The governance systems of India - bequeathed to us
by the erstwhile colonial masters which we embraced with
great eagerness - are today in a state of deep crisis. The
British built bureaucracies to control
and manage India's natural resources
and to deliver a variety of services like
education and medical services. The
British had a very limited interest in
India's economic development and
were mainly interested in revenue
extraction.
For them, there was no incentive to
prove the success of their enterprise. To
rule, of course, they had justify their
existence as a better people who had a
legitimate authority to rule. The economic growth spurred by the Industrial
Revolution in Britain and the impoverishment of India at the same time
because of British policies leading to
hunger, illiteracy and famines, created
an enormous economic gap between the
two countries and furthered the legitimisation of the British rule. British historian David Arnold has written a fascinating book on how the perception of
India as a hungry and desperate nation
grew within Britain and how the policies
of Britain which itself impoverished
India provided a continuously positive
feedback to this perception. That when
the British came to India, this country
was possibly the world's richest, most
urbanised and literate nation on earth
was steadily forgotten.
The fact that India was a country
which Westerners were once just as desperate to reach as many Indians are
today to reach the West, does not exist
even in the consciousness of educated
Indians in the late 20th century.
We raise this issue not because of
pride in the history of the nation. Which,
of course, we have in very great measure.
But, more because we believe that there
may be many lessons that we can learn
from the past. Not that all that is old is
gold. But, nonetheless, if we had such a
creative history there may be some
nuggets which we can still use today. The
fact that India has such a huge and rich
history, itself increases the possibility of
finding some nuggets. It is equally possible that the nuggets we find may be more effective in the Indian context because
these solutions would be the product of
Indian culture and, thus, more in tune
with the behaviour of Indians.
British-style governance systems
have totally failed to deliver the goods
for a variety of reasons. Let us just throw
up a few reasons for debate. For
instance, it seems to us that Indians
somehow just don't like to obey the law.
They have no hesitation in bypassing
the law in every way possible. This is
indeed strange because in their interpersonal behaviour, Indians are more
structured than just about any other
social group in the world. There are laid
down rules for whom we should marry,
what we should eat on what occasion,
how the son should behave with his
father, how the daughter-in-law should
behave with her mother-in-law, and so
on. And though modernisation continues to erode many of these behavioural
systems, they still cling on in a myriad
ways with great tenacity. Why should
Indians, therefore, be so structured in
their inter-personal behaviour while
being so unstructured in their public
behaviour?
Indians probably never cared much
for centralised governance systems.
Which leads us to ask whether corruption is a new phenomenon in India or
an old one? Indian history is definitely
full of cases from the days of Kautilya
and before when rulers stabbed each
other in the back for petty gains and
allowed foreigners to gain a foothold. At
another level, Indians like to keep themselves and their houses clean but have
no hesitation in throwing waste in front
of their neighbour's house.
With this kind of behaviour being
deeply and culturally-rooted, British-
style governance systems which are
highly centralised and bureaucratic and,
therefore, require considerable public
cooperation just cannot work. Yet, on
the other hand, Indians built innumerable numbers of tanks and ponds, protected their catchments, shared the
water, built schools in which millions
got educated, and built massive cities.
All this could not have been possible
without a governance system in which
the public did not behave with a degree
of responsibility and care. A satellite
picture of Ramnathpuram district in
Tamil Nadu still shows hundreds of
tanks even though this entire heritage is
today in a state of great decay. How did
this happen? What were the governance
principles which led to this advanced
stage of natural resource management
and delivery of services?
A new discipline of history has slowly emerged in the West which is called
environmental history. It studies the
history of ecological changes with the
growth of human civilisation. Surely,
such a discipline could shed a lot of light
on how we have reached the current
state of the Indian environment but
even more than that, it could shed light
on how the governance systems worked
in the past to manage the natural
resource base, the processes of urbanisation, and so on. Hindi litterateur
Mahadevi Varma once said, "It is not
possible to put a foot forward without
keeping the other one firmly on the
ground unless you want to fall down."
In other words, no society can move
forward in an organic manner without
taking into account its own roots.
Keeping this in mind, the Centre for
Science and Environment recently
organised a conference on ecological
history. Though historians had few
thoughts to offer on this theme, some
ideas came out very clearly:
Firstly, Indians definitely had a conservationist attitude towards nature but it was more a form of 'utilitarian conservationism' rather than 'protectionist conservationism' which many modern environmentalists preach. Indians did
not hesitate to reconstruct nature to suit
their convenience but they built rules to
live sustainably with the structures they
created. Religion was often used as a
tool to reinforce those rules.
Secondly, most of the rules regarding the use of land, the use of water or
the use of pastures, for instance, were
developed at the community-level,
which is probably why they were
respected. The kings seldom made any
rules to manage these things. On the
other hand, the current scenario is that
there is a plethora of rules in Central
and state capitals but by the time they
reach the point of implementation, they
get totally and utterly dissipated. And
even if there is someone there to implement these rules, the attitude of Indians
that every state directive should somehow be bypassed leads to near-total
non-observance. Thus, today we have a
lot of rules at the top but nothing at the
bottom whereas in the past there was
nothing at the top while there were
quite a few rules at the bottom.
Thirdly, the state rarely invested in
public services. In Rajasthan, for
instance, the kings rarely built tanks for
irrigation or for drinking water except
for those which they used themselves.
The massive Pichola lake of Udaipur
was built by a nomadic gypsy. What the
kings did were to encourage the people
- from local nobles to ordinary businesspersons, from temples to rich prostitutes, just about anybody - to invest
in schools, tanks and other such social
and economic infrastructure and look
after their upkeep. Historian Dharampal has documented in detail how hundreds of thousands of schools were built
in India before the British rule. The
kings essentially encouraged this investment by allowing these people lands to
cultivate which would not be taxed by
them. Many modern economists would
also argue that appropriate fiscal policies can go much further in changing
human behaviour than state regulation.
Are there any lessons for us in all
this to build a better 21 st century? These
are just a few ideas that we as laypeople
have gathered because of our interest in
environmental governance but there is
surely a lot that Indian history can teach
us howsoever much westernised we
might have become.
This is why we will probably organise more such ecological history conferences. To learn how do we ensure that
our other foot remains rooted firmly in
the rich ground of India.
Anil Agarwal
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