The Accountable State Versus the Minimal State

One of the key ideas of neoliberal doctrine is the ideal of a minimal state that does not interfere in the functioning of the market. Libertarianism extends this principle to government actions and state regulation at large, based on the belief that people can effectively organize and regulate their lives without the apparatus of a heavy-handed state.

The viability of this model can be questioned for any society. The following implicit or explicit claims concerning the notion of the minimal state are possible grounds of objection: (a) that the entity called the market exists above and beyond all networks of social relations; (b) that every aspect of human life can be viewed as functioning according to a market model;(c) that human beings are intrinsically egalitarian and democratic (an optimistic but naive belief); and (d) that these demands for a miminal state rest on a somewhat romantic idea of community as a more meaningful structure of social organization than the state.

In the Indian context, there are many good reasons for loosening the grip of a heavy-handed state on the economy. The power of the state could also be curtailed in other areas of public and political life, for example, the absurd and dictatorial use of colonial-era laws to quash freedom of expression or formulate policy pandering to 'community sentiment' at the expense of individual rights.

A focus on an accountable state can effectively address these shortcomings of the heavy-handed state, while preserving for the state the role of protecting the weakest segments of society. Given the reality of grave socioeconomic inequalities in India, the minimal state might just make things worse in several respects, bad as they might be anyways.

In the economic realm, with no well-developed mechanisms for consumer rights in India and no established structures in place to ensure corporate responsibility and accountability, the economic exploitation of Indian individuals or groups is likely to amplify manifold without some protection from the state. Weaker groups would inevitably be hit the hardest. On the basis of their privilege, upper caste and middle-class elites are likely to be relatively well-insured and insulated against the danger of economic exploitation. Perhaps that is why it is the economically well-off and socially and culturally privileged segment of Indian society that is the strongest advocate for a minimal state.

There is no in-built corrective or natural ethical imperative that flows from the unfettered functioning of the market. Economic freedoms do not automatically lead to political freedoms. Corporations and businesses cannot be their own judge and jury(even if they have internal and supposedly autonomous ethics departments).

If the market must be freed from undue control by the state (a legitimate enough demand), then the obverse also holds true: the state must be insulated from undue control by the market. States must protect themselves from being reduced to becoming mere spokespersons for the market.

Indian history is also instructive here. Gandhi moved from an initial belief that upper caste Hindus would abandon caste prejudice to a position where he acknowledged a role (if limited) for the state in combating discrimination. Communities, as Gandhi learned, do not necessarily reform of their own accord. As the vexed history of reservations and quotas for disenfranchised groups in India since independence shows, legal change does not automatically bring about social change. Yet legal change may be a necessary (if not sufficient) requirement for setting into motion the long process of social change, and the state should not permanently forfeit its power to initiate such processes.

The process of identifying the weakest segments of society and formulating appropriate policies for protecting vulnerable groups should themselves be subject to accountability and carried out with full transparency. Inevitably, they will be subject to intense contestation, attempted political manipulation (given that they
concern the capacity of the state to distribute resources and provide benefits), and the cynical calculations of democratic politics (the horse-trading that is a feature of Indian political life). But none of this warrants permanently abdicating the power of the state to protect the weak.