Indians are often accused of having no historical sense. Perhaps it is in keeping with that accusation that the current crisis seems to have warped all sense of historical perspective. Next week is the 20th anniversary of a turning point in Indian history: Manmohan Singhs 1991 budget that symbolised a new national regeneration. But there is a bizarre embarrassment about this moment that can only be explained by a strange ideological alchemy gripping India. The Congress party is doggedly determined to undo the major gains of economic reform; its lack of ownership of this occasion symbolises that. Indian intellectual debates have even less integrity than debates amongst politicians. Cues from the top leadership swing intellectual moods,with a scramble to jump on sloganeering bandwagons. Liberalisation was as much about dismantling our psychological inhibitions as it was about economics. But this government has empowered an intellectual climate where all those constricted psychological inhibitions are coming back: a total lack of ambition,a distrust of the people and overweening faith in the state.
There is no doubt that the state has a significant role in creating the conditions where more citizens can participate in the growth created by reform. India needs a properly constructed welfare state. But the UPA completely shifted the emphasis from vibrant job creation and empowerment to welfare,as if success will be measured by the more people we can make dependent. And its design for a welfare state rests on the bizarre assumption that if you create a right and throw money,any problem can be solved. It forgot one cardinal fact: the precondition for sustained welfare is growth. As Adam Smith said,you dont have to like capitalists to acknowledge the proposition that investment is important. It is a severe indictment of this government that on the anniversary of reforms there is more talk of capital flight than growth.
The scale of human deprivation in India is such that smugness about GDP growth numbers is unconscionable. The gains of growth are uneven on many dimensions. And markets alone will not solve many significant challenges. But these truisms are inducing more intellectual cramps than they should. So it is worth reminding ourselves that growth gave the state an opportunity to do things it could never imagine doing on a scale before. If the welfare gains from growth are less than what they should be,the primary blame should not be on economic reforms. The primary blame should be on the state. Uneven governance is a primary cause for uneven growth. It is deeply ironic that in order to deflect criticism from the state,we are criticising economic liberalisation. We are on behalf of the state engaging in what Marxists used to call ideological mystification.
There is also no doubt immense conflict in society: from Maoism to agitating farmers. But,again,a historical perspective is in order. Taken together,these are nowhere near the order of magnitude of conflict this society experienced from the 1970s through the 1990s,where even the Union seemed in peril. In some ways,there is less protest,because the dynamism of the economy has put people in a position where they fear there is a lot more to lose from disruption. And in part the conflicts are the conflicts of success and rising aspirations. The Indian states land acquisition policies have been unconscionably bad. But the present wave of protests is different in some respects. Rather than a sign of economic stagnation,they reflect the fact that the farmers horizons of expectations are now different. Their horizons of expectation are,rightly,such that they will not be cheated by the old rules and provisions that were made for an era when the state could act with impunity. Our conflicts over land or mining are not a sign that economic reforms did not work. It is a sign that two tectonic plates are colliding: a pre-liberalisation state practice that has failed to understand the new dynamics of aspirations.
Something similar is true of corruption. The scale is staggering; and the possibility that true culprits might escape is dispiriting. Society is right to be vigilant. But a sense of perspective is in order. No society,whether the United States,Korea,Japan,China or Britain,experienced rapid growth without massive corruption accompanying it. This should caution us against easy moralising or silver bullet solutions. But it should also caution us into resisting the profoundly unhistorical claim that corruption has so trapped us into an equilibrium we cannot have ambition as a nation.
Democracy ought to be described as a government where some people can fool some people all the time,all the people for some time,but no one can fool all the people all the time. The messiness of democracy,its adversarial character,its pluralism of interests,its thicket of checks and balances will create conditions where perfidy will be exposed. Governance norms were premised on the idea that secrecy and hierarchy will prevail for ever. But this is colliding with the new realities of India: society will reassert itself,and secrecy and hierarchy are no longer default premises of institutions. A whole range of actors will hold your feet to the fire. This is not a dispiriting,but a potentially game-changing moment. The critique of civil society is not that it protested. It is that the solutions it proposes must not be inconsistent with institutional proprieties and structures of power appropriate to a vibrant democracy. Just as government policy must not take away all presumptive trust in individuals,civil society must not take away a presumptive trust in democracy.
India is in the midst of a great churning,unleashed by economic reform. In the myth of Neelkanth,when asuras churned the sea in search of amrit,a lot of poison came out. We are perhaps wondering,which Neelkanth will absorb this poison? But it is important to recognise the character of this churning and the transformative possibilities it contains. Liberalisation was fundamentally about creating self-belief. Dont follow this government in destroying that self-belief.
The writer is president,Centre for Policy Research,Delhi; express@expressindia.com
