Forging a new imagination
Shiv Visvanathan
Sociologist
Rituals that mark the end of the year or its inauguration have a ceremonial form to them. They demand a different kind of accounting and yet insist on a new metaphysics of assessment. The question of the return to the welfare state is just such a ritual. This essay is an attempt to locate immediate problems within the wider framework of the welfare state as a social imagination.
The welfare state combines the ideas of electoralism, governance and caring to reinvent new ideas of democracy beyond the skeletal notions of representation
What we need is a new kind of politics where the marginal moves to the centre of citizenship, where ecology moves to reclaim political economy, where non-violence becomes a way of life, so that the society understands that welfare is a way of minimising warfare
The idea of the welfare state is one of the great creation myths of democracy. It combines a political economy of caring with a creative model of governance which builds accountability, responsibility and trusteeship into the very idea of citizenship. A citizen is someone who is well cared for in the long run. Citizenship is not just a framework of rights, but a theory of caring across the lifecycle of an individual from birth to old age. The welfare state combines the ideas of electoralism, governance and caring to reinvent new ideas of democracy beyond the skeletal notions of representation.
This new avatar of governance owed much to the imagination of one man — a marginalised bureaucrat, sidelined to the margins by his minister and told to review Britain’s insurance claims. William Beveridge sculpted the idea of the welfare state, proposing new benefits for the disabled, the retired and the unemployed.
The welfare state as an imagination has become part of the normal science of governance for decades. It almost sounds Victorian, it needs a new imagination. A spate of attacks from market ideologists like Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan has seen it varying thin. In many countries, it is a term of derision, describing an umbilical state spoiling its overfed citizens. The recent Indian debates, if one can call them that, have to be seen within this wider context.
As a narrative, the Indian story needs a different kind of storytelling. The immediacy of the debate stems from a kneejerk response to electoral issues. As a result, the demands become narrowly defined and lose their location in the requirements of the political economy. In 2003, Atal Bihari Vajpayee created a new pension scheme, abolishing the statutory requirement that stated that every pensioner receives at least 50 per cent of his income. What was once a statutory question of accountability and trust issue of the citizens now becomes open to market, to choice, to political options. In fact, in the new scheme, employees rather than being guaranteed income had to make an equivalent contribution matching the contribution of the state. This virtually created a new notion of the social contract between the state and the citizen. The state was declaring that it was no longer responsible for the welfare of the citizen, especially as he entered the old age. The spectre of India as an ageing society was haunting both governance and the market. Welfare was almost seen as becoming wasteful as money was invested in old age rather than the productivity of the economy.
This idea that the government was no longer responsible for the burden of pensions was a source of deep stress, with several states wanting to return to the old scheme. The political logic was simple. The immediate generation would benefit at the expense of future generations. The future would become a burden, a responsibility and a question of trust. In new and demanding ways. Liberal economists like Arvind Panagariya saw in it a regressive step, claiming that future generations would be condemned to bearing the burden of pensioners.
Parallel to the debate on government pensions was the armed forces’ demand for a scheme which included one rank, one pension. The armed forces made it clear that this was not a question of money alone, but of dignity and transparency. This demand emphasised that the caretakers of the nation should be cared for after their retirement.
The link between warfare and welfare becomes clear in a different way.
The one rank, one pension scheme stoked political fires in the armed forces, creating an array of discontent. The ambivalence and distance of the armed forces to the Manmohan Singh regime was obvious. Leading officers like Admiral L Ramdas warned that it would create a summer of discontent. The BJP regime sensed the ambience and was quick to introduce signs of political reform. It was in sync with the Koshyari Committee recommendations, which saw no problems in the Army’s demands, and the recommendations became law. What was a simmering source of politics where the Army was becoming a disgruntled entity was brought under control, but the new pension scheme found an array of discontent in many states. There was a surge towards the old pension scheme, which the Congress sought to exploit. Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot and Rahul Gandhi were quick to see the electoral seductiveness of such a possibility.
As one steps back to read these events, one realises that the Indian imagination of the welfare state is more grounded in the political economy of incomes and the power of the middle class. The welfare debate has become a middle-class bureaucratic debate. It has to move beyond electoralism and forge a new imagination. India has to move beyond the Beveridge Report to new ideas of sustainability, well-being and citizenship.
One sees a stunning illiteracy, in fact a spiritual impoverishment, in the welfare debates in India. Firstly, the Indian welfare state caters more to the formal economy, when 80 per cent of India belongs to the informal economy. A welfare state which caters only to the formal economy is a middle-class obsession; the emphasis becomes on job and income rather than livelihood. The welfare state has to be an ecological state and the current regime has reduced ecology to an unpatriotic and secessionist act. The silence of the informal economy and the neglect of ecology haunt the Indian welfare state. What we need is not jobs, which is a strictly economic idea, but a notion of livelihood which cares for the context of a job. You cannot destroy the forest and claim to be interested in the future of the tribal. Secondly, the Indian political framework has to enrich the idea of citizenship to include the tribal, the coastal, the Dalit and the minorities. An impoverished concept of citizenship can hardly talk of welfare. One needs a new imagination for the constitutional bodies where the Constitution includes the tribal imagination of forestry, the Dalit imagination of the city and a new sense of the coastal regimes beyond the rampaging entrepreneurship of the Adanis.
The Covid pandemic demonstrated that old age had almost become a form of obsolescence. The old were suddenly seen as dispensable, an outdated tool to be abandoned. The welfare state also has to have an openness to marginals and minorities. When internal security is combined with external security, what we get is the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), where warfare substitutes for welfare within the internal politics of a nation.
The welfare state is a search for holism, it demands a knowledge system which is an interdisciplinary act of trusteeship, each subject extending the way our knowledge system cares for a society. The political ecology, the economy and futuristics combine to form a new imagination for democracy. The notion of trusteeship either at the level of knowledge, holism, care and ethics is missing. One has to urgently emphasise that the future is missing in the politics of the current regime. The future has to be a new act of imagination. If a sense of welfare has to continue, the idea of sustainability is too corporate-centred to function as a democratic imagination.
The absences of the welfare state in India are clear. What we need is a new kind of politics where the marginal moves to the centre of citizenship, where ecology moves to reclaim political economy, where non-violence becomes a way of life, so that the society understands that welfare is a way of minimising warfare. There is a necessity to overhaul the imagination of democracy beyond the aridity of majoritarianism and electoralism. In fact, the irony of India is summed up in the sense that the so-called ‘Urban Naxal’ is the new welfare activist.
The welfare state needs a new imagination, a new set of concepts and a manifesto which encourages politics to move in more constructive and creative directions. Maybe one could begin by rewriting the Directive Principles of State Policy to include new critiques of technology, new notions of justice, new concepts of ecology to create a more substantiative and futuristic sense of welfare. One must go beyond the corporate and statist imaginations to reinvent welfare and democracy as new ways of thinking and living. The challenge is clear, the question is whether Indian politics is ready for it.
