Dialogues between samaj and bazaar

Why is it that most discussions or debates have to turn into either shouting matches or serial platitudes carefully articulated to avoid disagreement? Uncommon Ground – a compilation of dialogues between industry and social leaders based on the author’s 2008 show on NDTV – is an attempt to avoid the former but it ends up being the latter.

Author Rohini Nilekani makes it clear right in the front-flap of the book that the conversations contained in it explore the “middle ground” between the ideological divisions that polarise the business and voluntary sectors. The idea is to earnestly look for answers to some pertinent questions that “developing” India faces. But it is also to establish that good discussions, even between adversaries, need not be confrontational.

However, confrontation in an exchange of ideas is not bad; what makes it fruitless is incoherence and the hysterical urge to drown out other voices — something most panellists and moderators on talk shows are so given to. Considering that Nilekani manages to get some very articulate proponents of “development” to face some of the champions of sustainability and inclusive growth, one would have hoped for at least a little, if not too much, healthy confronting.

But this doesn’t happen; no uneasy questions are asked and most discussions end up being too relaxed. For instance, at one point in a discussion between R K Pachauri and Mukesh Ambani on India’s energy challenge and ways to move towards more sustainable options, “Mukeshbhai” says we cannot curb “aspirations” and that for our billion people a “higher quality of life” is different from a “wasteful lifestyle”. His mammoth house, Antilla, that reportedly guzzled power equivalent to that required by about 7,000 homes in a month was not built when the show was aired for the panellist to perhaps draw a relationship between a “high quality” life and a wasteful one. Nevertheless, someone should have asked what these aspirations are — a mobile, two mobiles, a car, two cars? And what is the role of business in driving these aspirations — more importantly, in defining them. Similarly, on being asked if there is a need to change lifestyles and who should change, “Dr Pachauri” delivers vague homilies and leaves much unanswered. Even as one does not expect panellists to engage in nit-picking, the point is to move beyond the superficiality of pleasant conversation.

This is somewhat achieved on the chapter on land in which Medha Patkar and Anand Mahindra engage in some tough talking. Both sides deal well with various aspects of land transfers, SEZs, development and displacement. Both present their convictions ably. Patkar reiterates the importance of giving people a choice, and states evocatively that they will not choose IT before rotis. Mahindra, on the other hand, emphasises that there could be such a thing as “good practices” when it comes to land acquisition and a win-win model for SEZs.

Nilekani gets many more titans face-to-face through the eight chapters to discuss other key concerns: Sunil Mittal and Aruna Roy on livelihood and job creation; Y C Deveshwar and Sunita Narain on business and environmental sustainability; Rahul Bajaj and Dinesh Mohan on personal mobility and transport, among others.

But amidst all these influential voices, there’s one nondescript NGO worker who sums up the developing world’s predicament most succinctly. And that, too, right on the first page of the book. Premkumar Verma or Premji, an NGO worker in north Bihar, explains that in the good old days, there was a fine balance between “samaj, sarkar and bazaar”; between the society, the state and markets, in that order. Over the past centuries, the balance has been disturbed, with first the state controlling the community and markets and now the bazaar dethroning the state — leaving the samaj to be a powerless third in the equation. This comes as a refreshing reminder that neither the state nor markets nor society at large need to compete with or triumph over each other. The three have a complementary role, and golden-ages across civilisations are ones in which they have worked in harmony with each other. The most forceful assertions, then, can sometimes come from the simplest of people. All we have to do is listen.

UNCOMMON GROUND
Rohini Nilekani
Penguin Books India
288 pages; Rs 490