In common parlance we use state and nation inter-changeably, when that should not be the case. Because they are as different as cheese and chalk. A state is an organised political community living under a government, and it’s a sovereign political entity in public international law. It’s a society having exclusive domain over a territory. A state, in most contexts, is virtually synonymous with a government whose writ extends over a people and/or a territory.
The term nation is a complex concept that has a variety of definitions. There are two widely accepted explanations of a nation. While the conventional definition of a nation is a large group of people who share a common territory and government irrespective of their ethnic make-up, it is not the only explanation. To some, nation refers to a shared cultural experience, such as Islam or Communism, or at one time even Christianity — an organisation with no physical borders yet sharing a common bond because of shared beliefs or ethnicity.
A nation state is a state that coincides with a nation. We all know about failed states. But nations never really fail. They get overtaken or subsumed or recede, but rarely do they disappear. That’s why many prefer the word country. It is more encompassing and generous in applicability. A country is a region identified as a distinct entity in political geography. In common parlance, it refers to a sovereign state.
History is mostly about the rise and fall of great and some not so great states and nation-states. When their borders extended, they were deemed great. When they receded they were deemed as having failed. About a thousand years ago, arguably the greatest nation in Europe was Lithuania. The writ of the Lithuanian rulers extended over much of modern Ukraine, Poland, Germany, Russia and Sweden. Today, it is a tiny newly independent Baltic nation-state. Remember Macedon and Alexander’s all conquering host?
India did not stop being a nation after the collapse of the Mauryan or Gupta or Mughal empires. It still endures as a nation-state now united by a set of values and aspirations, and even shared perspective of history. This shared perspective now enables an Indian to view an Ashokan inscription with as much proprietary pride as the Taj Mahal.
The only continuing civilisational nation-states since the dawn of history are China and India. According to the economist Angus Maddison, from the year 0 to 1700, China and India were the world’s largest economies, each accounting from 20-25 per cent of the world’s gross domestic product (WGDP). After their descent over the next 250 years to about five per cent each of the WGDP in 1950, they are on the rise again. What would one say about the period of decline? Did the two nations fail? No. But there is little dispute that the central authority in both countries and institutions of governance weakened and even passed into the hands of foreigners.
Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty, Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson’s book, is an eloquent, profusely researched and extremely scholarly analysis of these repeated failures. The book begins quite dramatically with the description of the entirely different situations of the two halves of the town of Nogales portioned by a fence to be parts of the United States and Mexico. The Nogales in Arizona thrives, while the Nogales in Sonora languishes. The climate is alike. The lay of the land is alike. The populations too are alike. Why? The authors tell us why:
“The answer to this lies in the way the two different societies formed during the early colonial period. An institutional divergence took place then, with the implications lasting into the present day.”
In other words, the difference was because of how the US and Mexico evolved differently with very different systems. One system evolved to milk the land for the colonial masters in Europe, while the other evolved due to the colonisation by the settlers and for their benefit. Suggesting that if the US did not free itself in 1783, it might have evolved differently. Like India, perhaps?
Some states are structured around “extractive political institutions” where the institutions serve to satisfy the aspirations of a narrow elite alone. Colonialism was clearly an extractive political system. But does India still have an extractive political system? Many an economist will argue that the data suggests just this. When we see the evolving politics through this prism we have an answer for the growth of family or clan-dominated political parties on one side, and the notable expansion of the upper classes and the growing power of family-owned businesses. Like many large and hugely unequal societies, India, too, has a wide spectrum banded into its class classifications. Much of India’s middle class is actually poor, just as a good part of the middle class is actually quite wealthy. And the truly wealthy can compare favourably with the wealthy any where in the world.
Standing in sharp contrast to the nations dominated by extractive political institutions are the nations based on inclusive political and hence economic institutions. In England, the Bill of Rights of 1689 following the overthrow of King James II precipitated a directional change in Britain and it harvested the benefits for the next 250 years or so.
Historical turning points such as this lead to far reaching consequences. The death of Mao Zedong and the rebirth of Deng Xiaoping from the living dead held in shuanggui, a unique institution in China for the detention of senior Communist Party leaders in China would easily be another. One day history may become more charitable towards P.V. Narasimha Rao who heralded the dismantling of the centrally planned state and the industrial controls central to it with just a single plainly worded administrative order.
2014 witnessed the rout of a family dominated political dispensation, and gave rise to widespread hope of a new reformative direction in our politics and economics. The recasting of many of our institutions and jettisoning of many bad practices are now very clearly long overdue. So far the new leader with a penchant for colourful clothes has preferred the cloak of silence. As the leaves of the calendar flip his options decrease. If this government doesn’t act soon and gets entangled in irrelevant political discourse, it won’t be long before it is forced into survival mode. With just 31 per cent of the popular vote, the margin between greatness and ignominy is very slender. Ask Manmohan Singh.
The writer held senior positions in government and industry, and is a policy analyst studying economic and security issues.
He also specialises in the Chinese economy.
