India has many manias. One of them is the craving for policy. When the value of the Indian rupee falls, there is a new policy aimed at shoring it up. If the price of vegetable oils rises, an expert committee will be constituted to work on bringing it down.
Policy is held in very high esteem.India has a policy for everything: for agriculture, for banking, for the construction industry, for drugs and healthcare, for education and food. A to Z, policy is so easy.
The best minds of India are judged by their policies. But there is no emphasis on practice. The best hands of India that are involved in practice will have to live in obscure isolation. The expert who suggests a road safety week is a public hero; the traffic constable who enforces the rules of the road is a public pest.
Honesty in practice
Honesty is the best policy. But what is the best practice? Is honesty the best practice? Is dishonesty the best practice? It is very confusing.
Policy is a guide to action, aimed at bringing about consistency in the actions of people. However, policy is not action. It defines the terms of engagement. A tribe, a nation and a family could all have policies on the ownership of assets, division of labour and sharing of profits. These policies will deliver the desired objectives only if the people involved act in congruence.
The mere statement of policy will neither lead to action nor produce the results. People will have to act to produce the results.
The army played a big role rescuing thousands of people in the Uttarakhand flood following rains, floods and avalanches there recently. There is a policy that states what the army can and should do. But the army comprising hundreds of personnel acted to rescue thousands of people. Each time there is a landslip or a rockslide, the army will deploy people and resources to provide first aid, to evacuate people, and to transport them to field hospitals.
There are thousands of tasks the army performs to comply with policy and to fulfil its sacred duty. Each of these requires competence and commitment, involvement, integrity and intelligence. They require empathy, enthusiasm and energy.
Policy does not bring in any of these. People do. Promises goad practice. But practice alone produces results. People produce results.
Blame game
It is fashionable to attribute India’s economic woes to inept policies. Policy is abstract and impersonal. Therefore, it is safe to blame policy.
Most analysts and commentators think the economy is fragile because of poor policies, that the economy is sputtering because good policies have not been implemented. They call this policy paralysis. There is no pressure to perform.
Consider Cuba, Cyprus, North Korea and Norway. They have all made very different policy choices. But on most social indicators of development and well-being, India lags behind them.
Many countries with similar policies are doing much better. Why? The truth is India has no predisposition towards practice. We are scared of confronting this. This is really India's biggest fallacy/That it thinks things work on policy/The truth is, it is pure practice/That lifts us from every abyss.
(The author is a financial analyst.)