Bad rules make bad politicians

I recently made an unqualified statement about the Office of Profit controversy. Writing on the same issue Subhash Shukla at NDTV says:

The makers of our Constitution were legal luminaries. They tried to plug all the loopholes in our Constitution. But what they could not envisage was that the politicians of today would stoop to such low levels in their lust for power and self–aggrandizement.

The writers of the Indian constitution were indeed legal luminaries. Contrary to Mr. Shukla's contention though this seems to have caused them to willfuly punch holes in the constitution. The first and biggest hole is its massive size. Even today, just as at the time that it was written, most people can't read the constitution. That is indeed quite tragic, because it is the basic document that governs their lives.

The Constitution of India has 395 articles, 7 schedules and 5 appendices, and it has been amended 93 times. The first time, by the Constituent Assembly before the first General Election, and most recently in January of this year. This is a direct side affect of the size and scope of constitution, which gets into minutae, which could easily be handled by supporting legislation, rather than the basic document. If plugging loopholes had indeed been a concern of the writers of the constitution, it would have been a far smaller document with a very specific focus on defining the terms on which the new nation was to be based.

Good advice is wasted on more than just the youth. Mary Schmich's advice to Chicago Tribune readers in 1997, that became famous as the Sunscreen Song, rings true:

Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians will philander. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you'll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders.

Politicians always have and always will abuse power. They will always be embroiled in controversy, because the game they play is zero-sum. If politicians were to play win-win games they wouldn't have to be so corrupt, but the nature of politics is zero-sum so you can't blame them for much more than choosing to be a player.

I think of politicians as lobbyists. Often a false seperation is attempted between non-elected public relations firms, and elected representatives. The former are viewed with derision as sleazy, the latter venerated as noble and selfless. I don't think that seperation is true except in the public imagination. Politicians are elected to lobby for their constituents, their supporters and their parties, and most importantly their own self interest.

Deriding modern politicians as perversly corrupt, does little to fix the problem. The problem which lies in the terms of the game they play as lobbyists. The terms are set by the constitution, which allows politicians to do anything, as long as they don't denounce it altogether. In some sense this is an insoluble problem atleast in India.

Some steps I'd like to see though, which might be feasible, were outlined in my post about Offices of Profit. Most importantly that politicians should become more responsible to their constituents. This can be effected if their pay packet is negotiated with local panchayats and municipal wards, and paid out of local taxes. This would turn the power pyramid upside down.