Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
3
Fault Lines
Jugaad and chalta hai do India more damage on a macro level. They build fault lines that
undermine and erode established institutional systems that are central to the functioning of
a society and economy. They contribute to India's failures to operate efficiently and instil
a lack of responsibility that stretches from opposition parties blocking parliamentary pro-
ceedings to failure to mend broken roads and tackle public health risks. The self-centred
focus of society comes into play here. For example, if chalta hai will keep the country func-
tioning at a tolerable level, the opposition parties in parliament need have no qualms about
pursuing their own interests and stymieing the government's attempts to pass legislation.
Parliament lost between 70 per cent and 80 per cent of available working time in the 2012
monsoon session because of opposition demonstrations and about 50 per cent was similarly
lost in the 2013 Budget session, 1 up from a third in 2011 and over 40 per cent in 2010. 2
Similarly, if jugaad and chalta hai together keep the country's defence forces equipped
and operating at what appears to be a tolerable level, the defence establishment (which in-
cludes grossly inefficient public sector corporations) can afford to look after its own in-
terests with comfortable jobs, patronage and the luxury of dealing with foreign suppliers
and their agents, while restricting the ambit of the more efficient private sector. Similarly,
the aviation ministry and government-owned Air India can wallow in the luxury and spoils
of crony patronage while the airline declines and airports are developed largely for the be-
nefit of the companies involved. There are similar self-serving examples across the public
sector.
'Total inadequacy of our politico-administrative apparatus to our needs is our single
worst peril,' says K. Shankar Bajpai. 3 'It comes from the sort of considerations, or thinking,
that nowadays shape our decision-making and behaviour - what Marx called kleinburger-
lich - ignorant, pettily self-seeking, parochial, inappropriate if not wholly irrelevant, of
course with no thought of India.' 4
Gautam Ahuja, professor of business administration and strategy at the University of
Michigan, has suggested that India's 'limited institutional capital and inadequate or poorly
functioning institutions' have boosted the development of jugaad. By institutional capital
he means formal and informal organizations, rules and norms that have 'broad acceptance
in a society and that facilitate and enable the productive activities of that economy'.
In a speech in Delhi in 2011, 5 he painted a picture of modern India without naming it,
saying: 'When the ordinary people in a society adopt an approach that is openly dismissive
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