Assignments on two P’s

As mentioned earlier (at the very end of this post), I had to submit two assignments on social subjects – Poverty and Policits. Since these are subjects that could be of common interest to my readers as well, I felt that I should share them in this forum.

Q1. What in your suggestion as a young mind is one unique aspect India should focus on for developing a poverty free India?

I believe that a growing economy is the only way to achieve development and eradicate poverty. But the post liberalization era has taught us that a growing economy does not automatically result in social development. A growing economy might deliver ‘economic development’ but not ‘social development’. Due to the fact that expectations of the poor were not met with the liberalization of the economy and instead the liberalization led to an increase in the canyon between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’, the cry for Government intervention to alleviate the pains of the poor has only increased. Due to the partial success of Government sponsored programmes (e.g.: mid-day meals in schools and free power supply for farmers in Tamil Nadu and few other states etc) the need for such programmes have only increased and hence I have come to the conclusion that there is no use in advocating the stoppage of these ‘safety net programmes’ – at-least in the near future.

Thus in the context that we need to aim for social development and that the safety net programmes by the Government are going to stay, I feel that this aspect of Indian Governance should be effectively used to develop a poverty free India. I suggest maximizing the benefit and efficiency of the Government sponsored safety net programmes in order to achieve in a poverty free India. In the rest of this response, I provide few brief suggestions1 on how this can be achieved.

A Human touch in the design and implementation of safety net programmes – The safety net programmes in India focus on transferring Government funds to the poor. But the issue is that this transfer is mainly achieved by way of getting the poor to execute menial jobs. Instead these programmes should also focus on using the minds of the poor. The Government should try and understand the primary and unmet needs of the people in an area and then understand the capabilities of the people in that area. In most cases scarcity of resources might be the only reason why these primary needs were not met. In such cases, the Government instead of creating a new menial job as an avenue to transfer funds to the poor should use one of the unmet needs to transfer the funds. I do agree that this is happening in two areas – rural infrastructure development and rural housing. But other areas do not need much of menial jobs and hence such areas are not focused by the safety net programmes. Few of the examples that immediately come to my mind are utilizing unemployed educated youths as temporary teachers, providing training on handicrafts and vocational methods via unemployed trained poor, creating database of revenue information (land records) in the cyber world with the help of trained unemployed youth etc. To dwell further deeper, I feel that the Government would be able to deliver a lot of prosperity to the urban poor working in unorganized sector if only the Government had an effective method to identify this sector. I suggest that safety net programmes can be used to collect the details of this sector. Also, the various Government departments can be encouraged to register their needs for people resources (for both manual and mind jobs) and programmes like “National Rural Employment Guarantee Act” can allocate the unemployed people towards these requirements.

Bouquet of Benefits – Next, I would like to advocate for providing a feature to the poor of designing their own safety net programmes from the available options – a set of options from which they can choose so that they get the best safety net from the Government. For example a couple without kids may not benefit from the ‘mid-day meals’ or the ‘cycle for students’ programmes but would prefer additional health coverage or unemployment benefit in case of sickness; rural poor might not want PDS (if their income is provided to them in the form of grains) but instead would prefer free power for their farm.

Thus I suggest the Government to maximize the benefit received by the needy by offering a bouquet – a bouquet in which the recipient decides the configuration. Of course a maximum limit would need to be specified while designing the bouquet.

Effective Implementation – Effective communication of the features of the programme and effective implementation of the same should be entrusted to those who are the nearest to the recipient and hence I advocate that agencies be chosen based on this criteria. For example the Panchayats should be used as the implementation agencies for rural areas. This is one aspect which will make or break these programmes and hence much thought should be given in this area.

In this context I also suggest the Government to consider outsourcing some of the activities that private sector can best perform – for example I request the Government to consider whether the PDS can be delivered efficiently to the needy if the needy are just provided with food coupons which can be used to redeem food from private shops while the Government can pull itself out of grains storage and transport to be used in PDS.

To summarize, since the poor are getting benefitted to some extent by the existing safety net programmes and the politicians may not prefer to withdraw these programmes, I suggest for a better and effective design and implementation of these programmes so that it will help in poverty eradication.

Q2. My definition of Politics is: Politics = Political Politics + Developmental Politics.  Here I have a question for you.  I believe in the last general election [2009] and previous state elections across many states there is an indication that developmental politics has started succeeding in our country.  Would you like to comment on this with examples and suggestions?

I do agree that the developmental politics played a bigger role in the last election when compared with the previous few elections. But I have a doubt (rather a fear) that this could have been a cyclical issue and maybe in the next election or the one after that the death of a national leader or price of an important commodity (eg: onion), or a socially sensitive issue (eg: reservation) or a war could decide the outcome of an election rather than the performance of the parties in the developmental front. So, my fear is – maybe in the past few years, in the absence of emotional issues, people decided based on performance on the developmental front?

One more trend that I noticed in the last elections is that people do not believe on promises on developmental fronts until it really materializes. They do not give a chance to a politician ‘promising’ development – that is they do not believe on the promise about development until it has been already delivered. Instead of a promise on development people prefer a short term return in the form of freebees like TV or even bribery (e.g. Tamil Nadu). This leads to a situation where in the politician also loses hope on developmental programmes and gets creative (!!) on what else can be given as a ‘freebee’. The concern I have is that those Chief Ministers who delivered development did not use development as a promise to win the first time. Rather after winning the hearts of the elector they used Developmental Politics to win the minds of the electors and thus were able to win the subsequent elections. Thus the problem is that a politician may not get elected merely based on promises about development when the opponent is talking about freebees or sentimental and emotional issues.

But I envisage (or rather hope for) a future where people realize that there is no free lunch; people realize that the value of what is freely delivered could have reached them (with less pilferage along the way) in some other better form; or people do not have a need for any more freebee and hence would prefer uninterrupted power supply and better roads and internet connection rather than one more TV.

More importantly, I envisage a future where in people come to the conclusion that any politician can provide them freebees but it takes a dedicated and talented politician to deliver development. A future in which “Development” is the only differentiator among the politicians and the hence politicians win by designing and delivering “Development Politics”.

Let me provide further context about these assignments and the outcome of my responses in my next post.