A manifesto for social progress

 We are threatened simultaneously by poly-crises from war, climate change, technology, social injustices, and geopolitical rivalries. There is no super prophet available who has the sufficient moral and credible standing to lead us all out of the current wilderness.

We are threatened simultaneously by poly-crises from war, climate change, technology, social injustices, and geopolitical rivalries. There is no super prophet available who has the sufficient moral and credible standing to lead us all out of the current wilderness.

Change is coming so rapidly and bewilderingly from all directions that in a world of specialist experts, each in their own narrow fields, no single person has the breadth and depth of knowledge to explain simply to 8 billion people how to act for social progress.

Young climate activist Greta Thunberg has 2 billion followers, but no concrete plans on how to make change for climate warming. Just saying Net Zero by 2050 is just blah blah blah does not make serious change. In 2018, 300 leading global social scientists (International Panel on Social Progress) worked together to produce a multi-disciplinary three-volume report called “Re-thinking Society for the 21st Century”, considered then the cutting edge thinking on what is social progress and how to achieve it.

Since the report was highly technical, Cambridge University Press brought out a simpler version called A Manifesto for Social Progress: Ideas for a Better Society. Nobel laureate Amartya Sen’s foreword recalled that 170 years ago, the era of social injustices from industrial capitalism produced a Communist Manifesto that claimed “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” The new Manifesto argues that social progress can be enhanced through reforms in institutions and behavioral changes. The difference between the two Manifestos is that the newer version is based on the latest empirical data and research.

The core idea of a good society starts from the premise that every human being is entitled to full dignity, irrespective of gender, race, religion, education, talent, and productive capacities. Since human activity is changing the planet (the Age of Anthropocene), humans should be in the driving seat of change. Indeed, the mantra of Environment, Social, and Governance (ESG) means that improvements in the environment and addressing social change must involve better governance.

Since governance quality determines the final delivery of social progress, politics is all about how to achieve the three pillars of social equity (reduce inequalities between and within nations), freedom (expand and deepen basic liberties, rule of law, and democratic rights for all populations); and environmental sustainability (preserving the ecosystem for future generations). Conventional thinking about governance is often presented as a binary choice between state versus market.

But in practice, there are many variants of mixed economies and political systems, in which state and markets are symbiotic, simultaneously working and fighting with each other. Whatever modes of governance, all must have bottom-up legitimacy and accountability, in which the link between leaders and communities have feedback mechanisms of empowerment, representation, participation, and deliberations that mobilize change-makers for social progress.

The alternative is social regression. Amidst all the polarisation and contention, the book draws common lessons about social change, which can come from revolution or evolution, depending on the degree of imbalances.

First, deep social change often comes from people, social movements and civil society organisations, rarely from top down.

Second, democratisation and empowerment require the participation of and pressure by those stakeholders who are affected by change.

Third, many experiments are needed to explore how to implement and adapt general ideas to local needs and possibilities for change to be accepted. In short, the consensus of 300 social scientists is that there is no single model, no single recipe for transformation. Social change comes from diversity and openness to different paths to change, but it is important to adapt general principles of human dignity and needs to local contexts and possibilities, and to exclude all forms of dogmatic approaches.

The latest mid-term elections in the United States reflect this complex but deep shift after nearly six years of Trumpian politics that deeply divided the nation. Past mid-term elections have always been against the incumbent party, but this time round, the “red wave” shift back to the Republicans winning both the Senate and the House of Representatives did not happen. The Democrats did well to retain narrowly the Senate and lost narrowly to the Republicans in Congress.

A new Republican leader in Ron DeSantis has emerged as an alternative Republican candidate to Donald Trump for the 2024 Presidential elections. The election results signal that American voters prefer a move towards the centre after years of traumatic polarization. In Bali this month, the success in their respective elections by President Biden and President Xi gave both the mandate to begin to calm down rhetoric after months of escalating US-China tensions. Differences will always exist, because progress comes from continuous work on change from individual to community to national and then global levels.

To expect top leaders of state or corporations alone to do the heavy lifting will not work. The social scientists’ manifest has six ideas to change one’s own life and the world. Climate change is a complex system change, and there is no silver bullet or instant change possible. First, one could change through family, especially listening more to the young. Second, change can come from the workplace, as one contributes through jobs. Third, we can effect change through community.

Fourth, we can change the market through our consumption and savings choices. Fifth, we can be a torch bearer to all we meet by caring and sharing. Lastly, each of us should be an active citizen, open and adaptive to change. Change must take time, which means often painful or tortuous transitions that cannot be avoided. Each generation must make their own mistakes or create their own opportunities for betterment. Change or be changed. This is an opportunity to either make lunch or be lunch.

ANDREW SHENG 

Source: The Statesman, 2011/22

How to imagine and work towards a future

 It is an uncertain world and the threats that emerge nowadays seem to be entirely unforeseen. First, there was the Covid pandemic, then the war in Europe. What can a society do to ensure its well-being in such uncertain times? Fortunately, humans have the ability to imagine a future and plan for it.

A future for society is the product of its collective imagination. It is generated through large numbers of people sharing ideas over long periods. It is, therefore, a matter of some wonderment that in India there is so little public discussion on what might be the shape of our future. Isn’t it important that we foster an ability to imagine possible futures for our country?

Imagining different futures also means planning for them. We cannot know precisely what crises are in store for us. But we can certainly strengthen knowledge resources and develop the ability to mine those resources for possible solutions as and when the need arises.

As things stand, building up knowledge capital is a task that, even today, is seen in India as a costly exercise that doesn’t bring immediate profit. For some decades now, there have been two perverse attitudes that obstruct the creation and expansion of knowledge. One is the extreme belief, nurtured by those educated in modern institutions, that there is a political angle to all knowledge. The other is an obstinate commitment to demanding immediate, visible profit from everything. Both attitudes are harmful to any creation or dissemination of knowledge.

An obsession with immediate returns has consequences for everything; from public policy to technology development to social development and economic growth. It is one reason why India, despite a large presence in IT services, has had little to show by way of independent innovation. Even something as basic as creating a system for online payment of GST and income tax has been fairly difficult for Indians to develop.

It is unreasonable to expect individuals to plan several decades ahead for a collective goal. That is the mandate of social institutions. Institutions in India seem to work on a limited-time horizon. Recently, a vice-chancellor from one of the top Indian universities presented a five-year plan in a talk at Cambridge University. The university told the official that they were used to plans looking 30 years ahead. A short-term approach at the institutional level has serious social costs.

It was a series of short-term actions that led to the coal crisis some years ago. In 2014, when the Supreme Court cancelled the allotment of 204 blocks, which had been allotted since 1993, on the grounds of non-transparent processes, there was a major crisis. The coal ministry devised a transparent online bidding procedure for auctioning the blocks rather successfully. The auctions not only met the demands of industry but also generated revenue for the government. The point is that well-structured rules and regulations are needed all the time not only for the regular business of government but across sectors. Devising those rules and regulations in a fair manner after considering the views of all stakeholders, is a sunk cost. Revising rules regularly to match changed realities is also a sunk cost. Following proper scientific methods, whether in science labs or in business or in government is a sunk cost. Yet social investment in good rules and regulations, documentation, building up knowledge capital, remains very low in India.

The ability to imagine a future means a degree of comfort with sunk costs. Most of the technologies that we depend on today, whether the internet, mobile phone, electric cars, batteries or penicillin, took decades to develop; even centuries. A model of the electric car, for instance, was developed even before the petrol engine, but it wasn’t practical to use. What is practicable at what point in time depends entirely on circumstances.

For societies to refuse to invest in innovation for the future would be self-defeating. Such societies would have nothing to fall back upon in moments of crisis.

Written by Meeta Rajivlochan 

Source: Indian Express, 4/05/22