Power, Prosperity and Poverty

This one is was long overdue. I have been meaning to put down my thoughts about this much-recommended book for a few weeks now. "Why Nations Fail - The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty", was first published more than eight years ago but I managed to finish it only during this ongoing Covid-19 lockdown.

The book covers a broad sweep of history and geography to make its central point -  the importance of institutions. Starting with Nogales a city that sits astride on the border between USA and Mexico the authors point out to the stark difference in levels of development (the average US citizen is 7x more prosperous) The Mexican side apparently is stuck with the extractive, authoritarian institutions inherited from the Spanish while the North American side developed inclusive, democratic institutions , which, in the long run, have clearly made up for the lack of gold and silver mines.

We are shown similar patterns in the rest of South America, Europe (England vs. France), Russia, Africa (Congo, Ghana and Ethiopia), Turkey, the Koreas and China. The amazing extent to Spanish exploitation ("Economienda") in South America came as a revelation. I never knew, for instance, about the extent to which the indigenous people were forced out of their towns and villages into "Reducciones" to serve Spain's greed for silver and gold.

It seems an Inca labour institution called "Mit'a" ('a turn' in Quechua) was revived to cover about 200,000 miles wherein 1/7th of male populations from the Reductions were required to work in the mines at Potosi. On top of the "Repartimiento" system for distribution of goods involved forced sale of goods to locals at prices determined by the Spaniards, and under "Trajin" (the burden), indigenous people were forced to substitute for pack animals, for carrying goods within the country.

While stressing on the importance of inclusive institutions, the authors admit that "No two societies create the same institutions; they will have distinct custom, different systems of property rights and different ways of sharing wealth."

You also realise that much has changed since the time this book was conceived. Under Donald Trump USA is no longer the inclusive, equitable country it used to be. And then we have a completely new set of unknown thrown up by the Covid-19 pandemic and mass surveillance programs. Perhaps it is time to revisit the arguments presented in "Why Nations Fail".

Nation-States vs. State-Nations

. India has always defied conventional definitions of a Nation-State. Accoording to Max Weber (Politics as a Vocation), a State is a "a sovereign entity (that rules itself), within a defined/specific territory (in defined borders), that holds a monopoly of the legitimate use of violence in the enforcement of its order". Since it just about meets all the three criteria it qualifies to be called a "State". However, a Nation is a body of people who share a real or imagined common history, culture, identity, religion, morality, language, traditions, ethnicity or ethnic origin. It is here that things get a bit wobbly. There is not much that is shared across the whole subcontinent. And yet, it would be quite absurd to claim that India is not a Nation, let alone a Nation-State. So, if available theories does not match with existing realities, you need to have new theories and concepts. This is exactly what is being done by Alfred Stepan, Juan Linz and Yogendra Yadav through their book, "Crafting State-Nations: India and Other Multinational Democracies". The authors invert the common, hyphenated term 'Nation-States' into 'State-Nations' to explain the dominant role played by the State in forging national identities. It makes so much more sense, if you think about it: Otto von Bismarck used his guns & cannons to unite all the Germanic tribes into a State-Nation, and then went on to enforce a common identity through a common, compulsary education system and by creating new symbols of national identity. The exact same model was used by the Meiji oligarchs to unite Japan's warring factions. Ditto with Garibaldi's Italy.


In all these cases, statesmen forged states and then, nations. Once a national identity was ready, new 'nation-states' emerged. In India the process seems to be happening at a slower pace, without much of the internal turmoil or wars that accompanied the European and Japanese experience. The credit for this should perhaps be equally shared between the national civil & military services, Bollywood, the national-level universities and sports.


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LINKS / REFERENCES:
* Varshney, Ashutosh (2012): ARE THE STATES TOO STRONG? IE, 24May12 p10 - URL - http://www.indianexpress.com/news/are-the-states-too-strong/953004/ 
* Wiki - http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_difference_between_a_state_and_a_nation#ixzz1vshmW6C3