Learning From The Past

The governance system bequeathed to us by our erstwhile colonial masters is today in a state of deep crisis. The British built bureaucracies to control and manage Indias natural resources and to deliver a variety of services. The British had a limited interest in Indias economic development and were mainly concerned about economic extraction.

For them, there was no incentive to prove the success of their enterprise. The economic growth spurred by the Industrial Revolution and the impoverishment of India at the same time created an enormous economic gap between the two countries and legitimised British rule.

We raise this issue not because of pride in our national history. But because we believe that there are many lessons to be learnt from the past.

British-style governance systems have totally failed to deliver the goods for a variety of reasons. For instance, Indians somehow just dont seem to like to obey the law. They have no hesitation in bypassing the law in every way. This is indeed strange because in their interpersonal behaviour, Indians are more structured than just about any other social group in the world. There are rules for whom we should marry, what we should eat and when, how the son should behave with his father, the daughter-in-law with her mother-in-law, and so on. And though modernisation continues to erode many of these behavioural systems, they still cling on tenaciously in a myriad ways. Why should Indians, therefore, be so structured in their inter-personal behaviour while being so unstructured in their public behaviour?

Indians probably never cared much for centralised governance systems. Which leads us to ask whether corruption is a new phenomenon in India or an old one? Indian history is full of cases from the days of Kautilya and before when rulers stabbed each other in the back for petty gains and allowed foreigners to gain a foothold. At another level, Indians like to keep themselves and their houses clean but have no hesitation in throwing waste in front of their neighbours house.

With this kind of behaviour being deeply and culturally-rooted, British-style governance systems which are highly centralised and bureaucratic and, therefore, require considerable public cooperation just cannot work. Yet, on the other hand, Indians built innumerable tanks and ponds, protected their catchments, shared water, built schools in which millions were educated, and built massive cities. All this could not have been possible without a governance system in which the public did not behave with a degree of responsibility.

A satellite picture of Ramanathapuram district in Tamil Nadu still shows hundreds of tanks even though this entire heritage is today in a state of great decay. How did this happen? What were the governance principles which led to this advanced stage of natural resource management and delivery of services ?

A new discipline of history has slowly emerged in the west called environmental history. It studies the history of ecological changes with the growth of human civilisation. Such a discipline can surely shed light on how we have reached the current state of environment. But more than that, it could shed light on how the governance systems worked in the past to manage the natural resource base, the processes of urbanisation, and so on. Hindi literateur Mahadevi Varma once said, It is not possible to put a foot forward without keeping the other one firmly on the ground unless you want to fall down. In other words, no society can move forward in an organic manner without taking into account its own roots.

Keeping this in mind, the Centre for Science and Environment organised a conference on ecological history. Though historians had few thoughts to offer on this theme, some ideas came out very clearly:

Firstly, Indians definitely had a conservationist attitude towards nature but it was more a form of utilitarian conservationism rather than protectionist conservationism which many environmentalists preach. Indians did not hesitate to reconstruct nature to their convenience but built rules to sustain the structures they created. Religion was often used as a tool to reinforce those rules.

Secondly, most rules regarding the use of land or the use of water were developed at the community-level, which is probably why they were respected. Kings seldom made rules to manage these things. The current scenario is of a plethora of rules in central and state capitals but by the time they reach the implementation stage, they are totally dissipated. Even if there is someone to implement them, the attitude that every state directive should somehow be bypassed leads to near-total non-observance.

Thirdly, the state rarely invested in public services. In Rajasthan, for instance, kings rarely built tanks for irrigation or drinking water except for those which they used themselves. The massive Pichola lake of Udaipur was built by a nomadic gypsy. What the kings did were to encourage people from local nobles to ordinary business persons, from temples to prostitutes, just about anybody to invest in schools, tanks and other such social and economic infrastructure and look after their upkeep.

Are there any lessons in all this to build a better 21st century? These are just a few ideas we have gathered because of our interest in environmental governance. But there is surely a lot that our history can teach us regardless of how westernised we might have become.This is why we will organise more such conferences. To learn how we can ensure that our other foot remains rooted firmly in the rich ground of India.