How to Open the Doors to The Gated Republic | EXTRACT

Seventy years since it became a republic, India has come a long way… and yet, it is still failing on some key fronts. Can India sustain private republics amidst public failures in a landscape scarred by social and economic fault lines? What are the possible solutions? Can government reinvent itself?

A day before Independence Day seems like a good day to deliberate on these questions. Shankkar Aiyar presents an interrogative view of the history and future of private India, around the framework of these very questions, in his latest book The Gated Republic.

 

The truism about India is that for everything that you see, that you hear, frequently the opposite is equally true.

India’s scientists successfully launched the Mars Orbiter Mission, executed a perfect slingshot to place it in orbit and left the world in awe – at a price less than what it cost Hollywood to produce the Oscar-winning movie Gravity. Lunar explorations continue apace with Mission Chandrayan 3 to be launched in November 2020. India’s engineers are designing and executing the world’s highest railway bridge over the river Chenab in Kashmir. India’s Election Commission manages the exercise of franchise in the world’s largest democracy, enabling over 910 million citizens to vote, whether at 15,000 feet above sea level in Anlay Phu in Ladakh or 35 kilometres deep into the Gir forests.

And yet, the above maxim about the multiple truths that are India is unfortunately proven by the sordid state of affairs in the delivery of public goods and services. The country’s ability in dealing with complexities and scale, alas, has not resulted in creation of capacity for transformative change. Truth be told, our many governments – central, state and local – have flailed and failed in delivering basic governance.

The promise of piped drinking water continues to be a pipe dream. Households and businesses spend hours cursing power outages despite the claims of surplus power. The inadequacies of preventive and primary health care systems render the poorest the most vulnerable. The millions coming out of India’s broken school education system lack the rudimentary comprehension of the basic three ‘R’s – reading, writing and arithmetic. And the security of homes/businesses depends on outsourced private security contractors.

It used to be said that India is a nation of many nations. Fact is, India is morphing into a nation of gated republics. Slowly, these gated republics are spreading across the landscape and their tell-tale signs are evident in anecdotal snapshots. The empirical picture is changing at a glacial pace and the scale is momentous. Year after year, governments launch new avatars of old promises to deliver public goods and services and taxpayer money is poured into these avatars, but at every milestone of per capita income and affordability, there are public policy failures.

The many failures of public policy are propelling a ceaseless secession. The term ‘secession’ owes its Latin origins to plebeians withdrawing from ancient Rome to force patricians to address their grievances. Early settlers, said Jean Jacques Rousseau, resolved disagreeable conditions within groups by withdrawing from one and seeking another.

The choice before India’s denizen is to grieve, grate and grimace, or get out. In his seminal tome Exit, Voice, and Loyalty, Albert O. Hirschman points out, ‘Once this avoidance mechanism for dealing with disputes or venting dissatisfaction is readily available, the contribution of voice – that is, of the political process – to such matters is likely to be and remain limited.’ The voice of the average Indian is not heard and the wait has been too long. And so Indians are desperately seceding, as soon as their income allows, from dependence on government for the most basic of services – water, health, education, security, power – and are investing in the pay-and-plug economy.

Seven decades after Independence, the piety of the promises made by the founding fathers has paled. Latter-day politicians and governments are blithely ignoring their responsibilities and Indians are paying the price, literally.

Can India vault orbits to a $5 trillion economy and develop and progress without a healthy and educated workforce, all without clean water, reliable power and security?

 

To find out the answer to this and more such policy-driven questions, order your copy of The Gated Republic today!