The central idea is what has been articulated earlier: “Deconstruction of the administrative state”. That could be revolutionary in the present context of government reforms. This has been a professed idea in India as well at the time of wide ranging reforms in 1991-92 and much later. Here the thrust was on eliminating wasteful expenditure by maintaining a huge bureaucracy in the centre with profligate ministries for which the need has vanished.

For example, with liberalisation many of the ministries are in a way redundant, such as, the ministry of steel ad mines, which are in effect the business of business. In fact, exercises were made in India to identify such redundancies in central government but to no avail.

There is sharp contrast between Donald Trump and his choices for bringing about government restructuring. Both Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are sort of intellectuals and businessmen. Elon Musk is reputedly deeply read and has often led a lonely life of a thinker. He has wondered about the mysteries of life and universe and was a voracious reader in these subjects.

Ramaswamy has a degree from none other institution than the Harvard University. Even later, he had a law degree from Yale University. As an Ivy Leaguer, Ramaswamy campaigned about the size of the government and whittling it down. He comes from a immigrant family and his parents went from Kerala to the United States in the 1970s. But both of them are not the born again white Americans — one is from South Africa and other is of Indian ancestry.

If these recruits have a well read background, Donald Trump stars nearly an alien in the world of books and studies. His life has been marked by wealth and spending, risky peccadilloes and scams. H has even been convicted by regular US court.

Their selection for pushing government reforms could send shivers down the spine of liberal Americans to the ordinary people. Musk is reputed to have stated his proposals could shave off $2 trillion from the US budget of a size of $6.5 trillion. That will throw hordes of people out of government agencies and departments directly and scores others in rippling effects.

The downsizing could cut into the budget of the US social sector spending as well as into its humongous military budgets, experts point out. These attempts at pairing down the size of the government can have multifarious impact which can be bitterly resisted by those who are government elites as well as established politicians.

The biggest opposition could be from the political class itself. The politicians pass the Federal budgets and the arm of the administrative state which controls the financial powers is the Congress. The political class might be loath to part with these owners. The legislature would insist on passing the budget and its contents and not see tusked experts like Musk-Ramaswamy clique.

Donald Trump’s clear victory in the US presidential election is a recrudescence of extreme rightist policies and conservatism in American politics. The liberal values have lost to even some blatant lies of the hard right.

Donald Trump had exploited the fear of the average white American of rising immigration, their sense of economic insecurity —however much misplaced— and a general pessimism about America among the common people.

The American economy had been the best performing among the developed world and its growth despite higher interest rates, was described as the “gravity defying experience” by the well known magazine The Economist of London. As a major economy, America had grown in excess of 3% for years which is unprecedented.

However, repeating on the economic woes of the country, highlighting some shortfalls like increase in oil prices or some food items over and over again had convinced the people of economic uncertainty. The economic problems have been dinned into people’s mind which seems to have convinced them.

This further vindicates the saying that even the worst lie, repeated enough, would be taken as the truth. Donald Trump had exploited this idea to the hilt as he had repeated his numerous lies over again and again in course of his campaign.

Similarly, Donald Trump had played on the common white American’s fear of uncontrolled immigration swamping the population dynamics. Trump had for example mentioned immigrants from Latin American countries were eating their pets, which had created a furore immediately he had mentioned it in a campaign meet. It was found this allegation was a complete lie.

But the waves of immigrants from American south had been a reality and in some of the border towns, the population composition had been changing. The more humane stance of the Democrats towards the immigration issues plainly had not gone down well with the common man.

These issues —immigration or economy or right to abortion — ran counter to the main tenets of American liberal order represented by the elites and the intellectuals. These rather well off and well ensconced sections of American voters had expected Kamala Harris to carry forward their liberal values in American politics.

Kamala Harris’s efforts to represent herself as middle class and coloured did not carry conviction with the people of these segments, as black voters this time did not travel with Harris. This time around, many black voters had milled around Donald Trump than Kamala Harris.

At the same time, it has to be admitted Kamala Harris had put-up a valiant fight against indomitable Donald Trump who gave little credence to truth and moral values. Harris had polled close to half of the popular votes, although at the electoral college stage it swung to Trump’s favour.

Secondly, she had very little time to fight a formidable opponent. Biden quit the fray at a pretty late stage by which time he had done considerable damage to the Democrats’ cause.

This election results have shown another startling example, the intellectuals’ assessment of reality and politics did not match with those of the common people. This almost vindicates the premise that popular vote results almost always go counter to those of elites and intellectuals.

The uppermost levels of American media and even most of western world, had uniformly opposed Trump and supported Harris. People had other ideas. (IPA Service)