Politica

I have had this sneaking suspicion for some time now. But it seemed a tad too irreverent. However i will stick my neck out and say that Democracy in its modern form is flawed and the problem is not so much the political establishment but the voters. Yes you read it right. The Voters.

You see the problem fundamentally lies with voters. It may seem like insulting something sacred - after aint - vox populi vox dei (the voice of the people is the voice of God) ?

As it turns out perhaps not. The average voter is most often wrong about the issues (both social and economic) and that their wrong ideas lead to policies that make society as a whole worse off.

We tend to assume that if the government enacts bad policies, it’s because the system isn’t working properly and it isn’t working properly because voters are poorly informed. In my view the voters are not only poorly informed (and that in itself a very huge problem in a India - a country with barely 60 % adult literacy), but, they are also only thinking about their own community/caste/region/religion. And a polity more than eager to exploit these differences adroitly. In an electorate like India where dialects change every 60 kilometers. Also, in a country like India where around 300 million people are living under USD 1 a day, there is neither incentive nor the inclination to think of 'national good'. The average voter will vote for the party which promises free power/rice at Rs 2 per kilo come election time. The average voter is not interested in the big economic picture. He is ignorant and apathetic. (i.e. He doesnt know the big picture and he does not care.)

I want to state here that it is not that this is a feature of only the Indian voters. Our democracy is only 60 years old. For even the US which has almost full literacy and has a democracy which is almost 235 years old, it is instructive to know that the the political knowledge of the average american voter has been tested repeatedly, and the scores are impressively low. In polls taken since 1945, a majority of American voters have been unable to name a single branch of government, define the terms “liberal” and “conservative,” and explain what the Bill of Rights is. Nearly half do not know that states have two senators and three-quarters do not know the length of a Senate term. I am not sure how many of Indian voters have even read the Indian consitution (do they know that they cannot start a political party if they do not proclaim that they support socialism) or even have an inkling of the rights and duties as a citizen.

More evidence of ignorance is forthcoming in the economic field and here there is no distiction between the Indian or American voters here. Bryan Caplan, the recent author of the book "The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Politics” suspects that voters cherish irrational views on many issues, but he discusses only views relevant to economic policy. The average person (from the American perspective), he says, has four biases about economics—four main areas in which he or she differs from the economic expert. The typical noneconomist does not understand or appreciate the way markets work (and thus favors regulation and is suspicious of the profit motive), dislikes foreigners (and thus tends to be protectionist), equates prosperity with employment rather than with production (and thus overvalues the preservation of existing jobs), and usually thinks that economic conditions are getting worse (and thus favors government intervention in the economy). Economists know that these positions are irrational, because the average person actually benefits from market competition, which provides the best product at the lowest price; from free trade with other countries, which usually lowers the cost of labor and thus the price of goods; and from technological change, which redistributes labor from less productive to more productive enterprises.*

Some posit that in effect democracy should work like a market. That effectively the 'invisible hand' of Adam smith should also lead to intelligence choices made by a mass of people each working in their self interest. (see the "The Wisdom of Crowds") However, in my view there is a crucial difference. Simply put by Garreth Hardin "Democracy is a commons, not a market". A commons is an unregulated public resource—in the classic example, in Garrett Hardin’s essay “The Tragedy of the Commons” (1968), it is literally a commons, a public pasture on which anyone may graze his cattle. It is in the interest of each herdsman to graze as many of his own cattle as he can, since the resource is free, but too many cattle will result in overgrazing and the destruction of the pasture. So the pursuit of individual self-interest leads to a loss for everyone. Voters do have views, and that they are, basically, prejudices. These views can be grossly irrational because since voting carries no cost, people are free to be as irrational as they like. They can ignore the consequences, just as the individual herdsman can ignore the consequences of putting one more cow on the public pasture. Voting is not a slight variation on shopping. Shoppers have incentives to be rational. Voters essentially do not. Any any self interest is contingent on the voting of hundreds of others. (the behaviour of others in the grazing example).

These conditions are endemic to democracy. They are not distortions of the process; they are what you would expect to find in a system designed to serve the wishes of the people. Democracy fails because it does what voters want. In India voters in two states (read WB and Kerela) are able to thwart national development by giving a powerful say to the communists who slow down economic liberalisation losing precious years to other countries. What one needs to understand that to make democracy successful, one needs education - primary education in India firstly to read and write and then to understand the basics of economics. As i have stated elsewhere education and beyond literacy (and not necessarily formal) is pre-requisite to the healthy functioning of a democracy. Till at least a significant percentage of the voters have a view of the big picuture, we will continue to take bad decisions as a process.

And it reinforces my view that : politicians accross the political landscape in India have a powerful incentive in keeping voters illterate and keep fanning their caste/community/religious prejudices. It is much easier to manipulate the illiterate and desparately poor.

One may say that it is easy to be an armchair critic. Till we find a better form of political organisation it is not incumbent to criticize democracy. I accpept that charge humbly. But let us not treat democracy as a holy cow. Sometimes a little less of democracy and little more of techoncracy may be just what the doctor ordered.