NDTV Dialogues: the idea of India - full transcript

New Delhi: On NDTV Dialogues, we move away from political campaigns and the slugfest over history. We focus instead on the idea of India. What are we seeing in the current context? Are we seeing a battle between different ideas of India? Are we looking at different interpretations of a grand unifying Idea? Kapil Sibal, Professor Sunil Khilnani, Ashok Malik and Dr Ananya Vajpeyi join the debate with NDTV's Sonia Singh.

Following is the full transcript of the discussion:

NDTV: Good evening and welcome to the NDTV Dialogues. Tonight we move away from political campaigns and the slugfest over history. We focus instead on the idea of India. What are we seeing in the current context? Are we seeing a battle between different Ideas of India? Are we looking at different interpretations of a grand unifying Idea? Are we looking not at an Idea, but really more about implementation about issues of delivery and governance? Joining me tonight on this is a distinguished panel, I am joined by Kapil Sibal, Prof Sunil Khildani, Ashok Malik and Dr Ananya Vajpeyi, thank you all very much for coming in tonight. Prof Khilnani over the years the Idea of India necessarily changes and in many ways it stayed the same. In this current context what do you see as the conflict today or the political debate today over this? Is it about, as I said, different ideas? Is it about an interpretation of one India?

Prof Khilnani: I think the way it's often portrayed is a debate about different ideas and clashing ideas. But actually if you look at it, it really is about interpretation of this more singular Idea, which itself has allowed a wide variety of positions within it. So even if you look at the current arguments about history, there's actually an agreement about who are the important figures in our history. There is a question of difference of interpretations, difference of nuances, who is more important compared with someone else. But there is an agreement that these are the figures, whether it is Patel or Nehru or whoever, these are the figures who are the makers of our history. It's not a turn to more marginal figures. It's not a turn to eccentrics, radicals or revolutionaries or more violent figures. So in that sense there is a broad agreement about what the contours of the Idea of India is today. There is, you know, one of the aspects of it is that it's an open Idea, so it's revisable. It's an idea that we are willing to be persuaded to believe in rather than forced to be simply believing, in that sense. So that's it, it's not an ideology. It's an idea. And I think the difference there is it's not a readymade packaged version of India is or what Indian nationalism is or what Indian patriotism is. It's a set of principles to which I think all of the actors today in our political space are broadly committed. Again there is differences of nuance but there is basic agreement and there is basic agreement also about the, what are the important figures and moments in our history. There is disagreement about whether one matters more than another, whether this episode was played correctly or not. That's fine, that's normal in any open democratic society. But no one is trying to paint a totally alternative account of what India is or a totally revolutionary account. So I think in that sense there is a broad consensus about what kind of an Idea we all believe in.

NDTV: Mr Sibal some criticism people have made of an Idea of India that we all broadly follow is that it doesn't, it's straining at its seams. In some sense we look at aspiration, whether you look at regional aspiration. You look at different voices emerging. It's of different states. We have seen more an often voices of states are so much more important at the Centre as well. Do you think actually redefining what we mean by an idea of today? How would you see it?

Kapil Sibal: Quite frankly I think the debate has been somewhat short on what the Idea of India is. I don't think that this kind of debate that I have seen in the last few months, that there is any alternative vision of India that is placed before the people of India. I think television plays a very important role there. You have sound bytes, quick sound bytes about personalities in the past. What India is concerned about is the future and the future is fast changing. Nobody is really talking about what the challenges of our future are. Where India should be in the context of those challenges? What policies should be put in place? What ideology must be followed in the context of those policies and how India must move forward in a highly competitive global environment? I don't see any of that in our public discourse. I think history is not going to. And personalities and talking about personalities and differing on personalities and their roles in the past will have anything to do with as to how we must deal with future. And that future beckons us.

NDTV: What could you see as a future of Idea of India?

Kapil Sibal: Well somebody should tell us how do we educate our young? Somebody should tell us. We need by 2020, when India is 75, five hundred million skilled people. How do we actually skill them? How do we take care of the enormous problems of healthcare delivery systems? Since we are a young nation, by 2020 the average age of an Indian would be 29. How do we actually empower our work force? And what are the kinds of skills that are required? What should be our economic policy and what should be our policy in the context of the global economic, you know complexity that is emerging and the fact we are the part of the global economic system? How do we deal with that competitiveness? How do we deal with issues of security? How do we deal with most of our services that are going to be delivered on the net? Right. So how do we deal with a new phenomenon of communication, where there are important players that are going to play out over the years? Do we have a policy? Does anybody have an Idea on it? Is anybody talking about it? I am afraid the past is; the contribution of great men in the past is wholly irrelevant to the challenges for the future.

NDTV: Dr Vajpeyi.

Dr Vajpeyi: Well you know, I mean as a historian I obviously do believe that there is lot to learn from the past and from, you know, our recent history during let's just say even the 20th century when a lot of ideas, that define us as a nation, are put into play, articulated for the first time and then to various degrees realized or not realized. But I do agree with what the Minister said that you know, the concerns of the future are quite pressing. And with such a large population and with all kinds of, you know, potential crises relating to the environment, relating to our demographics, our relating to the way which our resources are distributed and a very, very large question, which has not been fully addressed, of violence, of social inequality, of gender imbalance and so on. You know if we don't increasingly pay attention as to how we actually solve those problems, in not just the distant future, the near future, you know, the legacy we have and all the gains we have made, we have made considerable gains I think from 100 years ago, when we were, you know, deep in the throes of colonialism, if we don't reorient our sights very quickly to what's coming and what we need to deal with in the coming decades, then all of that great inheritance would be for nothing.

NDTV: Too much noise in the discourse currently. But Ashok Malik, if you have to actually distill perhaps the ideas that we see thrown around us. Kapil Sibal makes a point the actual solution is for the future. Do you see a glimmer of hope that we are actually looking at two alternatives now, which are being pitched up to us as we are heading into election season?

Ashok Malik: I don't think we are looking at two alternatives because I don't think there are just one or two Ideas of India. The simplest at basic level there are 1.2 billion Indians and there is 1.2 billion Ideas of India. However a vast majority of these Ideas perhaps approximate each other. And if I could borrow a turn from statistics it's probably a mode Idea of India which is the most commonly occurring variable in the series. There are also outlier Ideas of India, legitimate in their own way, but there is a broad main stream of India. This most commonly occurring Idea of India flows from the principles underpinning our Constitution. Not from every letter, semicolon and paragraph. It can be debated. But broadly the principles or what one calls the basic structure perhaps, which was a remarkably liberal document, which has served us and continues to serve as well. I don't think anyone is seriously is challenging the validity of that Constitution or the framework it has given us. But that framework requires constant updating. Right now 2014 or 2009 or call it what you will, India is at an intersection of three or four forces not encountered in say '55 or '65. One, urbanisation, the most rapid urbanisation I have seen in history; second, demography, a population that has never been so young and so large. This had an impact in Election 2009 to benefit Mr Sibal's party. It will have an impact in 2014, 2019 and I say 2024 as well. Who benefits? It's immaterial. That apart, Indian society, various aspects of society, civil society, business, families, have evolved and changed dramatically in the past few decades. The Indian state, and this is not a criticism of any one government, but the Indian state has not evolved in change as quickly. It has to keep up. Third, if we look at the relationship between the states and the Centre and Federal government or the Union government. The Constitution divides its powers between them in a particular manner, which they did in 1950. Perhaps that it needs to be re-looked at and perhaps those three lists have to be re-jinked. But all of that can be done within the framework that the Constitution gives us. We don't have to challenge or rewrite this Constitution, that framework and that basic idea of India is still there.

NDTV: Do you see Prof Khilani taking the points being raised; the point that you made just when we began also, this is not a battle about ideologies but different interpretations of one idea in a sense? How necessary is that today we are talking about this increased demographic, the young population and impatient young population? They are looking for delivery, dividends. One phase being used by the BJP, maximum governance minimum government; very different from that original Jawaharlal Nehru model, where state was really the Centre of society, underpinning society in a way. Do you see that as a huge transition going to occur over elections, that's a political move but that may be something much larger than that?

Prof Khilnani: I am not sure putting it that way, and I think it's just to pick up some earlier points. I absolutely agree with the point about importance of future and the futurity of our political imagination, and I think that actually is one of the fundamental aspects of the Idea of India. The Idea of India conceived in the earlier 20th century was not a nostalgic looking somehow, you know, a regressive notion. It was a notion about how about think about India's future, and how to locate possibilities within an understanding of its own history, so I don't think ever resistance to the future. In fact facing of the future, but a realization that the only way we could do that was by some understanding with where we got to do. I think in that sense the Idea of India is a deeply historical idea because it's trying to deal with future if you see what I mean. The other thing I would also say is, and I again totally agree with what is said about problems we are facing, and I think certainly the issue now, in this sense, is different from 1990s. And I think the issues today are about equity, about access. It is about participation, in a way. In the 1990s we were consumed, questions about who we were, what kind of identity we are? They were the sort culture wars if you like. Today there are different sorts of issues and I think absolutely right. And that will change the debate about what the Idea of India is. But I would say to that, the solutions to the problems we are facing today are not technocratic ones. They are not, in a sense, of governance. They are still ones of government, of classical government, of democratic debate, of persuasion, of evidence, of Constitutional principles of argument and in that sense those are the principles that underpin the Idea of India. They remain absolutely fundamental. I think the danger is to somehow to seduce ourselves into thinking now these are technocratic issues. We don't need to have a debate. We know what are the solutions are. It's all about implementation, actually it's not. Ashok Malik rightly said, we do have a 1.2 billion Ideas of India, and to carry that along we have to have reason, logical evidence, persuasiveness, arguments. Not some claiming I know this solution. If only I can kick few a people around we get everything working. And that's precisely undermining the Idea of India. I think there is a way in which the Idea of India is about basic ground rules, approach to very difficult future problems we face. We have to do as Kapil Sibal rightly said, not just domestic issues. We have to value India in the world, in a much more complex global environment than ever before. It's not just a domestic scale, complexity demographic issue, which Ashok pointed out. All those who correct we are also in a world that is vastly different in what it was 70 years ago and the kinds of risks threats and the kind of opportunities also we face are vastly different. It's the resilience I think, of that basic Constitutional structure which Ashok Malik pointed to, which is going to be our greatest strength and the extent which we can understand it, draw upon it and use it to deal with issues of Government, not governance. I really do think these are classical questions of government. Who gets what, why, when and on what basis? Those questions don't go away.

NDTV: In fact interestingly, because people, politicians in the few last weeks, frequently say, when we talk about battles of Ideas, we talk about secularism versus communalism; we talk about honesty versus corruption and that's what people of India look at as an Idea and where, we are voting for etc; that secularism itself in a way undermined in the current debate. Would you see as those in the binaries?

Kapil Sibal: I still don't understand what is the substance of the debate that's going on in India today. Has it anything to do with the future? And Ashok talks about constitutionalism, Ashok talks about Centre-state relations. Has anybody in the political firmament raised the issue as how we need to tweak Centre-state relations? How we need to deal with education say, or we deal with health, mostly on the concurrent list now, but all implementation is in the state. Has anybody talked about the global economic issues we are going to deal with? Has anybody talked about gender? Is there any debate of this substance? We are talking about our concept of India. Where is the political debate on the concept, and that's the sad part of it, that's why I have raised the issue. The Idea of India is a very complex thing. It's not a simple, you know, black and white issue, right, and it deals with a spectrum of issues. If I have a policy today, say on education or on communication, I can't implement everywhere in the country, because there is no one size that says it all.

NDTV: But it needs to be conveyed in a way, which catches the imagination of the people of India, and there is a sense of change...

Kapil Sibal: How do you bring discourse on to that table? The television industry doesn't allow this discourse to take place, right. Politicians are not part of that discourse. The print media is the front-page news, whatever you see everyday. Where is the substance of what India should be and what all we should be working for? Where is that in the public domain? It's not there. Take for example institutions, what role should the Judiciary perform in the context of the future of India? What is the role of Auditors? What is the role of Governors? What is the role of civil society? What is the role of Media? How we are going to deal with many of the problems that we are confronted with? Has anybody talked about it, anybody of this? Is it in public domain? It's not I'm afraid, it's not. And all we do is to bring discourse in the public domain, which has nothing to do with the problems that are confronting India and which will confront India. And unless we debate those issues and debate is the essence of everything and the Media is the only way through which we can debate this. Why not get anyway...

NDTV: Agreed. But do you not feel this undercurrent of people who want change, who feel that the system cannot function in the way it is?

Kapil Sibal: That's also dangerous, that's also dangerous. You want; there's an undercurrent for change, but what kind of change? How are you going to decide what kind of change is good for you, not good for you? Somebody needs to debate it. Someone needs to show the pros and cons of a particular course and a way of thinking, that's also not a part of it. I know people want change, but people don't know what change is good for them unless the substance of that debate is before the people, they are not going to get an informed decision and that perhaps will be even more dangerous for us.

NDTV: Ashok Malik just to pick up on that point. In a sense because when Anna Hazare's movement came out many termed it, perhaps Mr Sibal may be part of it, that it's an anarchist movement. You want change? What is the kind of change you want? Is it right bringing down institutions, what about building and strengthening institutions? Many would say the courts and decisions which have been taken almost governing India too. What is the kind of change we are looking at? Is it dangerous to actually slam government or blame them for everything? Prof Khilnani made the point that we have to look at the government rather than governance. Are we blurring the lines?

Ashok Malik: He made a very valid point that not every issue is an issue of technocratic governance. There is a larger negotiated sphere of Government, where also classical politics comes into play, continues to play a role in India. He is quite right there. But frankly our layered political system, it allows for a great deal of negotiation, and we sometimes tend to undermine it or not see it, not give it the importance it gets. Because the whole process of an election every five years, every three years, whenever, it is enormously empowering and cathartic one. Which is why; I remember when Anna Hazare's movement was taking place, I am a critic of Anna Hazare's movement and I am also the critic of the way government handled it. But let's not discuss it.

Kapil Sibal: Don't look at me. I am not sitting as a government or a minister.

Ashok Malik: I take that, sorry, okay, I don't want to bring it here. But I remember telling a friend India is not a revolutionary society. It believes in revolution by evolution and this was so true of our freedom movement as well. While Kapil says there is no great debate happening, people are not throwing up solutions and there is cynicism to our political system or maybe our media system as well. He has a point there. But there is a sense of hope in the people, because if you look at the way people vote in state elections or a national elections ...

NDTV: In Chhattisgarh 70 percent.

Ashok Malik: ... they may make mistakes, they may elect governments that don't work sometimes. But almost every election votes for a better future, for a better village, country, for that state whatever, but they vote in hope and they turn up in the most difficult circumstances. And there is logic in each mandate, whether it's a negative mandate punishing somebody who hasn't worked, whether it's electricity or a well in the village something for the country, but they vote with a sense of hope. And to me that is the best embodiment of the Idea of India.

NDTV: Dr Vajpeyi, you have said in your book Righeoust Public that it's difficult to fathom or forgive the bankruptcy of ideas and ignorance of the past that seems to affect political classes today. Ironically we have also seen an obsession with our past. Mr Sibal referred that, in some rallies, of a competitive, almost claiming, of various leaders by both main political parties. What do you think actually explains that?

Dr Vajpeyi: You know I think it's very easy to reduce complex political legacies and historical lessons to sort of, you know, symbols of this or that or sort of very crude nature. So you can take a very, very large figure like a Patel or like a Gandhi or like an Ambedkar or like a Nehru or any number of names come to mind, and there is a way in which you can, you know, reduce all the many things that they stood for, they tried to figure out or they did, to, you know, take the kind of essence that suits you in the argument that you are trying to make. And you know some of this is fair game. I mean that's what political polemics and demagoguery and you know vote getting is about. But sometimes there is a very kind of instrumental use made of in a rather sort of an irresponsible use, you could say, made of certain figures in a way that is, you know divisive or inflammatory, or that actually does a disservice to what that figure might actually have contributed to your history, you know. And I think to some extent you have to take this with a pinch of salt, because after all its an election year and all kinds of things are going to be bandied about and going to get thrown into the fray as part of the conversation. But its also important to think about the kinds of effects that your words may have on communities and on the dignity and the kind of identity of particular groups, and you know whether what you are saying is going to ultimately sort of make for better political environment or just a more fractious and a lesser inclusive one. And that kind of sense of responsibility I think you know requires a level of statesmanship that does not seem to be much in evidence, given the current kind of cast of characters at the national level at the level of leadership of various parties, not any particular one.

NDTV: Prof Khilnani how do you see the current churning that we see going on? It's often an interesting divide. You'll often see people very happy to vote for a particular party at the state and a very different party at the Centre. So in that sense there is no ideological loyalty to one party versus another. You will see, at one hand this great striving and young people wanting change, yet a Chief Minister gets elected term after term after term, bucking what we called incumbency in the '80s and '90s, when many chief ministers got elected out every five years.

Prof Khilnani: I think it is true that actually there is a kind of layered set of negotiations going on at every level of Indian politics, as Ashok said, very local to the regional, to the national. And in fact those negotiations, they involved ideas, involved arguments, involved in threats, involved seductions, inducements etc. But what we haven't really seen in, and this is not a problem of the media, this is actually a problem of the failure of political imagination. But what we haven't seen is the ability to connect the local, the regional, the national and the global into a kind of single coherent story, to able to tell that story in way that makes sense to people at each of those levels. In a sense of democracy, in any democracy, it's certainly in ours, ideas are necessary, solutions are necessary. But what's also essential is a story or to use that overused word narrative, which connects those ideas, solutions, offers into an account, which makes sense to people. Which is able to also show how the self-interest of the person, in everyday life, can be converted into a collective interest, into a national interest and that requires the trick of political imagination. And we had that in the last 100 years. We had that with Gandhi, different leaders in our history and I think that's what we are not getting today. So what we're getting in a sense, and this goes back to very important hope, that there is longing, and deep impulse of hope. And yet there is no story, which voices that today. Instead what we're getting on one hand is that kind of stories of resentment, of those who have done better and therefore we should go against them to salvage our own self-interest, whether its politics of religion or cast or whatever. That's what kind of story. Or we get a kind of story of noblesse oblige, that there are unprivileged, we should look after them, paternalistically attend to them. But what we don't get is any real story that is able to turn that genuine hope, which is felt, into something that can be in the collective interest, in the national interest and ultimately connected to the wider global issue.

NDTV: You haven't found any ideas, which intrigued you over the different political leaders, that have come up over the last decade and so, 20 years, which are intriguingly different?

Prof Khilnani: Well intriguing or different, I don't think they have that capacity to capture the imagination of the 1.2 billion that we are and that's, I am not saying it's easy. It's a very difficult task. But you had to have the ambition to have that kind of political imagination. And that's what made our history so extraordinary in the first half of the 20th century. We had people who were thinkers and doers, people who had imagination and the practical ability to roll up their sleeves and do the hard work. And now somehow we have the hardheaded politicians who can do the real work and we have the airy-fairy intellectuals who dance around with their ideas and don't do anything, you know, academics and so on. But the history of India has been made by the conjunction of those two, by the debate between those and at best by personification in single persons of those two aspects.

Kapil Sibal: We need a constructive vision. Alright, if you think, if A thinks that what has been done in last 50 years is terrible, India should have actually taken in a different path, then A must tell us what that different path is and how he or she is going to take it forward. We don't see any of that. We don't hear any of that.

NDTV: Is your party doing enough, because I am just asking because you said A and B.

Kapil Sibal: Again you are moving to politics. I am not talking about individuals. I am just saying we don't see that public discourse happening. We, luckily for me, we have a legacy of an ideology, right. You may agree with it or you may not agree with it. But that legacy actually encapsulates the vision of the ruling party over the years, right, and that's before the people of this country. You may agree or not agree. Where is that alternative vision? I don't see that happening. For example take that Food Security Bill. All parties agreed with it. All parties voted on it. Yet people say no, no, no, this is not good for India. But then we should not have voted for it. Just giving you an example. So the point is what is that alternative vision that has been before the people of India? Saying we don't agree with this vision, which has been going for last six years we want an alternative vision? This is our vision. I want you to think about it and I want to you to be part of the narrative of that vision. I don't see that happening.

NDTV: Mr Malik would you agree? Also looking at the different development models that are being pitched, it's true that BJP is right of center, of economics, also as much more right wing, yet when it comes down to it they're almost left of center. Whether it's Food Security Bill, the argument in Chhattisgarh is that Mr Raman Singh's Food Security Bill actually gives much more free food in a sense than the Center's Food Security Bill. Are we looking at even at alternative development models?

Ashok Malik: I don't think that has been fleshed out yet to be fair, to either the Congress or the BJP. The Congress has fleshed it out more than the BJP has. The Congress in the past five or seven years defined itself with a little left of center and I don't think BJP has responded with any degree of coherence as of now. This one point I would like to make to what Mr Khilnani said. We had a certain old model, for lack of a better word, of leadership till the '60s and '70s, perhaps till Indira Gandhi, of great leaders, and more than that Nehru or Gandhi or Patel, who held sway over a vast section of Indian society. And we also had a very different less competitive India where it was possible for a Parsi to get elected to the Lok Sabha, it was possible for a Krishna Menon, not that I like the man, to contest elections in Bengal and also a Tamil to contest in Bombay or Maharashtra. None of that can happen now. And even the post Indira Gandhi leaders, whether Rajiv Gandhi or to some degree Vajpayee, they have been the pan Indian leaders. They don't cover the purview a Patel or a Nehru did in 1950s and I960s. Are we searching for a harking back to that sort of leader, without admitting to ourselves perhaps, that leader will never come? And perhaps we have to reconcile ourselves to the fact in India we may have pan Indian figures, but never a pan Indian leader with a sort of appeal, which we say a Nehru or Patel may have had on August 16, 1947. Perhaps that it is a failure of our imagination. I don't know what the answer is. I'd like to throw up this question.   

Prof Khilnani: Even if I could; I agree. What I was trying to suggest is not the kind of nostalgia for some great national leaders, no, on the contrary it's right. As democracy becomes more complicated, more competitive, in a sense lead is becoming harder to get in the old form. What I was talking about was political imagination, which is not necessary only located in a single person anymore. And that means it can be found in institutions, it can be in a variety of different formats, but it has to convey that wider story. So its not nostalgia for the great leaders, the past. It's right. Probably we need some something that a variety of leaders may have, can actually agree on and believe in and a story that they are willing to take more widely. And that can be, as I say, an institution, in a belief, in the Constitution, in a greater understanding about the Constitution, that you know the Constitution is not a text that most Members of Parliament only confront for the first time when they are being sworn in as members of Parliament. You know that would be a widening of the imagination and it was greater belief in now.

NDTV: Though of course in the final round of Dialogue we look at the Idea of India, the interpretation of India as a secular, pluralistic republic. The whole definition of the word, defining secularism, is being attacked, very much as a part of the current political discourse. Also talking about nostalgia, breaking with the past, Mr Modi has been projected as a similar great leader, whose party is aiming to projecting him that way, are seeing a possible Narendra Modi wave.

Prof Khilnani: Well I think the word secular has become so overloaded and over fraught with. It's actually not a word really that dates from our national movement, but the word there was communalism, which was fought against, and as you know the word secularism doesn't appear in our Constitution till the 1970s when it was revised. So I think it is a problematic word and I think the important point is about pluralism. And that's something that is undeniable. It's not something that can be erased or effaced. It can be something that is disturbed and damaged at times, and can be fought against. But it seems to be so much a part of the life of our society. That the idea it can somehow eliminate that by some ideological belief in purity and homogeneity, but it seems to be a hopeless ambition. And it only generates the kind of violence that has happened at times in our recent history. So it seems we have moved beyond the kinds of identity crises that we seem to have had in the 1990s. I think the issues now, are many of them have been already raised, about access, about participating in the economy, about equity. It's about people getting some reasonable share of their place in society, in the economy and those are not simply instrumental. They are not simply technocratic. They need a set of values. They need a political imagination in which to be located and that I believe that makes the idea of India entirely relevant and I don't think it's simply a technocratic set of issues that we face

NDTV: And there is search for one leader?

Prof Khilnani: No I think there is an idea somehow that a combination of a leader from the past with someone who can use a smart phone is kind of what we need. You know, Sardar Patel plus the kind of technology savvy-net nerd is going to be the salvation of our future. I don't think so.

NDTV: Are we going to look perhaps at a galaxy of leaders across, you already see them in India. Perhaps tomorrow Mayawati is Prime Minister or a Mulayam Singh is PM. What is the idea of India then? Is it the Idea in their particular state and say the idea of really a federation of states coming together for a government at the Centre? Because that would be an interesting power play, we have seen it before with Mr Deve Gowda, it did not last very long.

Dr Vajpeyi: See I think that if we are committed to democracy and if we are committed to pluralism, then you know in the long run the Indian nation state is going to go through a lot of these different stages, where initially you had these kind of monumental figures, and you really had one party that was dominating the political scene. You know they had other smaller players, very limited demands and claims entering into the fray, and you know adjusting, finding a place in the sun and so on, learning to live with each other, and you have to cycle through that, and you know you have to have more and more people in the picture and on board and included in the narrative. And if that unsettles the pattern we were used to, so be it. And you know you have to, if you put in for democracy then you just have to do with that degree of fragmentation and that adversity, and you know the inability to impose a single narrative.

And in fact you come to a point that desire to oppose a single narrative or talk about, you know, a single savior of this entire political system, begins to sound dangerous, authoritarian and possibly even proletarian. And so whether they have the cacophony for the time being, and that temporary, in a sense, incoherence, it's better, more democratic in the long run. And I think also that, you know, there was a big turnover of ideas. So there was one set of ideas at a play from Independence and in the early years of the Republic. Let's say between 1988 and 1995 or something like this you had a number of new formations that came to place as regards caste, communalism, as regards the economy. And now what we have is more or less the aftermath of that. And a kind of consensus has emerged and a certain kind of right turn was taken in all respects and I don't think any of the major players, in terms of different parties or different regional entities, are in disagreement about, you know when the direction of an economic growth or liberalization or globalization; about the new kinds of waves in which we think about caste representative and politics; about new language of secularism and communalism are where, in the sense we are paying lip service to these ideas, and not really taking strong opposition. I think everybody is okay, so therefore the coming elections are example. It is not a foundational shift and not some huge paradigm changing, no matter what the outcome of this election, because we all are more or less moving in that direction. So we can't, it is I think the job of, whether its intellectuals or its politicians, of anybody who is trying to speak in public life, I think it is their job to make explicit that the ideas are implicit in a political field and to make the difference between politics and a policy, or government and governance. To make that difference implicit and that's the job of the media, and that's the job of politicians and that's the job of intellectuals. But it's not the these ideas are not there.

NDTV: Ashok Malik final thoughts on that aspect as well, authoritarianism. Is almost dangerous than having a khichdi government?

Ashok Malik: I think the people who search for authoritative governments they don't search for authoritarian governments.

NDTV: But they get the latter.

Ashok Malik: So not always. I have heard the word totalitarian used by Ananya and Mr Khilnani to speak about liberalism perhaps being a threat at some point. And I don't think I have serious concerns in 2014, because I said some framework has been defined and I don't think whatever, whoever is elected in 2014 is going to necessary bring in a totalitarian system or threaten Indian pluralism or a pluralistic society.

Prof Khilani: By the way I agree with that. I didn't say, I didn't talk about totalitarianism as a threat we face.

Ashok Malik: So if he or she, we all are talking about he with a capital 'H'. If he does get elected, if he doesn't deliver, he will be kicked out, as I'm quite confident about India and Indian democracy. Ananya spoke about new forces, which came in the early 1990s, economic changes, identity issues, a new foreign policy or whole sort of issues, which followed the breakdown of the old Congress system, though the Congress is a very big party. I think this led to a period of regional fragmentation where a national party became weaker. I imagine in another 10 or 15 years national parties will actually come back and be stronger in say 2020 like in 1995. But there will be a different form of national politics. Because the implications of economic growth which are there before us, the implication of urbanisation, of more rapid urbanization as never before and of a growing youth population with its aspirations, and this, across rural, over all India, will build pan-Indian constituencies; and of course televison, it's a big game changer; will build an pan Indian political appeal which may help one politician or another, that's immaterial. But I do think the role for national parties will actually increase in the foreseeable future.

NDTV: Mr Sibal final words and thoughts for you tonight really. The big idea you would like to see, in not in the next elections not even the 2014 elections, but the elections of the governments of India in future and focus which you think have been left out now. What do you think?

Kapil Sibal: I think fundamentally the role of the bureaucracy in the delivery system has to be fleshed out. I mean today the bureaucracy is limited, is afraid, believe that by taking decisions, tomorrow they will be prosecuted for bonafide decisions, any election process is not going to change that. So we need to think about what is the kind of bureaucracy that we want in India and how is the delivery system to be made effective. I think we should look into this fundamental issue, which nobody is debating because all of us, wherever we are, wherever we are sitting, have to work towards one aim, to make India a strong, competitive nation where all of us participate in the life of the nation.

NDTV: And I hope that these are the Ideas that will be debated in the many political campaigns and rallies. Thank you all for joining me. It's been a pleasure, thank you.