The Relationship Between Citizen and State

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzFNdSpu4ZU Duration: 536.8s

Speaker (00:05): So we are often lost in the economic, principles of, liberalism and market and so on and so forth. But there’s a larger philosophy at work. It’s about the relationship between the citizen and the state. We are free people. We are born free. We have collectively come together to organize ourselves into a state system, a government, in order to fulfill our collective needs that we as individuals cannot fulfill. Therefore, the sovereignty rests with us. Even today, even in a country like India where people don’t understand the role of the state adequately, those in power think that they are the lords and masters of the universe. The reality is that 80 to 90% of the things that matter in our lives are decided by us and our family or individually, good, bad, ugly, and we go on with life. And that’s a saving grace. That’s the reason why India is surviving despite bad governance and abject poverty and many other maladies. So the state has a limited role, but definite role. And that role cannot not necessarily be in one focus of power in Delhi, in Red Fort or in the the the union secretariat, I I despise the word central or central government or central therefore, you know, I’m pedantic, and I use some of these terms. Forgive me for that. Indulge me. The union government secretariat or Rashtrapati Bhavan. No. The power to the extent that has to be accessed collectively must be as close to the citizen as possible. That is the principle of subsidiarity. If a family cannot take care of the issues, collective work is required, then transfer the power to community or stakeholders. It may be a farmers producers organization. It may be a cooperative. It may be a school board to take care of your school because after all, who are the people who are concerned about the school’s functioning? The parents and the kids who go to their school. Others don’t really care except in a broad, generic sense that, you India is poorly educated. But otherwise, you don’t have personal stakes in that. A community of stakeholders. Define them and empower them as much as you can. Then the local government, because there are some areas where you cannot define a stakeholder. I cannot define precisely who are the people who use the road in front of my house. Anybody can use it. You cannot say only you people use it. If it’s a gated community, probably the road inside the gated community is primarily used by the residents of the community. But otherwise, there’s there are a lot of things, services and public goods, which are used by people who cannot be defined clearly as stakeholders. There’s a larger community as stakeholder. Therefore, territorial government as local as possible. There are some things because of economies of scale or because of jurisdictional overlap or complexity of management, they require organization and management at a larger level. That is where the province, the state comes. The state has province. The state government. There are some things, by the very nature of things, the defense of the realm, the currency management, and some other areas of the national highways framework, larger communication network, or or the transport transportation networks, or electricity grid at the national level, obviously require a broad national framework, then the union government comes. So unless we understand the link between the citizen and the states and the relationship, we always get confused. This notion that government is god, that the head of the government is a monarch. He is thereby a divine dispensation, and that he knows everything, that he encompasses everything, that we are subjects. It is a notion of monarchy. It is a notion of a feudal government. It is completely antiquated. It is completely unreal. It is completely dangerous. Now unless we understand that, it is not giving up the role of the state. You you have seen even in this discussion, I have been repeatedly urging. Do not underestimate the role of the state. State has a critical, though limited role. Whoever dismisses the role of the state is is doing that at his own peril. It is at the cost of society. Only when there is a strong and effective state, efficient state that clearly defined functions discharged well, can there be an efficient and working market. But that state need not be at one place for a number of good reasons. Number one, absolute power corrupts absolutely. Don’t give anybody absolute power. Therefore, horizontal decentralization. Number two, if there are multiplicities of of authority, then you can experiment and innovate. Supposing I commit a horrendous mistake, I may be well meaning, but we are all human. Human beings are frail. We are prone to error. Now my misjudgment, my mistakes will not visit upon the whole society. A thousand people will try a thousand experiments. We’ll see which works better, and then the society learns from that. The cost of mistakes is low, and the price of innovation is low. The benefits of innovation are high. That’s the advantage of decentralization. The third is you and I, as citizens, we have the voice. Now your voice and my voice is much more effective in our own community. I keep telling people about I I right now, I’m speaking to you from the fifth floor apartment, in this residential complex. Suppose the elevator does not function here, I’m going to holler, not because Bharat Mata is in danger or constitution is in jeopardy. Because the elevator doesn’t function, I cannot simply climb up every time. I’m now 64 years old. I’m pretty healthy, I believe. But doctors tell me that after a certain age, you walk as long and as fast as you want, but don’t climb upstairs and climb down. And therefore, elevator is important. And my aged mother certainly cannot climb upstairs. So I’m not going to keep quiet until the elevator is set right or the water supply to my apartment, or the electricity, the outages within the apartment complex, you know, because there’s a fuse box problem or something, or the watch and ward, because these are things that matter to me and my quality of life. I holler. I make it happen. Because there are other mobilizations, the caste, the the region, the religion, or the bigger Bharat Mata or emotional, they don’t matter. What matters is what’s important for me and my family. And that’s what true democracy is. Democracy is not about Bharat Mata. Democracy is not about an emotional sloganeering. It’s about the link between the citizen and the services she gets. What happens with the tax money? That link is clear only when the power is as local as possible. It does not require genius. Every successful democracy, without exception, has very effective local governments. You know, a country like Sweden, with just about five, six million population, maybe seven, eight million, you know what they’re saying about local governments, Sweden and Norway? My god. We cannot look at school education at a centralized level, a small tiny country which is equal to, say, a large district in India. I held a district charge some thirty three years ago with a population at the time of 5,000,000 people. Now a country of 5,000,000 size, they say, my god, it’s too big. We cannot centralize. We have to transfer power to the local communities. I was with many people talk about Singapore. Now I was with Singapore Public Service Commission chairperson, a lady in 2005 or so. She said, look, we do not and we cannot recruit public servants for all of Singapore. My god. It’s too centralized. Each department recruits their own. We only make sure that there is a proper mechanism and there’s a fairness in recruitment. Whereas in India, we think it’s perfect and natural for that one authority at one level to do everything, and that’s the right way. It’s an absurd way of doing things. You take United States, you take Germany, you take Britain, you take France, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, any country. It’s the communities and the local governments, and then the states and the federation, and then the federal government. Federal government may may get a lot of publicity in this age because the media people love the the the capital of the country and politics at a mega scale, but the real things that matter are local.