The State in Popular Imagination
April 6, 2004
Author: Dr. Neera Chandhoke
Source: The Hindu
Available: http://www.hindu.com/2004/04/06/stories/2004040601971000.htm
It is the state that is central to individual and collective life, despite all the changes that have been effected through the practices of governance.
THE TENTH Plan suggests that given market liberalism and globalisation, the state should yield to the market and the civil society in many areas where it, so far, "had a direct but distortionary and inefficient presence ... many developmental functions as well as functions that provide stability to the social order have to be progressively performed by the market and the civil society organisations. It means extension of the market and civil society domain at the expense of the state in some areas." The Tenth Plan accordingly recommends that the role of voluntary organisations, non-profit making companies, corporate bodies, cooperatives, and trusts be strengthened in social and economic development. The Plan in effect deepens the thrust that had originally been initiated by the Seventh Five-Year Plan towards reliance on the voluntary sector as an agent of social development. The Ministries that subsequently came to rely heavily on NGOs (non-governmental organisations) are those of rural development, health and family welfare, social justice and empowerment, human resource development, and of environment and forests.
The `off loading' of welfare services, which were for long seen as the responsibility of the democratic state, is part of what in contemporary parlance is called `governance'. The concept of governance has attracted a fair amount of acclaim from theorists and political practitioners in recent times. For the practices of governance promise an exit from centrally controlled bureaucratic, hierarchical, and overloaded structures of decision-making, which are judged inept simply because they are unable to act either quickly or efficiently. On the other hand, NGOs are seen to possess certain virtues: they are relatively unburdened with large bureaucracies, they are more flexible and more receptive to innovation than government officials are, and they are able to identify and respond to the needs of the grassroots because they are in close touch with their constituencies.
However, the concept of governance has also managed to generate considerable doubt in other theoretical quarters. What for instance has happened to the state or at least the state as we have come to be familiar with it for much of the 20th century? For governance gestures towards the decentring of what used to be a single locus of authority and legitimacy — the state. Many scholars seem to agree that the state has either been hollowed out or that it has disappeared. The question that perhaps is significant for democratic theory is: what does the ordinary citizen think of the practices of governance? Today, the citizen is presented with a number of agencies that are in the business of delivering services and solving problems, from water harvesting to training people for local self-government.
Has all this served to dislocate the `welfarist' state from the centre
of political imaginations? The answer to these questions is perhaps best
elucidated through reflection on some of the findings of our research project
on `Rights, Representation, and the Poor' that was conducted in Delhi in
2003. The project surveying 1401 citizens across different categories of
residential settlements in the city-planned colonies, unauthorised regularised
colonies, unauthorised unregularised colonies, and jhuggi jhopris (J.J.)
and slums, seeks to foreground the voices of those who are governed, rather
than concentrate on those who are engaged in governance.
The findings are of some interest. For instance, in response to the
question of who is responsible for meeting people's basic needs, the majority
of our respondents answered that it is the government's responsibility
to do so. And this even if meeting basic needs was not identified as a
personal problem for the respondent. Therefore, even though only 13 per
cent of the people who live in planned colonies identified basic needs
as a big or one of the biggest problems for them individually, 80 per cent
of the same constituency was of the opinion that it was the government's
responsibility to meet basic needs. Equally, whereas 45 per cent of the
residents living in unauthorised, unregularised colonies opined that meeting
basic needs was not a problem for them, 83 per cent believed that the government
was responsible for meeting basic needs, the corresponding figures being
72 per cent of the population who live in unauthorised regularised colonies,
and 83 per cent of the residents who live in J.J. colonies, and slums.
When it came to problem solving, the respondents were asked who they usually approached: a `big man' that is caste, religious, and regional leaders, whether they approached the judiciary, whether they solved the problems on their own, whether they had ever participated in demonstrations, public protest, or other forms of direct action, or whether they had approached the government to help them. Our findings show that whereas 28 per cent of the respondents had approached political parties to solve their problems, only 2 per cent had approached the judiciary, only 9 per cent had approached `big men' for help, hardly 10 per cent had resorted to direct action, and 17 per cent had engaged in self-provisioning action.
The largest percentage of our respondents, that is 36 per cent, had
approached the government directly. The variation across colonies is not
much in this respect; 40 per cent of the respondents in the jhuggi jhopris
and slums, 35 per cent of the inhabitants of the unauthorised unregularised
colonies, 32 per cent of the residents of the unauthorised regularised
colonies, and 35 per cent of the residents of the planned colonies normally
approach the government for resolving their problems. Out of this number,
less than one per cent had approached the government through their party
representatives. About 75 per cent of the 36 per cent who had approached
the government said that they had taken the help of their acquaintances
and family to do so. Not a single person had asked the NGOs for help in
approaching the government.
The state, it is evident, continues to loom large in the collective
imagination when it comes to providing the basic conditions that enable
people to live a life of dignity. It is the state that is central to individual
and collective life, despite all the changes that have been effected through
the practices of governance. This calls for some explanation. Why do people
continue to repose hope in a state that has after all been found wanting
when it comes to the delivery of the basic conditions of human well-being?
India's position has after all slipped from 24 to 127 in the Human Development
Report 2003, and though the proportion of people living on less than $1-a-day
has declined from 42 per cent in 1993-94 to 35 per cent in 2001, 40 per
cent of the world's poor live in India. Forty million children out of the
world's total of 115 million children who are out of school are Indian.
Only 58 per cent of the country is literate with women constituting a high
proportion of the non-literate.Child mortality rates under the age of 5
are 93 per 1000 live births; infant mortality is 67 per 1000 live births,
maternal mortality rates in the country are the highest in the world, and
life expectancy in India is 63.3 years in the country compared with 70.3
years in China. More than 90 per cent of the polio cases in the world are
found in India. Widespread malnutrition, poor infrastructure in the area
of health, and high mortality rates among the poor and Dalits make the
health scene a grim one. The country has the world's highest number of
hungry people, that is 233 million despite huge buffer stocks of food.
The government's record in providing services-sanitation, clean drinking
water, electricity, housing, and jobs is even bleaker.
Yet it is clear that across the board, citizens continue to have high expectations of the state despite the fact that the government has begun to delegate more and more of its responsibility to civil society organisations. Why? Perhaps the image of the `Nehruvian' state as the repository of public interest is still embedded in the popular consciousness despite all changes in the nature of the state. The second reason lies in the realm of accountability. It is just not clear whom the NGOs are accountable to: their clients, the government, multilateral funding agencies, or northern NGOs who also fund them. When welfare functions become the business of organisations, some within the state, some outside, upon which agency does the mantle of responsibility fall? It is after all easier to hold the state accountable than voluntary agencies, which have made their appearance on to the scene of service delivery. And accountability does lie at the heart of democratic theory.
The general consensus today is that the state is the problem. Instead
of trying to make the state deliver what it has promised through constitutions,
laws, and rhetorical flourishes, policy makers would rather establish a
parallel system, which can substitute for the state in areas of service
delivery. And yet one significant factor inhibits the legitimisation of
this plan, the fact that ordinary citizens, as the responses to our questionnaire
show, repose little hope in the ability of civil society agents to negotiate
their problems. They would rather fix responsibility on the state.
Note: The writer is Professor of Political Science, Delhi University.