Civilization: The Institutional reconfiguration that India awaits

I have a fundamental expectation from any political dispensation and leadership irrespective of their affiliations.

For various reasons - which in itself requires another blogpost - India has been led in a certain path in the last 70 years. The single-most limitation of this journey - remarkable in its own way - is it has not leveraged on the traditional strengths of India. Modernization is a continuous journey of life - every generation has leads a life that is in some ways different from the previous. Yet the strength of India has been to maintain a continuity in terms of principles even in this change that has ensured dynamism as well as an experiential depth. The British cut this continuity and the post-independent India has more or less continued the colonial legacy replacing only the rhetoric and face. The tragedy that this has been is missed out in most of our conversations. We need to move India to an altogether different track where we re-establish this continuity, leverage our own traditional strengths better yet modernize. What then are those opportunities? Let us examine these opportunities in the spheres of economics, politics, social organization, science and technology, philosophy and culture in general. Let me begin with what can be achieved on the socio-economical front.

The politics and economics of the entire world is today held captive to two paradigms - Capitalism and Leftism. Its an either or situation. We have had a variety of capitalisms and Leftisms such as Communism, Socialism et. al. Even when we define a Centre for these extremes that is all the time defined in terms of these two. You are never in the Centre - you are either Left of Centre or Right of Centre. The Centre is an invisible imaginary that is never defined. Capitalism believes in politics not controlling both earnings and expenditures of individuals and entities. It is expected that freedom and opportunities will eventually create a balanced society. The lack of balance will be compensated through voluntary charity. Communism on the contrary micromanages both earnings and expenditures through a variety of taxes, constrains, policies to ensure a balanced society at a great cost of personal freedom.

Yet the last century and more is a testimony to the disasters that these philosophies have created. The communist countries have ended up being dictatorial, resulted in reduced economical stability and great human tragedies in terms of loss of life and freedom. People have always tried to migrate away from such countries. The Capitalistic countries though have thrived for a certain duration but all of a sudden create economical slumps that seem to be man-made. Plutocracy and inequality are of monumental proportions. Violence has been exported to sustain capitalism. Charity has not ensured a balance in the society.

Much has been made on India being a spiritual leader of the world, but it is in the  economical and related political/social spheres hat India can be a leading light to the world. Traditionally, India's economics can be broadly summarized as earnings uncontrolled for people/entities but expenditure shaped. This clearly is a third economical paradigm that is drastically different from the capitalism and communism. It is important to note that the expenditures are shaped and not controlled. It is not achieved through taxes - taxes have always been less in the pre-British India. But the rich of India never lived in isolation as happens in the modern world. The society was organized into communities and the rich were active within those communities. The communities evolved expenditure and investment practices that ensured a balance and support to every aspect of life and people. That is reflected in the expenditure rules and practices of the Tata Business Empire designed and embedded into the Tata Group business rules by Jamsetji Tata. In Karnataka, the rich traditionally made immense community contributions during the reign of Mysore Wodeyars that has created a kind of balance that is not easily visible in the rest of the country. The key point is the rich did not see this as a charity. They saw it as a meaningful activity, their duty and as something that they saw as an investment for themselves as  community members. They have been great patrons of all aspects of life in the past. It is for this reason that the rich were not perceived as oppressors in India until the British came onto the scene and through their policies created a definite wedge between the two. The British administrators themselves have recorded this in a great deal as documented by Dharampal in his volumes.

In this economical vision all of our  immediate economical concerns are naturally accommodated. What needs to be achieved is an integration of the plutocracy into the various communities of India and a slow evolution of expenditure practices that rich spend only in a way the entire communities benefit. This is not a utopia, India has done it before when it was Bharat and we just need to learn from our past. Last 60+ years has been a disaster from this point. Deep suspicions have been sown in the mind of the society at large about the rich. The fabric that bound them has been cut unwittingly worsening an already bad situation created by the British. This partly is a contribution of  Nehruvian thought. Gandhiji, Patel, Rajaji - none of them believed in this kind of a wedge. Chief Ministers of Congress party in Karnataka too have abandoned this Nehruvian line of thought - hence the balance in states like Karnataka. However, for this integration to happen the fabric of India that has been weakened - not destroyed yet - has to be nurtured and restored with great care over the next years. This definitely needs visionary thinking and courage to break away from the global normal. This if done tactically - as was done by a Chief Minister here and there - cannot deliver what we require at a national level. It requires a concerted policy, programs and cultural drives and designed in a strategic matter. This cannot be done in a typical modern program/project implementation rather in a more organic, seed-sowing manner. This will be theoretically revolutionary from the global stand-point. This means integrating the country at a different level and creating an altogether new India.

However, the institutional setup of India - political, economical, social and cultural - is not geared up towards this, thanks to a Nehruvian centralist vision. The Panchayat Raj is an after thought as can be clearly seen in the Constitutional Assembly debates and the developments thereafter. The administrative setup of India considers the traditional India as needy of a forced transformation, not something whose strengths can be leveraged to build a modern India. 

I expect every new political dispensation to effect this shift in the institutional configuration of India.