REPAIRING GOVERNANCE

[I wrote this in the Calcutta Telegraph of 10 February 2009. I have strong ideas about governance in India, but try not to think too often about it since it is futile: Indian democracy has secure foundations.] ENERGETIC FLAILING

When did the latest American depression begin? I date it from January 2008. That is when American surgeons first reported a fall in botox treatments. For those who have not caught up with the times, many American women have for years been visiting surgeons every few months to get botox injections, which put a wrinkle-free smile on their faces and give a rising, flowing shape to the spherical features they wish to exaggerate. A typical treatment costs $1,500-$2,000. The fall in the demand for them first signified that even rich women were feeling the pinch. The sad news was conveyed by Joyce Tang in the Riff Blog on Mother Jones on April 8, 2008. The story was entitled “Botox takes a hit from the flailing economy”. That was brilliant wordplay on the failed state, which has been in currency for long. The Fund for Peace has been publishing a league table of failed states for the past four years (India is the 98th most failed state, much below champions like Afghanistan and Pakistan and much above unfailing wonders like Finland and Norway). It caught on fast; in September, Lant Pritchett of Harvard Kennedy School posted a paper entitled “Is India a flailing state?” He contrasted the excellent quality of India’s civil services at the top and their ineffectiveness in making the machinery under them perform to any standard of efficacy. All Indian government services are characterized by “rampant absenteeism, indifference, incompetence and corruption”. It is as if the nerves and sinews connecting the thinking head to the functioning limbs have been severed. That would be a brilliant opening to a conversation at a party, but breathing life into the idea needs some work. So Pritchett got busy; he started reading Indian novels — amongst them, Vikas Swarup’s Q&A, whose filmic incarnation,Slumdog Millionaire, is the flavour of the month just now. In the novel, the hero is a victim of government in ways which we Indians would recognize as familiar. Pritchett framed a theory that he thinks underlies the novel — and the day-to-day experience of Indians. He lists four characteristics of a modern state. Politically, the people of a premodern State were chattel which a king could punish, reward or transfer to another king at will; they are supposed to be the masters of a modern State, which must treat them all as equal in law. Administratively, a premodern State was run by flunkeys whom the king chose at will; a modern State is administered by a hierarchical bureaucracy chosen on merit which applies impersonal laws to everyone. Economically, a premodern State was dominated by inefficient activities mostly based on primary resources and carried out by individuals, families or small enterprises; the modern State is characterized by the large corporation whose bureaucracy manages highly productive, large-scale processes. Socially, the premodern State was defined by patronal relationships vertically, and family and community relationships horizontally. A modern State, in contrast, entails the construction of an imagined community in the form of a nation. With these four dimensions, one can get 16 combinations and hence varieties of States. Pritchett considers only six. At one end are star countries like Korea and Taiwan, which have succeeded in all dimensions; at the other are failed states like Somalia and Burma, which have failed in all respects. India has succeeded economically (it has sustained rapid growth) and politically (it has maintained mechanisms of political expression). Administratively, it has failed to make its bureaucracy effective. Its social achievement — in building a national community — is mixed. Its administrative non-performance makes it a flailing State. The world is divided into many little States; it is easy to find States that are better or worse than India in any respect. To make the comparison more meaningful, Pritchett compares India to its neighbours in south Asia. He shows that in comparison to them, India has been more consistently democratic. And yet it is worse than them on a parameter that reflects the most elementary output of a state — the immunization of children aged one to two years against measles. India had immunized a lower proportion of its children in 2006 than Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh and Pakistan; worse, the proportion of immunized children was lower in India in 2006 than it had been in 1995. Then he takes nine developing countries that are recognized to be as democratic as India. Amongst them, Chile, Taiwan, Botswana, South Africa and Costa Rica have relatively low corruption; India falls into the more corrupt group, which includes Jamaica, Panama and Trinidad. That might look like selective evidence; one could prove anything that way. But then Pritchett goes on to cite actual examples of India’s flailing state. He cites a Rajasthan experiment in which all sorts of attempts were made to improve the attendance of nurses in government health centres, which was below 50 per cent on an average day. The incentives and punishments worked for a while, but after some time, attendance went down even further, to about a third. The nurses were, without having seen his films, practising the principle of Woody Allen whom Pritchett quotes: “Eighty per cent of success is just showing up.” In another example Pritchett cites, doctors in government hospitals of Delhi were more qualified than those in private hospitals, but they treated patients much worse. The big difference was that private doctors asked patients questions to pinpoint their ailment; all that government doctors asked was, “Kya hai (What is the matter)?” We often blame our poor governance on our bad politicians; and there is no doubt that most of our politicians come from the bottom of the drain. But then, we have democracy; surely, we can throw out politicians who do not perform. And we do; anti-incumbency is very real in India. But incumbents’ successors are no better. What Pritchett does not consider is whether India should have democracy at all. Democracy has become India’s holy cow; it is the height of political incorrectitude to question it. But if electing corrupt and incompetent politicians is the only way we know of being democratic, maybe we would do better without democracy — at any rate, the kind of democracy we practise. Breastbeating about democracy assumes that it is politicians who are the root cause of corruption. But the legendary corruption of the police has nothing to do with politicians; to a great extent, politicians share in the corruption of bureaucrats. Democracy and bureaucracy are names given to institutions whose character varies enormously across governments. What democratic representatives are supposed to do, but do not do in India, is to represent consumers of government services. We need a new institution to represent them. And I would suggest that the function would be best carried out by representatives of taxpayers, who actually pay for their services. We should abolish all taxes other than income tax. We should elect a second House of Parliament. Its electors would be income-tax payers, and they would get votes in proportion to the tax they pay. The first house, elected by adult franchise as now, should decide the level of income tax; the second house, elected by taxpayers, should decide how the revenue should be spent.