Grand Tamasha: Highlighting the importance of building strong state institutions

This is the central takeaway of a new book by Subhashish Bhadra, Caged Tiger: How Too Much Government Is Holding Indians Back

Leaders come and go, but institutions stay forever. This is the central takeaway of a new book by Subhashish Bhadra, Caged Tiger: How Too Much Government Is Holding Indians Back.

Last week, Subhashish Bhadra discussed the key takeaways from his book on Grand Tamasha, a weekly podcast co-produced by HT and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. (HT Photo)

Bhadra is an economist whose career has straddled both the policy and corporate worlds. He has worked at a leading global management consulting firm, a venture capital firm, and a tech start-up, working closely with CEOs, entrepreneurs, bureaucrats, politicians and academics throughout his career. Last week, he discussed the key takeaways from his book on Grand Tamasha, a weekly podcast co-produced by HT and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Bhadra’s new book is a call to action that encourages Indians to move beyond their fixation with leaders and focus instead on building strong state institutions. While discussions of state capacity are typically the stuff of academic conference rooms and think tank seminars, Bhadra believes they should be at the core of everyday discussions Indians have on the future of their democracy.

According to Bhadra, laws in India are written in a way that delegate too much power to governments and, to compound matters, the very functioning of government is often mired in opacity. Even if you fix both problems, Bhadra explains, India needs more oversight mechanisms. “Unless there’s someone who can hold the government accountable, [democracy] does not work,” he explains. “Typically, that is the judiciary but then we see in some laws that the role of the judiciary has been reduced as well. For example, when books are banned under certain laws, the person whose book has been banned cannot go to court against it, which means the government has free rein to be able to do what they want to do.”

For Bhadra, the challenge is to modernize a “transformative Constitution,” that made sense for the times, but is badly out of date today. “I do think the measures that the Constitution-makers took were justified and they were acutely aware of that. So, we have that image of [Sardar Vallabhai] Patel….saying ‘Here is the first preventive detention law, and I’ve had many sleepless nights before introducing it.’ BR Ambedkar called for a government that was even stronger than the British government…And, given the context of their time, it was very much necessary,” Bhadra states. Seventy-five years on, however, there is a need to adapt. Says Bhadra, “Where we have perhaps got it somewhat wrong is when you start empowering the state, unless you start empowering society at the same time, that is when liberty, democracy, and prosperity go off the rails.”

In the end, Bhadra argues, change in India will be incremental, gradual, and evolutionary, which is as it should be for such a diverse democracy. “If we try to change too much, too fast…we possibly expose ourselves to things really going wrong in many ways,” cautioned Bhadra. “That’s the challenge with radical change—you often end up in places perhaps where you don’t want to be…I believe that the kind of institutions that we create becomes our legacy for the next generation, becomes our legacy for the longer-term health of India. If the British have been at this for 800-900 years and the Americans have been at this for over 300 years, the least we can do is be somewhat more patient.”