Several years ago, when the India-versus-China angle was hot in the automobile industry, the director of a leading Indian car manufacturer distilled the motoring paradigm on either side of the Himalayas to a simple matrix of people and space. I easily saw how one country was a small car market, and the other, not so. Matrices are not without exception. Rising incomes or better infrastructure can alter the size of the car you buy. But you cannot escape the matrix permanently, unless countries alter the mother factors.
WE SHRANK OURSELVES
It is now perhaps two years since those phrases by the government — governance deficit, administrative deficit. Coined at the height of the Maoist attacks, they convey to the point. We thought remote geography was to blame. But we subsequently saw more references indicating the difficulty in governing India. Official response to the anti-graft campaign; government's suspicion for social media, logjams in Parliament that are the sum total of logjams on the streets — you notice this tenor in urban issues as well.
We have difficulty approving unique identification numbers. Unmanageable India stares at us. May be we have too much freedom? There are takers for all opinions in society, which, having become large, is divided and complex. Society agrees on one thing — we must survive. As we try doing that, we spawn insecurity fast, because our 1.2 billion is diversely endowed. Contemporary economics fuels insecurity; our politics manipulates it. In principle, it is nothing new. But what if no matter what we do, we merely delay the onset of insecurity, never dispel it?
Whoever coined those phrases — governance deficit, administrative deficit — was articulate. Equally, those specialising in scuttling public campaigns, creating security mania and wanting to muzzle the media are adept at reading social patterns. Panacea, opportunistically, stops there. Insecurity is good business. What neither the government suspecting dissent in every corner, nor those fighting governance deficit or corruption, will address is the too many of us around, that makes all this the stuff of our destiny. We are too many in number. We have shrunk our living space and quality of life. We have only ourselves to blame. Yet, how many times do you hear the government, otherwise very articulate, identify population as the underlying cause for India's unmanageability? Which leader speaks so?
CAN'T ARTICULATE A MATRIX?
Perhaps, you would argue — that is so basic. Why waste energy on spelling out the basic?
The thing is — if you don't outline the basic as premise, whatever you construct on top won't be valued. It would keep on imploding, because premise overpowers journey. Population is everybody's mess. But that doesn't discount it as context. If a government is serious about governance, it should not flinch from reminding people of the un-governability they authored. There is nothing bountiful anymore in the South Asian context that supports governance without informing people what their numbers and consequent behaviour mean.
Population casts pressure on people and resources. It sculpts our behaviour. We are living examples of it. Our numbers challenge, as does our household-based organisation, hawking implicit virtue without acknowledging numbers. It blinds us to the larger picture. Except as election analysis, neither the math in our numbers nor the sociology within, interests anyone. We don't notice ourselves as the first step towards governing ourselves.
I find it intriguing that an automobile company chief outlined the basic paradigm of his work with a simple matrix, but entire governments can't. Our governments, like our households, avoid the matrix.
(The author is a freelance journalist based in Mumbai.)