Some facts. Barack Obama is a church-going, family-values espousing president-elect who will have a muscular foreign policy. How incredibly different fundamentally is that from usual American presidents? Obama should also be smart enough to know what liberal activism has done to Democratic presidents domestically.

Bill Clinton’s liberal enthusiasm in his first term produced a Republican mid-term election victory. Interestingly, among Republican winners was a new governor in Texas: George Bush. Clinton thereafter ruled, as the Economist had put it, as a moderate Republican. Jon Meacham explains in a brilliant piece in the Newsweek (October 27 issue) why President Obama will have to rule what will continue to be an essentially centre-right nation.

How a nation is governed after these fancy centre-left superstructures come to dominate public discourse of course depends on the ruling classes — politicians who win or lose power and the permanent administrative structure. The key variables are whether and how quickly the ruling classes detect and reject the fanciness of centre-left’s post-victory constructions.

Part of America’s strength is that this detection/rejection ability is well-honed. The ruling classes understand that on economics and foreign policy, governing from the centre-right is the sensible option. This is made possible because there isn’t a huge gap between politicians and the permanent establishment. India doesn’t share this trait.

India’s permanent establishment has come to understand broad centre-right governing imperatives quite well. India’s politics hasn’t.

The change in the establishment came from the time of Rajiv Gandhi. In many ways the original reformer, Rajiv, without ever saying so, started chipping away at his mother’s seemingly permanent and frighteningly fanciful centre-left superstructure.

... contd.