What if Shanti Bhushan were prime minister?

The self-appointed representatives of civil society would like to remind us that the trouble with our politics is that you have absolutely no idea what sort of person might wind up being on top. Horrific and untidy, isn’t it? “Suppose tomorrow, a corrupt person like Madhu Koda or A. Raja or any of the Reddy Brothers became prime minister,” is a worry that runs through a letter written by the five Anna Hazare-nominated members of the Lokpal bill drafting committee to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

No doubt, were that appalling prospect to materialise, the entire constitutional structure would be instantly subverted in the few seconds it took them to swear themselves in. After all, PMs emerge from nowhere, right? It is not as if there is an election to win first, a coalition to build, the confidence of Lok Sabha to be ascertained and retained, the restraining nature of allies and coalition manifestos. It’s not as if there is a voluble civil society either, to whip up a din at the slightest whiff of wrongdoing. And, of course, the PM is subject to no scrutiny whatsoever. There is no higher judiciary. There are no PILs. There is no investigative mechanism, and there are no parliamentary committees. The problem with democratic politics, especially in this era of coalitions, is that anyone can get to the top, and once there, there is pretty much no check on what they can do — wait a moment, did they say A. Raja and Madhu Koda? As it happens, the system is dealing with the Rajas and Kodas, with no little assistance from a vigilant civil society. These gentlemen have been rendered, till such time that they may prove their innocence, ineligible to be ministers, let alone PM.

However, the trouble with such free fantasising by Kejriwal, Bhushan and company is that it is fuelled by bias. Instead of looking at the institutional mechanisms that exist, and how they may be strengthened, it attempts to harness a middle-class yearning for gentility, for a mythical past when leadership was seen to be drawn from amongst “people like us”. It’s dangerous because it is exclusivity in the garb of activism. Unless the implication is that coalitions be banned by law — and there are enough illiberal suggestions afloat these days about minimising the space for small parties — a democratic system has to carry on in the world as it is and deal with whoever holds an office. The system has checks and balances built in, so this fantasising is simply anti-democratic scaremongering.