India, and most Indians, are getting wealthier. With a per capita income of $6,000 (PPP), India is now a lower middle-income nation. If our GDP continues to grow at a modest 7% CAGR, millions of Indians will gradually escape poverty and hundreds of millions of us will grow steadily more affluent. The probability of this seems fairly reasonable – not because of the competence of any government — but because of the aspirations, drive and entrepreneurship of millions of Indians, especially young Indians.
But even as we grow wealthier, the quality of life especially in urban India will continue to plummet. I live in Koramangala, Bangalore, the epicenter of India’s entrepreneurial ecosystem, a place brimming with talent and energy .
But it is also brimming with mounds of festering garbage. The stench of sewage permeates the air. A commute to the airport that once took an hour now takes more than two. However, Koramangala’s residents have it good compared to those who live in other suburbs like Whitefield.This story of unlivable cities is repeated across India. Delhi’s residents complain about the barely breathable air and awful traffic. Mumbaikars lament the disappearance of public spaces. Rain has shut Chennai down. As population and consumption rise, we are seeing the degradation of everything public -infrastructure, justice, law and order, healthcare, education -from bad to unbearable.
Our response to this degradation has been privatization by default. Companies create their own worldclass infrastructure. The affluent and growing middleclass retreat behind gated communities and highrise apartments and to a world of privatized education, privatized healthcare, private security and transportation. This retreat has given rise to what we see today: oases of private splendour in an ocean of public squalor. But how sustainable is this? What’s the point in rising affluence if the quality of our life is plummeting? What’s the point in owning more cars or better cars if it takes an hour or more to travel 10km? What’s the point of rising GDP if we can’t breathe our air, if most of our food is contaminated and the judicial system fails to deliver timely justice? As someone remarked about China, what’s the point in growing the pie if the pie is inedible? The ocean of public squalor is beginning to engulf our private cocoons.
It is very easy to get angry and blame “government” for this mess. Our deplorable situation is clearly the failure of successive governments of every political hue at the Center, the state and local level. They have failed to curb corruption and have failed even more miserably to build institutions. Institutions are the foundations of society . Even as our population surged and our economy multiplied, successive governments have allowed key institutions to atrophy; indeed, in many cases, they have been deliberately weakened.Weak institutions -regulatory institutions, institutions of administration, policing, and justice -are the root cause of government’s inability to stem corruption and deliver essential services to citizens.
But much as government is to be blamed, the bigger problem might be our own behaviour. Why is there so much rotting rubbish on the streets of Bangalore? It isn’t primarily because the municipal contractor doesn’t pick up the rubbish every day. It is that residents refuse to segregate garbage the way the law prescribes and most households furtively throw their garbage on the street corner. Why is corruption so rampant? Because fewer and fewer of us see anything wrong in either taking or paying bribes; bribery is simply a transaction cost. How many of us are willing to take the metro or bus to the airport instead of our car? The total refusal on the part of babus, politicians and middle-class citizens to use public services results in the lack of any incentive to improve these.
How many talented executives are willing to give up their lucrative careers for just a few years to help rebuild public institutions or strengthen good NGOs?
How many of us are willing to give up part of a weekend to participate in a community initiative to get rid of garbage, plant trees in our neighbourhood or attend meetings of the resident wel fare association?
How many business leaders are personally engaged in the CSR work of their company to ensure that financial contributions and employee talent are directed towards building institutional capacity? How many of us make the effort to vote in elections instead of seeing it as another holiday?
It is time that we realize that we get the kind of government and society we deserve. To a very large extent, the sorry state of our society is the result of our own indifference. To make a democratic society work, we need to redefine what it means to be a citizen.
Citizenship is not just a birthright, it is also an obligation. A democratic society is fragile and its success demands vigilance, collective action and even sacrifice from its citizens. It took great sacrifice to win our free dom. It will take at least as much leadership and sac rifice to create a functioning society.
