I do not call Joint family 'highly flawed' because it is not a hopeless case like arranged marriage. There are many good features of joint family but overall drawbacks are more. In any book of social science you can find these drawbacks listed there. I have nothing new to add to that list but I want to highlight some of them because my basic intention is to criticize one aspect of constitutional structure of India. When I thought about this aspect then I came to conclusion that widespread appreciation and practice of joint family is responsible for this.
So, I will start with problems of joint family. It is a socialistic structure. One person is head of the family and he controls everything. In joint family some people work a lot and some do not work at all but they all get same benefits. This breeds inefficiency. Controlling is the main problem of this institution. If control is weak then family will break, so a strong control on all the family activities is required. Controlling works against the personal development of most of the family members. It benefits one or two members only (many times the youngest member of the family as he is loved by all). Controlling kills the personal freedom which is needed for creative thinking. All these drawbacks you can find in detail in any social science book but still, I don't know why, people keep on appreciating this institution. Our hero in the hindi movies always advises the public not to break the family. Political and spiritual leaders keep on giving sermons in the favor of joint family. I want to simply say that all of them are backward looking and unscientific people.
Now I come to the main issue, constitutional structure of India. When India became independent, the makers of constitution considered joint family as holy cow and gave us the constitution of India. What is the problem with the constitution, it is the "Control". As in joint family there is a very strong head of the family we have a very strong central government. As in joint family, the members have very little say in crucial matters our state governments are powerless and resource less. Most of the states are functioning inefficiently and only few are working well. Today there are demands for many new states because people are fed up with inefficiency. Just making new states is not enough as we know they do not have power to function independently. We have lost a huge opportunity with 60 years of independence. India should have been a much more developed country by now, at least more developed than China.
America like constitution would have been much better for India. In USA the central government has only two things foreign policy and defense. Rest all is with state governments. In India our central government is running 5 star hotels and a junk, huge loss making airline named 'Air India'. They are doing hell lot of other loss making businesses so they do not have time for the most important thing , the defense of country. That is why we see terrorist activities happening at regular intervals. China is eating up our lands at border slowly. And there is no one to blame. When a farmer does suicide in Vidarbha the Prime minister is blamed in parliament. I think, like USA, our central govt. also should restrict itself with defense and foreign policy. Finance, HRD, Agriculture etc. all the ministries should be removed from centre. Indian railway is related to defense so that should remain with centre.
If we don't do this, many other countries (like China, Israel in the past 60 years ) will march ahead of India in the coming 60 years. We will remain many years behind them and will give them sermons on benefits of joint family.
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I am quite disturbed by many points in this post. Like you, I am completely against the joint family but your reasons are often factually incorrect, your arguments wrong-headed and your analogies and examples poor. First, the family structure is not socialist, but oligarchic. A socialist structures does not have a strong head in which all authority resides (I do not know where you come up with this definition of socialism). Two, the centralising of the Indian government is not as fault of the Constitution. The Constitution is a fairly progressive document. It is how dynastic and oligarchic politics unfolded in this country that centralisation became a problem. Defence is not our main problem; poverty is. we already waste far too much of our budget on defence and it is a criminal waste and a result of centralised power. We ought o give that money to Vidarbha farmers so they do not commit suicide. Please re-think your priorities and the connections between joint family and the running of the state. There are many commonalities and you have not touched upon them at all. In some sense, they are linked to the earlier points you made about men and women and arranged marriages. Sexual governance of women is something we need to explore, not silly arguments about defence.
ReplyDeleteAllow me to elaborate on my logic. In socialistic regime you have a very strong 'control structure' which controls every aspect of the life of the people.(e.g. you can't see YouTube in China). This is quite similar to the control the head of joint family wields on his family members.
ReplyDeleteYes Constitution of India is fairly progressive document but the fault for centralising the government lies with it. It has not given enough powers to states specially the financial powers. Like the joint family head controls all the finances. Your next line indicates that you see centralization as a result of wrong politics. I believe that it is cetralisation which is suffocating the good politics. Rather than one Prime Minister we should have 29 Chief Ministers to worry about price rise and poverty. I don't think one man can be held responsible for the daily needs of more than billion people. I give you an example of 'control' and managing a big family. Recently a group of junior and state ministers went to meet Prime minister to complain that they are Jobless, Their respective ministers are not giving them any work at all. Reasons are obvious the seniors ministers don't want to let go their control and PM can't manage everything.
You blame the problems of this country on dynastic and oligarchic politics. I have heard such arguments for past 20 years and I am sure they were there even before that. Oh our politicians are so corrupt. Oh our bureaucracy is so inefficient. If this diagnosis is correct then the problem would have been cured by now. You will agree that there should be freedom and openness in the society, but will you not agree that we should have a system which promotes openness ? Our democracy is control freak it kills freedom like Joint family. A controlling system promotes liars and corrupts and an open system promotes truthful and honest people. When Britishers were ruling India they wanted to control us because we were slaves for them. But when India became independent our constitution makers just copy-pasted this control structure as it is, because we were "family" members(bingo). There is something called 'Unleash' and 'Blossom'. When India became independent we needed a constitution which would unleash the potential of Indian people and India could have blossomed. Rather than that it concentrated more on controlling its people. If you give excessive powers and authority to a person or a group of people, they naturally develop arrogance, disregard and distrust for the people they control. Many times we hear state governments saying that center is behaving arrogantly. Have you seen a government worker (even a Peon) behaving politely with common public. There may be but very few and far apart. Let us take the current price rise political war. Sharad Pawar is blaming Mayawati and vice versa. Narendra Modi is fighting with Pranab Mukharjee. All this fuss is unnecessary and can be resolved very easily if centre gives all related responsibilities to states. There was recent report about how much food grains are lost annually in FCI godowns. Such losses can be minimised by decentralising. Simple management principles.
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When you say defence is not important you are exactly following the line of Gandhi and Nehru. Just after independence, they rose to every platform and declared that we do not need defence, and what we got ? An Immediate war with Pakistan. After that in quick succession war with Pakistan and China both. War with china was a big loss and big humiliation. Till date China intimidates India. We claim victory over wars with Pakistan, but can we intimidate Pakistan like China does it with us ? Most of the wars we have fought are the result of our unpreparedness including the Kargil war. As the Chinese saying goes, The best way to avoid a war is always be prepared for one. I think we could have avoided some of the wars if we were more prepared and we will do that in future also if we prepare ourself now. With the hostile neighbours like China, Pakistan and Bangladesh I don't think our situation is much different from Israel. Recently there was a paper published by Chinese think tank journalist which says that China should follow a policy towards India so that it can be broken into 20-30 small pieces. China should support insurgency in Kashmir and North-east and promote it in other areas like Tamilnadu on linguistic basis. The Chinese govt. may not support this paper openly but they have been following the same policy all the time. Pakistan wants to give India thousand cuts and you say that defence is not important. You say the defence budget is a criminal waste I say it is criminal negligence. You are actually repeating the same argument of Gandhi and Nehru. They also said that we have poor people to look after we don't need defence. Again I'll repeat myself that if your diagnosis is correct we should have removed poverty after 60 yrs. of neglecting defence.
ReplyDeleteWhen people ignore defence in the name of peace and welfare, what happens is they no longer remain there at all. They become extinct. Where are the aboriginals of Australia and America ? Once upon a time buddhists were all around Asia, today they are fighting for their survival. They are being hounded in Tibet. The last symbol of their presence in Afghanistan, the Bamiyan Buddha statues , have been destroyed. What harm they did to the Taliban or China ? The only answer to these questions is "ignoring defence". Can Israel ignore its defence ? They will be extinct within days if they do so. Do they have poverty ? No. The wonderful thing is that when you give importance to defence that does not mean you have to ignore welfare of people. A malnourished can not fight.
If I can extrapolate your statement, then you believe that one person becomes prosperous by snatching the small money of thousands of poor people. But this thinking is product of communist mentality and is wrong.(Wait for my next article, i'll come up with more on this) Prosperity is product of proper management and hard work.
I give equal priority to both and I want to manage both. Solid defence and poverty alleviation can go hand in hand. You will ask from where you will get the money for both. Not a single rupee will be lacking for any one if you do it with proper management, hard work and single minded commitment. When your Prime minister has to deal with thousand bullshit business like Air India, how can he be committed to a noble cause. And then he is blamed and ashamed in the the parliament for a farmer suicide. This is too heavy of a burden for the shoulders of one man. We should be more reasonable.
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You say that the money we put in defence budget should be given to the poor. You are just giving a short term solution. Of course a person in despair must be helped directly but we should not ignore the larger picture. We don't want our poor people always looking for state help, we want them to be self sustainable. Now, how to do this ? It is possible by long term investments and defence is the needed and desired long term investment. You will say that money invested in defence goes directly to foreign countries in purchase of arms, and that is where I draw support for my argument. Why can't we be the suppliers of arms to other nations ? If we think narrow, we can never do this, but if we believe in the power of our own people then we can do this with 100% guarantee.
ReplyDeleteThere are many examples where we have shown that we have potential but that is still not unleashed. Today mobile phones are cheapest in India as compared to anywhere in the world all because of one great capitalist Dhirubhai Ambani because he thought that mobile phone should cost less than a postcard. There is no competition to Tata Indica when it comes to profitability, and no MNC is even thinking of competing with Nano. Our scientists has created LCA (Light combat Aircraft) which may not be perfectly viable in the market but it is quite encouraging. If we invest more in that we can surely make a world class LCA, but Govt. is showing less and less interest in this now. This is just lack of commitment. China is making today a passenger aircraft and I am sure they will do it because they are committed. We have become experts in SLVs. Recently we established an Israeli satellite in space. Our 'Chandrayan' has touched the surface of Moon and discovered water there. All this has happened despite unhealthy and unprofessional business environment of India. Think, where we can go if our focus is right.