Democracy/Governance / 15.12.2009

The controversy in India over the proposed separation of Telangana from Andhra Pradesh as a new state brought two thoughts to mind: the irony of history and the tyranny of fashion. There is little argument that many states in India are very large in area and population – much larger than many countries – and that there is a good case that smaller units can lead to more effective and participatory governance. Thus the call for decentralization is credible and consistent with the fashion of the day. But think back now to 1947: At Independence India had about a dozen provinces governed directly by the British and over 500 princely states governed by treaty with hereditary local rulers who accepted British sovereignty in return for local autonomy. Could you have more decentralization than 500 states that had a coherence imparted by the legitimacy of tradition?
Democracy/Governance / 15.12.2009

The controversy in India over the proposed separation of Telangana from Andhra Pradesh as a new state brought two thoughts to mind: the irony of history and the tyranny of fashion. There is little argument that many states in India are very large in area and population – much larger than many countries – and that there is a good case that smaller units can lead to more effective and participatory governance. Thus the call for decentralization is credible and consistent with the fashion of the day. But think back now to 1947: At Independence India had about a dozen provinces governed directly by the British and over 500 princely states governed by treaty with hereditary local rulers who accepted British sovereignty in return for local autonomy. Could you have more decentralization than 500 states that had a coherence imparted by the legitimacy of tradition?
Development / 13.06.2009

Before moving on in this series we need to make a correction.

One antonym for cooperation is competition; another is individualism. In the context of the behavior we have been discussing, individualism, not competition, was the appropriate term to use.

The inferences we have made are not affected but it is important to have the concept right.

Let us go over the essentials again and in a little more detail. The essence of the argument was that the nature of the labor requirements of different staple diets could be so different as to socialize very different behavioral attitudes in the communities.

Development / 13.06.2009

I find it hard to believe that I forgot the reason for initiating this series on the possible origins of cooperative and competitive behavior using Malaysia and North India as the case studies. I had wanted to revisit the partition of India. This is an event in history that I visit again and again trying to understand how a tragedy of such magnitude could have occurred under the very noses of so many eminent personalities. And the one counterpoint I keep going back to is the situation in Malaysia which, from an ethnic perspective, was even more complex than India but was resolved in a much more satisfactory fashion.
Development / 07.06.2009

Question: Why are some people more inclined to cooperate while others are more inclined to compete? Answer: It’s all in the socialization. Let me explain how I arrived at this conclusion. I went to Malaysia for the first time about fifteen years ago. I saw in every government office I entered placards on the walls with guidance from the Prime Minister – Be Nice or Be Honest or Make Malaysia Great, etc. What surprised me was the seriousness that public servants accorded such messages.
Democracy/Governance, Governance, Politics / 13.02.2008

In an earlier post we had made the point that the alternative to unadulterated democracy was not dictatorship and more efforts at creating imaginative constitutional arrangements for transitional countries might yield better outcomes. We have already discussed the tragic consequences of attempts to introduce unadulterated democracy in British India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Now we can turn to see the outcomes of variations from pure democracy in some other former British colonies. The first interesting case is that of Malaysia – we focus on the variation itself and not on whether it was really a conscious attempt at imaginative adaptation. In this we rely on the chapter by Shamsul A.B. (Development and Democracy in Malaysia: A Comment on its Socio-Historical Roots) in the book that we have been using in the last three posts. The starting point was remarkably similar to the situation in India and Sri...