India's eroding institutional and social capital

Society enters a dangerous phase when foundational principles and institutions are seen as mere tactical assets, to be set aside when convenient, writes T N Ninan

In his column a couple of days ago, Shankar Acharya focused on wealth (which is stock) rather than the gross domestic product, or GDP (which is flow). He rightly stressed the importance of three forms of wealth, or capital—productive, natural/environmental and human—with special emphasis on the last. I would add two more kinds of capital that need to be kept in mind: institutional and social. These are particularly important in the current Indian context.

If one surveys the institutional scene, there is the complete waste of half the Budget session—reducing the Lok Sabha to the semi-relevance to which many state