A people-first progress model

It’s been said for a long time that the development of North Karnataka should be a priority for the state. Every government in the last two or three decades has expressed its determination to develop the backward districts. In 2000, the state government set up a Regional Imbalances Redressal Committee, which made several recommendations. Since then, a fair amount of money has been spent on projects and initiatives recommended by this committee.

But notwithstanding the declarations of commitment, the gulf between the prosperous districts and the ones bringing up the rear has persisted. And in March last year, the government set up yet another committee, this time to not only assess development in those districts, but also suggest corrective steps.

Something quite similar is going on at the national level. Some states have significantly lagged others, and for a very long time now, there have been huge transfers of funds from the richer states to the poorer ones. Despite that, the states that bring up the bottom of development rankings have been there for long.

Why? And more importantly, what can we do differently? Perhaps we’ve been asking the wrong question. Throughout the years, when it has been apparent that a region is lagging, the instinctive response has been to ask – What should the government do? This assumes that the answer to the problem lies within the government, and therefore, we must look for the options available there. But what if we’ve been looking for our lost keys where there is light rather than where we dropped them?

Early after Independence, we became accustomed to the idea that the government must develop India. In an era of giant new PSUs and limited private investment, perhaps that was predictable. But as the private sector began to grow, the government should have withdrawn more from its role in industry and focused on delivering public goods and services; instead, it has taken on new responsibilities without shedding its old roles.

As the number of things they need to do has grown, governments should have responded by making local councils responsible for more functions. But they did not do that. As a result, they’re overburdened with responsibilities and have to choose which things they’ll pay attention to. In that struggle for attention, weaker regions have invariably lost out.

There has been an even bigger downside to this. Focusing excessively on what they could do to solve various public problems, governments did not ask what the people could do instead, and how the state could enable them. At a time when they should have been promoting the capabilities and freedoms of citizens, they did the opposite, insisting that only governments could be trusted and empowered to solve public problems.

The result is widespread scarcity across sectors. If we’re serious about developing backward districts, we must first let them control more of their own destinies locally. State and national control of development will almost always favour the places that are already top-of-mind to political leaders, leaving other places neglected. And second, we have to accept that development is not something the government alone can create; it needs society and the market too. There is evidence for this way of thinking. The states that have more decentralisation of governance also have multiple economic hubs and social infrastructure that nudges people to think they have a future in those places.

Amartya Sen famously pointed out that development is the expansion of people’s freedoms, allowing them to seek and achieve the lives they wish to lead, including pursuing their economic goals. In this way of thinking, people are not mere beneficiaries of strategies to create investments or jobs. They are the reason we seek development, and it is in their imagination that we should pursue it.

I recently asked a senior executive of a leading IT firm about the company’s experience in trying to shift some of its workforce to smaller towns. He was candid, pointing out that companies want to be where the talent is, and managers in particular don’t want to go to places without social infrastructure.

We do need investments and jobs in the poorer districts. But more than that, we need better child care, education and health, more skills training, better public transport and credit access, and other inputs that enable people to develop their talents and have a good quality of life. And we need to trust that places with these features will be naturally attractive to the investments we wish to bring there.

(The writer is a a social entrepreneur, founder of Mapunity and LVBL, and co-founder, Lithium, wakes up with hope for the city and society, goes to bed with a sigh)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.