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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Is the Planning Commission out of touch with reality, or are we not listening? by Arun Maira

Is the Planning Commission out of touch with reality, or are we not listening? by Arun Maira

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published Published on Oct 11, 2011   modified Modified on Oct 11, 2011

What has changed since the economic reforms began? Many things. No waiting for years for a telephone connection, now cell phones with everyone.

From three makes of cars with wind-down windows to dozens of makes, all air-conditioned. From one domestic airline, government owned and for the rich, to many private carriers for the middle class too. What has also changed is the knocking on the window.

There are many more rich people in India now; and the richest in India have become the richest in the world. They travel in private planes, live in gated communities, holiday on foreign beaches. The poor are statistically less poor.

However, do the rich know what it feels like to be poor within shining India? Or are they just whizzing ahead, in their air-conditioned cars, from their gated residences into their internationally connected offices high above the people scrambling below? The Gini coefficient, a statistical measure of inequality, is rising in India.

The knocking on the window is increasing too. There have always been beggars at road crossings in Indian towns. When the cars were not air-conditioned, and the windows were down, the hands of beggars could reach into the cars. They would touch us, and we would push them away or put something into their palms.

Now we sit within our airconditioned cocoons when the light is red, with music blaring within. The poor must knock hard on the windows to be noticed. Beggars are unsightly, say proponents of 'world class' cities, and traffic junctions are a nuisance too. So we build fly-overs, so we do not have to stop, and hear the knocking any more.

Who are the poor? What do they want? The answers to these questions are not in statistics and poverty lines. The quality of lives cannot be measured only by how much of a standard basket of basic stuff people consume. The poor have aspirations too.

They want opportunities to participate in the growth of the economy. They need sustainable livelihoods, and not have to fall back into poverty with every mishap in their lives-health issues, loss of wages, creditors knocking down their doors.

The Supreme Court asked the Planning Commission to explain its measurement of poverty in the country. The Planning Commission gave a good, technically correct answer. People were outraged. The Planning Commission does not get it, people said: immersed in statistics, planners are out of touch with reality. Do the rich bother? Do corporations really care about uplifting the poor along with their stock prices? Does even the middle class care, asked a panelist in one of the many TV debates triggered by the Planning Commission's affidavit on poverty measurement?

The middle class is more outraged by increases in fuel prices for their cars than by the misery of the poor, he pointed out-those cars in which they zip by the poor, with windows closed and the music on, shutting out the knocking on the window. Are we out of touch? Or only perceived to be out of touch?

Trust is based on perceptions so perceptions matter. Before smothering people with more statistics and facts, let us listen to them. That is the only way one can know why people believe what they do. Charity, they say begins at home. And an inclusive society must have inclusion within its institutions.

How inclusive and democratic are our political parties, trade unions, civil society organisations, business corporations, and business associations? Do the leaders of such institutions really know what the aspirations and disappointments of their members are? How do they know this? These are the questions that leaders of institutions must apply themselves to, to create more inclusive institutions, which are the foundations for an inclusive society.

It is very easy for leaders to be lulled into believing that the members of their institutions really trust them. There are many hangers-on around leaders, pandering to them, telling them what they want to hear not what they should.

Thus leaders become out of touch with reality, some even believing that God has given them as a gift to their followers, as some dictators do, until some innocent says that the Emperor is not wearing any clothes. Then the revolt starts. What a fall from grace, then.

The belief in one's own guff is not the monopoly of political leaders. Leaders of civil society organizations and unions are guilty too. Even corporate leaders can live in castles in the air, as The Economist (September 24th 2011) points out in a report 'The view from the top, and bottom'. It cites a survey of 'National Governance, Culture and Leadership Assessment' conducted by a research group.

Surveying thousands of employees and their bosses, it found that bosses are eight times more likely than the average employee to believe that their organisation empowers and includes the people in decision-making. Leaders won't know if they don't ask and listen to their doubters and not only supporters.

The knocking on the windows of India's institutions is growing louder. To build an inclusive and genuinely democratic society, India must have democratic and inclusive political parties, civil society organisations, unions, and business associations.

We need leaders who build and strengthen institutions, not merely use institutions as pedestals for their own glory. The measure of real leaders is not the pronouncements they make, but the difference they make to the quality of their institution from the time they came to stand on it till they left it for their successors.

The Economic Times, 11 October, 2011, http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/opinion/guest-writer/is-the-planning-commission-out-of-touch-with-reality-or-are-we-not-listening/articleshow/10296071.cms


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