#120 Narrative Dominance

While excellent newsletters on specific themes within public policy already exist, this thought letter is about frameworks, mental models, and key ideas that will hopefully help you think about any public policy problem in imaginative ways.

PS: If you enjoy listening instead of reading, we have this edition available as an audio narration on all podcasting platforms courtesy the good folks at Ad-Auris. If you have any feedback, please send it to us.

📣📣📣 Announcement: Admissions are now open for the summer cohort of Takshashila Institution’s 12-week Graduate Certificate Programme in Public Policy. Visit takshashila.org.in/courses to find out more.  

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Global Policy Watch: A Short History Of The Breitbart Doctrine

Bringing an Indian perspective to burning global issues

- RSJ

In edition #117 where we covered the resignation of Pratap Bhanu Mehta, we had a polemic by Edward Skidelsky as suggested reading in our homework section. We specifically quoted this line:

“The ‘woke’ left is currently pursuing this goal by way of a Gramscian “long march through the institutions” — a progressive co-option of the schools, universities, state bureaucracies and big corporations.” 

What’s this ‘Gramscian long march’ that’s mentioned here? That’s the first question for this post.

Separately, I was drawn to a U.S. national survey done by Cato Institute last year on freedom of expression. The results weren’t surprising to me (including the stupid graph that I have copied below from their site):

“Strong liberals stand out, however, as the only political group who feel they can express themselves. Nearly 6 in 10 (58%) of staunch liberals feel they can say what they believe. However, centrist liberals feel differently. A slim majority (52%) of liberals feel they have to self‐​censor, as do 64% of moderates, and 77% of conservatives. This demonstrates that political expression is an issue that divides the Democratic coalition between centrist Democrats and their left flank.”

I take the ‘strong liberal’ in the US to be the progressive wing of the Democratic party. They are the ‘woke’ Skidelsky was referring to in his article.

There’s no equivalent survey of this kind in India. But I would venture to suggest the “strong liberals” in India might not poll as well on speaking their minds nor would the Indian conservatives be as reticent as their American counterparts in today’s times. Based on incidents like P.B. Mehta’s resignation that seem to have become more frequent in recent years and the ‘chilling effect’ that follows, I would guess these percentages might just flip in India.

Anyway, the percentages aren’t of interest to me. My interest is in the phenomenon. This dominance of one side that makes the other side self-censor themselves.

What explains this? That’s the second question for this post.

That Old Chestnut: The Breitbart Doctrine

Both these questions - on Gramscian long march and on self-censorship - bring me to the oft-repeated Breitbart doctrine:

“Politics is downstream of culture.”

That is, change the culture and sooner, politics will change. Now you’d think this was an insight that galvanised the American conservative right following the Obama takeover of the establishment. It was what got Trump into the White House with Steve Bannon in tow. That this was part of the right-wing toolkit.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The left was likely the originator of the idea that culture influences politics. To understand this better, we will go through a short history of ‘manufacture of consent’ and ‘cultural hegemony’. Knowing it will help address the two questions raised at the start of this post as well.

Manufacture Of Consent

The term ‘manufacture of consent’ first appeared in Walter Lippman’s book ‘Public Opinion’ (1922). For Lippman, the world was too complex for an ordinary individual to comprehend. In order to make sense of it, people carried a mental image of the world inside their heads. These pictures were what drove groups or individuals to act in society in the name of Public Opinion. A strong democracy, therefore, needs institutions and media that help in creating the most accurate interpretations of the world in the minds of the people. But this isn’t easy. Lippman was worried democracy relied on something so irrational as a public opinion that takes shape in the minds of poorly informed and easily manipulated people. For Lippman, policymakers and experts should use narratives for ‘manufacture of consent’ among people which enables public opinion to be channelled in a manner that’s consistent with what’s good for society. Lippman believed persuasion and the knowledge of how to create consent through ‘propaganda’ will change politics in the age of mass media. As he wrote:

“A revolution is taking place, infinitely more significant than any shifting of economic power. Within the life of the generation now in control of affairs, persuasion has become a self-conscious art and a regular organ of popular government. None of us begins to understand the consequences, but it is no daring prophecy to say that the knowledge of how to create consent will alter every political calculation and modify every political premise. Under the impact of propaganda, not necessarily in the sinister meaning of the word alone, the old constants of our thinking have become variables.”

Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman in their book ‘Manufacturing Consent’ (1988) picked up this idea to argue media outlets are “are effective and powerful ideological institutions that carry out a system-supportive propaganda function.” Market forces and an entrenched establishment control the mass media which manipulates public opinion by revealing only half-truths and distorted facts that serve their interests. It manufactures consent through propaganda while keeping the ill-informed public in thrall with distractions and entertainment. Chomsky has since argued this control of mass culture through media and institutions and the ‘manufacture of consent’ is essential to the survival of capitalism.

Gramsci And Cultural Hegemony

While Lippman was writing about the need for the ‘manufacture of consent’ using culture in a capitalist democracy like America, Antonio Gramsci, an Italian neo-Marxist was thinking on similar lines in a prison in Mussolini’s Italy. Gramsci started with a simple question. Why didn’t the working class living in an oppressive regime (anything that’s non-Marxist was oppressive in his view) revolt more often when they could see clearly how badly the economic balance was tilted against them? Why didn’t the exploited rise in revolt more often?

Gramsci argued a capitalist state had two overlapping spheres that helped it to thrive. There was the ‘political society’ that ruled through coercion and control of means of production which was visible to all. But there was also the ‘civil society’ that ruled through consent and control of minds. The civil society was the public sphere of ideas and beliefs that were shaped through the church, media or universities. To him, the capitalist state was successful in ‘manufacturing consent’ among people through the ‘cultural hegemony’ it set up through its control of the public sphere. People living in such societies didn’t question their position or their exploitation because they thought this was the ‘natural state’ of existence. The cultural hegemony was so complete and overpowering that there could hardly be any mobilisation of people against the ‘political society’ which ruled through coercion. The minds of the people were brainwashed through propaganda.

Gramsci, therefore, concluded that for the struggle (or revolution) to take over means of production to even begin, the people will have to win the war over cultural hegemony. He used the WW1 terms that were in vogue then. For the war of manoeuvre (that is a direct attack over the enemy) to be successful, it has to be preceded by the war of position (digging trenches and cutting off enemy lines etc). The people will have to win the war of ideas and beliefs by creating their own cultural hegemony and taking over the public sphere through control of religious institutions, media and universities. This is the ‘Gramscian march’ that Skidelsky referred to in his article.

This was a far-reaching idea about how the nature of power had changed in a world where universities and mass media shaped people’s thinking. The power of engineering consent using culture is the first step to launch a successful attack over an existing power structure. While Garmsci used neo-Marxian terms to expound his ideas, the broader implications of his argument were clear. In short: establishing cultural hegemony is the first step to winning the minds and eventually, the votes of people (we are talking of democracy here). Over time, this hegemony in the public sphere will earn you the long-term consent of the people who will consider it their ‘natural state’. Self-censorship will follow as an outcome of this hegemony. That addresses the second question on why people self-censor themselves.

Over a hundred years since Lippman first wrote about ‘manufacture of consent’, the idea that politics is downstream of culture has only acquired greater currency in a saturated media space that all of us inhabit now. The left and the right have both acquired the toolkits to fight this ‘war of position’ in various democracies around the world. In the US, it is ‘woke left’ on a supposed Gramscian march today. In India, I suspect, the shoe is on the other foot.

But the march is definitely on.

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India Policy Watch: Mandal Again

Insights on burning policy issues in India

- Pranay Kotasthane

A Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court is set to announce its judgment on the Maratha quota case. Amongst other issues, the court will decide on the question if state governments can breach the 50 per cent reservation ceiling. This 50 per cent limit comes from the Indra Sawhney judgment of 1993, which legally upheld the recommendations of the Mandal Committee Report.

Legal issues aside, today’s political reality makes this judgment even more riveting. Perhaps all political parties appear to be in favour of going beyond this 50 per cent limit, although in different ways. The NDA government has already increased reservations to ~60 per cent in central-government jobs, central-government educational institutions, and private educational institutions through the 103rd constitutional amendment in 2019. The additional 10 per cent seats are now meant to be reserved for economically weaker sections (EWS) of citizens not already benefiting from reservation. In other words, this quota is for persons from non-SC, non-ST, non-OBC classes, as long as their earning is below a defined income threshold. On the other hand, many caste-based and one-caste-dominated political parties are in favour of breaching the 50 per cent ceiling in order to extend or increase quotas for their caste base. The gap between the court-prescribed ceiling and the political reality has become unsustainable. To use a Ravi Shastri phrase, “something’s gotta give”.

Not to forget, that 50 per cent ceiling number itself is quite contrived. Read what the Indra Sawhney case judgment says:

Just as every power must be exercised reasonably and fairly, the power conferred by Clause (4) of Article 16 should also be exercised in a fair manner and within reasonably limits - and what is more reasonable than to say that reservation under Clause (4) shall not exceed 50% of the appointments or posts, barring certain extra-ordinary situations as explained hereinafter. From this point of view, the 27% reservation provided by the impugned Memorandums in favour of backward classes is well within the reasonable limits. Together with reservation in favour of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, it comes to a total of 49.5%. 

Beneath the legalese, observe the narrative power of numbers at play. Any measured phenomenon creates implicit norms of what is “too high” or “too low”. The 50 per cent limit seems intuitively “just right” or “balanced” — half of the seats have quotas while the other half doesn’t. This powerful narrative largely survived for over 25 years but seems to be falling apart now.

And so it appears that reservations have ceased to be a means to correct for inadequate representation of certain disadvantaged sections. Instead, reservations have become springboards for all groups to demand proportional representation. The implicit norm now is that the State needs to enable representation of groups in educational institutions and government jobs according to their proportion in the population; the question of historical disadvantage has been relegated to an incidental criterion. Moreover, the general equilibrium effect of quotas is that group identities have become sharper and more powerful.

Is there another way out?

There is no doubt that a republic founded in a society with a long history of systematic discrimination will inevitably resort to some affirmative action. But is there a way out beyond caste-based reservations?

Nitin Pai and I had proposed one such alternative a couple of years ago in FirstPost:

Consider this thought experiment. There are no predetermined quotas for any posts. Positions are filled only based on a composite score of all applicants. The composite score is a combination of two measures. The first is an inequityscore — calculated to compensate for the relative disadvantage faced by an applicant.

The second measure strictly represents an applicant’s ability to be effective for the position they are applying for. Selection is on the basis of the composite score. No seats are reserved and yet the score allows for addressing multidimensional inequity much better than current methods.

The inequity score can be used to indicate relative disadvantage along several dimensions: individual, social and geographic. Different factors can be assigned different weightages. For instance, given the salience of caste in the Indian social context, the greater the disadvantage a community faces, the higher the weightage.

In addition, we can incorporate other parameters into the inequity score — parents’ level of education, income levels, rural upbringing, or even childhood nutritional deficiencies. Currently, our system of quota-based allocations does not account for non-caste disadvantages that have a disproportionate impact on life outcomes.

A national commission for equity can be formed to propose and review parameters and their weightages within a cooperative federal framework. It doesn’t have to be one-size-fits-all solution. States can assign their own factors and weightages according to the local conditions.

The second measure — an effectiveness score — can then be kept completely independent of equity considerations. It can take the form of a test, an interview or any other indicator to assess candidates’ ability to perform the job they have applied for. Information about the inequity scores can be masked from evaluators of the effectiveness score.

By filling positions based on a sum of the two scores, it becomes possible to be more comprehensive in addressing social inequities while also creating stronger incentives for an individual pursuit of excellence.

Satish Deshpande and Yogendra Yadav had proposed a similar model for higher education way back in 2006:

An evidenced-based model addressing multiple sources of group and individual disadvantages helps to de-essentialise identity markers such as caste or religion; that is, it provides a rational explanation why specific castes or communities are entitled to compensatory discrimination and undermines attitudes that treat such entitlements as a “birth right”.

In essence, this solution tries to solve for both “merit” and “disadvantage”. The opponents of reservation claim that quotas directly undermine efficiency and merit. The proponents of quotas on the other hand find the notion of merit completely odious. They argue on these lines:

Efficiency of administration in the affairs of the Union or of a State must be defined in an inclusive sense, where diverse segments of society find representation as a true aspiration of governance by and for the people.

In contrast to quotas, the composite score solution acknowledges that some assessment of “merit” is inescapable, even desirable. But it also doesn't ignore the problem that disadvantaged individuals face. Hence, we believe it is a better solution than quotas.

In edition#72, we discussed a framework on “nine competing visions of equality” only to reiterate Deborah Stone’s insightful conclusion:

“equality often means inequality, and equal treatment often means unequal treatment. The same distribution may look equal or unequal, depending on where you focus.”

Essentially, any distribution, however equalising it is in one respect, can be charged as being unequal on another parameter. What matters far more is whether a distribution is perceived as being fair or not. As Starmans et al write:

… humans naturally favour fair distributions, not equal ones, and that when fairness and equality clash, people prefer fair inequality over unfair equality

In the Indian context, quotas come with charges of unfairness. It is time to look beyond them.

PS: A commonplace assertion that “the constitution imagined reservations to last only for ten years at the outset” is a myth. This 10-year clause was meant to apply to reservations of seats for SC/ST groups in the Lok Sabha and Legislative Assemblies. There was no such 10-year limit on reservations in jobs and educational institutions under articles 15(4) and 16(4). I too believed in this urban myth having read it being regurgitated in countless opinion pieces. Hat-tip to an alert Puliyabaazi listener for updating my priors.

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HomeWork

Reading and listening recommendations on public policy matters

1. [Video] "The Big Idea" - a half-hour interview between Noam Chomsky and British journalist Andrew Marr, first aired by the BBC in February 1996. A great interview where Andrew Marr is completely convinced he’s not taken in by the propaganda while Chomsky is sure he is!

2. [Podcast] A Puliyabaazi episode discussing the nine competing visions of equality

3. [Article] Alexander Lee on redesigning India’s reservation system

4. [Article] Satish Deshpande traces the history of reservation policies

5. [Article] Pratap Bhanu Mehta on how the open category is slowly becoming a reserved category through other means

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