The Politics of Universal Entitlements
Written by Anish // October 7, 2010 // Economic & Social Policy // 12 Comments
There are two reasons that I have been thinking about universal entitlements recently. The second of these is because I study in England and the Con-Dem alliance that is currently in power has announced brutal and extensive cuts in public expenditure. One shorthand being used to describe their extent at the moment is that they amount to 25% “across the board”. There is a fascinating range of strategies being deployed to win legitimacy for these cuts. In some, government waste is highlighted, in others, greater efficiency, while elsewhere there is talk of the Jurassic character of trade unionism. Yet another strategy is in evidence with the recent announcement that child benefits to parents who earn more than GBP 44,000 a year will be scrapped. Arguably, this strategy has emerged as a keystone of contemporary government across the world. Broadly speaking, it argues that the state does not have money to spend on people who don’t need it. Therefore, it seeks to chop and classify populations in ways that undermine the possibility of universal entitlements.
Why this struck me in particular is that up until a month or so ago, I was involved with a group of students in Delhi who were trying to lobby MPs about the creation of a comprehensive food security act (to get involved, see their Facebook page here ). The crux of the argument for such an act rests on the creation of a universal PDS – one to which rich and poor all have equal and shared access. What we have, at present, is a targeted PDS: one which distinguishes between APL (above poverty line) who are adjudged not to need subsidy and BPL (below poverty line) who are considered to be ‘legitimate’ beneficiaries of state assistance. With some noteworthy exceptions, most MPs we met baulked at the idea of a universal PDS. It just did not make sense to them. As one Kerala MP put it, ‘Why should I use state money to feed the Tatas and Ambanis?’
The logic which opposes universal PDS in India and which is proposing scrapping child benefits to women earning over 40,000 GBP is a similar one. The common premise is that the domain of the state’s activity, particularly with respect to providing social security, is to be a limited one. The economic rationale for this, in macro-economic terms, is typically through terming it unproductive expenditure or highlighting the state of the budget deficit as a result of this. There are, of course, sound economic arguments on the other side. In the case of the PDS, for instance, there is the question of the costs of creating and revising a system of targetting, the impossibility of eliminating exclusion errors in most systems of targetting that are not universal or near-universal, the fact that there will be a degree of self-selection even in universalised systems (I cannot imagine Mukesh Ambani feasting on ration-shop rice), the productivity of the fiscal deficit, etc.
I want to highlight, however, the political questions that are thrown up by universal entitlements. I would argue that in certain basic areas even a spontaneous ethical common-sense should dictate universal entitlements. Nutrition, health, education and political participation must surely rate as the most obvious of these. The fact that this is not the case is evidence of the grip that more regressive ideological formulations have over our ethical imagination. If it is neo-liberal individualism in the West, then in India, the persistent clutches of caste must have added its own special macabre twist. Note that, of the four areas I have listed above, only the last is (if only procedurally) acknowledged in the Indian context. Whereas in in England as well as in other developing countries, to a greater or lesser degree all of these are.
Universal entitlements enfold principles of equality and fairness that are crucial affirmations of a shared humanity. More concretely, they also ground us all in common struggles to improve the quality and effectiveness of things we hold in common. Conversely, the implications of non-universal structures, especially in these areas, is to create divisions. At one extreme of the divisions are the people who can afford to “opt out” of struggling to make things better. This includes, in the Indian context, most of us reading and writing these columns who are living in circumstances that allow us to have nothing in common with the hundreds who queue for hours at public hospitals everyday in order for the 5 minute perfunctory examination by the overworked OPD doctor. Those hundreds are the other extreme, who must fight for the improvement of these services, but whose voices are neither as articulate, nor as loud. They can, consequently, be safely ignored. Amartya Sen probably put it best when he suggested that facilities for the poor tend to be poor facilities.
The task before us in any civilized conception of society, must be to expand and improve universal entitlements in basic areas. In concrete terms for Indians this must mean fighting for the creation of universal entitlements in, at the very minimum, nutrition, health and education. What we can learn from the creation of institutions like the NHS in England is that these spheres are not won without militant struggles of working people and others alike. But the further lesson is that, once won, these are gains that have to be enduringly defended.
12 Comments on "The Politics of Universal Entitlements"
Anish, I’m not sure what you’re trying to say in this post. I don’t see here any arguments for state provision of “universal entitlements” for somebody who is not already convinced of the need for these. I’m sure you do have some such arguments, so it would be nice if you delineated them more clearly.
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