The Northeast has all the potentialities to strive and achieve development. When the desire and dynamics of the people of Northeast India is for development, it is necessary that the meaning of sustainable development is looked into. Development is required but it cannot be at the cost of peace and happiness and at the cost of family and community bonds. Today at what point the 'developed' countries are is also to be evaluated.
The general view of development is presently defined in terms of the Western world-view. The present western world-view on development is based on individualism. Ever since its religious and state institutions became dominant, the entire history of Europe became one of confrontation between individuals and institutions. Over centuries individualism struggled against the might of the kings and archbishops and at great cost asserted itself for the very survival of the human civilization in Europe. With the result, individualism and individual rights became virtually an obsession with the people.
Now the West has slipped deep into this domain of individualism by vesting rights even in children and depriving even parental control over them! The result is a collection of millions of individuals under the laws of the state, held together only by the rule of law. Thus rule of law and individualism without any role or legitimacy for any kind of human collectivity including the family are the foundations of the modern west and its sociology, politics and economics. The west is facing disastrous consequence because of this over-emphasis on individualism and individual liberty. The communities were broken long back, now families too are getting destroyed. Violence, drug addiction, immorality are stare the Western society. The Chairman of the USA Senate, Newt Gingrich commented in one of his emotional speeches in the Senate, "When 12 year-olds carry guns to schools, 14 year-olds become pregnant, 16 year-olds test HIV positive and 18 year-olds get degrees and diplomas that they cannot read, what kind of civilization are we rearing?"
While the social consequence is terrifying, the economic consequence is frightening. As the family institution has collapsed in the cultural sense of the term, there is no social safety net for the elders, the infirm and the unemployed and generally those who cannot take care of themselves. With the result social security to provide for their care is now the responsibility of the state. The social security cost is over 30% of the GDP in US. In Europe the situation is worse. In some countries like Sweden where the institution of marriage has virtually collapsed, over 65% of the men and women live together without marriage with any one for any length of time, the social security cost is as high as 65% of the GDP. In fact there is a deepening apprehension among economists and statesmen that publicly administered social security will ultimately result in the bankruptcy of the state itself. Commissions appointed to deal with this serious issue recommend the privatization of this greatest of public burdens.
Every commission says that it should be privatized, and concludes it cannot be, as without the time-tested institution of family it is not possible to privatize the care of the aged, the infirm and the unemployed and others who need care.
The undermining of families is a direct consequence of the undermining of communities. It is social conscience, social policing and social reputation, which makes and compels most families to behave. The social eye is the most valuable social control over wayward individuals. Once social policing was eroded and moral control by society and moral obligations ensured by social control were substituted to the institution of rule of law, and the state emerged as the arbiter of human beings, social capital eroded in the West. Today the thinkers in the West say that unless social capital exists even the present economy would get more sluggish.
Thinkers like Francis Fukuyama rightly opine, the state, by law, can only destroy societies and communities (and make individuals out of them) but it cannot legislate to create societies or families. All human collectivities evolve over centuries with culture, traditions, rituals, and religions binding them together. They act as the buffer between individuals and the state and absorb the distance between the state and the individuals and connects these two remote points.
So today, the west does not have a traditional social capital. Whatever social capital has been built up by the modem west in the sense of their collective working, which is also eroding because of high voltage individualism that is sweeping the West, have been purely commercially-driven institutions, not capable of influencing the total life of the people.
George Soros, one of the best financial minds in the modern capitalist West, laments that "In our modern transactional society the reason for having any kind of morality has been brought into question." He describes the current position in the West thus: "Why bother about the truth when a proposition does not need to be true to be effective? Why be honest when it is success, not honesty or virtue that gains people's respect? Although socialvalues and moral precepts are in doubt there can be no doubt about the value of money. This is how money has come to usurp the role of intrinsic values". The obsession of 'money at any cost' is disintegrating the systems. That is why there are fervent appeals by many thinkers that the West must devise a system of normative moral order outside the secular state, which can control and regulate the conduct of individuals supplementing the work of the state. These thinkers are drawn from different disciplines including sociology, politics and economics.
What is relevant for our purpose is that at present the assessment of the Western view of life based on obsessive centrality of individualism and individual rights, with the state as the interconnecting mechanism between the individuals, is being reappraised not just in politics, even in economics and developmental models.
The West needs an alternative to the obsessive individualism, which has become in a sense oppressive individualism. But fortunately in the East and particularly in India, we are not in search of an alternative. We have a functioning model of community-based life. It may be local communities, or castes, or other collectivity. And apart from that is the family. These institutions are dominant in the Indian public sphere. Northeastern India is also very rich in social capital.
As compared to the state their role is more comprehensive and more effective in harmonizing the people of India. The effect of these collectivities in harmonizing the people most intimately and proximately is evident from the fact that in India the crime rates are the lowest in the world. The reported serious crimes in India is only 4 per population of 1,00,000, the comparative figure for the US is over 540 and for Europe around 250. Likewise the family shoulders the entire social security burden of taking care of the aged, the infirm and the unemployed in India and thus takes this stupendous burden off the shoulders of the state.
But someone may say 'That is Ok, but is not individualism necessary for development?' Thus, the question is whether the collectivities like community and family are an impediment or an aid to development. When an empirical study of the development of different communities in different parts of India was taken up, it was found that in the case of all communities the upward social and economic movement takes place as a community. Such development has not taken place by the community breaking into individuals. Community, instead of being or becoming an impediment to development, actually became the vehicle for development. It is intra-community or communitarian competition, that is, competition within a community, which triggers the development of a community. The community identity and community discipline also tempers the ill-effects of any unruly competition. There is intense competition within identical groups. These dynamics of competition for development within the community was studied. It was found that whatever education or economic activity any individual took up for his development, spread like wildfire within the community. The members of the communities do not go for that competition which will undermine the communities even though the law or market allows 'free for all' competition within communities.
Modernism takes the competent individual away from its community thus impairing the possibility of development within the community triggered by one's success. Modernism (here what is meant by modernism is the system by which a member of a community gets educated and goes in search of a job away from his community) atomizes the individual, so the process of the whole community rising up with him is hampered.
Sri S Gurumurthy writes in his paper "Community Driven Development",
A study of the new communities/castes, which have taken to business, indicates that they have taken to business almost as a community. There is competition as well as co-operation within the community in business, which has resulted in competitive pursuit of entrepreneurship in which risk taking and enterprise have become almost a movement. A study of the communities newly in business like the Ramgadias in Punjab, the Jatavs in Agra, the Patels in Gujarat, the Kammas in Andhra Pradesh, the Nadars, Goundars and Naidus of Tamilnadu shows that the communities have turned into major business communities because of competition and co-operation within it. There is a contagion effect within a community. Interestingly the World Development Report of the World Bank, for the year 2001, observes this phenomenon of caste in business in the context of the Goundar community, which has made phenomenal growth as businessmen in the last few decades. This is about the growth of knitwear export business in Tirupur. Says the World Bank:
Since 1985 Tirupur has become a hotbed of economic activity in the production of knitted garments. By the 1990s, with high growth rates of exports, Tirupur was a world leader in the knitted garment industry. The success of this industry is striking. This is particularly so as the production of knitted garments is capital-intensive, and the state banking monopoly had been ineffective at targeting capital funds to efficient entrepreneurs, especially at the levels necessary to sustain Tirupur's high growth rates.
What is behind this story of development? The needed capital was raised within the Goundar community, a caste relegated to land-based activities, relying on community and family networks. Those with capital in the Goundar community transfer it to others in the community through long-established informal credit institutions and rotating savings and credit associations. These networks were viewed as more reliable in transmitting information and enforcing contracts than the banking and legal systems that offered weak protection of creditor rights. The intense competition in the garment industry ensured that good money would not follow bad and that firms would pay attention to the needs of customers.
(Source: World Development Report, Year 2001, page 175, published by the World Bank)
This is a demonstrable case of how community connections result in competition to set up business as well as to cooperate with those setting up businesses. It is evident from the data available that the members of these communities, most of them from the backward classes, who have entered business, have entered not as unconnected individuals, but as the members of a community, with some community members supporting the new entrant and some others following suit in a spirit of competition. Others feel confident that since their community man has done it, they can also do it. They also feel compelled that since their community man has done it, they must do it. This spirit of competition turns the enterprise within the community virtually [into] a mass entrepreneurial movement.
While many traditionally non-business communities have taken to businesses and turned into entrepreneurs massively by contagion competition within the community, the role of the educated is a direct contrast. In most business schools almost every student gets placement in the campus interviews. Even a small number of them do not become entrepreneurs. With the result, while education prepares students to become employees, the communitarian contagion competitive effect massifies entrepreneurs. So we have un-educated or under-educated businessmen and highly educated employees. Why do the educated tend to become employees? Why do they not tend to set up business? It is not difficult to find answers. The students who go to colleges see themselves only as individuals. In contrast, the constituent of a community in business sees himself as the member of the community.
Our empirical study further showed that the Tirupur model is not an isolated development. That seems to be the model elsewhere. Actually the Tirupur example hits the eye because of the fact that the Tirupur community has succeeded at the global level and has attracted the attention of global observers. That does not mean that it is just an anecdote.
There are other substantial illustrative and replicated models of community emerging as the model for development. In Tamil Nadu, for instance, four communities, the Goundars, Nadars, Naidus, and Rajus, have progressed economically and socially, besides culturally and educationally by turning their community into vehicles for development. The Goundars' development followed the community led development which took place among the Naidus in Coimbatore. The Naidu and Goundar communities have spearheaded the development efforts of the north-western parts of Tamilnadu and as a result today, the districts populated by these two communities are the most economically prosperous districts of the state.
Communities principally in politics Vs communities principally in business: In Tamilnadu, an empirical study of the castes, which have largely taken to politics through the caste vehicle as contrasted with cases of castes, which have taken to business through the caste vehicle shows interesting results. The three communities Nadars, Goundars, and Naidus who have taken to businesses have prospered and also become highly literate, besides taking to higher and professional education. Three other castes Mukkulathors, Vanniars, and Dalits who took mostly to politics through the caste vehicle remain far less developed and educated. The reason is that they fought for benefits from the government and turned government-dependent, while the other three castes pooled their energies together for self-reliant business development. In fact in the industrial clusters in which these communities dominate there is very little of government investment even in infrastructure.
Social capital is now being brought into mainline economics. Not financial capital but really it is the social capital which matters in progress of the community as well as in tapering the ill-effects of a ruthless market. Thus for sustainable development the development based on community dynamics is required. Community dynamics are maintained and are nurtured by the cultural traditions. Thus development is possible through culture. Community is not an impediment to but the vehicle for development. Therefore, when we think of development of our Northeast, we have to think of it as communities. When we aim at development we must have development strategy which will keep the community integrated and local specific instead of some individuals moving away from community (atomization) in search of greener pastures while the rest of the community languishes as it is.
The communities of the Northeast are rich in culture also have very high social norms. All that is needed is to feel confident about one's local cultural traditions and work to get the needed comforts and communications to be compatible with the times. The possibilities for community-driven entrepreneurship in one's localities would have to be seen, studied and explored. The Northeast is very rich in natural resources. These need to be coupled with entrepreneurship and industriousness. The lure of easy money would have to be given up. To give one example of its potentiality - the whole economy of Holland depends on the export of orchids. The Northeast is also very rich in orchids, fruits etc. There is immense potentiality. Only some sincere people would have to come forward giving up the lure of govemment jobs and work out some successful model of business. Observing such a successful model, the social capital and community dynamics would start working to make the whole community take to that business thus triggering the development of the whole community in which the atomization of the individual would not take place. Therefore the normative order that comes with cultural traditions would continue to lead to the holistic and sustainable development of the whole region. The Northeast awaits such people of vision and grit!
Article Written by Nivedita R. Bhide, All India Vice President of Vivekananda Kendra Kanyakumari.
