Democracy and Tyranny - I
1. This is in response to Nitin's guest post at Indian Economy Blog, "Democracy and Infrastructure" as owing to bad karma my comment got flagged as the spam.
2. This is just my mostly uninformed speculation
Gist of Nitin's post is the query whether there is something in democracy which impedes economic growth (although he talks specifically about infrastructure, but in my view the question can be extended to general economic outlook), as opposed to authoratarian governments.
First, the democracy
While in a democracy there will always be tendency for populism (which is nothing but precedence of short term and personal goals over long term and collective objectives), there is no clear answer.
The reason is (As I have said before in context of freedom) while democracy is necessary condition it is hardly a sufficient.
To wit, democracy is a system of governance through rule of the majority, it is not a system to qualify the merits of policies. Judgement of policies is left to the discretion of individuals.
Therefore in a democracy not only nature of economic policies but also the progress of nation is dependant on the ideals the individuals espouse. These ideas, are in essence the foundation of civilization. Further almost invariably these ideas are conceived, debated and agreed upon not by the whole population but by a select group called "intellectuals". The reason whole population doesn't participate even if it is free is partly because not everyone is trained to think and partly because not everyone has the time to collect required amount of information.
The conclusion is that direction a democracy takes is dependant on
1) The basic ideals it is founded upon
2) Which in turn is decided by a rarefied circle of intellectuals
If one is interested in reasons for less than impressive performance of Indian democracy , it is to be found in the above two premises.
1) The idea behind Indian constitution is social and economic freedom but wishy washy statism.
2) The reason for this was misplaced faith that the members of constitution assembly regardless of political affiliations ( i.e. left and right) placed in state, both in its influence and its immunity to corruption and distortion.
Therefore not only Indian republic was bestowed with statist thinkers even the common public was indoctrinated so that it came to accept the presence of interventionist, omnipresent, omniscient and omniprescient state as an axiomatic position.
What is more Indian public was encouraged to increasingly rely and depend on state not just for welfare of society but also for welfare of specific social segments.
Therefore to blame Mulaytam Singh or Arjun Singh for the mess we are in is trivial. In fact if one were to take a cynical position about susceptibility of public to pavlovian conditioning even blaming present generation seems useless.
The rot that India faces whether corruption or social decrepitude did not set in a course of few days. The short sighted policies adapted by our leaders and the wide latitude Indian public gave to them (to the point of idol worshipping) are to blamed.
2. This is just my mostly uninformed speculation
Gist of Nitin's post is the query whether there is something in democracy which impedes economic growth (although he talks specifically about infrastructure, but in my view the question can be extended to general economic outlook), as opposed to authoratarian governments.
First, the democracy
While in a democracy there will always be tendency for populism (which is nothing but precedence of short term and personal goals over long term and collective objectives), there is no clear answer.
The reason is (As I have said before in context of freedom) while democracy is necessary condition it is hardly a sufficient.
To wit, democracy is a system of governance through rule of the majority, it is not a system to qualify the merits of policies. Judgement of policies is left to the discretion of individuals.
Therefore in a democracy not only nature of economic policies but also the progress of nation is dependant on the ideals the individuals espouse. These ideas, are in essence the foundation of civilization. Further almost invariably these ideas are conceived, debated and agreed upon not by the whole population but by a select group called "intellectuals". The reason whole population doesn't participate even if it is free is partly because not everyone is trained to think and partly because not everyone has the time to collect required amount of information.
The conclusion is that direction a democracy takes is dependant on
1) The basic ideals it is founded upon
2) Which in turn is decided by a rarefied circle of intellectuals
If one is interested in reasons for less than impressive performance of Indian democracy , it is to be found in the above two premises.
1) The idea behind Indian constitution is social and economic freedom but wishy washy statism.
2) The reason for this was misplaced faith that the members of constitution assembly regardless of political affiliations ( i.e. left and right) placed in state, both in its influence and its immunity to corruption and distortion.
Therefore not only Indian republic was bestowed with statist thinkers even the common public was indoctrinated so that it came to accept the presence of interventionist, omnipresent, omniscient and omniprescient state as an axiomatic position.
What is more Indian public was encouraged to increasingly rely and depend on state not just for welfare of society but also for welfare of specific social segments.
Therefore to blame Mulaytam Singh or Arjun Singh for the mess we are in is trivial. In fact if one were to take a cynical position about susceptibility of public to pavlovian conditioning even blaming present generation seems useless.
The rot that India faces whether corruption or social decrepitude did not set in a course of few days. The short sighted policies adapted by our leaders and the wide latitude Indian public gave to them (to the point of idol worshipping) are to blamed.
3 comments:
That's a great story. Waiting for more. » » »
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Where did you find it? Interesting read » »
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