Technocrats or Politicians as our leaders?

When it is time for elections there is always a call for technocrats to contest. Most of us want them to win an election and run public offices of the highest order. These technocrats have excelled in their professional life and positively impacted many lives. We expect them to be successful in politics as well and bring the much-wanted change in our life. Does that happen?

Technocrats operate in a microcosm of society. It can be an organisation or institution. The organisation is a collection of individuals who have agreed to work together for a common purpose or goal. Exemplary technocrats, with their ability, regularly achieve much larger goals from the individuals around them. They are good at working with people, delivering greater results for the organisation. They make life better for everyone around them. It is not just their colleagues, they make life better for the extended stakeholders of the organisation. The beneficiary can be the supplier, the investor, the customer and so on.

Thus there is an aura build around these successful technocrats. The public wants them to reciprocate their success in the profession to politics and public office, making their lives better. They find the political leaders lacking in the ability to bring desirable change in their lives. The public believes that technocrats can bring their leadership skills in professional life to politics and public offices. They want successful leaders in professional life to replace political leaders.

It is naive to believe so. Technocrats leading organisations, delivered results of higher-order, have always crossed one big hurdle early in their journey. They crossed this hurdle much early to their success. That hurdle is, they were able to bring together like-minded people towards a common goal for everyone’s benefit. Everyone around them believed in the common goal and was on the journey in their own free will. It is not the case in politics and while running public offices.

Politics calls for different kind of leaders. Some technocrats may excel in politics but most of them can fail miserably.

In Kerala, a candidate can win an election with a vote percentage of 37%. If we take 74% as the polling percentage, more than half of the voters did not vote for the winning candidate. Thus the winner starts with more than half of the population against her candidature, also considering the non-voters as well.

Even the most popular candidate is only able to garner a voting percentage of 56%. Again, if we consider 74% as the polling, 24% of the voters did not select the winning candidate.

Thus, in electoral politics, an elected representative starts off with a very large number of the population who did not want her in the first place. It calls for a very different leadership skill, to engage the other side of the population and be successful at it. Technocrats will not find it easy. Probably we need to give more respect to political leaders who win their constituency repeatedly!