Economic inequity: It’s Robinhood time
All democracies start with good intentions. In the beginning, as a nation decides to adopt the most popular political format of them all, the democratic form is seen to be a good one. The most benign and politically correct one to pick as well. And it gets picked by many. The fact that we today have 98 democracies in the world, which represent 60% of the total kitty of nations, says it all. More than half the population of the world lives in a democracy (China of course skews a big chunk away in this numbers game).
The democratic form of governance seems to be the most robust. Democracy is a thought in action then, one that is assiduously protected by everyone within the country, with clear divisions of the legislature, executive and judiciary that help govern and maintain the semblance of law, order and equity. And in this assiduous maintenance of the spirit of the democratic form of governance, nations face challenges as they grow older and bigger.
The water of capitalism, which is typically the brute driving force of economies that run in the democratic mode, has a way of finding its own level. As the gush of capitalism finds its own level, there is a tendency for economies to get divided into clear ghettos of those who have and those who don’t. Economies that possibly started out as very poor ones (India included), over a clear time frame of decades, rise from the bathos of poverty and correct the basic inequities the nation suffered from. Capitalism and its many avatars are clear friends out here.
If one is to measure the success of a democracy, there is a clear start-point metric that can visibly be compared to a contemporary point of relative overall success. Countries that boast of a steady and frenetic pace of GDP growth year on year are classic examples that showcase the joy of a democracy.
Many of us are really happy with the way this is. We see what we see and refuse to look for what we don’t. Many of us who ask these questions vocally and celebrate the success of the GDP metric are really prime beneficiaries of what the governance module has contributed to date. Much of this contribution is to the account of those who have emerged to be “those who have”. And those who have, have plenty.
The other constituency out there in a democracy is really that portion of the nation that is quite deprived and has variably been labelled as the “have-nots”, the poor and underprivileged. This portion of the nation is really the silent majority more often than not. A silent majority that speaks normally once in five years at election time, with a vote. And well nigh nearly 30% of a nation by and large does not even vote. And there rests the silence of the lambs, in peace.
If one is to examine the current state of most democracies, there is an acute divide. This divide is economic. It separates those who have and those who don’t. The government is of course not to be blamed. Every government worth its vote actually strives hard to erase the gap between the haves and have-nots. No government is really able to erase inequality for sure though.
The effort of every government in every democracy is therefore to create equity that is political, social, religious and economic. While most governments succeed on the first three counts, the last is seldom reached. Nations therefore remain divided into small islands of those who have and large continents of those who don’t. The work of every successive government remains predictably the same, the key goal being to establish some semblance of equity in economic terms.
But in many ways, most governments write self-fulfilling prophecies of failure on this count, term after term. As democracies across the world grapple to work in the space of economic-equity correction, I really do believe there is a need to get a little more aggressive with this goal. Isn’t it time for India, as the largest of all democracies, to experiment aggressively with a model that talks of rebalancing the economic inequity that persists, decade after decade?
What, then, are the ideas? Let me float two. I believe totally in a model that speaks of acute capitalism at one end and acute socialism at another. Those who have all the money in their hands must be able to enjoy what it can buy. In and with exclusivity. And those who don’t must not be deprived of the best as
well. At least not when it comes to basics such as food, health and education.
A classic example in action is possibly the Delhi Education Model of Arvind Kejriwal and Manish Sisodia. The richest of the rich have their best of best schools where the fee is Rs 9 lakh per annum and more with top teachers and great facilities. And that’s the school for those who are in the blessed realm of acute capitalism. And for those who are at the other end of the spectrum, there are the Delhi government schools, which are possibly not less efficient in the goals of learning and teaching that schools are meant to specialise in.
And secondly, is it also time for a model of basic product pricing that has “Robinhoodisation” as its theme? Think. Why should Keku Sharma in Begusarai, who earns Rs 100 per day for a family of five, pay the same price for a kg of rice that Keku Sharma the CEO of a SaaS (Software as a Service) outfit in Bengaluru pays? Robinhoodisation in pricing out here will mean that a kg of rice will cost Keku of Begusarai Rs 2 per kg and Keku of Bengaluru Rs 200! All based on a socio-economic classification code embedded in their respective Aadhaar cards. A kg of rice will therefore not have a standard MRP. It will vary based on the weight or the lightness of your Aadhaar card. Radical, yes! Unpalatable to many, yes! But isn’t it time we got radical?
Harish Bijoor (harishbijoor@hotmail.com)
Brand Guru & Founder, Harish Bijoor Consults