Democracy is an idea. It is founded on the principle that all human beings are equal. But the idea alone is not enough. Democracy needs structures to enable people to participate in decision-making, such as elections of representatives and debates in the elected assemblies. And democracy also requires processes for people to understand issues that affect their lives so that they can use these structures of democracy intelligently. If the constitutional structures and assemblies are the muscles of the democratic body, the processes of public education and public debate are the circulatory systems—the blood flow and nervous system—that a healthy body also needs. India has the constitutional structures that enable people to vote in elections, and they do so regularly and in large numbers, making India the largest democracy in the world. The idea of democracy is alive in India. India has established the structures and assemblies required, and elections are conducted regularly in which masses participate. But what is the quality of the processes of deliberative democracy and public reasoning—the third essential component of a democratic society?
In a democratic and diverse country, such as India, consensus is required for all stakeholders to move together, forward and faster. This consensus cannot be commanded in a democracy. Nor can it obtained by debates within elected assemblies in which representatives take pre-determined party positions, and where their objective most often is to embarrass the other side. The consensus has to be developed through, what Amartya Sen calls a process of “public reasoning”. Therefore, it behoves economists, businessmen, and policymakers, who are keen to get the economy onto a fast and sustainable trajectory of growth in GDP, to apply the right methodology to improve the process of public reasoning in India. Many problems in India, such as the improvement of Mumbai to make it comparable to Shanghai as many aspire for, require consensus for solutions. While we may learn great skills for large-scale project management from China, we may have to look elsewhere, to democratic countries, for insights into how to rapidly achieve consensus in a democracy.
Let us turn to the USA, one of the most vibrant democracies in the world, to learn what we can emulate and what we should not. In his book, Democracy’s Discontent: America in Search of a Public Philosophy, Michael Sandel says, “After World War II, the civic strand of economic argument faded from American political discourse. Economic policy attended more to the size and distribution of the national economic product and less to the conditions of self-government. Americans increasingly viewed economic arrangements as instruments of consumption, not as schools for citizenship.” In The Future of Freedom, Fareed Zakaria describes the deep division of American public opinion created by competing “think tanks” aligned with opposing ideologies. The first think tanks in the USA, such as the Council on Foreign Relations, were created before World War II with bipartisan support because “people truly believed that it was important for a democracy to have a place for civil discourse on important public issues.” Now think tanks represent opposing ideologies and “Scholars at most public-policy institutes today are chosen for their views and not their expertise,” says Zakaria. The media is also divided along ideological lines that parallel the divide amongst the think tanks. People choose from the plethora of competing journals and channels that clamour for their attention and get locked into hearing one point of view only. It is no wonder that public opinion in the USA has become more divided than it was in the past century.
In fact, the USA is witnessing the emergence of ‘conceptually gated communities’, analogous to the physically gated communities that separate ‘People Like Us’ from ‘Them’. People within these communities of like-minded people talk only to each other and read only what their own members write. Such close-minded, conceptually gated communities are inexorably emerging all over the world, even in so-called open societies, as an unintended consequence of the combination of otherwise desirable forces, such as the masses of information to which people have easy access, but do not have the means to digest.
India needs think tanks to guide policymakers and influence public opinion. But they will not help to create consensus. Indeed they may aggravate divisions as US experience shows. We have a free media, as does the USA. But that too may not help to create consensus. The disease of commercialism already infects the media in our country. As Zakaria says of the USA, so perhaps in India: “While, like other mediating groups, it historically tempered public passions, the press today often inflames them. It sensationalises, dramatises, and trivialises news”. Therefore we need another mechanism specifically designed to bring people with different perspectives together: to listen to each other, to distil the essence of their shared aspiration for the country and the critical principles they will adhere to in the work they have to do together as partners in progress.
An ongoing process of public reasoning, conducted with good techniques of dialogue, in which people from many walks of life participate, and people with different ideologies listen to each other, could provide the glue we need. The all-round development of India will not happen in spite of our being a democracy. It will happen because we are a democracy, provided we improve our abilities to deliberate and decide democratically and effectively. These abilities must be spread widely in India: into our panchayats and parliament; and into many forums for partnerships between diverse people who must work together to make a difference to their lives and to the country. Such ‘ways of mass dialogue’ are the WMD we must proliferate to realize our aspiration for inclusive and sustainable growth.