When citizens lose faith

Arun Maira

CITIZENS’ mistrust of the State has crimped India’s economic progress. The economy has grown growing fairly well since the shock of the other ‘pro-market’ reforms in 1991. Consumers have benefited. And many Indians have become very wealthy. Concerned with the declining growth of the economy in the UPA-II regime, the anti-corruption movement sweeping through the country, and the ‘policy paralysis’, the Planning Commission carried out a systems’ analysis in 2012 of the forces shaping the economy. The analysis revealed that the root cause of slow progress was the mistrust of citizens in the institutions of the State to serve the needs of ‘aam aadmi’, and also in institutions of big business. The growing mistrust of politicians and crony capitalism fuelled the rise of the eponymous Aam Admi Party which swept the Delhi elections. 

Citizens of all countries expect the State, whether autocratic or democratic, to provide some basic services: security, law and order, and public services such as sanitation, education, water, public health, and public transportation. This is a basic condition a State must fulfil to earn the confidence of its citizens. The Indian state has done very poorly in providing basic services that citizens in many other countries take for granted. Harvard development economist Lant Pritchett describes the Indian state as a ‘flailing state’, in which many government institutions are functional in their heads, but have little control of their limbs and of the results delivered on the ground to citizens.

Delivery of State services is in short supply in India. Moreover, they are provided preferentially to those who pay bribes, and those who have more power to claim them. In Lutyens’ Delhi, where the State establishment lives, water and electricity are provided 24/7, even when citizens in the rest of the city swelter in power blackouts and scramble to get water, and pay a lot for it too. Security personnel make way for the powerful and the rich through crowds of citizens who are left scrambling for service and safety in the chaos. 

Every day, ‘aam aadmi’ in India sees the reality of a weak State serving the powerful. She (or he) can trust the State if she believes that the State has her interest at heart. Her experience tells her it does not. So, as a rational and self-interested human (as economic theory says she must be) why should she trust the government and the State? ‘Trust us’, political leaders may plead. But when their inability, and even unwillingness, to serve her needs is so obvious, how can she? 

Worldwide surveys of citizens’ trust in institutions, such as the Pew Research Center’s survey and the Edelman Trust Barometer, have been reporting the low level of trust that citizens in most countries have in their governments. Often, these surveys report higher trust in institutions of big business — though not by much. Business leaders, as well as economists with an anti-government ideology, have interpreted these surveys as citizens’ desire to have less government and more private businesses in their countries. However, all the surveys had said was that citizens seemed to trust businesses somewhat more than the government, which often was a low bar to exceed. 

A worldwide movement gathered strength since the 1990s, coinciding with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise of the Washington Consensus to hand over public sector functions to the private sector. Health, education, public utilities, prisons and even public security services were privatised. India followed the herd too. In UPA-II, PPPs had become the solution to all failures of the State to provide public services — infrastructure, public utilities, health and education. The Indian telecoms story was the poster for the benefits of getting the government out of the way. The private sector had provided millions of Indians with mobile phones on demand, whereas when the government ran telecom services, citizens had to wait for many years to get a phone connection. 

Ironically, it was the telecom sector in which collusion between private interests and State functionaries was revealed along with huge corruption. Citizens were also becoming dismayed by the disregard of the needs of the poor by private hospitals and educational institutions even when it was explicit in their licenses to operate. Citizens had little trust in the government. But they had little trust in the private sector too. 

Citizens, especially those left behind in the growth of economies, fear even more when the State appears to be run by big business and is corrupted by private interests. Indeed, this fear fuelled the surprising rise of both Bernie Sanders from the left and Donald Trump from the right in the recent US elections. They said they were standing against the collusion of big business and the government in setting the rules of the game in favour of the rich and the powerful and against the interests of common citizens. Hillary Clinton was not considered trustworthy. Whatever be the truth, it is the perception. And trust is based principally on perceptions. 

‘I will trust you, if I perceive you are acting in my interest’. The demonetisation strike by Mr Modi is a bold gambit to show that he and his government are acting against those who have colluded to deny common citizens the benefits of the State. It is a move to also indicate that from now on the government will improve delivery of services to common citizens and not pander to the conveniences of the rich. 

‘Trust me’, Mr Modi has asked the people. They are giving him a chance. Words will not be enough. The State will have to deliver. The head will have to coordinate its flailing limbs. Services will have to reach into the last mile of India’s dark interiors, to millions of citizens who have been ignored while India shone elsewhere. 

Mr Modi also has the difficult task of making citizens believe that he is not being swayed by those who have helped to bring him to power and who now may demand that he give them preference — whether they are wealthy contributors to his party, or Hindu nationalists who have marshalled political support for him. For citizens, a trustworthy State must extend beyond the government of the day and the person in power. The question is not whether the majority of Indian citizens trust Mr Modi, but whether all Indians can trust the Indian State.

The writer is a former member of the erstwhile Planning Commission