Sheep dreaming of androids?

Android: robot with a human appearance. Do Androids dream of electric sheep: 1968 science-fiction by Patrick Dick that formed the basis of 1982 film Blade Runner and its sequel Blade Runner 2049. Animals were in short supply following the nuclear devastation of San Francisco, and having a sheep became a status symbol.
Sheep dreaming of androids: well-meaning dotards - the digital warriors - pining for technocratic government.
Democracy has failed us, and it is gauche for the boots to come marching in. So let's find an Android: boots with the appearance of democracy. A technocratic government is the solution, with many of the digital warriors secretly hoping to be a part of the solution.
Nothing wrong with aspiring to public office; but there is a slight glitch here: the Constitution does not provide for unelected governments, and while in this country we have learnt to expect the unexpected Supreme Court seems to be in no mood to exhume the doctrine of necessity to give an individual power to amend the constitution. And, Sharifuddin Pirzada has returned to his Creator.
The justification that the proponents advance for technocratic government is that the elected think good governance is bad politics, that the politicians' DNA reeks of corrupt practices, and that the political system does not provide space for skillful people who are badly needed to alter the course.
The justification may be hard to assail but not the answer. We have already been down that route - several times!
Right until ZAB politicians in the government had only a symbolic presence. The business of the state was run by the 'steel frame', which had all the attributes that the techno-walas find missing in the 'democratic' dispensations. Then we had the Zia and Musharraf regimes, where again there was ample space for 'experts', despite the Supremos' misplaced obsession with the fig leaf of legitimacy. And, the regimes were not free of murmurings of financial impropriety!
Despite its strongly democratic credentials, ZAB's government moved at remarkably fast clip. One can disagree with the policies but can't dispute the runs that were put on the board. And, the regime is widely perceived to have been corruption-free!
[One thing that democratic and non-democratic have in common is both needed to make that occasional pilgrimage to the IMF]
One can get into an endless debate on the respective 'achievements' of the two sets, but even if one can make out, not without a mammoth effort, a case for better governance, better economic indicators, better law and order, better well-being under non-democratic stints, it begs the question of sustainability. After each non-democratic intervention we found ourselves worse off than before, despite their long innings.
So what sets the two apart?
If it was just expertise, do we find the present government lacking? It is headed by a 'foreign qualified' engineer with entrepreneurial experience. It has a chartered accountant (England and Wales), a professor of Ivy League pedigree, and another foreign qualified Engineer that we have written extensively of. It has advisers and special assistants, including the respected Sartaj Aziz, with good enough credentials to be on any list of technocrats. But it can't cut the mustard.
We move, then, from expertise to environment; from ability to ability-to-deliver?
The case of the proponents is that once you are in the Intensive Care Unit, as is fast becoming the case, you can't receive 'visitors'. The sanitization imperative of ICU allows no so-called representatives of the people, no 'question hour' of the parliament, no disturbing noises of the governed. Matters have to be left to the doctors (technocrats), who are accountable to themselves alone.
Could it be that it is the 'original' dictator that the proponents have in mind: the emergency legal appointment in the Roman Republic of a dictator who had sole power for a limited duration, at the end of which power was returned to normal Consular rule? The snag is that dictators have a tendency to perpetuate themselves. Sulla and Caesar showed it; men on horseback in post-colonial developing world confirmed it.
Maybe it is the concept of 'weak dictator', as discussed in social choice theory - someone who works within the political set-up but calls the shots, like Lorenzo the Magnificent who ruled Florence indirectly through surrogates - that appeals to the technocratic school? Well, we have been down that route too!
Technocratic regimes deliver when autocratic; and we have been witness to how autocracies suppress free thinking, how they stifle innovations that threaten elite privileges, and how they always end badly as they offer no safe outlet for public frustration. Like it or not, the comment attributed to Churchill - Democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others - has historical evidence underpinning it.
The indefatigable energy of the digital warriors, and the powers-that-be, would be better directed at fixing what is wrong with our democracy, not shelving it.
Politics has become a business: invest in getting elected and then reap the returns; and put some capital aside for the next election. Politics has become dynastic, it is oiled by 'brokers' who control the baraderi, it is infested with election shenanigans. The uncertainty theory explains not all but a lot of it: incentive to do the right thing gets vitiated if the process is interrupted at periodic intervals.
It will be a long haul but we have to let the less-than-perfect democracy function without interruption, while plugging away at 'checks and balances' without which democracy gets deformed.
The Constitution provides for judicial, parliamentary, and 'within the executive' checks. Judiciary, notwithstanding the charges of activism, is getting into the groove to check executive transgressions. The parliament, unfortunately, is unable to perform this function in the presence of that repressive law that prohibits its members from voting against party line. From 'within the executive' the institutions, whether the regulatory bodies or the offices of the Auditor General, NAB, and FIA, have been effectively defanged. They have become lapdogs rather than watchdogs.
This, then, is what we need to correct to make democracy work: don't de-seat parliamentarians for not following party orders, and give the Civil Service the gumption to implement the law.
If things don't get done it is not because the 'political will' is missing; it is because people's will to change politics is missing.
Silence is not an expression.
[email protected]