Commentary/Mani Shankar Aiyar

Whenever politics stands in the way of speedy economic decisions, it has been pushed aside

There is something deeply disturbing about the mindless way in which the South-East Asian example has gripped the imagination of our chattering classes.

True, the South-East Asians have made a huge success of their development. But so have we of our democracy. If our democracy is flawed, so is their development. And if they are finding it increasingly difficult to sustain their police states, so are we finding it difficult to sustain our Hindu rates of growth.

During the Manmohan era, our rate of growth was raised to just a fraction below that of the Tigers. I am sceptical about the ability of this government to give us a Manmohan rate of growth. But cancelling the dips on the roundabouts with the acceleration on the swings, we are now poised to maintain growth over the medium term between 7 to 8 per cent per annum. The interesting question really is whether, as we move from a medium to high-growth economy, the Asian Tigers will move from authoritarianism to democracy. And if so, at what growth rates.

Indonesia, like us, had a lively freedom movement. They took the end of the Japanese occupation as the signal for national freedom: Hatta and Sukarno jointly declared Indonesia independent on August 17, 1945. The former Dutch colonial authority sought, however, to restore their administration. Therefore, it was not till 1949, with assistance from pilot Biju Patnaik who became part of the folklore of their freedom movement, that Indonesia was able to secure de facto freedom.

For the first decade of freedom, political life in Indonesia was quite as vivacious as in India -- and, with Sukarno at the head, a shade more colourful. But, commencing from 1959, Sukarno began paranoically curtailing democratic rights and human freedom. It resulted in a vicious back-lash of spiralling political violence. The economy meanwhile slid into anarchy. Sukarno tried to divert the nation's attention from its domestic ills with a perverse konfrontasi (confrontation) aimed at neighbouring Malaysia and Singapore. In the swirling chaos, a coup was attempted on September 30, 1965. But General Suharto crushed it the same day.

In the next few months, an estimated 150,000 to 500,000 political activists and innocent civilians lost their lives. The particular target of attack was the Communist Party of Indonesia, the PKI, which remains, 30 years on, the mythic object of hate.

After crushing the coup, Suharto progressively assumed greater powers, but all in the name of President Sukarno to whose rescue Suharto had apparently come. On March 1, 1966, Sukarno, faced a rebuff in the Majlis (parliament), stepped down and invited Suharto, by signed letter, to assume the powers required to restore order. Whether Sukarno was illegitimately overthrown by Suharto or whether Suharto merely did Sukarno's bidding is still a matter of such controversy that 77-year-old Suharto, who has ruled Indonesia unchallenged these last 30 years, is anxious for a commission of inquiry to clear his name. Sukarno was put under virtual house arrest and died some years later.

For 30 years, Indonesia has been a depoliticised state. Depoliticisation, says Dr Dewi Fortuna Anwar, was a reaction to the 'frenetic politicisation' of the Sukarno period. Anwar is a dazzlingly brilliant and astoundingly articulate social scientist, one who confesses to being caught up in the 'emotional nationalism' Sukarno was able to unleash and which has kept Indonesia, for all its amazing diversity, united and integrated as a nation-state. She is clear and concise about the kind of state Indonesia has been built into during the Suharto years.

"Indonesia is a corporate state," she says, "There is no civil society. All social organisations -- be they of youth, women, labour, whoever -- are creations of the state. Their task is to mobilise popular support and secure political legitimacy for the government. The ruling Golkar is not a political party. It is an amalgam of functional groups whose task it is to harness different sections of the public to the national purpose. The civil service is, in effect, the party machine; its purpose is to provide an efficient party organisation. That is why no political activity is permitted below the district level. The village has been depoliticised. The military is the backbone of the policy; civilians are discredited and radical nationalism disapproved."

To what extent, I ask, would she attribute the economic success of the Suharto regime to its political repression? She has no hesitation in ascribing Indonesia's economic achievement to its political system. "In Sukarno's day," she says, "it was politics that was the commander; now, economics is the commander. The aim is not democracy. Democracy is considered a luxury. Politics, social life, all aspects of life are geared to development. Politics is resorted only to the extent that it facilitates growth. Whenever politics stands in the way of speedy economic decisions, politics has been pushed aside."

Tell us what you think of this column