Schism of democracy and economic take off Published in The Frontier Post on September 6, 2012

Kashif Manzoor Correlation between democracy and economic take off has been awarded a status of universal value by the Western political thought. It has been assumed to a mythical level that economic take off cannot be launched without the prevalence of democratic institutions. This sense of inescapability culminated in the Francis Fukuyamas The End of History and the Last Man in which he argued about t he ultimate victory of political and economic liberalism.

If we can go through the history from British industrial revolution-the first of its kind- to the modern economic success stories, the universality of the above said correlation requires a rethink. Martin Jacques in his classic When China Rules the World: The End of Western World and the Birth of a new Global Order has given an entirely different proposition when he goes through the details of the entire major economic take offs right from British to the modern age. British industrial revolution took off in late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries but only one-fifth of the men had the right to vote even by 1850 and women got the right to vote only in 1918. Generally this scenario applies to other European nationstates as monarchies were pervasive in the Europe during the economic take offs. American story is no different either as only White men enjoyed the right to vote during the American economic take off depriving the Blacks and the Women. Japan, the only nonwestern nation to be industrialized, only introduced the male suffrage in 1925 whilst the economic take had been achieved as a consequence of the Meiji Restoration which occurred in 1868. Martin Jacques then gives the accounts of relatively modern economic take offs achieved by the Asian countries. South Korea and Taiwan had the military dictatorships at the helm of affairs when the respective economies took off and Singapore was governed by a regime what could be called as an authoritarian or even a contrived democracy. Under the British rule, Hong Kong was devoid of democracy yet it was an economic miracle cherished by other East Asian countries. Perhaps the biggest blow to the myth of correlation between democracy and economic take off is Chinas ascendency to the status of biggest economy of the world only after the US. Chinese governance system can be called anything but the democracy yet they were able to achieve economic success that the Francis Fukuyama had to acknowledge the fact that US democracy has little to teach China. But there has to be some sort of method through which economic take off can be achieved. If the democracy is an illusion, what is the reality then? An economic take off requires political stability, consistency of policies and rigorous implementation. It needs a visionary leadership that does not compromise the long term goals and avoids the costly popular decisions just to gain political mileage. It needs an environment where sanity prevails and vested interests may not turn the national interests into wasted interest.

Some people will argue that India is a democracy and shes got the economic success with the democratic institutions. But after having a birds eye view of Dr. Manmohan Singhs role in the economic progress of India, the truth may be revealed. Dr. Manmohan Singh has been playing a key role in the Indian economic revival since 1991 when he was appointed as Indian finance minister by the Narasimha Raos government. His economic reforms gave him the name of Indian Deng Xiaoping which is a notable thing in itself. His ascendency into the office of prime minister in 2004 gave him the opportunity to embed the prerequisites of an economic take off into Indian economy. It was the consistency of Dr. Manmohan Singh that produced the results and not the volatility of Indian politics. What the proponents of democracy have done is that they have made the democracy an end in itself whilst it should be a mean to an end: the prosperity of the nation. If a system has been proven dysfunctional, why not try another one? We as a nation need to think out of box. Its not a divine revelation that cannot be defied in any case. We need a system which can provide us with visionary leadership that in turn can deliver prerequisites of an economic take off stated above.