The ongoing Aadhaar imbroglio is symptomatic of not only the rot within India’s welfarism but also its systemic entropy. In fact, if there is one country in which the worst fears of classical liberals as well as contemporary libertarians about the welfare state have been realised, it is India.
Even if we skirt the philosophical and moral critiques of the welfare state made by Western conservatives and other rightwing thinkers, we will find inherent inconsistencies in welfarism as it is practised in India. Right from the beginning, policy and decision makers of independent India have ignored a fundamental reality: that the welfare state is, first and foremost, a state. They have spent most of their energy and resources on introducing and expanding welfarist measures rather than, what was and is urgently needed, strengthening the institutions of the state – even for the success of welfarism.
For the British had framed laws and formulated policies to largely further their own ends. They set up institutions to perpetuate the Empire; they promoted the extortionist land revenue system to bolster the exchequer; they framed economic policy that bolstered the manufacturers of Manchester and Lancashire rather than those of Kanpur and Bombay; they created an administration to suppress and repress the natives rather than ‘organise liberty with order’; they established the police that had least regard for human rights; in almost everything they did, the interests of mother country preceded those of the colony. (Well, they also brought modernity and the ennobling Enlightenment ideas and ideals to India, something no Indian ruler at the time did, but that’s another story.)
Illustration: Chad Crowe
Not much has been done to alter that situation by way of state capacity augmentation. On top of that, the Indian state took upon itself a variety of responsibilities: becoming the prime mover of development, overseeing infrastructure projects, setting up dams and public sector undertakings, regulating (usually heavily) the economy, taking care of health and education, trying to achieve a socialistic pattern of society, in short doing everything under the sun.
Unsurprisingly things have gone from bad to worse, with mounting inefficiencies, ineptitude and corruption in government functioning. This is the statism of a weak state, but it is still statism.
Our leaders love it; in their scheme of things, the cure for statism is not small government or less statism; the solution is more or, at best, a different kind of statism. For instance, when public distribution system (PDS) proved less than effective, a targeted public distribution system (TDPS) was devised. TDPS was implemented except in a handful of states and Union territories with effect from 1997.
How did it go? In the foreword of its performance evaluation report, erstwhile Planning Commission deputy chair Montek Singh Ahluwalia wrote in April 2005: “About 58% of the subsidised food grains issued from the central pool do not reach the below poverty line families because of identification errors, non-transparent operation and unethical practices in the implementation of TPDS. The cost of handling of food grains by public agencies is also very high.” Ten years later, the Comptroller & Auditor General’s report said, “After a lapse of two years from the stipulated date of completion, most of the states were yet to computerise their TPDS operations.”
Einstein is said to have defined insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”. Insane or not, this is how our system works. So, our political masters stayed focussed on making the state largesse more targeted.
Aadhaar was conceptualised, but it has also run into all manner of trouble – linking Aadhaar to ration cards, privacy matters, data theft, even alleged starvation deaths, litigations. But the government is still adamant regarding the implementation of Aadhaar.
The attitude is typical. Without diagnosing the ailment, our politicians keep trying a range of inefficacious therapies – even when the diagnosis is obvious. Everybody knew that inadequate state capacity plagued PDS, but little was done to address the real issue; instead something new, TPDS, was tried.
Similarly, the implementation of Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana has proved to be less than satisfactory, but the government aims at an even more ambitious National Health Protection Scheme. And, of course, we are also told that Aadhaar will redeem the poor.
More than stubbornness, this is dogmatism: our rulers are loath to, as Ayn Rand would say, check their premises. The premise in this case is that a welfare state can be built regardless of state capacity. It is putting the cart before the horse, but they are convinced that this will work. Which means that the state can take limitless burden without improvement in its institutions, without administrative reforms.
There was something called the Second Administrative Reforms Commission, headed by Congress leader M Veerappa Moily. It prepared as many as 15 reports, the last of which came out in April 2009. Nobody has heard about administrative reforms – or, for that matter, movement on police and judicial reforms – since then.
It says something about the obtuseness of our politicians that neither the government nor the opposition is bothered about administrative, judicial and police reforms; they are happy with cows, name changing, symbolism and other emotive issues. The engine bequeathed by the Raj was rickety; instead of repairing it, politicians have burdened it with a myriad of welfare measures.
The denouement is the mess that is India.
DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.
