Development as Freedom (27 page)

Miseries and deprivations can be of various kinds—some more amenable to social remedy than others. The totality of the human predicament would be a gross basis for identifying our “needs.” For example, there are many things that we might have good reason to value if they were feasible—we could even want immortality, as Maitreyee did. But we don’t see them as “needs.” Our conception of needs relates to our ideas of the preventable nature of some depravations, and to our understanding of what can be done about them. In the formation of these understandings and beliefs, public discussions play a crucial role. Political rights, including freedom of expression and discussion, are not only pivotal in inducing social responses to economic needs, they are also central to the conceptualization of economic needs themselves.

The intrinsic relevance, the protective role and the constructive importance of democracy can indeed be very extensive. However, in presenting these arguments on the advantages of democracies, there is a danger of overselling their effectiveness. As was mentioned earlier, political freedoms and liberties are permissive advantages, and their effectiveness would depend on how they are exercised. Democracy has been especially successful in preventing those disasters that are easy to understand and where sympathy can take a particularly immediate form. Many other problems are not quite so accessible. For example, India’s success in eradicating famines is not matched by that in eliminating regular undernutrition, or curing persistent illiteracy, or inequalities in gender relations (as was discussed in
chapter 4
). While the plight of famine victims is easy to politicize, these other deprivations call for deeper analysis and more effective use of communication and political participation—in short, fuller practice of democracy.

Inadequacy of practice applies also to some failings in more mature democracies as well. For example, the extraordinary deprivations
in health care, education, and social environment of African Americans in the United States help to make their mortality rates exceptionally high (as discussed in
chapters 1
and
4
), and this is evidently not prevented by the working of American democracy. Democracy has to be seen as creating a set of opportunities, and the use of these opportunities calls for analysis of a different kind, dealing with the
practice
of democratic and political rights. In this respect, the low percentage of voting in American elections, especially by African Americans, and other signs of apathy and alienation, cannot be ignored. Democracy does not serve as an automatic remedy of ailments as quinine works to remedy malaria. The opportunity it opens up has to be positively grabbed in order to achieve the desired effect. This is, of course, a basic feature of freedoms in general—much depends on how freedoms are actually exercised.

The achievements of democracy depend not only on the rules and procedures that are adopted and safeguarded, but also on the way the opportunities are used by the citizens. Fidel Valdez Ramos, the former president of the Philippines, put the point with great clarity in a November 1998 speech at the Australian National University:

Democracy does create this opportunity, which relates both to its “instrumental importance” and to its “constructive role.” But with what strength such opportunities are seized depends on a variety of factors, including the vigor of multiparty politics as well as the
dynamism of moral arguments and of value formation.
⁹
For example, in India the priority of preventing starvation and famine was already fully grasped at the time of independence (as it had been in Ireland as well, with its own experience of famine under British rule). The activism of political participants was very effective in preventing famines and in sharply condemning governments for allowing open starvation to occur, and the quickness and force of this process made preventing such calamities an inescapable priority of every government. And yet successive opposition parties have been quite docile in not condemning widespread illiteracy, or the prevalence of non-extreme but serious undernourishment (especially among the children), or the failure to implement land reform programs legislated earlier. This docility of opposition has permitted successive governments to get away with unconscionable neglect of these vital matters of public policy.

In fact, the activism of opposition parties is an important force in nondemocratic societies as well as democratic ones. It can, for example, be argued that despite the lack of democratic guarantees, the vigor and persistence of opposition in pre-democratic South Korea and even in Pinochet’s Chile (against heavy odds) were indirectly effective in those countries’ governance even before democracy was restored. Many of the social programs that served these countries well were at least partly aimed at reducing the appeal of the opposition, and in this way, the opposition had some effectiveness even before coming to office.
¹⁰

Another such area is the persistence of gender inequality, which too requires forceful engagement, involving critique as well as pointers to reform. Indeed, as these neglected issues come into public debates and confrontations, the authorities have to provide some response. In a democracy, people tend to get what they demand, and more crucially, do not typically get what they do not demand. Two of the neglected areas of social opportunity in India—gender equity and elementary education—are now receiving more attention from the opposition parties, and as a result, from the legislative and executive authorities as well. While the final results will emerge only in the future, we cannot ignore the various moves that are already being made (including proposed legislation that would require that at least a third of the members of Indian parliament must be women, and a schooling program that would extend the right to elementary education to a substantially larger group of children).

In fact, it can be argued that the contribution of democracy in India has not, by any means, been confined to the prevention of economic disasters, such as famines. Despite the limits of its practice, democracy has given India some stability and security about which many people were very pessimistic as the country became independent in 1947. India had, then, an untried government, an undigested partition and unclear political alignments, combined with widespread communal violence and social disorder. It was hard to have faith in the future of a united and democratic India. And yet half a century later we find a democracy that has, taking the rough with the smooth, worked fairly well. Political differences have largely been tackled within the constitutional procedures. Governments have risen and fallen according to electoral and parliamentary rules. India, an ungainly, unlikely, inelegant combination of differences, survives and functions remarkably well as a political unit with a democratic system—indeed held together by its working democracy.

India has also survived the tremendous challenge of having a variety of major languages and a spectrum of religions—an extraordinary heterogeneity of religion and culture. Religious and communal differences are, of course, vulnerable to exploitation by sectarian politicians, and have indeed been so used on several occasions (including in recent years), causing much consternation in the country. But the fact that such consternation greets sectarian violence, and that most of the substantial sections of the nation condemn such deeds, provides ultimately the main democratic guarantee against the narrowly factional exploitation of sectarianism. This is essential for the survival and prosperity of a country as remarkably varied as India, which may have a Hindu majority, but which is also the third largest Muslim country in the world, in which millions of Christians, along with most of the world’s Sikhs, Parsees, and Jains, live.

Developing and strengthening a democratic system is an essential component of the process of development. The significance of democracy lies, I have argued, in three distinct virtues: (1) its
intrinsic importance
, (2) its
instrumental contributions
, and (3) its
constructive role
in the creation of values and norms. No evaluation of
the democratic form of governance can be complete without considering each.

Despite their limitations, political freedoms and civil rights are used effectively often enough. Even in those fields in which they have not yet been very effective, the opportunity exists for making them effective. The permissive role of political and civil rights (in allowing—indeed in encouraging—open discussions and debates, participatory politics and unpersecuted opposition) applies over a very wide domain, even though it has been more effective in some areas than in others. Its demonstrated usefulness in preventing economic disasters is itself quite important. When things go fine and everything is routinely good, this role of democracy may not be badly missed. But it comes into its own when things get fouled up, for one reason or another (for example, the recent financial crisis in East and Southeast Asia that disrupted several economies and left many people destitute). The political incentives provided by democratic governance acquire great practical value at that time.

However, while we must acknowledge the importance of democratic institutions, they cannot be viewed as mechanical devices for development. Their use is conditioned by our values and priorities, and by the use we make of the available opportunities of articulation and participation. The role of organized opposition groups is particularly important in this context.

Public debates and discussions, permitted by political freedoms and civil rights, can also play a major part in the formation of values. Indeed, even the identification of needs cannot but be influenced by the nature of public participation and dialogue. Not only is the force of public discussion one of the correlates of democracy, with an extensive reach, but its cultivation can also make democracy itself function better. For example, more informed and less marginalized public discussion of environmental issues may not only be good for the environment; it could also be important to the health and functioning of the democratic system itself.
¹¹

Just as it is important to emphasize the need for democracy, it is also crucial to safeguard the conditions and circumstances that ensure the range and reach of the democratic process. Valuable as democracy is as a major source of social opportunity (a recognition that may call for vigorous defense), there is also the need to examine
ways and means of making it function well, to realize its potentials. The achievement of social justice depends not only on institutional forms (including democratic rules and regulations), but also on effective practice. I have presented reasons for taking the issue of practice to be of central importance in the contributions that can be expected from civil rights and political freedoms. This is a challenge that is faced both by well-established democracies such as the United States (especially with the differential participation of diverse racial groups) and by newer democracies. There are shared problems as well as disparate ones.

We live in a world with widespread hunger and undernourishment and frequent famines. It is often assumed—if only implicitly—that we can do little to remedy these desperate situations. It is also presumed, frequently enough, that these maladies may actually get worse in the long run, especially with the growth of world population. Tacit pessimism often dominates international reactions to these miseries in the world today. This perceived lack of freedom to remedy hunger can itself lead to fatalism and the absence of serious attempts to remedy the miseries that we see.

There is little factual basis for such pessimism, nor are there any cogent grounds for assuming the immutability of hunger and deprivation. Appropriate policies and actions can indeed eradicate the terrible problems of hunger in the modern world. Based on recent economic, political and social analyses, it is, I believe, possible to identify the measures that can bring about the elimination of famines and a radical reduction in chronic undernourishment. What is important at this time is to make policies and programs draw on the lessons that have emerged from analytical investigations and empirical studies.
¹

This chapter is particularly concerned with famines and other transient “crises,” which may or may not include open starvation, but do involve a sudden eruption of severe deprivation for a considerable section of the population (for example, in the recent East and Southeast Asian economic crises). Famines and crises of this kind have to be distinguished from problems of endemic hunger and poverty that may lead to persistent suffering but do not include any
fresh explosion of extreme deprivation that suddenly engulfs a portion of the people. Even in analyzing endemic undernourishment and persistent, long-run deprivation later on in this study (mainly in
chapter 9
), I shall draw on some of the concepts that the study of famines will yield (in this chapter).