Always thought what is the purpose of having a government? Can't there be a society with no government? The answer to the second question was provided by Karl Marx in his theories. He predicted a future with no state and class in the society. Everyone will have equal access to resources to fulfill his/her needs. The world has, however, proved him wrong. No society emerged on the lines as predicted by Marx. Infact, the capitalist society has not witnessed great proletariat revolutions even with the persisting exploitation to some extent.
In a sense, the world has emerged to a stage where the question of existence of governments have gone unquestioned. It has continued to exist. Only the role of governments may have shifted from being a regulator to a facilitator in some countries depending upon the stage of development.
Well, the reason for such structure is not hard to determine. Governments are required to maintain and regulate the society so that it perform its functions within a definite set of rules and regulations. Otherwise, an anomic situation may thrive. As a society advance economically and intellectually, the regulatory role reduces. People in such society come to a stage where they internalise the DOs and DONTs of the society.
Having deliberated upon the question of existence of government, the next question that comes to mind is: For whom the government works and for whom should it work?
World over there are variations with regard to the basic functioning of a government, In Socialist countries like India, Venezuela, China (not Communist exactly) etc the State aspires to work for those who "need" its help. It aims to create an equitable society (well, that is what the Constitution of these countries say in letter) so that gaps can be filled with respect to access of resources to lead a dignified life. The Capitalist society, on the other hand, gives free hand to individuals to gain and utilise resources according to their capability. The Western Countries are predominantly capitalistic.
India presents a good example for a researcher interested in economic nature of society. On paper, India wants to create a socialistic economy. However, as globalization is unfolding, it cannot be said with certainty that India is on its stated path. It is true that the State has been adopting principles which is expected to reduce the gap (measured by the Gini Coefficient).
However, there is an interesting thing to be noted here. India, as a nation, claim that the middle class has increased to an unprecedented level. Unfortunately, without any proper definition for the so-called middle class, everyone in India calls himself/herself as belonging to middle class.
Mr. Harsh Mander, in his recently launched book, has stated that this middle class is basically the top 10% of India. The majority of population (may be close to 50%) live below or close to the poverty bracket. The idea we are following is that instead of investing directly for the welfare of those at the bottom, economic growth will percolate to the lower levels of the strata. This has been the arguement since independence. It is debatable if the middle class has emerged out of the poor class, or has been the product of factors like increasing population (this leads to the increase in actual numbers). This is particularly important because we have probably not significantly reduced the poor class (both absolute number and percentage). This can be said because the official data has always been disputed. Other researches have provided with data that vary widely with the official data.
Even if the official arguement is accepted that poverty has reduced since independence, it is not sufficient. The Preamble of our Constitution mentions that every citizen should lead a "dignified" life. It is disturbing to guess how can a person lead a life of dignity with resources sufficient just for survival.
This situation demands that the government may change its strategy and the point of focus to fulfill its constitutional mandates.
8 comments:
Not so Kool!! i think Mr. blogger deviated his path from para 4.. and shifted all his attention from 'Why Governance?' to 'financial class distinction'...
@Unknown... Please excuse me for this. Due to paucity of time, I could not elaborate and connect in a coherent way.
Regarding "deviation", I was trying to connect the necessity of having a government with it's role to provide a system which promotes equality in the society as the Constitution aspires for.
Thank You for reading.
It is an equilibrium problem how much to spend in activities which are not directly making the poor richer and direct investment in welfare program through subsidies but ABOVE ALL THE BASIC NEED IS TO MAKE THE MECHANISM RUNNING...equilibrium position may be debatable but the mechanism must be make efficient so that whatever is alloted to poor class it reach to the needy one..but goverment has pathecally failed in it...at the same time the allotment must be sufficient to give basic needs for the poor..
@Pradeep. Thank you for reading and making a point.
@other readers: Some people have written that I only took the economic angle of it.Also, that I did not stick to the topic. Yes, I agree with these comments. Actually, I started from "why government" only to show that this debate of having a government is settled now looking at the situation around the world. I based this idea on Marx because he was probably the only person (as I am aware of) who spoke against the institution of govt.
Probably the title went wrong. My main aim was only to show what government should do, which I focussed on the second part. I could have explained more clearly.
Also, I limited my arguement on one issue i.e poverty. I know that there are many things from economic to social to human rights issues, which requires govt intervention.
My aim was very limited here.Next time, will try to integrate different dimensions as well.
There was once upon a time a during the 1980's when Zimbabwe became freshly independant. The president Robert Mugabe's policies were largely socialist, and according to a 1995 World Bank report, "Zimbabwe gave priority to human resource investments and support for smallholder agriculture," it invested in things that mattered to the poor like health care, land reforms, education etc. As a result many social indicators improved very quickly. "By 1990, Zimbabwe had a lower infant mortality rate, higher adult literacy and higher school enrolment rate than average for developing countries" But eventually it could not sustain the economics of such policies and according to world bank the major flaw was its paucity of jobs for graduates from its impressive education system. (similar to Kerala!). And in my limited understanding world bank would not give them aid to keep their programmes going unless they saw something for them (western countries) in it. So they forced Zimbabwe into an austerity programme and made it globalized (just like India in 1991-92). There can be many a debates as to what went wrong and what could have been done better to make the scheme work. But this as Pradeep Rathore pointed out is a major problem with such policies - The system should keep going.
Yes, everything is accepted. In that case, the point of concern should be on how to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the system.
Hopefully, the system of DBT and use of IT may be useful, particularly in delivery of services. And of-course, the system should keep moving.
Thank you @Prashant the great for reading.
Apart from the comments above, nicely written. Keep it up Nitya!
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