India and the Neo-anarchist state

A Perfect political system they say is an oxymoron. Each system brings its own positives and negatives so how does a country adopt a system. Surely such a serious thing cannot be enforced on any country and ideally a nation has to choose a system that suits its intrinsic genius, a system which allows its people to bring out their best and make it a progressive country. Which begs the question whether we in India have chosen the correct political system. And given the evidence before us we cannot say a resounding 'Yes'.Even after 60 years of Independence a third of our population is below the poverty line, communalism is rampant and the rich-poor divide is widening.

The roots of our current political system lies in the erstwhile British raj whose sole agenda was to deplete the country of its resources. This necessitated a system where power was centralised ( in British hands of course) and devolution of power was despised. Whenever the Indians protested for greater power the British threw in a few rudimentary 'power-crumbs' and continued to eat the bigger pie. This system worked wonders - for the British that is - for nearly two centuries. This hardly changed after independence with the masters replaced from the British to fellow Indians. So long as the leaders were benevolent and competent this worked fine but once their integrity faltered then the political system got infected with the cancer of corruption. Since power was centralized it pumped the malaise of corruption to each and every corner of the Indian society.Things have come to such a pass that the people have turned cynical instead of becoming angry.

Is there a way out of this quagmire? There must be. As a possible solution let me draw attention to an old idea an ideology in fact which was famous during the 19th century. This was called Anarchism. This in fact was a left-wing ideology espoused by the liberals in Europe at that time. In a nut shell it called for elimination of all compulsory government i.e. the state and stressed on self-organization. Its core idea being the assumption that humans by nature were good and were perfectly capable of governing themselves and thus a formal government was not needed. However this ideology failed because it was impractical because society is not like nature to be left on its own , it has to be regulated and managed either by individuals or by groups of them. However we in India can take some good points espoused by it and use it to our benefit, lets call this neo-anarchism. These being limiting the scope of the government and devolving power to self-organized local bodies.

Lets look at the first one. The current government with its almost complete control over the country has led to vote-bank politics, populism and political one-upmanship whereby the politicians put themselves above the country. Add to it that most of our politicians are not exactly highly educated or of high integrity it results in chaos. Also with so much heierarchy the citizen does not know who is responsible for his needs, is it the corporator, the MLA, the MP,he's confused. Its almost like everybody is responsible for nobody and each of them passes the buck to the other when any question is raised. All these factors call for limiting the governments powers and devolving it where it is used efficiently.

Limiting the scope of the government is nothing new , it has been tried successfully in the field of Indian business. Until 1991 Indian business was shackled due to the licence - permit raj which as the name suggests was centralized power where the govt of the day gives you a license to produce goods. Over the years this lead to rampant corruption. But post-1991 key business areas like IT,Telecom etc were thrown open to privet enterprise and the result is there for every one to see. Hence which ever areas where the government's power was limited progressed exponentially. Now we need to extend this principle to the general society too and restrict the influence of the government.

OK, so the scope of the government is limited but where will the power get dispersed? For this we need to make our local bodies potent and powerful. This means giving more power and money to local bodies such as municipalities and corporations. This will help in providing localized solutions to local problems hence will be more effective. For eg. if a road in any locality is not proper then i can approach the local municipality to repair it. Money accompanies power therefore these local bodies should get the loin share of our taxes so that they can take more responsibilities and heed to their citizens. The corporates could be involved in this as well, like exempting a company from giving taxes and instead make them take up some social initiatives such as funding infrastructure construction, providing books , uniforms to school children etc. In this way the various parts of the society gets to play a role in the upliftment of the society.

As things get 'localized', what will be the government's role. The government will be concerned with broader issues such as foreign relations, maintaining law and order in the country , providing for regional imbalances, providing better laws etc. These are some of the crucial things that the government can handle. As the latest financial crises in the US showed the government's role in regulating the economy is crucial. Hence the government should clearly know what it should and should not do. This will result in a state with a loosely coupled and truly federal character where the government takes care of 'global' issues whereas local bodies take care of 'local' day-to-day issues.

This sort of a set up is suitable for India and will surely bring out the best in us. Here's why. There are two situations that call for a strong state involvement one where the country has a mature polity and the other where the citizens cannot self-organize themselves. The Scandinavian countries fall into the former and China for example falls into the latter category. However India fails on both counts , it does not have a mature polity and its citizens are perfectly capable of organizing themselves. Hence this calls for having a light-weight loosely-coupled state where the citizen gets to do more instead of an overpowering state.

The picture is not entirely rosy, there are some cons to this system. Localizing will also mean some local bodies will always be stronger and have more corporate support than others, contrast karnataka and mizoram for instance. In these cases the smaller/weaker bodies get left behind. This can be countered by having the government acting as a balancer whereby the smaller bodies get their due.

Its not like this system is new for India. Ancient India was based on smaller village republics with each village having its representative body ( something like a panchayath) perfectly capable of governing itself with the king at the top concerned with global events like conquests , invasions , economy etc. These village republics flourished irrespective of whatever happened at the top. Even in the modern world the US can be described as a neo-anarchist state with the states governing themselves with the centre providing a strong constitutional bedrock.

All in all going for a loosely-coupled neo-anarchist model will be better suited for India than the current centralized-state system and will help unleash the potential of her people and help India fulfill her destiny.