India – US relations: A handshake of convenience or shared ideology of Democracy?

Date: Tuesday, May 16, 2006. Place: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington DC. Some of the brightest and sharpest brains of United States, on matters of U.S. Foreign Policy towards South Asia, discussed and debated on a topic “U.S. – India Relations: The Global Partnership”.

The focus of the talk, quite aptly, was the historic civil nuclear deal which India and United States were trying to put together at the moment. A lot has happened since and most of us are aware of the current status on it. But there was another underlying theme which fascinated me to the core.

Of the few paradigms which both opponents and supporters of the deal agreed to was that “The growth of India is in ‘strategic’ interest to United States”. The top-of-the-list reason cited for it was the democratic values that both these nations shared (and not countering China or gathering support against Iran). Any skeptic can well argue that this is part of propaganda which US tries to put forward with its to be allies. A critical analysis though would suggest otherwise.

Outside the boundaries of North America, Western Europe and a handful of other states, democracy has found stiff resistance to be accepted as a way to govern the matters of the state. Democracy, though designed to empower the common mass, requires a huge price to be paid in multiple dimensions including efficiency losses and delayed responses to critical issues. A vast majority of human society has not accepted this cost and have tried other ways of governance either openly or disguising it under the name of democracy. India seems to borne that cost. The closest example to which we can compare ourselves to is China. The comparison between the average Chinese and Indian can give some insight into the cost (and benefits too!!!) of embracing democracy.

Critics can and would point out that India though may apparently practice democracy, in reality is still undemocratic due to illiteracy, corruption and other serious ways. That indeed is a serious argument and everybody is aware of that. But as a lot of people put it, India is the biggest experiment in the history of humanity to govern with principles of democracy. It is an experiment, with its multiple current shortcomings, that has not yet failed the test of democracy. It would really hard to find a person, who has respectable knowledge of world’s current affairs and history to say otherwise.

So given the world affairs today and India’s record of democracy, it is not so hard to see why United States would have a ‘strategic’ interest in the growth of India. United States, staunch believer in democracy, is a declining power in the world and needs new strategic partner who share and practice similar political ideology. But the million dollar question is – Would Indians view pursuing and strengthening democracy as strategic and part of on their ‘India Poised’ dream or leave it to its current state with apathy and dismissal?

Paying for Corruption

70 out of 163!!! Does this sound a good rank, especially when it measures the level of corruption in different countries? Maybe not. But that is what the report card of India says, released by Transparency International (TI) in its 2006 Corruption Perceptions Index. India shares this rank with comparable economies - China and Brazil. But there is striking comment in the report. Although still trapped in corruption, it gives India credit to be one of the countries in which there is a significant improvement in corruption index. This progress is intriguing. The same organization had published report exclusively on corruption in India in 2005. Its findings say that corruption is actually increasing in India. Nothing drastic has happened in these 2 years to reverse the trend. It seems puzzling.

On digging some deeper on this issue, there seems to be an explanation. It is impossible to measure corruption accurately. All studies on corruption use some proxies to measure it. The Corruption Perceptions Index uses the opinion of various experts, international organizations, and business executives in India and around the world. The study on India, named "India Corruption Study 2005 to Improve Governance", focused on the "common man" and his perception and experience about the level of corruption in eleven key public services including Police, Judiciary and Income Tax department. This difference in methodology is the key to understand these results.

If we assume that above results as fair, the verdict is - The country is moving in the right direction but the common man is worse off. But how exactly the common man gets affected more? And how can we improve the situation? There are many reasons already known to most of us. Here, I would focus on one of them. The report mentions "One-third of citizens think that both the officials concerned and the users of these eleven services know how much to be paid as 'extra' to get a job done or attended to." Most of us would agree the existence of this behavior. But why exactly do the officials ask for this 'extra amount'? Many of us would be amused with this kind of stupid question, but it is a serious area of research and requires deeper understanding.

Various academic scholars studying the problem of corruption link it to the level of salaries of public officials. One of them, Klaus Abbink of Nottingham University, outlines the various linkages that such scholars pursue. Firstly, the higher the relative salaries in the public sector, the more an official loses if he is caught at corrupt activities. Officials getting caught are usually expelled from the public service and forced to work in the private sector. Secondly, low salaries in the public service attract only incompetent or even dishonest applicants, which results in an inefficient and non-transparent corrupt administration. And lastly, when government positions are paid worse than comparable to other jobs, the moral costs of corruption are reduced. Poorly paid public officials might find it less reprehensible to accept bribes than officials receiving a comparatively fair salary.

All of the above sound both intuitive and plausible. There have been some empirical studies to prove the above hypotheses. The evidence from such studies is mixed and point to the difficulty in measuring such linkages. But the word 'exact' in the TI report lends some credibility to the above arguments. Indian public officials arguably have lower relative wages compared to their counterparts in other parts of the world. There is also real and apparent understanding that public officials have not benefited from the wave of globalization. The officials seem to be extracting the income differentials from the common man.

How do we solve the above problem? One of the Government's proposals is Sixth Pay Commission. It is argued to be a drain on the exchequer. If we believe the above analysis to be correct, an improvement in the salaries could have tremendous gains. One, and most important, would be to regain the confidence of public in such institutions like Police, Judiciary and Taxation. It would go a long way in having a vibrant democracy. On monetary aspects, if officials can be motivated through salaries to capture even a miniscule fraction of black market economy of India, the exchequer would be brimming with money. The only requirement is a small step (and not total revamp which would require huge political will and ultimately be a failure) towards linking performance and accountability with salary hikes.

Enforced Democracy - Cause for Non-State Political Actors

Not a very interesting thing to do on a Saturday night, but nevertheless I was listening to a recorded panel discussion at SIPA on "Israel and Hezbollah: Understanding the Conflict through the Prism of Social Science Research" (if it is not on the news panel, then you have missed it). It was an intelligent discussion by distinguished scholars to explain the recent clash between the above two actors by standard International Relations theories. I would not delve more into the same but would like to highlight one point made by Dean Lisa Anderson to focus on a related problem but in a different setting.

Dean Anderson basically argued that the conflict portrays a situation in which a non state actor clashes with a state not to establish a separatist state but to establish itself as a political entity. This can be analysed both a move against the "state" centrism of international relations as well as a view of the middle east as a region different from western way of doing things.

This may also explain that while the conflict in Serbia on Kosovo is whether to form a separatist state as state is a symbol of having political power, other regions may not be the same. The concept of State is essentially euro/west centric. Similar emphasis on democratic way of doing things in the west may not be the best way of doing things in other regions.

Lets consider the region close to home. First situation that may come to mind is of Kashmir. It can be argued that the demand of Kashmiris for a separatist state maybe an influence of western thinking but in reality, they may want something completely different. But I here I want to focus on the deduction on democracy.

Anyone who has seen the interaction between the state officials (public servants) and rural population (public) in India can testify that the usual lines by a citizen is "Saheb, humara kaam kab tak ho jaayega?" (Respected sir, when would our work be done?). This depicts that a common citizen does not demand but hopes for a solution by the state machinery, which is NOT democracy. Some can argue that this is sheer lack of education. I would like to counter argue that education has not helped Indian citizens to adopt democracy. The urban educated population takes any good action by the officials as surprise and treats any bad as "the usual". Unless there is an en mass change in the attitude of taking state as malfunctioning rather than evil and taking subsequent responsibility to reward or punish the state through elections and various other means, democracy is doomed to produce suboptimal results.

A small example to justify the analysis above and the title of this post. The apparent apathy of the government of Andhra Pradesh towards the need of the population produced reaction is two extreme forms. On one hand, there were suicides by farmers distressed by financial burden. All the political theory on democratic elections would suggest that they were a strong interest group with a huge voting power and by ignoring their interests the party in power cannot be re-elected. This apparently did happen, but nevertheless their interests were ignored. Second, is the rise of separatist group to form a separate state. It was apparently with their support that representative were selected to the national legislative assembly. The question arises if they were such a big political force, why again in democratic setting, their interests were not appeased earlier? Why did the dissatisfaction grew so much that they started to demand a separatist state? Why did there was a rise of a non-state political actor where democracy at the state level should have taken care of the interests of the representative population?

The million dollar questions are - If democracy is producing suboptimal results, what can be optimal? And even if we find that solution, is removing the name "democracy" from our charter advisable as any non-democratic label invites trouble? Also, if we believe democracy is not the best, who would our best friends be?

Public Convenience in the hands of Public

I am a total fan of those swanky, ubiquitous red brick compounds “just around the corner” in Delhi. It has just changed the way you move in the city and you can see their utility for people from all walks of life. But not even for a moment a thought came across my mind that government should get involved in this project.
Proper sanitation facilities are one of the basic conditions for healthy living and should not be neglected. But this service, like any other social or business service, requires technical expertise, proper planning, constant monitoring and upgrading. Sulabh has got that expertise and technology to run the toilets at sustainable levels. It has even consulting services for those who want to provide similar services.
We believe that privatization would help because government should not be in the business of managing business. Its role should be to facilitate better human living at various levels – economic, social and political. Government may be required when there is no market or player to provide a particular service. An example of it is building roads. That sanitation services can be provided at sustainable level has been proved by Sulabh. The role of government should be to facilitate their proliferation and encourage new players who can take up this responsibility. They should simultaneously try to promote health and hygiene education.
And this is exactly what they seem to be doing. I am not sure how many people are aware of this, but there has been always a focus on sanitation by the government. Central Rural Sanitation Programme (CRSP) was launched in 1986 to improve the coverage of rural sanitation facilities. CRSP was re-structured in 1999 and a demand responsive community led Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC) was introduced. “(It) …emphasizes more on Information, Education and Communication (IEC), Human Resource Development, Capacity Development activities to increase awareness among the rural people and generation of demand for sanitary facilities. This will also enhance people’s capacity to choose appropriate options through alternate delivery mechanisms as per their economic condition…” I quoted this from New TSC Guideline posted on the Rural Development Ministry to give a flavor of government understanding of the problem.
India is a huge country and there are multitudes of challenges. Sometimes it so happens that the problems and achievements get lost under the debris of political rhetoric. It is extremely important to raise the questions and a good question to ask (thanks to RTI) now is to how it is faring and thereby judge the effectiveness of TSC’s success.