Democracy and Progress: Sunday, May 23, 2004

I enjoy eating at the faculty club on campus, but not for the food. Its the company. And I particularly like eating at the "big" table, the one where business school (and some other) faculty eat. Mostly the older senior faculty, and then there's usually some of us younger ones. But for me, there is much wisdom here, as well as a change of pace. Discussion flows freely in the absence of youthful ambition.

Sukhi Singh from Engineering the other day explained something most profound to us all. Since the elections has just finished back in my native country India, and had resulted in an overwhelming defeat for the ruling party, despite their presiding over one of the biggest economic success stories in Asia, we were talking about what had changed and what had not.

Sukhi (which means happy) said that India would not taste real success unless a fundamental aspect of its culture changed. He called this the "premise of distrust". Every bureaucratic institution in India is pervaded with this, resulting in a system of intricate checks and reviews, requiring approval at many levels. You see, since everyone in India is expected to break the law if not checked repeatedly (and this is quite a valid assumption mostly), there are stages of checks, overlaying great chokes on economic endeavor. And then the checkers too need checking, which greatly raises the possibility of corruption, which becomes endemic.

In contrast, Sukhi said, the United States functions in a manner with a premise of trust. Everyone is expected to follow the law, and mostly everyone does. The checks are ex-post and not ex-ante, for breaking the law is severely punished, with no exceptions. Creative people are free of bureaucratic hinderance unless they break the law. But they are not checked, reviewed, second-guessed or exploited by people with no ability to provide a proper input on their work.

What struck me later was that this was it. Just trust versus distrust. While we may continue to fool ourselves that it is democracy in the U.S. that makes us so productive, it may not be. Freedom surely paves the way for trust to work its magic, and that freedom is ensured by democracy, but in the end, its the culture of trust that does it. Democracy alone would be insufficient. Otherwise, India would be the most successful country in the world! It is a country with over 80% Hindus, yet the President is Muslim. In the most recent election, it almost had a women executive head, of Italian origin, born in Rome (and she would have been the second women to run the nation). The final choice for Prime Minister is now a sikh, with a degree from Oxford. If anyone needs evidence that democracy is a western prerogative, let this be the best counterexample. Compared to India, democracy in the U.S. is infantile.

But, the culture of trust does make the U.S. unique. We are taught early to trust ourselves and believe in our thoughts. How many countries preach this gospel. Which religion even comes close? So, when the state starts to mistrust us, big brother us, use the Patriot Act to smother us, it makes us really unhappy. When we are told to trust them, not ourselves, something is wrong. When government tells other nations to trust them, not themselves, we insult them with distrust. And we need to be really careful, because if carried too far, we will lose the mother lode that makes this country what it really is. In any case, lets trust in ourselves, instinctively and surely.