Contribute to Social Capital

Editorial:
Writing in 1958, influential political scientist and thinker, Edward Banfield, presented what he saw as the reason for backwardness – communities which cannot work together. In his seminal book, “The Moral Basis of a Backward Society”, he studied the reasons behind the underdevelopment of a village in the southern tip of Italy. His conclusion: “The extreme poverty and backwardness is to be explained largely by the inability of villagers to act together for their common good.”
His work was followed up thirty-five years later by a Harvard professor Robert Putnam who returned to the same theme and villages in 1993. In his book “Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy”, he concluded that local governments work in northern Italy and fail in south Italy because northern Italians are more likely to get involved in neighbourhood activities like singing groups, football clubs, cooperatives and networks of small entrepreneurs, while the southern Italians remain aloof and uninvolved, and also backward. Both tips of Italy were governed by the same government and subject to the same policies, and yet, while one region progressed, the other refused to develop. Banfield’s central thesis was that social capital is key to high institutional performance and the maintenance of democracy.
Surf the net or search Wikipedia and one will find more details on the findings encapsulated in the two tomes, but even the condensed essence presented above is convincing enough. Putnam set out to understand the conditions required for developing “strong, responsive, effective representative institutions.” And this is key to effective democratic expression. Turn the mirror on Sikkim in this light and it becomes apparent that societal engagement and community participation has not achieved the spontaneity required for expressions to become free and assertions more frank. There will always be those who try and secure positions and berths for themselves, and while these aspirations are not always conspiratorial, they are never healthy either. When people distance themselves from public engagement and shy away from collective action, they end up building distrust even in an environment of democracy which should have inspired confidence. One has often rued the absence of an active civil society in Sikkim, and if one looks at how people, by and large, have refused to engage voluntarily even in local area issues and have instead waited for someone to claim leadership role, the hollowed out building blocks of a civil society explain the absence. The Chief Minister has also been speaking of the civil society’s reluctance to engage in Sikkim, but one must realise that third-party enforcements cannot fabricate a civil society. Social capital is of value only when it is voluntary and cooperative; it is worthless when it is stage-managed. Take the Bhanu Jayanti celebrations which will be held across the State tomorrow. At one level, they involve a wide swathe of people, but take away the organising committees [which remain same for this celebration as well as plantation drives] and the event will flounder. How many members of the Sikkimese community will be moved to make private contributions to sustain something they have grown up with if State patronage is withdrawn? There will be many who will be willing to, but few will step forward and do so.