[Reader-list] India's new ruling caste

[Kshmendra Kaul]

Dear Rana
 
I found Appu K Soman's article juvenile in it's understanding of and commentary on India. He has made moronic generalisations. 
 
Attention being brought to it in the Appu K Soman piece, Lant Pritchett's "Is India a Flailing State - Detours on the Four Lane Highway to Modernisation" seems to be a very interesting and well thought out essay. http://ksghome.harvard.edu/~lpritch/Papers/Is%20India%20a%20Flailing%20State_v1.pdf
 
I would say that within the parameters laid out by Lant Pritchett, "India is a Flailing State" is an apt description. It is, in my opinion an extremely good essay on today's India, notwithstanding disagreements one might have with some comments and deductions. 
 
Appu Soman's usage of 'upper echelons' is an incomplete understanding of what Lant has written:
 
""""""  
India is today a flailing state---a nation-state in which the head, that is the elite
institutions at the national (and in some states) level remain sound and functional but
that this head is no longer reliably connected via nerves and sinews to its own limbs. In
many parts of India in many sectors, the everyday actions of the field level agents of the
state—policemen, engineers, teachers, health workers—are increasingly beyond the
control of the administration at the national or state level.
""""""""
 
Lant describes the state of affairs in India through these lines:
 
"""""""
 
Suppose a development expert from a modern, well-governed country, of today,
say Norway, were told he was traveling to a foreign country but really transported in a
time machine to Chicago in 1929. He would find a booming economy, but corrupt
politics, huge social tensions across races and ethnicities, vast economic inequalities,
barely functional municipal services, unplanned and unregulated expansion of the city in
all directions as it was crowded with immigrants from rural areas and from other nations.
What is his forecast? Should he be optimistic or pessimistic? What is his prescription?
Where does one start with “reform” when everything seems out of control? From the
hindsight of history, he should be optimistic, Chicago, while far from being Norway, is a
rich, vibrant, and functional city.
"""""""""
 
Lant concludes (on India in comparison to China) with these words:
 
""""""""""""""
India was born and has always lived in a democratic tradition, but has increasing
weakness in the adoption of administrative modernism to its society and politics. To
paraphrase Abraham Lincoln via Naresh Saxena no government can long survive half
democratic and half corrupt. India, with its multitude of reform efforts is struggling on
the path to reforms that lead to the effective implementation of rules, but they are far
from out of the woods.
 
What this produces is a combination of different uncertainties at different
horizons. In India, one is uncertain about the near future (and even, for that matter, about
what is really happening in the present). But, as India’s formal political and administrative institutions are roughly those of many advanced nations, one can imagine
India 50 years in the future without having had any major institutional shifts but having
made a long hard steady slog to prosperity and governmental efficacy so long-run
uncertainty is less.
""""""""""""""
 
Kshmendra
 

--- On Tue, 5/26/09, Rana Dasgupta <rana at ranadasgupta.com> wrote:


From: Rana Dasgupta <rana at ranadasgupta.com>
Subject: Re: [Reader-list] India's new ruling caste
To: "Taha Mehmood" <2tahamehmood at googlemail.com>
Cc: "Sarai Reader-list" <reader-list at sarai.net>
Date: Tuesday, May 26, 2009, 12:47 PM


actually I was even more flumoxed by this:

> Lant Pritchett of the Harvard
> Kennedy School has coined a new term for India: a "flailing state" –
> where the government's extremely competent upper echelons are unable
> to control its inefficient lower levels, resulting in poor
> performance.

Soman is fighting internecine battle against this position of course, 
and his own vision is too much bathed in the rosy light of post-Obama 
election glow.  but is Pritchett's position not astonishing?



Taha Mehmood wrote:
> Dear Rana,
> 
> Thanks for the post. I read it and thanked god for giving us such
> pearls of wisdom  through Appu jee- imagine for a second, that  by
> 2019, good sense prevails and we did opt for presidential style
> elections. We will have a federal structure in place and then imagine
> somehow, that President Modi is able to win over a mere contender
> called President Rahul. So!! what could we have as a possibility -
> Praveen Swami as NSA, C Raja Mohan as Sec of State , Mohan Bhagwat of
> the RSS as capable Sec. of Interior, APJ as Sec of Science and
> Technology, Gurumurthy as Sec. of Finance, Praveen Togadia as Sec. of
> Defense, Jaitely as Sec of Information and Broadcasting and Pramod
> Muttalik as Sec of Culture. I am sure it is high time we pay heed to
> the likes of Appu Jee by 'allowing the country's leader to select
> competent people for cabinet positions' then and only then can India's
> cherished dreams could be realized.
> 
> Regards or should I say Amen??
> 
> Taha
> 
> PS: Whose agenda is he following by the way??? We have just had a
> bizzare election where an old man tried to lift weights, write blogs,
> invite people for TV debates, wrote book and hopped around on a
> chopper and spoke at length about what old people talk anyways like
> getting weak at the center and so on and yet lost the bloody election.
> And then we have Appu Jee telling us that no no no no....this is what
> we need...arre bhai Why??? Thik hai why not. Point taken but why any
> ways???
> 
> 

-- 
"I'm an ex-citizen of nowhere. And sometimes I get mighty homesick."

Rana Dasgupta
www.ranadasgupta.com

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