Big Society in India....Part 2.....
on Jana Gana Mana (India), 13/Jan/2011 06:17, 34 days ago
He Continues......!....In order to understand the economy and governance in India, (and consequently the 'space' that the voluntary sector operates in) there are two key elements regarding the unusual nature of economic development and governance in India. This is important in attempting to understand both the situation in India and how it relates to the UK.Firstly, the Indian process of economic development has been different from the traditional sequence of development. The sequence as undergone by western society, is one where a society moves from agricultural reform to low cost manufacturing and eventually to globally traded services. India seems to have bypassed much of this traditional development path, as instead it has jumped to globally traded services offered by textiles, high-tech and call centre activities etc. It could be argued that there is an inbuilt lack of resilience because in‘normal’ and accepted patterns of economic development, each step of growth is being predicated upon a solid basis, to which the economy could return if unsuccessful. This is not the case in India. With this ‘quantum leap’ it means that there are still huge disparities within the country anda huge swathe of population who are detached from the fruits and successes of economic growth.Secondly, India has an issue of paying for its public goods and services via a strong public economy. This issue is predicated upon the high levels of unorganised labour and the low levels of public taxation. Only around 7 per cent of the labour force is employed in organised labour. This means that only around 35 million, out of a working population of circa 480 million, pay income tax and contribute to the public economy. Indeed, of these 35 million, 21 million are employed by the State (for the delightfully byzantine rules governing the allotment of the Government’s property to its employees visithttp://estates.nic.in/but more on that some other time). Therefore, while economically booming, India still has the vast majority who work within unorganised labour and this makes it in some ways schizophrenic, in terms of having a booming, ultra modern, but small globally connected economy but also a primitive, traditional and very localized economy. Between these two anachronistic economic development histories, the public economy struggles to provide.However, one of the abiding themes in terms of India is the extent to which the economics of the area isunderpinnedby a strong social identity and cohesiveness which we found during the study tour - and now Katie and I are experiencing as residents in a tight-knit community with a web of social identity and cohesiveness. On my visit 2 years ago, I tried to appreciate this, albeit viewed through a western, liberal democratic consciousness of our UK paradigm (and preconceptions) of civil society, identity, community and voluntary sector activity….and probably missed out, being deaf to a full appreciation of this social identity and consciousness in India. As the famous Indian poet and Nobel Prize winner for literature in 1913, Rabindranath Tagore said‘to a western observer our civilisation appears all metaphysics, as to a deaf man, piano playing appears to be mere movements of fingers and no music.’What I recognise as key is that the manifestation of this social identity and consciousness is directly organised and locally driven by NGO activity. This is rooted from within individuals, families and communities, and as such is embedded into the‘DNA’ of how the society operates and communities act. An example of this is the concept of ‘fraternity capital’ where individuals, after a few years working in a company, may well see the opportunity to start on their own be it from a NGO basis or from an entrepreneurial basis, and are often subsequently backed by friends, family and the wider community. The benefits of this consciousness in economic terms are threefold. Firstly it serves as a stimulus to the social sector providing public goods and services. These public goods and services are vital infrastructural aspects to successful commercial activity. Secondly it complements government activity, filling the ‘gaps’ of state action, and thirdly it works closely with the commercial sector, imbuing it with social responsibility.Although this is just our first month, we are both experiencing first hand within both our placements