Welfarism: We’re not just beneficiaries but citizens and voters too
This story is possibly apocryphal, but nevertheless worth telling. Just after independence, Jawaharlal Nehru instructed his party workers to go to the masses in the hinterland and spread the good news. That the British had left, and we were a free nation now.
The workers heard a common refrain, “Oh, the British have left? Who’s going to rule us now?" This was not the voice of a broken spirit, but of instinctive subjecthood. This had been people’s default status through the ages under various kingdoms and also the British. They naturally assumed that new a set of rulers would reign.
Hence the early work on strengthening the foundations of our newly born democratic republic in 1947 was to champion the basic idea that the people are supreme. Not elected officials, not Members of Parliament, and not even the Constitution can be above the people. They are the bosses.
After 75 years, have we finally internalized this idea? Does it manifest in our public life and governance? A sophisticated analysis of this question would need a careful study of the evolution and maturing of India’s politics and democracy. But there are enough indicators to suggest that we are still closer in status as subjects rather than masters. It is still a “maai-baap sarkar" (a paternal state) that protects and nourishes, and to which people turn to for all their problems.
The legacy of subjecthood now survives as politics of patronage. The political dialogue is not being conducted with the citizen, but with a beneficiary or “labhaarthi." This framing of the relationship robs people of their agency as voter-citizens and treats the electorate simply as recipients of largesse from the government or state. Welfarism has been ascendant in India for more than
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