HISTORY

POLITICS AND THE STATE:PART3

Recall the face of the poorest and weakest man you have seen and ask yourself if this step you contemplate will be of any use to him(mahatma Gandhi)

The Indian  state origins

 After India gained independence from British in 1947 the Congress party formed the government.At the time of independence the level of industrialization in the country was such that even a pin had to be imported and could not be manufactured in India.There was extreme poverty and famines.

    Like other newly independent countries the Indian government followed a policy of creating state run  heavy industries and restricting private investment by licenses and production quotas.While gradually the country could manufacture most items of use and engineering technical excellence was built by establishing IITs ,competion both internal and external was absent in the economy. . Morever crony businessmen developed  who bribed govt officials for quotas and licences and produced shoddy products for a sheltered market.                                                                                                                     

Political parties and the  state

             The political parties promised free goods during elections and this enabled oppurtunist politicians to come to power.All efforts are made during elections to divide the electorate on religious and caste or regional lines .Money and muscle power is used  routinely during elections by all parties.It is difficult for ordinary citizens therefore to stand in elections .                                                                                       There were insurgencies in northeast and Jammu and Kashmir. The Pakistani deep state funded and trained militants in Kashmir and Punjab.There has been geopolitical power struggles with deep states of Srilanka,Bangladesh ,Nepal ,the neighbours of India.

The liberalisation and IBC effects on economy

The Indian economy collapsed in 1991  and the then congress PM Narasimha Rao took a bold step to remove quotas and licenses for private industries. At one step private industry became competitive and productivity increased. This was followed by introduction of IBC by PM Narendra Modi in.2016  . Earlier Indian businessmen took massive loans from state run banks,and subsequently siphoned it off from the firm and left the firm as a sick industry. With coming of IBC this loot has stopped. PM Narendra Modi has initiated massive investments in physical infrastructure such as roads , ports ,railways. Through PIL schemes  manufacturing has attracted  investments in solar energy,lithium batteries ,semiconductor production However  unemployment especially among youth below thirty years of age is very high ,nearly forty percent. Measures taken to combat unemployment has to be scaled up.India has lagged behind in education and skill development and health investment. The condition of government run public schools, government hospitals is despicable. The poor have very little opportunity for a decent education or proper healthcare today.Both health and education requires much higher investment by the government.

The police and judicial system

Whereas the economy has been unshackled from its chains and corrupt businessmen have suffered the same is not the case for justice administration. Today total cases pending in all courts is nearly five crores       (Fifty million) .A civil case may see judgement in the next generation  for the litigants. Criminal cases have scant witness protection and often all witnesses turn hostile. The sad state of judiciary is taken advantage by criminals and their lawyers who are confident of such cases going on for years. Today’s criminals have lost the fear of law.Part of the reason lies in poor infrastructure of Indian courts. But the endless delays due to appeals can be corrected by the judiciary itself.

    The police system is in a worse state. The investigating agencies are used to harass opposition leaders and put them in jail.For the ordinary citizen the police is blind if the crime has been committed by a politician or top businessman. In many cases investigations are not done properly thus favouring the powerful politician or businessman. The transfer and postings of police personnel is under the politicians and they punish any police officer not following their dictates.There is a urgent need to make the police an independent agency as far as the investigation wing is considered

Corruption in public offices

There is vast scope for corruption in developing countries as government is required for all development activities.Thus investments in infrastructure  or arms purchases by  government are huge contracts and frequently involve bribes . The other corruption is the one that the ordinary citizen faces to get public services ,to open a new business or govt subsidy. With digitalisation of public services this has come down in central government offices. They are however widely present in state govt offices of many states.The movement against corruption by AAP and CM Arvind Kejriwal has tried to eradicate lower level corruption.

Corruption is widespread in government recruitment’s such as appointment of school teachers and police constables. The money is shared across the entire chain of beauracracy and political leaders from top to bottom.There are syndicates supported by political parties which extort money from the public on various pretexts .In addition there are sand mafia which sells sand illegally,coal mafia,sandalwood mafia,poachers in wildlife sanctuaries.These organized gangs often in collaboration with politicians illegally sell public resources.

A possible solution to the dysfunctional state

The deep state has been there since the beginning of human society. The reason is that society is made of organizations and these organizations are captured by people with  fixed ideological views or by frankly self serving individuals. Laws to reform organizations are required and are often delayed by these leaders. In developed countries the presence of a strong state power in the form of police and justice system and beaurocracy makes state action against rebel regional rebellion effective. Moreover a dense civil society organization network prevents rise of political or military dictatorship. Religious extremism cannot infiltrate political parties due to internal code of the church.

      However all this has not precluded intervention by developed nations in economic or political organization of developing countries. They have put economic sanctions and done military interventions against nations for mineral ,oil and other resources.They have intervened to divide nations to support religious groups or ethnic groups. The reason is a lack of a supranational organization with powers of enforcement like a national state. 

There is a need to train people in ideological flexibility as all ideologies have good points. The screening of organizations for self servers can be implemented in political parties or firms to a large extent. However the absence of strong civic organizations which occurs after urbanisation is a major handicap for developing nations. In case of foreign interventions the doctrine of balance of power and sensitivity to security considerations among nations can prevent war between nations,

Ack:When crime pays: money and muscle in Indian politics,Building state capacity,Turn of the tortoise : The challenge and promise of India’s future,The billionaire Raj