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Showing posts with label democracy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label democracy. Show all posts
Friday 22 December 2023
Thursday 21 December 2023
Sunday 3 December 2023
Saturday 2 December 2023
Monday 13 November 2023
Wednesday 13 September 2023
Sunday 10 September 2023
A Level Economics: What is a Failed State?
Nadeem Paracha in The Dawn
On YouTube, there are numerous videos on ‘failed states’. Those posted by certain American news outlets almost always describe Russia as a failed or failing state. Similarly, videos produced by Indian media outlets often refer to Pakistan as a failed/failing state. Then there are also some videos produced in China which ‘predict’ the collapse of the American state structure, and many American videos that speak of ‘China’s coming collapse’.
So what is a failed state?
There are various theories about what constitutes state failure, but most political scientists and economists agree on two major symptoms of this failure. The first is when the state loses its ability to establish authority over its territory and citizens, and is unable to protect the country’s sovereignty. Secondly, state failure also constitutes the state’s inability to provide basic necessities to its citizens and when a country’s governing institutions become ineffective.
However, according to foreign policy experts such as the Norwegian Morten Bøås, the application of the term ‘failed state’ is largely political in nature. A country threatened by another country whose state is facing a crisis, often labels it as a failed or failing state. This is why to the US, at the moment, Russia is a ‘failing state’ and to India, so is Pakistan.
Recently, Chinese propaganda has claimed that the US is on the brink of state failure, especially after the ‘backsliding’ that American democracy witnessed during the Trump presidency. It’s politics.
The definition of what constitutes a ‘failed’ or ‘failing’ state may be determined by geopolitical interests, but the internal role of extractive and exclusivist institutions cannot be ignored
But does this mean that there are no failed states at all? There are. Most political scientists agree that Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, Syria, DR Congo and Sudan are failed states because state authority in these countries has almost completely collapsed. Outside the confines of areas in which the state does have some authority left, ‘non-state actors’ hold sway. Poverty, political chaos and violence are rampant. There is no presence of a cohesive state here.
Even though one may agree with men such as Bøås that ‘failed state’ is a political term applied for propaganda purposes to justify external armed intervention or to impose economic sanctions, this does not mean that, apart from the more blatant examples of failed states, other countries are entirely safe from becoming another Afghanistan or Somalia.
Most states, even in developed countries, often exhibit some symptoms of state failure. But the symptoms are particularly intense in developing countries, where there is a greater chance of the state failing.
In Pakistan, when Islamist militants had occupied vast swaths of land in the early 2010s, and the state seemed ill-equipped or even reluctant to reestablish its writ in these regions, many voices inside and outside the country warned that Pakistan was heading towards state failure.
The warning was not exaggerated. However, the state too was conscious of this. It finally responded by conducting an unprecedented military operation. Between 2014 and 2017, it was able to oust the militants from areas where they had established parallel governing systems, mostly based on outright terror.
But military action alone against forces challenging the writ of the state is not enough. In the book Why Nations Fail, the economists James A. Robinson and Daron Acemoglu write that nations fail not because they lack abundant natural resources or are located in volatile regions. One of the most prominent reasons that states fail is because of ‘extractive’ political and economic institutions.
Nation states with inclusive institutions prosper because these institutions do not restrict the economic and political participation of all citizens. It does not matter what race or religion a citizen belongs to, they are encouraged to bolster the country’s, and their own, economic ambitions.
Extractive institutions go the other way. Economic and political elites accumulate power and wealth for themselves from those who can’t find a voice or place in the extractive institutions. Pakistan is a parliamentary democracy. But this democracy is largely extractive and exclusivist. Its exclusivist nature is deeper than just ‘elite capture’. This is so because the non-Sunni and non-Muslim communities too are kept at an arm’s length, because they do not adhere to the definition of Islam defined by the Constitution. Some are even outrightly repressed.
A powerful state institution in Pakistan, the military, sees itself above this nature of exclusivity. Yet, from the 1980s onwards, it was the military that further strengthened extractive and exclusivist policies and even used exclusivist forces to meet its own political ambitions. The parliament and a politicised military have both contributed in severely limiting the participation of the diverse talent required to construct robust economic and political institutions.
The continuing extractive policies have now instigated a clash within the extractive elites, both civilian and military. The extractive elites benefitted the most through exclusivist policies. On the other hand, those who are kept out because of their faith, sect, ethnicity or class have been severely marginalised and are just mere spectators of an ongoing tussle for power between the two factions of the extractive forces.
The ‘anti-military’ riots on May 9 and 10 were an example of one extractive group trying to push back the other. So, the crisis of the state that Pakistan is facing today is also about a crisis within elite groups. A new election alone won’t resolve the crisis. Pakistan’s democracy is still navigated by an exclusivist constitution, which can actually deepen the crisis.
I believe, alarmed by such a possibility, the military is contemplating a Hobbesian route. In his highly influential book The Leviathan, the 17th century British philosopher Thomas Hobbes posited that, in exchange for getting protection from violence, war, chaos, poverty and crime, the citizens are required to delegate a large degree of power to a sovereign state.
The exchange may also require the citizens to relinquish certain rights, so that the sovereign can work freely to guarantee the economic and political security of the citizens without any hindrance.
Indeed, this is clearly an authoritarian view, but Hobbes does warn the sovereign that the failure to do so is likely to cause state failure. On May 9 and 10, the extractive faction that the military was once the architect of, tried to usurp power by rationalising its actions as ‘pro-democracy’ and supported by ‘civil society’.
I believe that, even if and when electoral democracy returns, the Hobbesian route will continue to be taken, because the military is now convinced that anything else is bound to put the state on the brink of failure.
On YouTube, there are numerous videos on ‘failed states’. Those posted by certain American news outlets almost always describe Russia as a failed or failing state. Similarly, videos produced by Indian media outlets often refer to Pakistan as a failed/failing state. Then there are also some videos produced in China which ‘predict’ the collapse of the American state structure, and many American videos that speak of ‘China’s coming collapse’.
So what is a failed state?
There are various theories about what constitutes state failure, but most political scientists and economists agree on two major symptoms of this failure. The first is when the state loses its ability to establish authority over its territory and citizens, and is unable to protect the country’s sovereignty. Secondly, state failure also constitutes the state’s inability to provide basic necessities to its citizens and when a country’s governing institutions become ineffective.
However, according to foreign policy experts such as the Norwegian Morten Bøås, the application of the term ‘failed state’ is largely political in nature. A country threatened by another country whose state is facing a crisis, often labels it as a failed or failing state. This is why to the US, at the moment, Russia is a ‘failing state’ and to India, so is Pakistan.
Recently, Chinese propaganda has claimed that the US is on the brink of state failure, especially after the ‘backsliding’ that American democracy witnessed during the Trump presidency. It’s politics.
The definition of what constitutes a ‘failed’ or ‘failing’ state may be determined by geopolitical interests, but the internal role of extractive and exclusivist institutions cannot be ignored
But does this mean that there are no failed states at all? There are. Most political scientists agree that Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, Syria, DR Congo and Sudan are failed states because state authority in these countries has almost completely collapsed. Outside the confines of areas in which the state does have some authority left, ‘non-state actors’ hold sway. Poverty, political chaos and violence are rampant. There is no presence of a cohesive state here.
Even though one may agree with men such as Bøås that ‘failed state’ is a political term applied for propaganda purposes to justify external armed intervention or to impose economic sanctions, this does not mean that, apart from the more blatant examples of failed states, other countries are entirely safe from becoming another Afghanistan or Somalia.
Most states, even in developed countries, often exhibit some symptoms of state failure. But the symptoms are particularly intense in developing countries, where there is a greater chance of the state failing.
In Pakistan, when Islamist militants had occupied vast swaths of land in the early 2010s, and the state seemed ill-equipped or even reluctant to reestablish its writ in these regions, many voices inside and outside the country warned that Pakistan was heading towards state failure.
The warning was not exaggerated. However, the state too was conscious of this. It finally responded by conducting an unprecedented military operation. Between 2014 and 2017, it was able to oust the militants from areas where they had established parallel governing systems, mostly based on outright terror.
But military action alone against forces challenging the writ of the state is not enough. In the book Why Nations Fail, the economists James A. Robinson and Daron Acemoglu write that nations fail not because they lack abundant natural resources or are located in volatile regions. One of the most prominent reasons that states fail is because of ‘extractive’ political and economic institutions.
Nation states with inclusive institutions prosper because these institutions do not restrict the economic and political participation of all citizens. It does not matter what race or religion a citizen belongs to, they are encouraged to bolster the country’s, and their own, economic ambitions.
Extractive institutions go the other way. Economic and political elites accumulate power and wealth for themselves from those who can’t find a voice or place in the extractive institutions. Pakistan is a parliamentary democracy. But this democracy is largely extractive and exclusivist. Its exclusivist nature is deeper than just ‘elite capture’. This is so because the non-Sunni and non-Muslim communities too are kept at an arm’s length, because they do not adhere to the definition of Islam defined by the Constitution. Some are even outrightly repressed.
A powerful state institution in Pakistan, the military, sees itself above this nature of exclusivity. Yet, from the 1980s onwards, it was the military that further strengthened extractive and exclusivist policies and even used exclusivist forces to meet its own political ambitions. The parliament and a politicised military have both contributed in severely limiting the participation of the diverse talent required to construct robust economic and political institutions.
The continuing extractive policies have now instigated a clash within the extractive elites, both civilian and military. The extractive elites benefitted the most through exclusivist policies. On the other hand, those who are kept out because of their faith, sect, ethnicity or class have been severely marginalised and are just mere spectators of an ongoing tussle for power between the two factions of the extractive forces.
The ‘anti-military’ riots on May 9 and 10 were an example of one extractive group trying to push back the other. So, the crisis of the state that Pakistan is facing today is also about a crisis within elite groups. A new election alone won’t resolve the crisis. Pakistan’s democracy is still navigated by an exclusivist constitution, which can actually deepen the crisis.
I believe, alarmed by such a possibility, the military is contemplating a Hobbesian route. In his highly influential book The Leviathan, the 17th century British philosopher Thomas Hobbes posited that, in exchange for getting protection from violence, war, chaos, poverty and crime, the citizens are required to delegate a large degree of power to a sovereign state.
The exchange may also require the citizens to relinquish certain rights, so that the sovereign can work freely to guarantee the economic and political security of the citizens without any hindrance.
Indeed, this is clearly an authoritarian view, but Hobbes does warn the sovereign that the failure to do so is likely to cause state failure. On May 9 and 10, the extractive faction that the military was once the architect of, tried to usurp power by rationalising its actions as ‘pro-democracy’ and supported by ‘civil society’.
I believe that, even if and when electoral democracy returns, the Hobbesian route will continue to be taken, because the military is now convinced that anything else is bound to put the state on the brink of failure.
Tuesday 29 August 2023
Friday 4 August 2023
Thursday 3 August 2023
Friday 23 June 2023
Fallacies of Capitalism 14: Capitalism is Synonymous with Democracy
The "capitalism is synonymous with democracy" fallacy assumes a direct and harmonious relationship between capitalism, an economic system based on private ownership and market competition, and democracy, a political system characterised by representative government and citizen participation. However, this fallacy overlooks the potential conflicts that can arise between economic interests and democratic decision-making processes in several ways:
Power imbalances: Capitalism can lead to the concentration of economic power in the hands of a few wealthy individuals or corporations. These entities may exert disproportionate influence over political processes, such as lobbying or campaign financing, which can undermine the principles of equal representation and fair democratic decision-making. The resulting power imbalances can distort policy outcomes and compromise the interests of the broader population.
Influence of money in politics: Capitalist systems often allow for the infusion of large sums of money into political campaigns and lobbying efforts. This financial influence can create an uneven playing field, where economic elites can exert significant control over political agendas and policy outcomes. Democratic decision-making should ideally be based on the will of the people, but when economic interests heavily influence political processes, the voices and concerns of marginalised or less affluent citizens may be marginalised or ignored.
Regulatory capture: In capitalist systems, regulatory agencies are responsible for overseeing various sectors and industries to ensure fair competition and protect public interests. However, there is a risk of regulatory capture, whereby the regulated industries exert significant influence over the regulators. This can result in policies that favour the interests of powerful economic actors rather than promoting the broader welfare or democratic principles. Regulatory capture undermines the accountability and responsiveness of democratic institutions.
Inequality and political participation: Capitalism can exacerbate economic inequalities, which, in turn, can influence political participation. When wealth and income disparities are significant, certain groups may have greater resources and access to political power, while others may face barriers to participation. This can undermine the democratic ideal of equal political voice and representation, as marginalised groups or those with limited economic resources may be less able to engage meaningfully in democratic processes.
Conflicts of interest: Capitalist economies rely on profit-maximising behaviour, which may run counter to certain democratic goals. For instance, economic actors may prioritise short-term profits over long-term societal or environmental well-being. Democratic decision-making often requires considering broader societal interests, including sustainability, social justice, and the needs of future generations. Conflicts can arise when economic interests clash with democratic principles, potentially undermining the pursuit of collective well-being and the long-term interests of society.
Recognising the potential conflicts between economic interests and democratic decision-making processes is essential for maintaining a healthy balance between capitalism and democracy. It underscores the importance of robust institutions, transparency, campaign finance reform, and mechanisms to mitigate undue influence and power imbalances. By addressing these conflicts, societies can strive for a more equitable and inclusive democratic system that ensures broad representation and safeguards against the dominance of narrow economic interests.
Wednesday 21 June 2023
Sunday 7 May 2023
Why the Technology = Progress narrative must be challenged
John Naughton in The Guardian
Those who cannot remember the past,” wrote the American philosopher George Santayana in 1905, “are condemned to repeat it.” And now, 118 years later, here come two American economists with the same message, only with added salience, for they are addressing a world in which a small number of giant corporations are busy peddling a narrative that says, basically, that what is good for them is also good for the world.
That this narrative is self-serving is obvious, as is its implied message: that they should be allowed to get on with their habits of “creative destruction” (to use Joseph Schumpeter’s famous phrase) without being troubled by regulation. Accordingly, any government that flirts with the idea of reining in corporate power should remember that it would then be standing in the way of “progress”: for it is technology that drives history and anything that obstructs it is doomed to be roadkill.
One of the many useful things about this formidable (560-page) tome is its demolition of the tech narrative’s comforting equation of technology with “progress”. Of course the fact that our lives are infinitely richer and more comfortable than those of the feudal serfs we would have been in the middle ages owes much to technological advances. Even the poor in western societies enjoy much higher living standards today than three centuries ago, and live healthier, longer lives.
But a study of the past 1,000 years of human development, Acemoglu and Johnson argue, shows that “the broad-based prosperity of the past was not the result of any automatic, guaranteed gains of technological progress… Most people around the globe today are better off than our ancestors because citizens and workers in earlier industrial societies organised, challenged elite-dominated choices about technology and work conditions, and forced ways of sharing the gains from technical improvements more equitably.”
Acemoglu and Johnson begin their Cook’s tour of the past millennium with the puzzle of how dominant narratives – like that which equates technological development with progress – get established. The key takeaway is unremarkable but critical: those who have power define the narrative. That’s how banks get to be thought of as “too big to fail”, or why questioning tech power is “luddite”. But their historical survey really gets under way with an absorbing account of the evolution of agricultural technologies from the neolithic age to the medieval and early modern eras. They find that successive developments “tended to enrich and empower small elites while generating few benefits for agricultural workers: peasants lacked political and social power, and the path of technology followed the vision of a narrow elite.”
A similar moral is extracted from their reinterpretation of the Industrial Revolution. This focuses on the emergence of a newly emboldened middle class of entrepreneurs and businessmen whose vision rarely included any ideas of social inclusion and who were obsessed with the possibilities of steam-driven automation for increasing profits and reducing costs.
The shock of the second world war led to a brief interruption in the inexorable trend of continuous technological development combined with increasing social exclusion and inequality. And the postwar years saw the rise of social democratic regimes focused on Keynesian economics, welfare states and shared prosperity. But all of this changed in the 1970s with the neoliberal turn and the subsequent evolution of the democracies we have today, in which enfeebled governments pay obeisance to giant corporations – more powerful and profitable than anything since the East India Company. These create astonishing wealth for a tiny elite (not to mention lavish salaries and bonuses for their executives) while the real incomes of ordinary people have remained stagnant, precarity rules and inequality returning to pre-1914 levels.
Coincidentally, this book arrives at an opportune moment, when digital technology, currently surfing on a wave of irrational exuberance about ubiquitous AI, is booming, while the idea of shared prosperity has seemingly become a wistful pipe dream. So is there anything we might learn from the history so graphically recounted by Acemoglu and Johnson?
Answer: yes. And it’s to be found in the closing chapter, which comes up with a useful list of critical steps that democracies must take to ensure that the proceeds of the next technological wave are more generally shared among their populations. Interestingly, some of the ideas it explores have a venerable provenance, reaching back to the progressive movement that brought the robber barons of the early 20th century to heel.
There are three things that need to be done by a modern progressive movement. First, the technology-equals-progress narrative has to be challenged and exposed for what it is: a convenient myth propagated by a huge industry and its acolytes in government, the media and (occasionally) academia. The second is the need to cultivate and foster countervailing powers – which critically should include civil society organisations, activists and contemporary versions of trade unions. And finally, there is a need for progressive, technically informed policy proposals, and the fostering of thinktanks and other institutions that can supply a steady flow of ideas about how digital technology can be repurposed for human flourishing rather than exclusively for private profit.
None of this is rocket science. It can be done. And it needs to be done if liberal democracies are to survive the next wave of technological evolution and the catastrophic acceleration of inequality that it will bring. So – who knows? Maybe this time we might really learn something from history.
Those who cannot remember the past,” wrote the American philosopher George Santayana in 1905, “are condemned to repeat it.” And now, 118 years later, here come two American economists with the same message, only with added salience, for they are addressing a world in which a small number of giant corporations are busy peddling a narrative that says, basically, that what is good for them is also good for the world.
That this narrative is self-serving is obvious, as is its implied message: that they should be allowed to get on with their habits of “creative destruction” (to use Joseph Schumpeter’s famous phrase) without being troubled by regulation. Accordingly, any government that flirts with the idea of reining in corporate power should remember that it would then be standing in the way of “progress”: for it is technology that drives history and anything that obstructs it is doomed to be roadkill.
One of the many useful things about this formidable (560-page) tome is its demolition of the tech narrative’s comforting equation of technology with “progress”. Of course the fact that our lives are infinitely richer and more comfortable than those of the feudal serfs we would have been in the middle ages owes much to technological advances. Even the poor in western societies enjoy much higher living standards today than three centuries ago, and live healthier, longer lives.
But a study of the past 1,000 years of human development, Acemoglu and Johnson argue, shows that “the broad-based prosperity of the past was not the result of any automatic, guaranteed gains of technological progress… Most people around the globe today are better off than our ancestors because citizens and workers in earlier industrial societies organised, challenged elite-dominated choices about technology and work conditions, and forced ways of sharing the gains from technical improvements more equitably.”
Acemoglu and Johnson begin their Cook’s tour of the past millennium with the puzzle of how dominant narratives – like that which equates technological development with progress – get established. The key takeaway is unremarkable but critical: those who have power define the narrative. That’s how banks get to be thought of as “too big to fail”, or why questioning tech power is “luddite”. But their historical survey really gets under way with an absorbing account of the evolution of agricultural technologies from the neolithic age to the medieval and early modern eras. They find that successive developments “tended to enrich and empower small elites while generating few benefits for agricultural workers: peasants lacked political and social power, and the path of technology followed the vision of a narrow elite.”
A similar moral is extracted from their reinterpretation of the Industrial Revolution. This focuses on the emergence of a newly emboldened middle class of entrepreneurs and businessmen whose vision rarely included any ideas of social inclusion and who were obsessed with the possibilities of steam-driven automation for increasing profits and reducing costs.
The shock of the second world war led to a brief interruption in the inexorable trend of continuous technological development combined with increasing social exclusion and inequality. And the postwar years saw the rise of social democratic regimes focused on Keynesian economics, welfare states and shared prosperity. But all of this changed in the 1970s with the neoliberal turn and the subsequent evolution of the democracies we have today, in which enfeebled governments pay obeisance to giant corporations – more powerful and profitable than anything since the East India Company. These create astonishing wealth for a tiny elite (not to mention lavish salaries and bonuses for their executives) while the real incomes of ordinary people have remained stagnant, precarity rules and inequality returning to pre-1914 levels.
Coincidentally, this book arrives at an opportune moment, when digital technology, currently surfing on a wave of irrational exuberance about ubiquitous AI, is booming, while the idea of shared prosperity has seemingly become a wistful pipe dream. So is there anything we might learn from the history so graphically recounted by Acemoglu and Johnson?
Answer: yes. And it’s to be found in the closing chapter, which comes up with a useful list of critical steps that democracies must take to ensure that the proceeds of the next technological wave are more generally shared among their populations. Interestingly, some of the ideas it explores have a venerable provenance, reaching back to the progressive movement that brought the robber barons of the early 20th century to heel.
There are three things that need to be done by a modern progressive movement. First, the technology-equals-progress narrative has to be challenged and exposed for what it is: a convenient myth propagated by a huge industry and its acolytes in government, the media and (occasionally) academia. The second is the need to cultivate and foster countervailing powers – which critically should include civil society organisations, activists and contemporary versions of trade unions. And finally, there is a need for progressive, technically informed policy proposals, and the fostering of thinktanks and other institutions that can supply a steady flow of ideas about how digital technology can be repurposed for human flourishing rather than exclusively for private profit.
None of this is rocket science. It can be done. And it needs to be done if liberal democracies are to survive the next wave of technological evolution and the catastrophic acceleration of inequality that it will bring. So – who knows? Maybe this time we might really learn something from history.
Tuesday 2 May 2023
Political lobbyists are pretending to be NGOs & fooling tax dept.
Jaitirth Rao in The Print
There has been quite a bit of noise about the current dispensation being against what is referred to as “civil society”. One expects this kind of diatribe from illiberal Lefties. But such is the stranglehold of these ideas and ideologies that this slanted view has now started gaining wider traction. The principal objection seems to be that the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act 2010 is being weaponised against some NGOs. This and related issues are worth examining in some detail.
When the Congress-led UPA 2 introduced draconian provisions in the FCRA law in 2010, I had gone on record opposing it. My article on that issue is available in the public domain. I mention this because I want it to be clear that I am not the usual adversary — the “fascist” supporter of the FCRA.
The FCRA is supposed to regulate foreign contributions. It has a provision that if foreign funds are received by an NGO, then the latter is required to use it for its own charitable purposes. The funds are not to be diverted to other NGOs or charity organisations. Based on the advice of some dubious and clever chartered accountants, some NGOs, instead of making contributions to other non-profits — which they are now prohibited from doing — have come up with an “innovative” solution. They are “paying” other NGOs for “services”. These services are usually in the grey and ambiguous domain of “consultancy”. Now, clearly, the NGOs are trying to “indirectly” achieve what the law prohibits them from doing “directly”.
None of these NGOs are babes in the woods. They are acquainted with common law cases. There are hundreds of cases in the US, a country close to the purse strings of these NGOs, saying that it is impermissible to do indirectly what is not permitted directly. How can it be that if the Indian State invokes a common law principle so clearly enunciated in the US, it suddenly becomes a fascist enemy of decent NGOs? As it turns out, virtually all the regulatory action against foreign-funded NGOs has been for this reason.
Don’t tread where MNCs failed
As someone who has dealt with tax authorities in nine different countries over the last 49 years, let me assure the clever chartered accountants advising these NGOs that corporations and banks have been experimenting with these devices and playing with these loopholes for decades and have rarely, if ever, succeeded. The amateurish attempts by these NGOs to fool the tax department are going to get them nowhere. Where large multinational corporations (MNCs) have failed, NGOs should not tread.
Several ill-advised NGOs have gone one step further. They have tried to pretend that contributions received from their foreign donors have not been donations but payments for the elusive consultancy services rendered by their Indian arms for their foreign payments. Such obviously foolish attempts are bound to get them into trouble. There is no point in complaining after the fact.
Foreign-funded NGOs are welcome in our country if they wish to perform “charitable” acts like helping the visually challenged, the terminally ill, or the differently abled. As a country, we have been reasonably kind in supporting causes like leprosy alleviation or livelihood creation, even if the ultimate aim behind these good deeds has been religious proselytisation. In this regard, we have gone against the dictums of MK Gandhi who vociferously opposed “do-good” missionaries. But when foreign-funded NGOs start getting involved in political lobbying in India, we have a problem.
Some of us are old enough to remember that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) subsidiary, the NGO known as the Congress for Cultural Freedom, funded Indian magazines like Quest in the ’50s and ’60s. Some of us have also read the testimony of Soviet Union archivist Vasili Mitrokhin who regularly made sure that more copies of Russian translations of Hindi poets were printed and “sold” than their Hindi originals. This too happened in the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s. Again, some of us remember that the head of the Ford Foundation in Delhi could get on to Jawaharlal Nehru’s calendar easily and that some of our tragicomic policy initiatives came from this august institution. Foreign-funded NGOs trying to tell us what taxation policies we should follow are really pushing their luck. And that is exactly what several of them have done before and are doing right now. Fortunately, one of them is now under a regulatory scanner. The Indian State, as is usually the case, has been dilatory. But better late than never.
The anti-State menace
Foreign-funded NGOs and foreign media have been against the Indian State and any strong dispensation for more than 70 years now. They prefer pusillanimous clientelist governments in India. They pilloried Panditji for his soft stance with the Soviets during the 1956 Hungarian revolution. They are now upset that we are not as anti-Russia as they would like. They have also made a devil’s bargain with blatantly Islamist organisations such as the US-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).
This is why they prefer to refer to Indian Muslim gangsters as politicians. They talk of trigger-happy police officers in India. There are, of course, no such officers in the US. They prefer to characterise the Citizenship (Amendment) Act 2019 as obnoxious and anti-Muslim. I beg to differ. The Act is in favour of persecuted religious minorities in India’s neighbouring countries. These NGOs and the media do not bleed for Sikh shopkeepers, Hindu girls, and Parsis in our neighbourhood. They support the quixotic “farmers’” agitation in India when everybody knows that it was a “middle-man” affair. And they are silent about Canada’s blatant persecution of its truckers.
Let us now revert to our own domestic uncivil society. Under the previous dispensation, a bunch of impractical Lefties got together. They had never run factories or created jobs but managed to ingratiate themselves with the powers that were and became members of the pompous National Advisory Council (NAC). Their “advice” usually resulted in the active sabotage of the intelligent policies that Manmohan Singh was trying to implement. One feels sorry for Singh, who had to constantly look over his shoulders to avoid being bitten by this overweening Dracula. The combined NGO menace got so bad that the hapless former PM, in an interview to Science journal, blamed American NGOs for sabotaging the India-US nuclear deal, which had the support of the elected governments of both countries.
The simple fact is that the so-called civil society NGOs, who had support from the NAC and who could defy Singh quite easily, are now defanged and stand without protection. All that they can do is write strong pieces in the English press in India and appeal to their patrons in foreign papers to give them some oxygen. There is an old English saying: “They say, let them say…”
Call them by their right name
It is interesting to note that for the illiberal Left, references to “civil society” almost invariably mean references to NGOs, many with explicit political agendas. Are Sangeetha Sabhas, Bhajan Mandalis, regional associations (like Kannada Sangha in Mumbai, Maratha Mandali in Chennai, Odiya Sahitya Sabha in Bengaluru, Durga Puja Association in Pune), and traditional charities (like the Red Cross, Saint Judes, National Association for the Blind) not part of civil society? If any of them run afoul of tax authorities, will there be any media coverage? The French traveller Alexis de Tocqueville makes reference to voluntary organisations as being central to the American democratic experience. To this day, more the three-quarters of the fire brigades in American small towns and suburbs are manned by volunteers. Churches and synagogues organise charitable activities. Rotary, Lions, and Giants clubs are part of civil society as also oddly enough is the Masonic Lodge.
All of these institutions derived their funding from members of their immediate physical communities. This is the civil society that de Tocqueville praised. He would be shocked if told that quasi-political lobbying groups who obtain money from foreign countries in order to influence American politics were to be referred to as members of the voluntary, citizen-supported civil society, which he held up as exemplars of grassroots democracy.
We need to get our vocabulary right and refer to political lobbyists by their correct name. Our ancients told us that getting the right “nama-rupa” or “word and form” will automatically make our arguments solid. When we revert to that tradition, it will be clear that genuine members of civil society are not complaining. Political lobbyists are indulging in grievance-mongering, which I hope and pray we quietly ignore.
Thursday 27 April 2023
Saturday 15 April 2023
Thursday 13 April 2023
Wednesday 29 March 2023
Democracy in Pakistan: Of the elite, for the elite, by the elite
Civilians and the military have taken turns to rule Pakistan, but the system, arguably, has remained the same, ‘unscathed’ by democracy writes Touqir Hussain in The Dawn
One of the most perplexing debates around is on the subject of democracy, where it is easy to confuse concept with practice, form with substance and illusion with reality.
There is another problem. Countries at varying stages of democratic evolution are all called a democracy, which adds to the confusion, as we, in our mind, expect all these models to be equally responsive in meeting the needs of society. That makes us tolerate and endure a system that is not quite democratic and may never become so.
In Pakistan, democracy remains both illusive and elusive. What we have is something that looks like democracy, but does not work like one. Democracy is a dynamic, not static, process but Pakistan’s “democracy” is stuck.
If any “good” has come out of the current crisis, it is hopefully the realisation that the conventional wisdom that Pakistan’s problems are due to a lack of civilian supremacy, or because the “democratic system” has faced repeated interruptions by the military rule, or that elected governments have not been allowed to complete their full term may not be quite true.
Has the current crisis — and the way politicians’ brazen preoccupation with the struggle for power is ripping the country apart while it burns — left any doubt that the “democracy” we have has been part of the problem, not the solution? In fact, it is this very “democracy” that has provided legitimacy to bad governance, produced weak governments opposed to reforms for fear of losing elections, and has kept recycling. Above all, it has lacked substance.
Form and substance
True democracy has both form and substance. The form manifests itself in electoral democracy, sustained by a process of free and fair elections, and peaceful and orderly change of governments. But the form must embody good governance to empower people, and it can do so only by resting on free and representative institutions, constitutional liberalism or any other value-based system, strong rule of law, and a just and equitable social order. That is the substance. Without substance, democracy remains hollow. It has no soul.
The intelligentsia in Pakistan, especially the liberal/secularist segment, is most passionate about the Western liberal model focusing on freedom of choice, free speech, civil liberties, independent judiciary, and of course elections.
Much of this class lives emotionally disconnected from the rest of the population and their harsh challenges of survival and means to cope with them. It feels that all you need is elections, free media, independent judiciary, and the Constitution.
Voila! You have democracy — and it will take care of the nation’s problems, including those of the poor.
Democracy and progress
The secular/liberal class as a whole, and Western-oriented sections of it in particular, are right in seeing a causal connection between democracy and progress in advanced industrialised countries. They are, therefore, justified in emulating a similar democratic political system and having high expectations from it.
Where they are at fault is that they do not grasp the full picture. Most of them forget that democracy, which ostensibly brought progress in the West, was more than a political system. It was also a society’s organising idea, whose substance was equality of opportunity, fairness, rule of law, accountability, safeguarding of basic human rights and freedoms, gender equality and protection of minorities.
In sum, democracy’s core idea was humanism. And the whole objective of giving people the right to choose who will govern them on their behalf was to ensure the implementation of this very ideal.
Otherwise, what is the purpose of self governance? Given the chance to self govern, would people like to bring themselves to grief with their own policies? Certainly this was not the intent.
Unless a nation shows this fundamental understanding of democracy and takes steps to put itself on the road to democracy, it will never get there. It will keep moving in circles or going backwards.
The poor cannot ‘feed’ on democracy
For much of the liberal class in Pakistan, especially its more affluent stratum, the form is the substance. It looks at democracy as simply black and white — there can be no gradation.
Pakistan’s “democracy” is advanced enough to satisfy the liberals’ love of liberty and enjoyment of certain human freedoms, but regressed enough to be exploited by the elite for their purposes at the expense of the people.
In her book, ‘Thieves of State’, Sarah Chayes focuses on corruption in Afghanistan. Sarah, who spent a decade in Kandahar, concludes that the concerns of most people did not have much to do with democracy. Pakistan is, of course, no Afghanistan but the book has a message that applies here as well.
Democracy is no doubt the best form of government but go and ask the masses in societies that are grappling with serious state and nation-building challenges what is most important in their lives. What is important for them, they will tell you, is social and economic justice, human security and dignity and the hope for a better future. And they will like any government that provides this kind of life.
A USAID official once asked me what the people of Pakistan want. Development or democracy? Prompt came my reply — if democracy brings development, they want democracy; if it does not, they want development.
Basically, you need a democracy that satisfies the human aspirations for freedom as well as improves the quality of life for citizens at large.
Pakistan’s ‘democracy’ a political tool for power
In Pakistan’s case, “democracy” is just a political tool for the dominant social groups to maintain their wealth and status. The other instrument is military rule.
But the beneficiaries are roughly the same in both models — the whole panoply of power comprising the top tier of politicians, bureaucrats, the military and judiciary, “business folk and the landed”, who among them monopolise the country’s economic resources.
The civil and military leaderships may compete for power, but eventually cooperate to maintain the status quo. Both use each other — the military using the failure of the politicians as a pretext to come to power or to dominate it, and politicians using the alibi of military interruption or dominance for their own failure. They are allies as well as rivals.
In Why Nations Fail, Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson trace the evolution of political and economic institutions around the globe and argue that nations are not destined to succeed or fail due to geography or culture, but because of the emergence of extractive or inclusive institutions within them.
They write:
“Extractive political institutions concentrate power in the hands of a narrow elite and place few constraints on the exercise of this power. Economic institutions are then often structured by this elite to extract resources from the rest of the society. Extractive economic institutions thus naturally accompany extractive political institutions. In fact, they must inherently depend on extractive political institutions for their survival … political institutions enable elites controlling political power to choose economic institutions with few constraints of opposing forces. They also enable the elites to structure future political institutions and their evolution.”
In light of their thesis, we can see how powerful groups or institutions have long dominated Pakistan’s body politic by taking advantage of its security issues, place of religion in its national makeup and its feudal social structure. The political system that emerges from this body politic is designed to empower only the powerful and privileged and does little to foster the rule of law.
Musical chairs
Civilians and the military have taken turns to rule Pakistan, but the system, arguably, has remained the same, ‘unscathed’ by democracy. There was no fear of accountability, and no obstacle to electability. They did not need the people, so they did very little for them. And neither of them faced the full wrath of the public as each deflected the blame on to the other.
When the cost of maintaining a “democracy” led by civilians would become unbearable, we would tolerate the army’s intervention to help us get rid of them. But instead of returning to the barracks, the military would stay on. Then we’d long for democracy, which would let us down yet again. The fact is that no institution is solely responsible for democracy’s misfortunes in Pakistan. They all provided opportunity to each other to come to power and supported the system.
In the civilian edition that now comprises the ruling coalition, politicians may be divided into political parties but are united by the elites. Henceforth, whichever party comes to power when the ongoing bloody struggle for power is over, it will likely be no different from others in being invested in the system. It may disrupt the system, but will not threaten it.
Liberty and order
Even if Pakistan had a fully functional Western liberal democracy, it was not going to solve the country’s fundamental challenges. The fact is the Western liberal democratic model has become too competitive. In their book, ‘Intelligent Governance for the 21st Century’, Nicolas Berggruen and Nathan Gardels challenge the view that the liberal democratic model is intrinsic to good governance. Examining this in relation to widely varying political and cultural contexts, especially the Chinese system, the authors advocate a mix of order and liberty.
When asked once on the Charlie Rose Show what he thought of Western democracy, Lee Kuan Yew — the inaugural prime minister of Singapore — replied that the system had become so competitive and combative that in order to come to power, the opposition spent all its time planning to undermine the incumbent government by misrepresenting or distorting issues and thus misleading the public. “It would be a sad day when this kind of democracy comes to Singapore,” he said.
In his classic, The Future of Freedom, Fareed Zakaria states that Singapore follows its own brand of liberal constitutionalism, where there are limits on political freedoms — and it happens to be one of the most self-content countries in the world.
It boggles one’s mind that we in Pakistan tolerate the civil-military led political and governance structure, which is rigged in favour of the elite, while using the full freedom of a democratic system to play the game of politics at people’s expense. We put up with it as if this behaviour is an acceptable price to be a “democracy”, which incidentally does not quite happen to be a democracy. Indeed, there are institutions that one finds in a democratic system, but they lack autonomy and integrity. They have failed in the moral strength to serve the people, but not in the capacity to sustain the system.
You can see how millions of good Pakistanis are glued to TV or their phones every day following the comings and goings of politicians as if they were going to solve the country’s problems. We forget that their fights are about themselves, among themselves.
Democratisation is a revolutionary struggle
You cannot change what you do not know. The creation of a true democracy is a revolutionary struggle. And it must begin with the realisation that the “democracy” we have will not solve our problems regardless of who is in power. We cannot also bank on this “democracy” to become democracy by itself.
Countries change not because they have become democratic. They become democratic because they have changed. In many ways, democratisation is a painstaking struggle, indistinguishable from state and nation-building. Progressive movements and the civil rights campaign in America, political and social movements in Europe and the Meiji Restoration in Japan are a few such instances.
How will this change occur in Pakistan?
That is the subject of a much wider and complex debate. Briefly, one can say the following: Pakistan has enormous strengths — remarkable resilience, faith-based optimism, a sense of exceptionalism, a vibrant media and a promising civil society.
There is enormous talent available within the country — academics, journalists, authors (many of them internationally acclaimed), political activists, retired public servants — both civil and military — who all have shown extraordinary knowledge and commitment to Pakistan. They can inspire and mobilise the young generation yearning for true change that could provide stimulus and critical mass for social movements.
That will be the purpose of social movements — to remove the obstacles to a genuine democracy in Pakistan. These include a misplaced focus on faith that has fostered extremism and hindered openness and tolerance, and a feudal dominance that has inhibited education, gender equality, openness to modern ideas and a credible political process.
Not to mention the military’s pre-eminence that has led to the dominance of security over development. The latter has skewed national priorities and resource allocation. All this is hardly a life-supporting environment for democracy.
Can Pakistan truly become democratic? Yes, it can. Whether it will; remains to be seen.
Sunday 26 March 2023
"Democracy is bad for India"
Former Justice Markandey Katju
Opposition parties in India have joined hands and are crying themselves hoarse in condemning Rahul Gandhi’s conviction and expulsion from Parliament as a huge assault on democracy. Many of the ‘liberal’ mediapersons and so called ‘intellectuals’ in India have also joined the chorus condemning the ‘murder’ of Indian democracy.
One sees hardly any other news in the Indian media nowadays.
However, these people proceed on the assumption that democracy is a good thing in India, which needs to be protected. But is this assumption correct ?
I submit that democracy, like freedom, may in some countries and in some circumstances be a good thing, but in others may be a bad thing, and one should not make a fetish or a holy cow out of it.
I submit that in India democracy is a bad thing, which has kept us backward, and therefore poor. Let me explain.
Everyone who has even a little knowledge of Indian realities knows that in India democracy runs largely on the basis of caste and communal vote banks. Casteism and communalism are feudal forces which have to be destroyed if India is to progress, but parliamentary democracy further entrenches them. How then can India progress with democracy ?
Most of our people have backward mindsets, full of casteism, communalism, and superstitions. Democracy means rule of the majority, but the majority of Indians have feudal mindsets. How can rule by them or their representatives take the country forward ? How can building a Ram temple in Ayodhya or cow protection solve India’s massive problems of poverty, unemployment, hunger, price rise, lack of healthcare etc ?
In my opinion to move forward we have to have an enlightened dictatorship led by modern minded leaders, like Mustafa Kemal of Turkey in the 1920s, or the leaders who came to power in Japan after the Meiji Restoration of 1868, and rapidly industrialised the country.
The Opposition parties in India, even if they unite or form an alliance in next year’s parliamentary elections, have no vision about how to take the country forward. In fact they have nothing in common except the desire to oust the BJP. Even if they win the elections and come to power, the first thing they will do is to scramble for lucrative portfolios.
Thereafter, too, they will keep jostling and infighting, like the constituents of the Janta Party which came to power in 1977, and eventually broke up over internal infighting in 1979.
And what is there in Rahul Gandhi, apart from being a member of the self-proclaimed India’s ‘royal family’? Has he any ideas how to solve India’s massive problems? He has none. All he knows is how to do stunts like the Bharat Jodo Yatra.
Why then should one have any sympathy for him?
Opposition parties in India have joined hands and are crying themselves hoarse in condemning Rahul Gandhi’s conviction and expulsion from Parliament as a huge assault on democracy. Many of the ‘liberal’ mediapersons and so called ‘intellectuals’ in India have also joined the chorus condemning the ‘murder’ of Indian democracy.
One sees hardly any other news in the Indian media nowadays.
However, these people proceed on the assumption that democracy is a good thing in India, which needs to be protected. But is this assumption correct ?
I submit that democracy, like freedom, may in some countries and in some circumstances be a good thing, but in others may be a bad thing, and one should not make a fetish or a holy cow out of it.
I submit that in India democracy is a bad thing, which has kept us backward, and therefore poor. Let me explain.
Everyone who has even a little knowledge of Indian realities knows that in India democracy runs largely on the basis of caste and communal vote banks. Casteism and communalism are feudal forces which have to be destroyed if India is to progress, but parliamentary democracy further entrenches them. How then can India progress with democracy ?
Most of our people have backward mindsets, full of casteism, communalism, and superstitions. Democracy means rule of the majority, but the majority of Indians have feudal mindsets. How can rule by them or their representatives take the country forward ? How can building a Ram temple in Ayodhya or cow protection solve India’s massive problems of poverty, unemployment, hunger, price rise, lack of healthcare etc ?
In my opinion to move forward we have to have an enlightened dictatorship led by modern minded leaders, like Mustafa Kemal of Turkey in the 1920s, or the leaders who came to power in Japan after the Meiji Restoration of 1868, and rapidly industrialised the country.
The Opposition parties in India, even if they unite or form an alliance in next year’s parliamentary elections, have no vision about how to take the country forward. In fact they have nothing in common except the desire to oust the BJP. Even if they win the elections and come to power, the first thing they will do is to scramble for lucrative portfolios.
Thereafter, too, they will keep jostling and infighting, like the constituents of the Janta Party which came to power in 1977, and eventually broke up over internal infighting in 1979.
And what is there in Rahul Gandhi, apart from being a member of the self-proclaimed India’s ‘royal family’? Has he any ideas how to solve India’s massive problems? He has none. All he knows is how to do stunts like the Bharat Jodo Yatra.
Why then should one have any sympathy for him?
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