One year ago, Amartya Sen argued that open public discussion during a crisis could cause equitable policies to be implemented such that 'a better world emerged'. His example was Britain during the Second World War.
There was a sharp reduction of the incidence of undernourishment in Britain in the difficult years of food shortages during the second world war. Facing a big reduction of total food availability, Britain arranged more equal food sharing, through rationing and social support. The chronically undernourished were much better fed than ever before. A similar thing happened with better shared medical attention.
It is notable that, Charles Tegart, Imperial India's notoriously brutal Police Chief, who had ruthlessly suppressed Bengal's revolutionaries using spies and double agents, was put in charge of combating the British black market in 1942. Was there 'open public discussion' in the UK? Up to a point- yes. But Nazi sympathizers were thrown in jail. After the war, collaborators- like Lord Haw Haw or even the son of the former Secretary of State for India- were hanged.
Sen does not acknowledge that it was Tegart's methods- not open public discussion- which secured Britain's triumph.
However, a counter-example Sen suggested might, in view of India's current COVID surge, seem prophetic-
India is a particularly striking case. Inequalities remain very large. Famines have not occurred since the establishment of democracy in independent India.
Though one did occur in neighboring Bangladesh soon after it became a Democracy with a free press and lots of open public discussion. Sadly, around this time in India, the Police and paramilitaries were killing Maoists with such vim and vigor that open public discussion decided to keep shtum or talk about something else.
Yet open public discussion — which makes the predicament of the deprived heard, politically significant and protects the endangered — faces increasing governmental restriction, including reduction of media freedom through direct and indirect means. Marked by the contrast between reasonable medical facilities for the affluent, and not even decent primary healthcare for most of the poor,
who overwhelmingly live in rural areas
and weighed down by the brutal asymmetries of modernised caste inequalities, India could have benefited greatly from equitable pandemic management. Yet there is little evidence of egalitarian concerns. Instead, the focus has been on drastic control and sudden lockdowns (including of trains and buses)
to prevent the virus getting loose in the hinterland where it could mutate quietly with none being the wiser.
with little attention paid to labourers who lose their jobs or the many migrant workers, the poorest of the poor, who are kept hundreds of miles from their homes.
Shailaja, Health Minister of the Communist regime in Kerala, did a much better job. Her expert knowledge of coping with NIPAH a couple of years previously meant that she and her team were not just reactive, they were proactive. Migrant workers had faith in the State Government because they could see with their own eyes that Government Schools and Clinics were fit for purpose. Sadly, this is not true of most of India because grass-roots politics is corrupt and casteist- not meritocratic and based on competition re. 'last mile delivery'.
The Communists may get re-elected in Kerala because they have done well in this crisis. The problem is Modi too may get re-elected no matter how badly he does simply because there is no other credible, or willing, candidate.
Competition matters. Open Public Discussion does not. Criticism is useless if no other choice is available.
Sure, social distancing restricts the virus’ spread (this important benefit is not in dispute). But it has to be combined with compensatory arrangements — for income, food, access and medical attention — for people devastated by the lockdown.
But 'compensatory arrangements' have to be combined with resources on the ground and administrative capacity. Carving up an imaginary cake is all very well. But the cake has to be baked before anyone can eat it.
For Modi this crisis has been a discovery process. A lot of capacity which exists on paper turned out to be useless or counter-productive. But then the American CDC turned out to have feet of clay.
What the COVID crisis has shown us is that policy making must acknowledge 'Knightian Uncertainty'- i.e. the unknowability of future states of the world. Public discussion has purchase where the future is predictable. Where it isn't, regret-minimizing strategies must be employed. We must guard against catastrophic threats which we keep quiet about in public.
India, like many countries, needs something like an NHS.
Why not say 'India needs to be as rich as Britain'. But why stop there? Why not say 'Indians should be British. They should eat scones not samosas.'
But no lesson in that direction will probably emerge from the pandemic response, given its huge inequities.
I think one lesson which emerged very quickly was the need for 'One Nation, One Ration Card'- i.e. portable benefits so as to give migrant labor more security, which benefits industry without increasing its regulatory burden.
There are many other such lessons at the District and Regional level. The crisis has concentrated minds on demographic realities- not the picture that was current on the basis of outdated statistics which showed much less migration than there actually was.
Sadly, it is quite possible that when we meet again we will be no better placed to face the unequal world in which we live. Yet it need not go that way. A concern with equity in crisis management would lessen suffering in many countries now, and offer new ideas to inspire us to build a less unequal world in the future. Since we are less than half way into the crisis, dare we hope this can still happen?
A year later the answer is clear. Open public discussion has not played a helpful role. Compare America- where many politicians and media personalities expressed COVID skepticism- with China and this conclusion is inescapable.
Many in India, sharing Sen's fear that the Modi Government was restricting media and other freedom, suggested that the lockdown was a tool to 'stifle dissent'. In particular, it was seen as a heavy handed attempt by a Majoritarian, if not Fascist, Government to put an end to mass protests by a minority. At a later point, when farmers from the majority community were conducting a protest, the fact that there seemed to be no COVID surge confirmed most people in the view that the whole thing had been overblown. Perhaps Indians had higher natural immunity. People said- 'you see, Caucasians have AAT deficiency and are more at risk. Anyway, many Indians have immunity because similar viruses have been circulating here for centuries.'
Would a greater concern with 'equity in crisis management' have helped? The answer is that in the case of a pandemic only one thing matters- who is most at risk of infection. Whether they are rich or poor does not matter. They must be identified and quarantined. The moment you change the policy instrument to satisfy a second policy objective, you get something which is not just sub-optimal, it may be counter-productive. Let us suppose a bien pensant government had decided to force Black people where I live to get vaccinated on the grounds that we were at higher risk and, in any case, combating 'Institutional Racism' is a good thing. It is likely we would have felt we were being used as guinea pigs. We might double down on opposing the vaccine as evil and part of some malign conspiracy. Suppose the Government backs off- for fear of provoking race riots- and moves on to the next most vulnerable group. They might be equally recalcitrant. Indeed, they might feel they are being unfairly equated with a less prestigious social group.
Economists speak of Tinbergen's rule- you must have as many policy instruments as you have policy objectives. It is folly to say 'well, this instrument' should be changed to reflect other concerns we ought to have'. That is a path to McKelvey chaos.
There may be a moral argument that Medical Science can't be our sole guide. A coldly utilitarian approach must be softened by the warmth of human sympathy and sentiment. But, surely, such warmth and sympathy can be added at the point of delivery? There is no need to change the instrument for an a priori reason.
Still, the objection may be made that any Social Action must reflect the moral values that constituted the Social realm.
However, this may be countered by saying 'instruments arise out of nothing else. The fact that they have an objective, scientific, description and set of protocols doesn't mean they don't arise from the promptings of a warm heart and a misty eye.'
A cynic might say 'instruments may be designed by angels. But they are implemented by devils- greedy politicians intent on sucking up to the rich. Thus there is an occult mechanism whereby only instruments beneficial to the rich get implemented. You are very naive to believe otherwise.'
This may be true. Still, this may be a case of 'enlightened self-interest' doing what is socially optimal.
Suppose a Government were only concerned with the Rich. It would still have to help the poor because the poor can infect the rich or, if the Rich have retreated to a private island, harm the value of their investments by dying instead of working.
Interestingly, Labour- as a class- gains from a pandemic. The Black Death is supposed to have helped the English peasantry emerge from serfdom and rise up economically. Capital, thus, would have a greater interest in preserving the quality and quantity of the Labor supply.
Sen speaks of 'compensatory arrangements'. This requires resources and a type of State Capacity which itself requires resources of a qualitative type. This means a poor country with a lot of very poor people is not going to have the fiscal resources, or administrative capacity, to make 'compensatory arrangements' - more particularly if it was already using transfers to help the poorest. In other words, a concern with equity may mean that, when a medical or military crisis hits, there is no 'spare capacity' to cope with the increased need for equitable compensation. Instead there is entitlement collapse of an inequitable type.
Open public discussion can have a perverse effect on tackling inequity. If the impression is created that there is 'free money' available for the very poor then all sorts of not-so-very-poor start queuing up demanding compensation. The farmers who were protesting actually employed migrant laborers. They have been offered a higher price for their product than that given to those migrant laborers who now have no choice but to work for local landlords.
During a crisis, it makes sense to have an expansionary fiscal stance. However, those who supply mission critical items- e.g. oxygen or vaccines- may use their market power to extract windfall profits. The fact that there is an expansionary fiscal stance itself sets off a furious race to secure the benefits. Open public discussion can be used to amplify unfair, as well as fair, demands.
In India, Pratap Bhanu Mehta has been the most vocal supporter of open public discussion as a panacea. Indeed, he may be regarded as a martyr in its cause. He says he resigned from a Private University because the Government had put pressure on the Donors to get him to quit. This was because they didn't like the articles he was publishing in the Indian Express.
He complains in his latest article- ' what do policy proposals mean, when all policy is about managing headlines, not achieving an objective?'
The McKelvey chaos theorem tell us that when a policy space becomes 'multi-dimensional'- e.g when considerations of equity are tagged onto purely medical considerations- then there is a struggle for 'Agenda Control'. Virtually any outcome, however disliked by all, may result from a situation where any sensible measure can be opposed on the basis of some other principle. If open public discussion wants to be fully reflected in the actual decision space- if Democracy is to be truly participatory- then, having 'incomparable' principles (e.g. equity considerations separate from health considerations) can lead to chaos.
Mehta writes- There is a need to fix accountability.
In a representative Democracy, accountability is secured by having an Executive subject to Judicial and Legislative overview. However, there must be a viable alternative to the existing Chief Executive or ruling party. This is what is lacking in India now. Rahul Gandhi won't step up to the plate. Open public discussion might increasingly deplore Modi, but if there is no alternative to Modi, then it is impotent. It is not the case that the Judiciary can take over the running of the country. Nor, in India, is it feasible for the Army to step in.
Mehta suggests that 'institutional sinews' could have played a role- But how does accountability get fixed when so many institutional sinews from federalism to bureaucracy have snapped?
The problem here is that the Indian Constitution contains no notion that India is federal, not unitary, or that the Civil Service has a separate mandate and is wholly independent of elected politicians. One may say 'yes, but there was a certain political culture or 'unwritten code' which obtained in the good old days.' But there is no evidence of this. Furthermore, in no State- no matter which Party rules it- do we see anything very different from what is happening at the center.
The conclusion we must come to is that the Basic Structure of the Indian Constitution is not favorable to the view that 'Open Public Discussion' or 'Participatory Democracy' has salience- more particularly during a crisis. One the contrary, the Executive is expected to get on with the job and keep its fingers crossed that it gets re-elected. Recent Supreme Court judgments suggest that the right of mass protest is not unconditional or indefeasible. The harm such protests cause should be taken into account.
Sen and Mehta- unlike the 'Subaltern School'- don't dwell much on an obvious problem with 'Open Public Discussion' in a highly unequal society. The very poor have little 'Voice'- save at election time. By contrast, the wealthy own newspapers- like the one which employs Mehta as a contributing editor- and endow University chairs or, indeed, entire Universities.
Mehta writes-
India has always been a tough place; the callousness that comes with inequality is deeply inscribed in our social structure. Politics was supposed to mitigate at least the harshest edges of this inequality. Instead, what we are seeing in the politics of the BJP is the unleashing of an unvarnished social Darwinism, a ruthless exercise of power on behalf of the powerful: Majorities against minorities, state against dissenters, and big capital against small. The spectre of more repression being unleashed to manage the post-pandemic discontent cannot be ruled out. The question is this: Will these rudiments of public solidarity on display counter deadly social Darwinism that our official politics has become?
Mehta impugns 'repressive' actions- e.g. lockdown enforcement- and equates anything else with Social Darwinism. He does not understand that we are dealing with actual Darwinism. Genes which do not contribute good defenses to this type of virus are being eliminated from the population. This does not correlate with one's Social status at all.
Let us now look at the sort of policy proposals 'open public discussion' throws up. Bear in mind Mehta was the head of a leading think-tank in Delhi and had previously held some sort of quasi Governmental advisory position.
Perhaps, a good test case is something urgent: A reconsideration of our vaccine policy. The three basic ingredients of a vaccine policy for a pandemic of this kind are clear. Do whatever it takes to make sure there are enough supplies (the right procurement contract, capital subsidies, capacity expansion, and, if need be, the suspension of intellectual property rights).
This may be true of America. It isn't true of a poor country like India. We can ask for 'suspension of intellectual property rights' but asking aint getting. It seems Biden will actually help us with vaccine raw materials but this is because India could incubate much more deadly vaccine resistant strains thus sparking an even more deadly surge in America itself.
It is notable that much 'open public discussion' opposed the indigenous vaccine- the suspicion being that an unfair advantage was being given to a particular Company- though Fauci now says it may be resistant to mutated strains. This underscores the important of 'informed' rather than 'public' information exchange. The latter can crowd out the former.
Centrally procure vaccines, but give states operational flexibility.
To do what? Hoard vaccines? Set off a bidding war? Has 'operational flexibility' helped the EU response or has it hindered it?
And distribute them free. This is essentially what the United States did.
Because India is as rich as the US
And do all of this as fast as possible, if we are to prevent new mutants from arising.
Earlier this year, there was a learned article explaining that vaccinating those who had already been infected was very wicked. Indeed, at the time a lot of ordinary people- seeing the farmers as healthy as ever after weeks of mass protests- believed that Indians had natural immunity. The whole thing was a hoax.
Instead, what we got in vaccine policy is a bizarre combination of ruthlessness and managing the headlines.
Open public discussion, means business as usual for politicians and public intellectuals. Mehta will continue to scream that Modi is Hitler. Others will scream that Mehta and Sen are utter cretins who live in a fantasy land where India is as wealthy as America. Meanwhile elections go ahead and it turns out that the 'open public discussion' of Sen & Mehta and their counterparts on the Right wasn't actually public at all. They may as well have been whispering to each other and giggling behind the bike shed.
Mehta ends by denouncing private provision of vaccination.
Now allocation will be based on whoever can lay their hands on the vaccine, not what is best suited to combat the virus and reduce health burdens. You then say there will be differential pricing. In essence, those who can afford to get them at private sector rates shall get them more easily. The argument is that they will cross-subsidise. This is a specious argument; if people want to genuinely fund cross-subsidies in health, better to collect it as taxes and create public goods, not distribute vaccines as a privileged good under scarcity.
This may seem perfectly reasonable in the U.K- where Mehta got his first degree- or in the USA- where he got higher degrees. But the UK, with one twentieth of the population of India, has double the number of tax payers even though the tax threshold is twice as high.
Suppose, vaccines were free but allocated strictly on medical criteria. Then more Income tax payees die because they have lower priority. This shrinks the tax take which in turn shrinks the budget for Health care etc. You have a vicious circle.
Can a better society emerge from the COVID crisis? Yes. Informed discussion- with safeguards such that experts don't have to worry about being labeled racist or transphobic or Zionist etc- could take the place of open public discussion. But, surely, some provision like that already exists? Anyway, we can't suppress public discussion in our sort of Societies. Thankfully, there is a 'Darwinian' solution. Don't engage with obvious losers. Be like Modi. Grow out your beard or otherwise improve your image. When attacked by a potential winner, respond yet more viciously. If he calls you a Nazi, accuse him of raping dogs in the street. A little of this goes a long way. Ordinary people understand that one can just disintermediate the 'open discussion' losers. Our leader could always, like Trump, turn the tables on them by deploring their amorous attentions to innocent little bow-wows. But he doesn't have to bother. What is important is that he project confidence and take as many U turns as are necessary to get us away from this horrible virus.
No comments:
Post a Comment