It is commonplace to view the ingredients of successful economic development to include competitive markets, an enabling State, and a political democracy based on universal franchise. The quality of these ingredients varies from one society to another, leading to outcomes that are widely different. Much is known about the quality of markets and how they influence economic development. The State, on the other hand, is a complex creature with many branches and departments. Relatively less is known about how the quality of a State impacts the process of economic development. Similarly, political democracy only ensures that people choose their legislators. Here the quality of electoral supervision and management by a neutral institution like the Election Commission plays an important role in determining fair outcomes in voting. However, the voters have little direct control over the laws enacted, the quality of the executive branch, and the judiciary. The laws enacted include political rights granted by the State and civil liberties for citizens. The quality of the executive branch depends on transparency in its actions and how fair the law enforcement agencies are in their investigations. The judiciary is the ultimate institution that citizens can fall back on against injustice. The courts of law have to be deemed unbiased, independent of the executive branch. In any society, the quality of these institutions is, to a large extent, determined by the values and beliefs shared by citizens and the faith they have in the system of governance. If the law enforcement agencies are deemed to be biased in favour of a political party, or the judges appear to be influenced by the executive branch, the citizen’s faith in justice will be eroded. Not only that, some powerful people might even game the system by nudging a court’s decision to go in a particular direction.
In the determination of values and beliefs that influence governance outcomes, two sets of institutions play critical roles in shaping them. They are primary schools on one end of the spectrum of educational institutions, and universities on the other end. Basic values are formed in the early stages of education and socialisation of a child. This is distinct from the useful skills the child will be expected to acquire over the years spent in school. The infant learns about sharing, about not hurting others, being fair, treating others equally, being polite, gender equality, and civic responsibilities. These have to be explicitly inculcated and reinforced. It is the ability to deliver these, along with the routine writing and reading skills, that makes primary education of a school system socially useful. The values learnt often persist over a lifetime. It is the material on which the future generation’s worldview and culture are built.
At the other end of the spectrum of learning are institutions like colleges and universities that provide useful research on human behaviour, aesthetics, history, the physical world, science and technology. This output has two components: the basic foundations of knowledge that are available to all as public goods and the addition of technology, which can be used privately to produce other goods and services for profit. The latter has immediate economic benefits in terms of output, income, and employment. The former is useful as a stock of permanent learning, which can be useful for future research that can produce benefits for citizens. It is clear that for higher education, the bigger and deeper the stock of knowledge a society can produce the better it is for humanity. The more the diversity, the richer is the stock. Hence, higher education needs freedom as an essential ingredient in its recipe for knowledge creation. Any attempt to stifle this freedom would result in long-term damage to the nation’s ability to improve the well-being of its citizens.
Another institution is vital for enabling economic development and an open society: an independent media. Newspapers, radio, television, internet news and social media provide information about the world which shapes and influences people’s views and perceptions. The information could be about local or global events. Typically, purveyors of news also provide some analysis by and opinions of experienced people and scholars. This is done through powerful visuals and real-time commentary. The viewer has alternative sources to choose from. It is important that the information comes as raw as possible, free from the lens of political ideology or through the sieve of misinformation and falsehood. If this does not occur, people could form warped opinions and often find it impossible to separate fake news from what is the reality. In most societies, media platforms are owned by large business houses that have their own agenda in terms of what they are willing to peddle as news. Some news may be suppressed completely, some tweaked to give it a different perspective, while others may be presented as being entirely opposed to the truth. Business houses have their own dynamics with political parties and governments. On paper, the media remain an important instrument for a vibrant democracy. But in today’s world featuring multiple sources of instant information, the media remain feeble in the hands of the powers that be. Hence, more often than not, what citizens believe is the product of media propaganda. This contributes to the blurring of the distinction between truth and falsehood.
In India, all the institutions mentioned above have been deteriorating sharply in the twenty-first century. Electoral politics along with respect for the Election Commission have eroded. The judiciary has been associated with many controversies and has had its rulings criticised in sensitive cases. Law enforcement agencies appear to have lost their independence from political control. Institutions of higher education are becoming increasingly restricted in terms of what they can talk about, write, or do research on. Debate and dissent are both strongly discouraged. Non-compliance draws unpleasant consequences. As far as primary schools are concerned, even the elementary skills of reading and writing are inadequately taught with alarming results in terms of learning. Nobody knows what kind of values are being imparted or the nature of the civic consciousness developed. The media have become unabashedly partisan in supporting the government and the political party in power. Propaganda, inaccurate news, and distorted views are purveyed in strident tones. Falsehoods are repeated with astonishing regularity.
Lack of trust in critically important institutions makes the average citizen compelled to fend for himself/herself. The citizen defines the life he/she can lead, focussed entirely on a culture of ‘I-me-myself’. As a result of which one is no longer concerned with other people and their well-being. One is worried about one’s self-identity and suspicious about other people. One learns to exclude and one learns to hate. One loses the ability to speak; one can only echo. The rule of law that any modern society feels comfortable with is under duress to give way to the dominance of social norms, that too largely antiquated ones. On top of that, one should not forget to add the misery brought about through high inflation, unemployment, and deep uncertainty over livelihoods and incomes. In such a milieu, even a 6% economic growth may not be something that will help India improve the quality of development.
Anup Sinha is former Professor of Economics, IIM Calcutta
