The constraint on India’s growth lies in processes required for obtaining public support for reforms
Policy makers in Europe and the US are confused. Economies are spluttering. Capital markets want governments to balance their budgets whereas citizens want governments to spend more to boost employment and improve education, healthcare, and infrastructure. India’s government is caught in the same dilemma. India’s economy must grow to enable faster reduction of poverty and attract more investments. While economic policy-makers say there is a gap between the economics of what needs to be done and what is politically feasible, many fear that, over the past twenty years, mainstream economics has drifted too far from social and political realities. While economists wonder what will be the ‘new normal’ for the global economy, one may safely predict that the new normal will not come about from a calculation by economists. It will emerge from a political process of consensus between conflicting points-of-view and contending demands. This is inevitable wherever democratic norms—of elected representation and participation of citizens in shaping the rules—are becoming embedded as they are in India. Human society is a multi-faceted system, not merely an economy. Therefore many points of view that may seem troublesome to economic policy-makers must be considered, including views of unions and organizations that represent social and environmental concerns.
Paradoxically, the two modern forces, democratic elections and the explosive growth of channels of information, that make it both possible as well as necessary for many voices to be heard, also make it more difficult to achieve a consensus. A proliferation of media channels—voice, print, electronic, and web-based—is competing for citizens’ attention. Every channel must make money to survive. Therefore all communicate in titillating, bite-size bits to attract attention. Thus the public discourse has become shallower when it must become deeper. In democracies politicians must get elected. They communicate to the masses through these same channels. So they too master the art of the sound-bite and ride with the fashions: offering people what they superficially want rather than what society needs. In these mutually reinforcing ways the public discourse has been stranded in ‘the dialogue of the moment’ rather than digging deeper into issues, as the public editor of The New York Times laments in a commentary about the state of affairs in the US. Indian media and Indian election campaigns are rapidly going the same way.
India’s crisis of the month is overdue reforms to the power sector. However power is not the only sector crying for systemic reforms. Surprisingly, in spite of the enormous differences in the US’ and India’s material resources and per capita incomes, both countries need policy reforms in several common areas. Both countries must improve access to healthcare and education. Both are debating the roles of government and the private sector in provision of public services. Both must create more employment. Both are considering incentives for companies to invest and employ more people in their own countries rather than abroad. In both countries, there is concern about how elections are funded and the role of the corporate sector in influencing the shape of legislation. Many of these debates are trapped in ideological biases, each shutting out the other’s point-of-view. When, in democracies, the quality of public deliberations on such matters becomes shallow, as it has in the US and India, consensus is not possible and reforms are not easy.
Many would argue that India’s reform agenda is more urgent and India needs reforms of its processes for making reforms, even more than does the US. The constraint on India’s growth lies in processes for obtaining public support for reforms, not in the caliber of its economists. Therefore India’s leaders must urgently create the two conditions necessary for a sensible public dialogue on the systemic issues that must be resolved. One: create good platforms for a thoughtful public dialogue. Two: provide good ideas to seed the dialogue.
As explained before, proliferating media channels are inexorably veering towards a shallow commercial rather than deep societal discourse. Therefore innovations are required to create alternative channels and discussion formats that engage citizens in a deeper discourse. The TV serial, Satyameva Jayate, was one recent innovation. Public radio and public television, facing less commercial pressure, could provide other alternatives—provided they present themselves more attractively. Perhaps all commercial media channels, electronic and print, should devote a percentage of their time and space to such discourses as their Corporate Social Responsibility.
The ideas that will seed discussions on these ‘social’ platforms must lay before citizens the systemic issues shaping their lives and the lives of their children. The presentation of these ideas should be unbiased by political ideologies. This has become impossible in the USA where all think tanks and media channels are divided along ideological lines, conservative and liberal, thus deepening rather than bridging divisions. Moreover the issues must be presented to citizens in accessible language, rather than the technical language of economists and experts. This was the charter of India’s Planning Commission. The Cabinet Resolution of March 15, 1950 setting up India’s Planning Commission says, “The work of the Planning Commission will affect decisively the future welfare of the people in every sphere of national life. Its success will depend on the extent to which it enlists the association and cooperation of people at all levels”. With the presentation of India’s 12th Plan, the Planning Commission must step up and present to the people, in language they can understand, scenarios of India’s future that explain the choices before them, so that they can support the fundamental reforms necessary to create a justly inclusive and environmentally sustainable society.