Casteist, criminal and corrupt: Tamil Nadu deserves the political masters it elects

My friend, thinker, and writer, Thirumalai Rajan recently provided an enlightened analysis of the recent Tamil Nadu elections in a Facebook post. I will paraphrase a translation of his arguments.

In the recently concluded Assembly elections, 40 per cent of Tamil voters voted for the AIADMK whereas another 40 per cent voted for the DMK-Congress coalition. A sizeable section of voters from either camp is made up of diehard supporters.

In other words, 30 per cent of the electorate would blindly vote for the DMK regardless how corrupt, thuggish, criminal, or casteist the DMK is. Every hateful policy of the DMK, including its Brahmin-phobia, resonates with these diehard supporters. They justify its criminal ways and see the DMK as an extension of their selves. They long to partake in its crimes.

Another 30 per cent of the electorate is made up of diehard supporters of the AIADMK. These supporters aren't as adharmic as the diehard supporters of the DMK. However, they would turn a blind eye to the corruption and the lack of governance of the AIADMK regime. They too would partake in the freebies.

Rajan astutely observes that Tamils elect the leaders they crave for and deserve. The leaders whom they elect represent the electorate's value system.

Many voters demand and take money as bribe for every vote they cast without caring one bit that they're destroying the future of their own children.

He then concludes that there is no hope for the future of a society where an overwhelming majority lacks a sense of scruples and venerates the leaders who epitomise unscrupulousness. This miserable state has existed for decades.

Everything Rajan has written about Tamil Nadu is applicable to the rest of India.

Why should we care? We should care because the future is going be unlike anything we've known in the past. All along, societies changed slowly. Changes were predictable. Our fathers could safely assume that they would retire in the jobs they got out of college. Interest rates didn't change drastically thereby leading to a home foreclosure.

Collateralised Debt Obligations weren't ubiquitous. Debts weren't structured around tranches. Global economy wasn't as interlinked or complex as it is today.

More importantly, technology has changed the equation drastically and will continue to do so at an exponential rate of growth. This change has laid waste to giant corporations whose defences we once thought were impregnable.

Corporations like IBM, Dell, HP, Sony, Panasonic, Lehman Brothers, and Xerox were all iconic just a decade ago. Many of those possessed wealth far in excess of the GDP of a state like Tamil Nadu. All of those corporations have either sunk or are sinking.

Who would've imagined that crowdsourcing technology would create the largest taxi or hotel chains in the world even a decade ago? Unmanned Arial Vehicles have completely changed the way wars are being fought.

We have barely seen the tip of the iceberg called technology revolution. Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing (NLP), Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), and Robotics are just beginning to happen. But, combined with crowd-sourcing, this revolution is happening very fast. In Future Jobs: Solving the Employment and Skills Crisis, Edward Gordon points out that by 2025, 65 per cent of today's schoolchildren will be employed in jobs that do not exist yet. A scenario like this never existed before.

Technologies such as those I listed above would drive this trend. For all we know, a child in rural Tamil Nadu may learn physics from MOOC, have her doubts clarified on a crowdsourced network from a teacher in Argentina speaking Spanish while NLP software translates the interaction.

Where does that leave millions of school teachers in Tamil Nadu? Unskilled and unprepared for the change, they would be swept away.

Retail is not going to be the same ever again. Crowdsourcing technologies would drive sourcing and distribution of virtually every commodity. In a blink of the eye, millions of people who are employed in the retail sector would become jobless.

Financial securities designed in the USA would determine interest rates and inflation in ways a voter in Tamil Nadu cannot even comprehend today.

All of this requires political leadership which understands technology and economics. It takes visionary leadership which could formulate strategies to address society's needs by 2025 and build the infrastructure for that today.

It requires a massive overhaul of every system from education to healthcare. It requires a courageous leadership which can take unpopular decisions for the greater good of society.

In other words, a leader must inform the Tamil people that they're ailing and that if they do not wake up to the reality today, their children would inherit a horrible society to live in 2025.

The electorate should listen to such a leader.

Unfortunately, there is not a single leader in Tamil Nadu who possesses vision or courage. The people of Tamil Nadu simply have no idea of the changes which the future holds in store. They blindly vote for the most unscrupulous leaders for a token bribe. Their apathy informs us that they deserve the political masters they get.

It also makes us wonder whether democracy rather harms than helps a society which lacks the ability to act in self-interest.

Everything I've written in the form of analysis about Tamil Nadu is applicable to the rest of India.

I've not offered a solution to the problem. However, I've sounded a clarion call to warn society about the tsunami waiting to happen. Recognition of the malaise is a prerequisite to its cure.