The trajectory of progress must change

General Studies Paper 2

Introduction

• The G-20 has provided Prime Minister Narendra Modi an opportune stage before the next general election in 2024. Promotions of the G-20, with PM’s picture a part of them, are everywhere. Of greater significance to the world is that the G-20 is being led by India, the world’s most populous country.

Governance is facing trouble

• Global governance is in bad shape. The trajectory of progress must change.
• The world is being divided by wars amongst nations, and strife within them — wars with military weapons and with financial and trade weapons.
• Desperate millions are being pushed back to their deaths while trying to cross borders and oceans in search of better lives and safety, while three multi-billionaires are competing to create commercial space ventures to take a handful of wealthy people for a brief joyride in borderless space.
• Humanity cannot carry on the way it is. The trajectory of progress must be changed to make economic growth more equitable and sustainable.
• Economists try to prove with numbers that poverty is reducing, and incomes are increasing for everyone. They should look around and listen to real people struggling in precarious livelihoods.
• The planet is heating up inexorably. It cannot take the pressure of the present consumptive model of economic growth any longer. More economic growth will not solve the world’s problems. It must be sustainable and equitable too.

The importance of G20 chair for India

• India, as chair of the G-20, has offered a vision of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam (One Earth, One Family, One Future) to bring all citizens of the world together and make the world better for everyone.
• To continue to solve systemic problems with the same approach that caused them is madness, Einstein declared. A new paradigm is required for global governance.
• In 2015, all countries adopted the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) to be achieved by 2030.
• The SDGs describe 17 complex combinations of environmental, social, and economic problems. All 17 problems do not appear in every country, and when they do, they do not appear in the same form.
• No country has only one of the SDG problems; every country has at least six or seven.
• Calculations show that even seven problems (out of a possible 17) can combine in 98 million different ways.
• Clearly, one global solution for the environment, society, or economy, cannot apply everywhere. People on the ground know where their shoes pinch. Standard solutions cannot fit all.

A map of ground realities

• The McKinsey Global Institute has produced a detailed map of realities on the ground, in its report which concludes that growth of GDP at a country level explains only 20% of the progress on the ground. The remaining 80% is local and specific.
• The present theory-in-use of top-down problem-solving is conceptually flawed.
• Complex systemic problems that appear in many places require local systems solutions that are found using cooperation and implemented by communities that combine solutions to economic, environment, and social problems.
• India has proposed an approach of LiFE (lifestyles for sustainable development) to the G-20.
• Principle 7 of LiFE also requires the world’s leaders to “recognize and amplify the role of local communities, local and regional governments and traditional knowledge in supporting sustainable lifestyles”.

Way forward

• Democracy is government of, for, and by people.
• A government elected by the people that provides benefits top-down to people is not a complete democracy.
• Pressure to change and new solutions must come from the peripheries of power systems, with movements on the ground in India and around the world.