So what exactly is a technocrat anyway?
Destined to save our economy and our country, we Indians have been graced with the appearance of a technocratic government since last seven years, where economist Dr. Manmohan Singh (PhD) has been the prime minister. As the hero of our day – the UPA technocratic government - is largely unknown to many of our people, we summon a brief dialogue on technocratic government
Q: What's a technocratic government?
A: To answer this question we first need to be clear about how governments are formed in parliamentary systems. First - in a parliamentary system, the government must be approved by the parliament. Often this will require the agreement of more than one political party, resulting in a coalition of parties to support the government. As part of this "coalition agreement", the heads of ministries (or what are ‘Ministers’) are allocated to the different parties, who place representatives from their parties as the heads of their respective ministries. Moreover, the parties agree on a "Prime Minister" to head the government, usually but not always from the largest party in the coalition. Most of the time, the identity of this "Prime Minister" - conditional on election results - is known during the election campaign.
Q: Ok, so what's really a technocratic government?
A: Technically, a technocratic government is one in which the ministers are not career politicians; in fact, in some cases they may not even be elected members of parliament at all. They are instead supposed to be "experts" in the fields of their respective ministries. So the classic example is that the Finance Minister would be someone with an academic background in economics who had worked for years at the IMF, but has not previously run for elective office or been heavily involved in election campaigns.
Q: Is it required for the Prime Minister also to be a "technocrat"?
A: Not necessarily. You could have a prime minister from a major party who heads a technocratic government (i.e., most of the ministers meet the definition laid out above), or you could have a technocratic prime minister as well. In the current UPA government, the Prime Minister is both a technocrat and an economist. [To be clear: there is nothing in the definition of a technocratic government that requires it be led by an economist!]
Q: Why did the UPA appoint a technocratic Prime Minister, two times in a row?
A: The practical reason is often because a government has lost the support of the people who elect them to parliament, but also for various other reasons (including legal, pragmatic or political). If the parties in the parliament can't agree to form a normal government, then sometimes they can all agree to support a technocratic government. Just to make things even more complicated, it is possible to have a ‘partisan caretaker prime minister’ (which is basically what is going on in India right now), which then would not be known as a technocratic government, but instead is often called a "lame duck government".
Q: So why would elected politicians ever turn over power to unelected technocrats? Doesn't that go against the facts of everything we think we know about politicians: that they are above all else interested in holding elected office for self gain?
A: This brings us to the crux of the matter in terms of current developments. What seems to be going on is that a "received wisdom" is developing that only technocratic governments can carry out the "painful reforms necessary" to save our country. The theory here is that no major party is going to want to pay the costs of instituting painful policies alone. If this is the case, then one way around this predicament is to appoint a technocratic government that is not "of" any party but is supported by all the parties. In this way, blame can essentially be shared, and government can do the right thing, whatever that may be.
Q: Does it work?
A: Does anyone know?. First, politicians are not particularly good at "sharing blame", which will make the temptation for any of a number of major parties to undercut the technocratic government for political gains. Second, even if mainstream parties get behind a technocratic government, that doesn't mean fringe parties will as well. Indeed, a technocratic government supported by all of the mainstream parties seems a perfect recipe for the rise of non-mainstream parties.
Q: OK, but even with those caveats, technocratic government still sounds pretty good! Why doesn't everyone have one?
A: Well, there is this one small problem, which is that in a democracy; people are supposed to elect their rulers. Since, by definition, a technocratic government does not get elected for office, it is hard to call a country with a technocratic government, a democracy. Instead, we have a system where the people only get to vote for people that they send into Parliament; who then get to decide on who the real leaders of the government will be.
Q: Will technocratic governments save India?
A: The UPA made it possible for certain policies to be implemented in the short-term. But India’s longer-term problems are going to need to be solved (or not solved) by India’s elected officials. Democracy is about accountability. While UPA has made it possible to duck accountability, long-term policies are going to have been enacted - or at the very least maintained - by elected officials. The UPA technocratic government has failed miserably on most accounts and will never be an effective Government ‘of the people, for the people, by the people’.
