been to find a decent, uncontroversial, experienced serving or former bureaucrat to occupy the office that acts as the most respected guardian of India’s electoral politics?

Why choose a person who the Shah Commission declared “unfit to hold any public office which demands an attitude of fair play and consideration for others”?

So let’s not lose a sense of perspective amid all the sanctimonious sophistry about whether it was “proper” for Chief Election Commissioner N Gopalaswamy to have recommended Mr Chawla’s sacking. Appointing Mr Chawla to the Election Commission was an unpardonable act of cynicism by a party that has so totally run the country to the ground.

The only honourable course is the for UPA government to accept Mr Gopalaswamy’s recommendation and proceed to remove Mr Chawla. Or, perhaps, persuade him to ‘resign in order not to drag the office into controversy’.

Dr Reddy’s life-saving medicines

Independent institutions under independent individuals

Joe Nocera’s piece in the New York Times crediting Y V Reddy, former governor of the Reserve Bank of India, for pursuing policies that (relatively) insulated the Indian banking system from the global financial crisis, has some of India’s top bankers sounding like people looking back at their adolescence and thanking their strict parents or school principals for, well, being strict parents or school principals.

Now that those risks have been made painfully clear, every banker in India realizes that Mr Reddy did the right thing by limiting securitizations. “At times like this, you tend to appreciate what he did more than we did at the time,” said (Yes Bank founder Rana) Kapoor. “He saved us,” added (HDFC chief Deepak) Parekh. [NYT]

Now, a few experts, like V Anantha Nageswaran, have been arguing that Dr Reddy’s exemplary stewardship of the RBI was among the few bright spots in India’s economic management in the last five years. And as events proved, they were right.

Beyond individuals though, the underlying point is that independent institutions can deliver competent governance in their mandated areas even under bad governments. Of course, even independent institutions can be undermined over time, by packing them with less than independent-minded individuals. And that, unfortunately, might well be on the cards. The tenacious Dr Reddy is no more at the crease. The Election Commission could fall into the hands of Naveen Chawla, who the Shah Commission declared “unfit to hold any public office which demands an attitude of fair play and consideration for others.”