Ram Rattan Sharma
Several research studies of the past decades in psychology and evolutionary biology show that morality, altruism and other values are an innate part of the human mind, however the social setting in which a person lives can nurture or shunt these traits. These human and moral qualities can have a large impact on well being of society, and this fact has been recognized now. Society that managed to develop higher levels of trust worthiness among their people achieved greater prosperity. This is true for many social norms and habits and this fact is now accepted across the world. The studies have shown that having a few good human beings in society can give rise to a certain kind of dynamics in the whole society through which the society ends up creating an overall better society conducive to overall well being and happiness. |This reality can be used as a tool of making policies for certain desired outcomes. These human traits can be tapped in the policy making, while making policies it is important to take into account the different agents/players. The policeman, the contractor, the ration shop owner and the ordinary citizen who are reasonably self seeking. If they get the opportunity to earn some extra money with little effort, they will seize the opportunity. Therefore to cut down on corruption and pilferage, there is need to design policies in such a way that there is no incentive for ordinary citizens and the enforcers of the law to cheat and use the situations for their personal gains. Similarly good mechanism also plays a vital role. Many noble programmers and schemes to increase the welfare of the citizens in India have fallen on hard times because of policy makers propensity to assume that the policies are delivered flawlessly or by perfectly programmed robots. It has been found that models based on such faulty assumptions are destined to fail.
It is important for citizens to understand this because, in democracies, popular opinion plays an important role in promoting progressive policies. Now we should not mistake that uncompromising self seeking behavior is innate in human beings. This assumption, wide spread in some early main stream economics, is fortunately, not true. Recent research shows that human being have a natural propensity to cooperate to be trust worthy, and to be honest. In general people are often willing to give up some personal gains in order to demonstrate pro-social behavior. However, these qualities may vary from one society to another. Variations may be found in the same society. These good values change over time and depend on the context, too. We find some inclination among the Indian population towards not abiding by the rules and laws. We often find people breaking traffic light rules. This inclusion is higher if there is no traffic police guarding the traffic signals. It looks really surprising that several people who otherwise violate traffic lights do not do so in presence of traffic police, as if they would be rewarded for being law abiding citizens. However, this tendency varies among people from one place to another.
We see some over dependence among Indians on some sort of intermediation either by the police or law enforcing authority or court. This attitude needs to be corrected with the right kind of public policies. One way to do so is by enhancing a “we feeling among the people and promoting them to cooperate with the law enforcement agencies and encouraging others to be law abiding and for this to come in, there is a need to enhance the level of social trust. Today, India is aspiring to develop faster and to do better as an economy for this, it is important to foster the culture of honest and trust worthiness. It is true that we do not as yet have a hard science of how to develop these cultural qualities in a population. But we know that even the mere understanding of the importance of certain qualities for promoting the economic development of a group of people, helps nurture these qualities in people. We see people learning not to smoke in a crowded room, because they have come to understand that this is not in their collective interest. Social stigma in turn further supports these good values which make individual self interest and social interest interface and align generally in favour of the larger social gains. In recent years we have seen the Govt. using good social and moral values in its public policy to have a desired response from the common citizens , as encouraging people to give up subsidies on the LPG so that its benefits can be given to those who really need such help, asking the daughters to prod there would he-in-laws to get a toilet constructed first, the beti bachao, beti padhao campaign to promote the cause of gender equality and women empowerment showing higher trust in common citizens with the help of policies like permitting self attestation of their documents and asking the tax officials to be friendly to the tax payers. Several studies of recent years have shown that traits like social norms and habits which seem as if they are ingrained in a society can change overtime. It is possible for India to nurture and develop such social norms that will enable a more vibrant society and nation. On the other hand, wrong and divisive attitudes among the citizens should be discouraged with the other set of public policies…..
(The author is former Dy Librarian University of Jammu)
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