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Why state must cede power to communities

The general assumption that states must have a monopoly of power is fundamentally flawed. It is leading to broken societies

R Jagannathan
Illustration: Binay Sinha
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Illustration: Binay Sinha

India is Broken is the dismal title of a book written by an Indian economist at Princeton, Ashoka Mody. Without going into the merits of this book, which I have only read in summary, two rhetorical questions need to be asked: One, which country isn’t “broken” in some way or the other? And, two, will the “liberal” solutions most people proffer as correctives make them less “broken”?
Depending on which parameters you choose to decide on the extent of India’s “brokenness”, one can probably say the same about gun-toting America, post-Brexit “Little” Britain, Vladimir Putin’s post-Ukraine Russia, and belligerent Xi Jinping’s “Zero-Covid” China, most of warring Africa, West Asia, Latin America, and South Asia outside India, Nepal and Bhutan.
Large parts of the blame should devolve on two types of liberalism —classic liberalism and left liberalis
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First Published: Jan 31 2023 | 10:05 PM IST

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