Caged Tiger: How Too Much Government Is Holding Indians Back

By Subhashish Bhadra

What is common between the censorship of the film Padmaavat and artificially high 'minimum' support prices for crops? If the police comes down so heavily on peaceful anti-CAA protestors, why did it not show the same harshness towards those violating the COVID-19 lockdown? Why is an otherwise powerful Election Commission unable to enforce free and fair elections within political parties or fully weed out criminals from politics?

The common factor is faulty institutional design, which is eating away at the foundations of our society. Leaders come and go, but institutions stay forever. Only a consistent focus on better institutions can help India have a more robust economy, media, police, parliament, internet and cultural life. Yet, discussions on institutions have been restricted to academic circles.

Keeping aside ideological biases of Left or Right, Caged Tiger brings alive the rich yet unseen story of India's institutions. It combines deep research and complex frameworks, converting them into the vocabulary and cultural context of millennials and Gen Z. It goes all the way back to the British Raj, exploring the origins of modern Indian institutions. Tracing additions by subsequent governments, from Nehru's to Modi's, it identifies policies that keep Indians suppressed and how each of us can change them. It is, in short, young India's guide to becoming smarter about the issues that matter.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release date: May 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9789354359750

Book preview

Advance Praise for Caged Tiger

The geometry of trust is changing. Across the world, people are hesitant to trust big banks, big governments and big institutions to solve their problems. Surprisingly, things are different in India with 70% of us trusting the government, more than the number who trust the media or non-governmental organisations. Caged Tiger helps us understand why and offers a gripping analysis of the importance of institutions in revitalising Indian democracy. Subhashish Bhadra offers practical mental models for building more inclusive and egalitarian institutions. Filled with interesting questions, data points and case studies, this book is a must-read for anyone interested in shaping the future of India.

Utkarsh Amitabh, CEO and Founder, Network Capital

Caged Tiger will wake you up and make you look at India very differently. Subhashish Bhadra argues that we have a government trying to do too much with too little, and with even lesser accountability to the people whom it is supposedly doing it for. Before the picture of your most-hated politician pops into your head, Bhadra reminds you with facts and examples that this problem exists across party lines and across leaders.

Under the constant barrage of breaking news cycles and finger-pointing between political parties, we as citizens forget to pause and ask the kind of questions that really matter. Instead of focusing on the issue of tonight’s 9 p.m. debate, Bhadra’s arguments will leave you thinking about what matters for India in this decade, and even this century.

In a highly polarised world with constant distractions, the biggest act of patriotism a citizen can perform is to stay laser-focused on the fundamental problems in the bargain between our freedoms and the responsibilities of the government. We are losing our freedoms, and this book tells us how we can win them back.

Tanuj Bhojwani, Co-author, The Art of Bitfulness

Why do things often fail to work in India? Why are our rights frequently violated? It’s tempting to place blame solely on politicians, who promise us a better future and keep escaping accountability. But, is our understanding superficial? Have we fallen into a trap of personality politics that distracts us from forging consensus and progress on our shared constitutional goals?

Such is the partisan divide in urban India that political conversations among friends are increasingly fractious and best avoided around family. The dogmatic belief in a handful of people seems to overpower our imagination and ability to understand the structural issues that confront us today. After all, it is far more entertaining to compare political parties than public policies.

Here, Caged Tiger by Subhashish Bhadra cuts through the shallow fog of public discourse. It provides depth to our understanding of how our institutions work, why they often fail and how we can fulfil our civic duty. Let me be clear: Caged Tiger is an important but not boring book. Part of it is due to the presentation of complex ideas with an engaging narrative. It is accessible and essential reading for every critical Indian. A recommended gift for friends with disagreeable political choices.

Apar Gupta, Co-founder and Executive Director, Internet Freedom Foundation

The lessons of history teach us that economic progress alone is not sufficient for happiness. Freedom of speech, rule of law and respect for human rights are equally important for individuals to feel safe and happy in a society. Caged Tiger is a passionate appeal to all readers that even as we make rapid progress towards becoming the world’s third largest economy, the task of providing justice, equity and safety to our citizens remains a work in progress. This is not to take away from the considerable achievements India has attained as a democracy but a pointer to how we can build an even better India for everyone.

Venkatesh Hariharan, India Representative, Open Invention Network

Many triumphs and disappointments of post-independence India can be traced to its political and economic institutions. As India becomes a global economic power, we will need to make some institutions stronger and rethink others. Caged Tiger provides excellent insights into our institutions. Well researched and engaging, the book establishes Subhashish Bhadra as an insightful young voice on these issues.

C.V. Madhukar, CEO, Co-Develop, and Founder, PRS Legislative Research

In an environment mesmerised by personalities and ideologies, Subhashish Bhadra does the important work of casting the spotlight on India’s public institutions. A must-read for anyone who wants to understand how the independence and accountability of institutions shape everyday life and liberty in India.

Smriti Parsheera, Fellow, CyberBRICS Project

Every successful democratic country needs to maintain a fine balance between the principles of its constitution and the bargains of daily politics; between the power of an effective state and the rights of individual citizens. Independent institutions are important mediators in such situations. Subhashish Bhadra has written an insightful book on how the Indian state often hinders rather than helps the people it is meant to serve, and how institutional change is as much the job of citizens as it is of reformists within government.

Dr Niranjan Rajadhyaksha, Resident Senior Fellow, Artha Global

If India is to prosper, it can’t do it with a leaky state, an ill-resourced police force and an un-free internet. Subhashish Bhadra makes a compelling case for why the future of the Indian state is dependent on the capacity of its institutions and not simply the charisma of its most popular leaders. This is a must-read for everyone who cares about the future of India.

Arghya Sengupta, Founder, Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy

Right after independence, India went astray with colonialism morphing into state domination, which induced stagnation and poverty. In the recent decade, we are starting to see the emergence of new concepts of freedom and a rethinking of the Indian state. Caged Tiger is an important building block of this new paradigm. Everyone interested in rebuilding the Indian dream should read this book.

Dr Ajay Shah, Economist

Why has India not progressed? This is a hard question that is always on the minds of every Indian. Caged Tiger attempts to answer that question by pointing out that it is lack of strong institutions that could be one answer. Subhashish Bhadra goes into great detail about how in several spheres there have been institutional failures that have contributed to the current state of affairs. He urges us to reimagine our politics, not in favour of strong leaders but in strengthening existing institutions and in holding them accountable to do their constitutional dharma. Be forewarned that this book may create a significant cognitive dissonance, if you already believe that we have arrived at the world stage as a power to be reckoned with. Whatever your opinion may be about that aspect, this is not a book you can ignore, no matter which side of the debate you are on. The examples cited here are too numerous to ignore and to pretend that all is well with our institutions. India cannot be a power to be reckoned with at the world stage if we can’t look at ourselves in the mirror and can’t engage with the reflection, however disconcerting it may be.

Anand Venkatanarayanan, Co-author, The Art of Conjuring Alternate Realities

CAGED TIGER

How Too Much Government

Is Holding Indians Back

SUBHASHISH BHADRA

BLOOMSBURY INDIA

Bloomsbury Publishing India Pvt. Ltd

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First published in India 2023

This edition published 2023

Copyright © Subhashish Bhadra, 2023

Subhashish Bhadra has asserted his right under the Indian Copyright Act to be identified as the Author of this work

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To my parents

Contents

Introduction

1 Economic Restraints

2 The Panopticon

3 Controlled Cacophony

4 His Master’s Police

5 Cultural Revolution

6 Crumbling Temples

7 Regulatory Tentacles

8 Peering into the Crystal Ball

9 A People’s Reinvention

Acknowledgements

Notes

Index

Introduction

As on 23 April 2021, nearly 2.4 million Indians had an active COVID-19 infection and nearly 30,000 had succumbed to the illness in the preceding 30 days. Countless Indian families, mine included, had gone through the trauma of losing a loved one to this illness. Many of us spent hours looking for hospital beds for family and friends. We felt helpless, despondent and angry. The worst was, however, yet to come—the death toll continued to rise for the next month, peaking at nearly 4000 deaths a day towards the end of May. On 23 April, therefore, we were still in the early stages of that deadly second wave.

That day, the central government ordered Twitter to remove tens of tweets that were critical of its handling of the pandemic, including those from Members of Parliament (MPs), ministers of state governments, actors and filmmakers.¹ The tweets reportedly highlighted the missteps of the government or miseries of people caught in the crosshairs of the pandemic. Most either spoke about the scarcity of medicines or criticised the decision to go ahead with the Kumbh Mela even as the pandemic showed signs of resurgence.

State governments issued similar orders directly to citizens. The deputy commissioner of Mumbai Police prohibited, among other things, messages that incited ‘mistrust towards government functionaries and their actions’ during the pandemic.² The chief minister of Uttar Pradesh directed officials to seize the properties of those who spoke about the oxygen shortage in the state.³ The Bihar government, in January 2021, issued an order that legal action can be taken against those who make ‘offensive’ comments on social media about its ministers, MPs, MLAs and government officials, even though a 2015 Supreme Court order had outlawed a similar central law. Further south, the highest-ranking police official in Telangana warned of strict action against those who posted ‘inappropriate content’ on social media,⁴ even though these terms are vague and subjective.

Every level of the government felt the need to manage the flow of online information. At the height of the second wave of COVID-19, the district magistrate of Indore issued an order placing restrictions on comments and forwards related to the coronavirus on social media platforms.⁵ This came days after the Jabalpur district magistrate issued a similar order against ‘objectionable’ COVID-19-related content on social media. Politicians themselves used evocative references to Hitler and the Emergency to describe such rules; yet, governments of different political hues issued them in the states they governed.

In those difficult days, many Indians stepped up to help each other find hospital beds and life-saving medicines, even for complete strangers. Citizens bridged the gaps left by governments that, many believed, had failed despite their might, mandate, machinery and money.⁶ Yet, we felt censored on that very social media where we found saviours in each other and by those very governments we elect and pay taxes to.⁷

The governments argued that social media was being used to spread misinformation, which in turn was making pandemic management more difficult.⁸ They pointed to the rapid pace of vaccination—with India setting a world record of 25 million doses in a single day—while arguing that fake news about the vaccines was harming the poor the most.⁹ This might well be true, but in the long arc of human history, such challenges arise repeatedly in shapes big or small—riots, pandemics, earthquakes, recessions, wars, social unrest, floods and more. How our democratic institutions respond in those moments of crisis really defines the kind of society we are.

While the structures of the US government forced the newly elected Biden administration to debate its COVID-19 economic stimulus plan threadbare with the opposition,¹⁰ the Indian government resisted efforts to bring the PM CARES Fund under the Right to Information (RTI) Act.¹¹ Nobody knows how much money the fund has, though IndiaSpend estimates that it received at least

₹9600 crore as early as May 2020.¹² While the United Kingdom’s Parliament debated its government’s emergency COVID-19-related proposals at length, several Indian governments creatively interpreted unrelated and colonial laws—including one whose coercive use was criticised by Bal Gangadhar Tilak way back in 1897—to enforce measures without consulting the Parliament or state legislatures.¹³ Despite the widespread criticism of the vaccination process, the central government of India, in June 2021, refused to share details about its vaccination plan, stating that ‘it is of no public interest’.¹⁴ And while the US institutions showed their robustness in easing out a president who refused to acknowledge election results, the Madras High Court observed that the Election Commission should be ‘booked for murder’ for permitting political rallies during a resurgent COVID-19 pandemic.¹⁵

No government in the world is perfect but countries where democratic institutions work better are more thoughtful and responsive to their citizens’ needs. For example, every country in the world struggles to find the red lines around free speech online. When Twitter labelled many tweets of former US president Donald Trump as ‘manipulated media’ in the run-up to the 2020 elections, the US government did not send the police knocking on the company’s doors. France and Germany criticised Twitter’s later decision to ban Trump from the platform. But, unlike India, neither of them brought in rules that, in the words of the Bombay High Court, could have a ‘chilling effect’ on the freedom of speech in the country.¹⁶

Better institutions would not have prevented the pandemic or completely eliminated the unfathomable human suffering it caused. However, they would have made Indians’ lives better during these tough times; governments would have been more consultative and transparent, courts would have shown as much urgency in helping migrants as they did in probing the death of a Bollywood actor and the media would have truly played its role to hold governments accountable.

Our pandemic-scarred nation should not be pinning the blame on those in power. Instead, we should be asking why institutions that are meant to safeguard citizens in what is supposed to be a strong and vibrant democracy failed to do so adequately. Why do governments get so much say over what is shared on social media? Why are taxpayers unable to easily see where their taxes and donations are spent? Why are our Parliament and state legislatures unable to question governments effectively? If the police could come down so heavily on peaceful anti-CAA protestors, what prevented them from being equally harsh on those violating the COVID-19 lockdown? Why, in the middle of a pandemic, do governors play a questionable role in the rise and fall of state governments? As we lift the veil from the here and now and look deep into the very soul of our democracy, we discover flaws in our democratic institutions.

And this is not just about the pandemic. From culture to media to the economy, India is confronted with many colonial laws that provide excessive powers to governments, often at the cost of citizens. This, in turn, prevents us from living our most productive and fulfilling lives. Many believe that such restrictions are justified because they contribute to ‘nation-building’. They exhort the ‘noisy middle class’ to bear these minor inconveniences and make sacrifices that help usher in India’s golden age. That, however, could not be further from the truth.

A free citizenry results in a stronger nation. Economists have found that countries where citizens are freer to start businesses, engage in trade or make investment decisions have higher economic prosperity.¹⁷ Similarly, quantitative analysis of three decades’ worth of data from 97 countries shows that countries with more press freedom have higher economic growth.¹⁸ Moreover, countries where citizens are freer to practise their religion also have higher economic growth.¹⁹ The list of research studies with similar findings goes on and on. If there is one message that we can take away from it all, it is that setting citizens free is the surest way to create a robust and strong nation.

This quest for freedom compels us to ask whether our institutions enable Indians to be free or become tools for governments to control us. The truth, as always, lies somewhere in the middle. Therefore, all concerned citizens need to think long and hard about institutions if we want our unique democracy to survive and our promising economy to thrive. Democracy, after all, is not just about showing up at an election booth once in five years. It is equally about what happens between elections and whether citizens are seen as participants in every consequential decision made by governments.

It is time to walk away from the headlines and the larger-than-life personalities and take a deeper look at the issues that really matter.

WHY INSTITUTIONS MATTER

This book is not about Narendra Modi or Indira Gandhi. It is neither about Jawaharlal Nehru’s socialist aspirations nor about Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s infrastructural vision. Over the past 75 years, several individuals—prime ministers, chief ministers, bureaucrats, judges and politicians—have played important roles in how the Indian dream unfolded. They shaped our narratives, policies, hopes and fears. Our emotional reaction to their personalities, good or bad, often eclipses an objective evaluation of the performance of the governments they ran.

The importance we give to individual leaders is largely justified. Nehru’s naiveté in dealing with the Chinese opened a festering wound that refuses to heal even now. Manmohan Singh’s personal resilience during the economic reforms of 1991 and the US nuclear deal of 2008 paved the way for a globally integrated India. Vajpayee’s resolve in conducting nuclear tests, and his skilful diplomacy thereafter, helped India enter the nuclear club smoothly. In the states, many chief ministers transformed the lives of their citizens—for better or for worse. The character, motivations and values of a few government leaders have always determined the lives of millions of Indians in post-colonial India.

But there is an equally important aspect of democracy that gets ignored in mainstream discussions—institutions. Institutions are the rules that govern our economic, social and political interactions.²⁰ In other words, institutions include the impersonal conduct of organisations that are shaped by rules and procedures, not by human whims. When these rules are written down and clearly defined, they are called formal institutions. They include the laws, regulations, codes and decrees written by parliaments, governments and regulators and enforced by the police and courts.

Institutions constrain not just ordinary citizens but also those in positions of power. For example, a prime minister needs to think about whether a new law is compatible with the Constitution and earlier laws passed by the Parliament. A chief minister needs to evaluate whether laws allow him to act against a journalist he dislikes. When passing verdicts, judges need to be mindful of earlier decisions by the Supreme Court, whose orders automatically become the law of the land. A police officer needs to think about whether she has the power to arrest a citizen she suspects of committing a crime. Such institutions are the beams that hold democracy together. Good institutions are needed to keep the pillars of democratic life—political, economic and social—together. Like most foundational structures, they are invisible. But they are also the most important part of the edifice.

To be fair, societies managed to function for millennia without this plethora of rules and laws. Instead, people were bound by values espoused by religions or the fear of social ostracism. They did the right things because they believed that a higher power was judging their honesty and piety or because they feared that any deviant action would not be tolerated by their community. Yet, few of these rules bound the emperors and kings who lorded over them. Such ‘informal institutions’ continue to exist even today. However, formal institutions started replacing them when markets and societies became more complex and when people living thousands of miles away from each other became joint custodians of a shared national destiny. Today, there are thousands of laws that tell us how citizens and rulers should behave. In short, institutions are everywhere.

Behind the story of independent India’s largely triumphant journey is a complex interplay between individuals and institutions. But while individuals receive the attention of mythological proportions in books and cinema, the boring world of institutions is relegated to arcane discussions in seminar rooms. For many, the conversation feels academic and technical. It does not lend itself naturally to a social media hashtag. This deprives us of the fascinating story of India’s evolving institutions, which hides in it the nuances of who we are and indications of where we are heading.

This is a pity because the primacy of institutions in the development of a country is a well-accepted fact among the world’s foremost thinkers, and yet the idea has failed to enter the everyday conversation. One of the most cited economists globally, Daron Acemoglu, has built his life’s work around this issue. In his seminal book Why Nations Fail, he shows that a country needs to create inclusive economic and political institutions if it wants long-term prosperity for its citizens. Closer home, the Modi government’s first chief economic adviser, Arvind Subramanian, has argued that the good institutions our founding fathers bequeathed to us have played an important role in India’s recent economic miracle.²¹ He also cautioned that the steady erosion in their effectiveness could adversely impact India’s momentum. It is about time that all of us—politicians, judges, media and the common person—heed their advice and talk more about our institutions. This issue needs to escape academia and enter our everyday vocabulary. For that to happen, we first need to understand why institutions matter.

Institutions matter because they bring predictability and fairness to our lives. They circumscribe the actions of government leaders. For example, a more independent Reserve Bank of India (RBI) may have reacted differently to the demonetisation of 2016. But our central bank is significantly less independent compared with America’s, especially in the appointment and removal of its board. Without effective institutions, our leaders are less restricted in the exercise of power, taking us closer to the medieval days of kings and princes. Our leaders often exploit loopholes to perpetuate their power and longevity. For example, in 1973, the central government attempted to reduce judicial autonomy by superseding three senior judges in appointing the chief justice of India. Like all rational people, government leaders do what is in their self-interest.

Some of them may indeed have altruistic goals. But we should not live our lives hoping for magnanimous leaders to turn to altruism. Instead, we should ask ourselves what incentives our institutions have put in place to ensure good behaviour from them. Writer and podcaster Amit Varma argues that these incentives determine the kind of political leaders we produce. In British times, Indian politicians were driven by the noble cause of independence rather than a lust for power—because there was no power to be had! Consequently, we saw honest leaders with a strong moral compass. Fast forward to today, and our institutions provide a lot of discretionary power to politicians, creating breeding grounds for corruption and the unbridled display of authority. Consequently, the quality of our political leaders has consistently degraded. To stem the slide, we should think of doomsday scenarios and ask whether we have enough institutional safeguards to prevent those. Governments will come and go, but governance and its structures will stay forever.

Institutions matter because of their relative permanence. The actions of our government leaders will invariably be modified or overturned by future generations. But the changes they make to institutions will far outlive them, becoming enablers or constraints for those who come to power later. The history of independent India is replete with examples of laws that were brought in with good intentions but were used for increasingly restrictive objectives over time. Institutions are particularly important in these polarised times because they provide forums for different viewpoints to try to iron out differences. They bring in experts and bureaucrats who take a long-term view of national priorities and counteract the short-term electoral considerations that guide politicians. In the absence of institutions, there might be a free-for-all between different groups that seek to get their ideologies adopted at all costs.

Most importantly, institutions matter because they compel us to think of the tapestry of laws and procedures by which a country is run rather than simplistic notions of right or wrong. For example, there is a lot more to free and fair elections than just having an equal opportunity to vote. After all, Hitler seized power in Germany by perfectly legal means, using a series of laws to emasculate the opposition and co-opting various organs of the state.²² Once we start diving deeper, we realise that a maze of laws on issues such as electoral financing, press freedoms and criminal investigations determines whether our elections are truly free and fair.

Yet, we do not talk about institutions enough because we are too preoccupied with how we feel about the government leaders of the day. But if there is one thing I hope to convince you over the next nine chapters, it is that our institutions matter and that we must change them. In this book, I will show you how most of our frustrations with governments—in areas as diverse as the economy and media freedom—can be traced back to our laws that provide too much unaccountable power to governments, an implementation that is shrouded in secrecy and the absence of independent oversight of governmental actions. Before doing so, however, we must acknowledge a unique reality about Indians—that we largely trust and support our governments despite their many flaws.

IN GOVERNMENT WE TRUST

The Indian government enjoys the trust of its citizens; 70 per cent of us trust the government, which is more than those who trust the media (61 per cent) and NGOs (68 per cent).²³ Within the government, the army, upper judiciary and heads of government inspire high trust, whereas the police, government officials and political parties do not.²⁴

There are many cultural and historical reasons for our trust in governments. We Indians are strongly motivated by loyalty and care towards our family and deference towards its patriarch. Outside of the home, we seek comfort in our religious or cultural identities and treat those who share these identities as our extended family. We seek advice from the patriarchs of such extended families—the guru or the baba—and hold them in high regard. Be it at our workplace or as sports enthusiasts, we often call those around us ‘family’. Taking this line of thinking to its logical conclusion, we see the entire country as one big family and are inspired by our shared identity as Indians. The head of this billion-plus family is the government. We, therefore, give it the same loyalty we give our elders and gurus. The distinguishing feature of Indian families is forgiveness; we overlook the faults of other members out of a sense of love and adoration. This is why we are willing to forgive governments’ mistakes, too.

We trust governments because we elected them. It is our collective creation, and behavioural science shows that we value something more if it belongs to us or if we have played a role in creating it. To the extent that governments are either inefficient or corrupt, we blame our own shortcomings as a society—that we vote on caste or communal lines or for candidates with criminal backgrounds. We trust governments because being accommodative is one of our cultural attributes and we are, therefore, easy to please. Being demanding—of family, friends, life or governments—is culturally discouraged and perceived as selfish. The Indians’ expectations from the governments are relatively low also because of the long spells of extractive colonial and monarchical rule in our recent history. We benchmark ourselves against our neighbouring countries, which are typically poorer and less democratic than us. We complain less and have a chalta hai attitude to minor inconveniences. Often, we just give up because we feel that the problems we face are too big or deeply entrenched and that complaining about them will not help.

Most importantly, we trust governments because, on average, they have performed remarkably well. India’s defining achievement is that it has repeatedly conducted the world’s largest elections and losing regimes have peacefully handed over power to political rivals. No other country at India’s level of income has done so. The storming of the US Capitol by a violent mob in early 2021 showed that even richer countries struggle with political transitions. Our governments have also kept us safe from foreign aggressors as