Life is like a game of snakes and ladders. The economically disadvantaged sections of the population hover on the lower rows of a game board infested with snakes and hardly find ladders to take them to the upper rows. Meanwhile, the affluent monopolise the ladders. Even if these affluent, or relatively affluent, are swallowed by a snake or two, they soon find the ladders to take them back to the top.
The snakes on a household’s game board are issues such as the loss of livelihood, debilitating illness, the death of the wage earner, suffocating debt, ever-rising costs of basic necessities, inadequate capacity to assert one’s legal rights (perhaps in relation to the ownership and possession of land and assets), and social disadvantages resulting from caste or tribe. The ladders, on the other hand, are enablers: premium education, the right set of vocational skills, proximity to economically developing centres, obtaining affordable housing, internet access, availability of medical facilities and financial services, and so on.
We have seen how mature democracies have gradually demonstrated the broad-based rise of merit in their societies. In a rapidly developing economy such as India, mandated constitutionally to be socially equitable, it is imperative to focus on ensuring that the ladders not only outnumber the snakes but also are more available to the economically disadvantaged.
Politically, the easiest way of making such ladders accessible is to extend the entitlements and categories of beneficiaries. But such unreflecting profligacy will lead to inadequate financial resources for infrastructure, national defence, law and order, protection of the environment, promotion of culture, higher education and so on.
In a country such as India, therefore, the prime need today is to improve the quality, efficiency and effectiveness of the existent enabling instruments — thereby ensuring that those on the lower rows of the game board get a chance to scale the ladders. This can be achieved through increasing accountability, and periodically auditing the execution, of enablers provided by the central and state governments, public and private partnerships, NGOs and private citizens.
One way of achieving this is establishing standard methods across the country to enhance the enablers. However, it is vital to keep in mind that the economically disadvantaged are not a single undifferentiated mass. While the basic human problems arising from poverty and the overall strategies to solve them may be the same everywhere, a segmented approach in implementing the solutions should be adopted. Rural poverty, for instance, is today driving people in large numbers from villages to towns and cities. The urban poor are a class by themselves, and it is necessary to adopt different approaches to meet their requirements as appropriate in terms of policy and action.
Gram panchayats are the key to enhancing enablers in rural areas, and they could do well if provided with technical and financial support to help them take schemes to every individual. It would also be possible to entrust the Public Works Departments of the state with providing training and accreditation to established engineering consultancy organisations and their engineers, who can provide the necessary engineering support at the panchayat level.
The Rural Standard Schedule of Rates, prepared by the Engineering Staff College of India, can be adopted for rapid and error-free preparation of estimates, working out of wage payments and facilitating technical audit of the works. This will go a long way in ensuring that the results achieved are consistent with the money spent.
Disseminating, replicating and scaling up good practices from across the country and the world have become much easier with the help of modern technology. Public, joint or private partnership schemes like Jamshedpur’s water supply scheme, Gujarat’s Chiranjeevi Yojna, Madhya Pradesh’s Ladli Laxmi Yojana, Surat’s slum redevelopment & urban reform and Mumbai’s slum sanitation programme can be easily replicated in many other areas. Technology and connectivity can be used to regularly audit and suggest course correction. Innovation coupled with the surge in the number of committed social entrepreneurs is going to greatly help in this process.
As fiscal budgets have limits, the task is to make the resources available for social development as productive and inclusive as possible. Building in a maximum time period that an individual can avail of these entitlements will help the state stretch the development budget to more people. The time period is not in terms of the number of years the government dishes out enablers, but in terms of the total period that each individual can avail of these enablers from the government at a subsidy or free. This will push the recipients to strive for economic independence instead of relying on subsidy as a lifelong crutch. In this way the state will be able to utilise its resources better, reach out to many more individuals every year and achieve a higher level of development.
The global economic gloom and India’s faltering indicators have understandably given rise to renewed calls from individuals and business chambers for more “reform”. While such reforms may benefit some sectors of industry, overall reform of the structure and systems that provide enablers efficiently to disadvantaged sections of society, to move up the ladder of life, will have a larger positive impact on India’s economy.
The writer is a special invitee to the national executive committee of BJP
