Simon Kuznets theorised economic inequality increases in developing countries until a base per capita is achieved. After that, inequality decreases. The Kuznets Curve (KC) looks like an inverted U-shaped graph, when inequality is mapped against per capita.
Some social scientists discern an Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC), when pollution levels are mapped versus per capita. That is, a developing nation damages its environment in its first growth spurt. After some basic per capita is reached, citizens demand clean-ups and then emissions are capped, sewage treated, etc.
A KC may also exist with regard to corruption and per capita. One fervently hopes so. The last decade has seen unprecedented growth — India’s per capita rose from a nominal $500 in 2000 to $1,125 in 2009. Side by side, there has been robust growth in corruption and its incestuous twin, crony capitalism.
Logically, given the original KC, there has to be a KC for corruption. Corruption breeds inequality but inequality eventually declines with growing per capita. But whatever that magic per capita level may be, India has obviously not hit it yet.
In 2010, we saw some signs that India is closer to the tipping point. This is not because there was a decrease in corruption, or crony capitalism. It is because corruption was exposed and there was genuine, spontaneous outrage about it.
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This is not a reference to the orchestrated posturing that crippled the winter session of Parliament. It is about the universal disgust inspired by the CWG mess, the spectrum scandal and the Radia tapes. It is about the free, frank discussion of judicial outcomes in sensitive matters like the Vinayak Sen case, the Reliance-ADAG gas allocation dispute and the Babri Masjid.
Ultimately, disgust is the bedrock on which a civil society is built. Be it environmental degradation, crony capitalism, or generalised corruption, improvements occur only when the establishment finds chalta hai unsustainable. A sufficient number of citizens need to be sufficiently disgusted before that happens.
How long will it take to develop that level of disgust in amader Bharatvarsha? There cannot be hard-and-fast extrapolations. The prerequisites are high levels of genuine literacy (as opposed to the ability to sign one’s name), democracy and personal freedom, respect for property rights, and some level of basic per capita. India has a long way to go on most of these indicators.
Decent institutions like a fair, efficient and independent judiciary; honest and efficient civil services; and transparent government policies develop only when societies possess the above. Otherwise, as in India, we see cargo-cult travesties, where the forms are aped without the functionality.
But in this respect, India could end up uniquely blessed. No country has ever had a population so large, so young and so upwardly mobile in both absolute and percentage terms. A decade or two later, most of the current establishment will be dead, of natural causes, and India’s per capita will be roughly five to six times as large as it is now.
Simply through the efflux of time, and the so-called demographic dividend, the current gerontocracy will be replaced by people who are much younger, more wealthy, better educated, and more self-assured. Will our descendants be unpatriotic enough to ignore our long-cherished tradition of sirfarish?
There is hope. Schoolchildren led the campaign against fireworks that has resulted in less noisy and less polluted Diwalis. They are well aware their texting and IM bills are larger, and their power supply is more expensive and uncertain, due to the shenanigans of Raja and his ilk. Some of them wonder why the laws used by the British to muzzle the Freedom Movement are used against the citizens of a supposedly free state. They will do the job eventually if only we can nurture their sense of disgust.