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| Tuesday, 3 August 2004 |
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Making private enterprises work for everyone
Checks and balances are as essential to free enterprise as to democracy, yet both are closer to one Rupee one vote than one person, awash in conflicts of interest. Science and public relations run wild with their spin games, trying to convince the public that the experts know their business, so no outside critic should be qualified to raise issues. The problem may be less lack of organized resistance than the definitions of free enterprise and democracy. If the correct checks and balances were in force, excessive disparity in wealth and influence, and the ruin of Nature, would not prevail Democracy, like every other high-sounding political abstract, is a heterogeneous concept. It embraces the idea of individual freedom. It also embraces the idea of rule by popular consent - of policies that grow out of the wishes and aspirations and needs of the majority of people. These ideas are often in conflict. Individual Freedom In Sri Lanka, I think that our own democracy has tended to put greater emphasis on the first - the individual freedom - than on the second. What we need today is a shift of emphasis. But it does not kill the concept of democracy. It merely requires that individual excellence and aspirations should not flourish at the expense of the aspirations of the majority. Ideally an individual's brilliance should find fulfilment by serving the needs of the majority. Indeed what appears to be the ultimate democratic gesture - the ultimate in individual expression, turns out merely to be anarchy. It has two possible consequences: either the system simply runs down or a few individuals grow up in power and wealth and begin the cycle of capital and technology all over again. After all, in mid 1960s Prime Minister Dudley Senanayake dreamed of a land of small farmers. His dream failed partly because the mere aspiration of personal fulfilment was not enough. It needed a subtle and sophisticated political infrastructure if it was to flourish, and not allow a few to begin to dominate the many. It also failed partly because of the incompletely conceived industrial counterpoise that productive agriculture needed. But now, after 40 years, we have the benefit of hindsight, if we care to learn from it. Our defence of big business is also considered "democratic" since the "free" in "free enterprise" is considered an essential aspect of more general individual freedom. But we also have come to believe (and the businessmen themselves half believe it) that big business is democratic, in the sense that it reflects the aspirations of the whole society. How far that is from the truth can be easily seen. Any private industry meets people's aspirations only insofar as it is profitable to do so. Inconvenient aspirations it ignores, attempts to obliterate or converts. It has enough power, through its control of manufacture, sale and advocacy to bend public needs to its own ends. The Guardians Yet private enterprise has become the symbol of our democracy. We have come to believe that we are free because we condone private enterprise. And when evil things are done in the cause of private enterprise, we excuse them as inevitable side effects of the democratic process. We have come to believe that if we demand our government to curb these practices, we are indirectly imperilling our own right to be free. In short, we have made the elite of big businesses, the guardians of our concept of democracy. In a country where inflation is becoming the most conspicuous problem, we must take practical politics seriously. In a society that values democracy, both in the sense of producing policies that reflect general aspirations and in encouraging individual excellence, we need policies in which everyone is involved. It means everyone having some intimation of why things are done in a particular way and whether that is the best way. It implies a society that does more than wait for the incumbent technocrats to dole out the next goodies. It means the education in the real sense, imparting knowledge of how food grows and how people adapt what grows to their taste and not in the sense of indoctrination in the ways of the industry. It means more humility on the part of the society's leaders, particularly the politicians. We need far more effort by people at large, because so long as people behave passively, they will be unable to resist the inexorable emergence of deplorable ruling elite. It also means asking what our own idea of democracy really means - whether the businessman's distribution of artificial baby foods, which adversely affect our children's' lives more profoundly than the lifetime's work of the average elected politician. Reality It implies a lot - quantum increase in knowledge and profound change in aspirations. But the prize, a well educated and well fed people in a truly democratic country, is great. The price of failure is total disaster from which our economic strength cannot insulate us forever, and in the short term can save us only by delegating suffering elsewhere. No utopias, nothing fancy. Just a political and economic framework in which it is "realistic" to do simple things well. All these are meant to alert people how big business abuses the lack of checks and balances. These are a few of the loopholes in economic theory. Closing them would not bring utopia, but would remind commercial enterprises violations of the public trust are accountable to the state who grants the charter. The impetus to merge capital has always meant trouble for competition, democracy, and most people. That is why the company law is subject to the public will. Since companies have rights of citizens, they ought to behave as good citizens, treating workers, customers, and the environment with respect. State legislatures have authority to force them to agree to such conditions, but in practice the reverse is more often the case. Only a public outcry would motivate the legislature to act beyond token laws protecting the public interest, enforced rarely, primarily in cases that get glaring publicity. |
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Produced by Lake House |
It is said the world is not fair, and capitalism benefits the wealthy
at the expense of the masses. These are tendencies encouraged in
capitalism in the form we know, with its haphazard checks and balances.
