"ideology reduces itself to three functional truths. Find something to hate viscerally, over-extend the shadow of your ideology to all realms of a citizen’s life and protect yourself by sanctifying a core principle within the ideology that cannot be made profane. "
Profound. How did you distil ideology to these 3 streams (literature)? Is any ideology bound to follow this corrosive path? How can an ideology come to hate some random thing viscerally?...
Many queries arise, pertinent to the times we live in.
Gents, this is great analysis as always. One counterpoint. It is appealing and democratic to leave policies on critical issues to be debated and voted upon by citizens. The only issue is that a lot of liberal reforms (and I am biased here) happen because of a small, "enlightened" group legislating/ adjudicating in a manner that a majority might be opposed to (or lukewarm about at best). Over time, these changes often become generally acceptable. Roe vs Wade is a case in point. I'm not sure whether a majority of Indians would have voted for equal rights for women/ lower castes or universal franchise in 1947, or a majority of Americans would have voted to emancipate slaves in the 1860s.
This is obviously a risky argument as it partly violates the rights of people to govern themselves, and short circuits bottom-up societal reform. But progress has often occurred because people have been dragged forward a bit further than they'd have liked.
I agree with you. On the whole, India's social revolution through the constitution took is a big net positive. The challenge is whether we want to add more elements to that project at current levels of state capacity. There's no one answer for all societies.
I am just worried about interplay and pace of ‘policy reforms’ fitted in ‘Constitutional morality’, ‘legislative capacity’ and ‘Executive-led Governance’, in India.
Now and then, policy reforms has created confrontations in above three organs of Indian policy, that is legislature, executive and judiciary.
Can we say that, alignment among the organs of Indian polity is not good enough to achieve generational policy reforms?
Do we need ‘policy making domain’ to reconsider this ‘systemic’ nature Indian political setup?
I think there are many examples where we have done generational reforms in India so I'm optimistic. We need to learn the right lessons from our successes. Civil Services Pension Reform of 2004, 1991 Economic Reforms, Green Revolution, etc are some examples.
"ideology reduces itself to three functional truths. Find something to hate viscerally, over-extend the shadow of your ideology to all realms of a citizen’s life and protect yourself by sanctifying a core principle within the ideology that cannot be made profane. "
Profound. How did you distil ideology to these 3 streams (literature)? Is any ideology bound to follow this corrosive path? How can an ideology come to hate some random thing viscerally?...
Many queries arise, pertinent to the times we live in.
Thanks guys for the deep dives. All the best! :)
Moral Tribes https://g.co/kgs/7KEL3m this book has some answers.
Gents, this is great analysis as always. One counterpoint. It is appealing and democratic to leave policies on critical issues to be debated and voted upon by citizens. The only issue is that a lot of liberal reforms (and I am biased here) happen because of a small, "enlightened" group legislating/ adjudicating in a manner that a majority might be opposed to (or lukewarm about at best). Over time, these changes often become generally acceptable. Roe vs Wade is a case in point. I'm not sure whether a majority of Indians would have voted for equal rights for women/ lower castes or universal franchise in 1947, or a majority of Americans would have voted to emancipate slaves in the 1860s.
This is obviously a risky argument as it partly violates the rights of people to govern themselves, and short circuits bottom-up societal reform. But progress has often occurred because people have been dragged forward a bit further than they'd have liked.
I agree with you. On the whole, India's social revolution through the constitution took is a big net positive. The challenge is whether we want to add more elements to that project at current levels of state capacity. There's no one answer for all societies.
Great explanation as usual.
I am just worried about interplay and pace of ‘policy reforms’ fitted in ‘Constitutional morality’, ‘legislative capacity’ and ‘Executive-led Governance’, in India.
Now and then, policy reforms has created confrontations in above three organs of Indian policy, that is legislature, executive and judiciary.
Can we say that, alignment among the organs of Indian polity is not good enough to achieve generational policy reforms?
Do we need ‘policy making domain’ to reconsider this ‘systemic’ nature Indian political setup?
I think there are many examples where we have done generational reforms in India so I'm optimistic. We need to learn the right lessons from our successes. Civil Services Pension Reform of 2004, 1991 Economic Reforms, Green Revolution, etc are some examples.