Issues in Political Theory, UG I            Sept.04   (JB)

 

Daniel Lerner, “Toward a Communication Theory of Modernization”, in Lucian W. Pye (ed.), Communications and Political Development  (possibly still available in Indian ed., Radhakrishna Prakashan).

 

Lerner poses the question: why is it so that developing countries keep turning out too many graduates from colleges and universities and, yet, the economy can provide jobs for only a few.

Though he talks in the context of one particular country, his proposition holds good practically for the entire developing world.

Lerner then himself provides the answer. This is because the tempo of modernisation is uneven. Lack of coordination between the educational institutions and the relatively weak economy of a developing nation is evident. The process of modernisation, in turn, causes this uneven phenomenon. The net result is rising frustration among the literate unemployed.

But what is modernisation? It is, says he, a ‘life style’, a way of life. The sub-systems of any system must function smoothly. When all the parts work well enough, then the whole, i.e., the system, will also work well. If, on the other hand, some parts, or sub-systems, work well but others lag behind, then the system as a whole cannot function well. This is true of any system, whether the human or the political body. For instance, a democracy will function well so long as its voters are alert and take an active interest in the voting process.

Complicating the modernising scene in the Third World, i.e., Asia, Africa and Latin America in general, is the manifold increase of communications. News about other regions, within a country and abroad, of better life-styles and standards of living there, is easily accessible, especially since the end of World War II (1945). This awareness of better alternatives of living standards, not available locally, generates frustration and resentment against the political and economic system. This leads to social instability, agitations, ‘gheraos’, strikes and other dysfunctions in the political, economic and social system.

Following the Second World War, the phenomenon of ‘revolution of rising expectations’ appeared. People in the post-colonial era were no longer satisfied with the stagnant, traditional life style. They wanted better living conditions. But since the Third World countries generally were unable to meet those needs, ‘revolution of rising frustration’ was often the result. This is continuing to this day.

Lerner offers a convenient, but rather simplistic, formula to quantify expectation and frustration. He offers the following:

Satisfaction = achievement divided by aspiration. So, if someone aspires to Rs. 100 but manages to get Rs.50, his ‘satisfaction’ is half!

One should be cautious about using such quantifying formulae, however. Such formulae have only limited usefulness in Political Science, where not every political or related phenomena can be quantified. If the son presents his parents with a new set of clothes and feels good about it, how can one calculate, in mathematical terms, his ‘satisfaction’?

Lerner cautions that material deprivation may not necessarily lead to frustration. If someone has low ambition and is more or less satisfied with whatever he has, then he is not frustrated. On the other hand, a millionaire may still be suffering from acute bouts of frustration if he is ambitious and wants a billion, and fast!

Lerner then moves on to determine six institutions that either help, or hinder, political, economic and social development. These are as follows:

Economy: if a country’s economy is powerful, then it offers immense opportunities and openings to its citizens to fulfil their ambition. A weak economy, on the other hand, has little to offer. Hence, frustration will tend to be  higher in the host country. Take ‘brain drain’. A large number of India’s technical graduates leave for the ‘land of opportunities’, the USA, religiously, every year. A ‘green card’ or ‘H1B’ visa, all related to permission to stay in America and work, are much-coveted items, worldwide. This awareness of better life elsewhere is also a product of communications.

Within a country like India, villagers tend to flock to the mega-cities because earning and life style opportunities are greater there than in their usually stagnant  rural communities.

 Police (methods): A dictatorial state can use force to keep aspirations down. China under Mao, the USSR und its Warsaw Pact allies in East Europe under Stalin were good examples. Nearly all communications from the outside world (read Western influence!) were cut; no free mixing with foreigners, limited, and government-supervised, visits outside the Soviet bloc states, heavy censorship of foreign news sources, etc. were the hallmarks of these systems. However, as recent history has shown, in today’s world of interdependence and global communications, such self-isolation cannot last. The Soviet Union and its bloc collapsed since 1991. Post-Mao China, since the late 1970s, has embarked upon a course of drastically opening up to Western goods, information and influence even while the communist party continues to monopolise political power. China today displays a ‘pragmatic’ brand of communism. India, too, has abandoned all pretensions of being a ‘socialistic pattern’ of society and is competing with China to attract foreign investment. Both these Asian giants are now waking up, it seems. They are doing very well indeed in terms of GDP growth, something which only a handful of so-called ‘Asian tiger economies’ (i.e. states with impressive economic growth rates) like Malaysia, Indonesia, South Korea, Singapore etc. had boasted of in the 1990s, till they suddenly faced a severe downturn at the end of that decade (a perennial problem with economic growth).

Family: In the Third World, the family as an institution retards progress somewhat, and surely is a bastion of conservatism (think of how much ‘freedom’ you can expect yourself in terms of the time  you must return home, your study time, marriage—usually ‘arranged’—and many other ‘do’s’ and ‘don’ts’, which your family expects of you). Such ‘conservatism’ has a positive side, too. It helps maintain stability in society. Without such family controls in place, society would tend to spin out of stability, a ‘free for all’, leading to confusion and chaos.

In the West, meaning especially West Europe and the USA, the son or daughter of your age enjoys far greater ‘freedom’, however, whether for better or worse.  Aspects such as self-reliance, developing one’s own opinion and so on are positive aspects in Western family upbringing. But sexual promiscuity of a permissible society also leads often to disasters and, from the Indian standpoint, to the  bizarre.

Community: The peer groups, the leaders, of a community (a community is a group of people united by linguistic, regional, religious, ethnic, or other ties) set the values (the list of ‘do’s’ and ‘don’ts’) for it. The rest tend to, or are expected to in any case, to adhere to those values. Tagore songs, for instance, are a must for a typically Bengali gathering. With the Mizos, you can expect guitars, Western pop songs and—alcohol. Ditto for the Goanese. An American professor resents being addressed to as ‘Professor so and so’ and will quickly tell you: “Oh, just call me Bill!” The opposite is true for a German, and probably many other European, academics. You are expected to address them as “Herr Professor!” in Germany.

A Bengali typically will put  his money in the bank. An average Bengali aspires to a nice job. But the more enterprising, business-minded Rajasthani or Gujarati will typically invest his money in a high-risk venture. He may profit immensely but also runs the risk of losing it altogether. So values differ from community to community. And community leaders determine much of these values.  A conservative community will tend to conserve, cling on to, whatever exists. This means it will hinder progress and change, modernisation. The opposite can be expected with a liberal, forward-looking community.

Schools: The US word ‘school’ is all embracing. It can mean ‘school’, as we in India understand it, right up to college and university! In other words, the entire educational system. If a society is conservative, then it will offer only conservative education. A modernising society, on the other hand, will offer liberal education with updates of knowledge in order to keep up with the latest developments. It is the difference between a Sanskrit ‘tole’, or an Islamic ‘madrassa’ on the one hand and an English-medium school in a mega-city in India on the other. The latter type of schools also brings together various communities of India, which a vernacular school cannot. This free inter-community  mixing, and getting to know other Indian sub-cultures, is a sign of modernisation.  This, in turn, contributes to the country’s socio-economic and political development and progress.

Media: Can be of two broad types, print (newspapers, magazines, books) and electronic (radio, TV, computers). Again, the media shapes, or can hinder, modernisation, depending on which side they are on. The media helps people form opinion. Conservative media will encourage conservative view, but liberal media will offer open, freewheeling thought and contribute to modern outlook of those who peruse them.

 

While on the topic of media, Lerner draws attention to two factors: the capacity to produce and consume information. In order to produce information, a country needs plants (studios, electricity, press machine or, these days, computers, etc.), equipment (camera, film, transmitter, TV tower and all the rest of the equipment that makes up a TV or radio studio), and personnel (reporters, printers, editors, publishers, hardware and software experts, etc.). But availability and running of plants, equipment and personnel will depend directly on the level of development of the economy of a given country. The more advanced the economy, the more freely will these be available. To take an example, in order to man a studio, one needs all sorts of experts, both technical personnel as well as experts e.g., producer, who will produce, let us say, a drama, or any kind of show. But where will they come from?

There must be special schools to train them up. This means there must be prior infrastructure in place (with school equipment and experts) so as to turn out these specialists regularly!

The more the capacity to produce information (news via dailies, weeklies, monthlies, TV, radio, websites), the greater is the development status of the economy. Hence, the mass of information produced is a good indicator of economic and political development.

However, merely producing information is not enough, if there are no ‘consumers’. ‘Consumption’ of information will depend upon a sense of ‘cash’ (Lerner’s word), literacy, and motivation.

‘Cash’ means the cost of information. If the cost is high, there will be less consumption of information. So, the lower the cost of producing information, the more accessible will it be to greater masses. In India, a few decades ago, one had to pay a government license fee for just a radio set—and it was not even an FM set but a valve radio that took ages to warm up and start broadcasting. The radio programmes were  extremely impersonal and boring, especially the news casting part. Today, in the beginning of the 21^st. century, no more license fees, even for your TV or computer, let alone radio. Newscasting has become infinitely more informal,  interesting, moving fast, with real-time (simultaneous, as a ‘story’ develops) telecasting, thanks to the communications satellite revolution (we see this with live coverages, be it sports or the Iraq war of 2003). In fall 2004 India’s giant educational satellite called Edusat has been launched successfully to telecast to remote villages and near-inaccessible regions of the country to bring the communities living there into the mainstream of national life. This is ‘communications and development’ ! Talking of cost of information, newspapers in India are vying with each other to cut their price so as to increase circulation. Such healthy competition benefits the ‘consumer’ of information and increases access to information. Closely tied to the print media  is the literacy factor. The greater the literacy, the more the demand for reading materials. That in turn boosts modernisation by enhancing awareness of our environment and of better  opportunities elsewhere. To revert to the ‘brain drain’, without literacy, and communications,  this phenomenon would not have been possible.

Finally, motivation implies a sense of profit. This means one wishes to become literate, spend time and money to get a decent education from a sense of material benefits, which he expects as a result.

Little wonder that all the developed states in the world have a high literacy rate, the developing ones have low rates. Literacy become the ‘prime mover’ of modernisation. A literate person tends to develop ambition of improving his lot. He employs his skills, which not only benefits his own career but also contributes to the improvement of the economy. Economics Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen, no wonder, has focused on grass-roots level literacy in Bangladesh (from where he originally hails) and India through his trust agency. And both India’s central and West Bengal governments have taken up literacy as a priority item on their agendas.

 

Next, Lerner turns to further implications of modernisation. These are stability versus mobility. The impact of modernisation upsets stability of a society. Traditional  rural societies tend to break up, or in any case are no longer the same as they had been for centuries. A farmer’s son may no longer want to follow in his forefathers’ footsteps. Instead, he  may like to go to the nearest big city, may be join a factory as a worker, and earn possibly a better living and surely ‘enjoy’ all the perks that a mega-city has to offer. His chances are enhanced if he has had some education (again, the literacy factor!).

To be sure, modernisation is not an easy transition to a modern society from a traditional (backward) one. Conflict of values develops. The question arises: how much to ‘modernise’, and where to cling on to tradition. Each country has to find its own solution, strike its own balance between stability and mobility. Only Japan managed to modernise in the 19^th. Century rapidly, without social upheavals. But Japan, a very homogenous island race, is an exception. Most Third World countries are still struggling with the process of modernisation and finding it an uphill struggle. Iran under Shah Reza Pahlavi provides a classic, opposite example. The example of failure of hurried attempts at modernisation, in the late 1970s.  Iran had earned a huge amount of petro-dollars ((US dollars earned through oil sales) from the mid-1970s due to the Arab-Israeli war of 1973. The oil-exporting Arab states decided to hike oil price to punish the West for supporting Israel in that war. The Shah of Iran dreamt of turning his country into a super-modern state, and  the predominant military power in the Persian Gulf region. His forced modernisation, which disturbed tradition, led eventually to a massive grass-roots revolt against him, encouraged by conservative clerics, leaders of the community. The net result was that the Shah, a virtual dictator with his dreaded secret police, the SAVAK, was nevertheless overthrown. Tehran turned, like magic, into a highly conservative Islamic country almost overnight under Ayatollah Khomeini. The USA, Shah’s great friend, was demonised for decades since the revolution of the late 1970s in Iran.

 

As Samuel P. Huntington has pointed out, modernisation breaks up traditional society, but breaking something does not guarantee generation of a trouble-free, new and modern society. He draws a distinction between ‘modernisation’ as a process and ‘modernity’ as the end result. The process does not necessarily guarantee the end result!

 

Lerner probes a bit deeper into mobility, the social dynamism that comes with modernisation.

He identifies three types of mobility:

First, geographic. Man is no longer tied to his native soil (e.g., village, unlike his forefathers). Distant opportunities beckon him as society modernises. So, a Kolkatan today easily leaves for Delhi, Bangalore or Chennai for higher studies or better job. He hardly feels a permanent attachment to his native city, if other regions offer him better career prospects. Again, the ‘brain drain’ to the West is a glaring example of geographic mobility.

Second, social. Modernisation encourages free mixing of religions, communities, castes and creeds. The old agrarian division in India running along caste ‘superiority’ and ‘inferiority’ is considerably diminished in urban regions. One is respected, not because of his caste status but because of his capabilities, his earning power, his position in the modern society. A commercial firm does not care which caste one belongs to, so long as one can execute the job assigned to him, and do it well. The USA, for instance, running fully on modern, rational lines, grants its much coveted ‘green card’ or ‘H1B’ visas, worldwide, to the deserving candidate, irrespective of his racial, religious or other background ‘irrelevant’ to the job he will be assigned. Geographic mobility also encourages social mobility, ties among communities are strengthened on a rational basis, old prejudices are discarded.

Third, psychic. The modern man’s attitude to life changes. In earlier decades in India, banks were suspect. Nobody wanted to deposit money to a bank. One would rather keep it under the pillow, or in a deep hole in the mud floor of a village house. But today? Even maids and other domestic help very often have a bank account and even life insurance. Another example is that  the nuclear family is increasingly replacing the joint family, at least in the urban areas. Working wives are a commonplace. But only about a hundred years ago this was unthinkable. Similarly unthinkable was modern education for women, far less in a co-educational institution. Eating out is more a rule today than an exception. Family planning is part and parcel of modern, urban life. In sum, myriads of changes take place in attitude towards life. This is psychic mobility.

 

From Vicious Circle to Growth Cycle

 

Of course, economic development forms a vital segment of modernisation. To be modern and to improve one’s economic well-being go hand in glove together. But, as Lerner points out, this is more easily said than done. A poor economy will tend to remain poor. This is because it has little or no economic resources to invest. No investment means no extra income, no profit, no gain. So, the bad news is, poverty breeds poverty, the poor will tend to remain poor, unless he can cough up extra cash to invest wisely and see his investment grow. The key problem, hence, is: how to break out of this’ vicious circle of poverty’ and get on to the bandwagon of an economic ‘growth cycle’. In simple economic terms it is like this:

1.Capital Improvement (CI) leads to higher productivity (HP)

2. HP leads to higher real income (HRI; ‘real’ means allowing for inflation)

3. HRI leads to higher savings, and higher demand (HD)

4. HD leads to higher investment (HI)

5. HI leads to CI.

The first step for getting into economic growth cycle is, hence, capital improvement, i.e., increase in capital. In short, two major methods are available. One, greater domestic savings (e.g., the Indian govt. encourages investment by individuals in ‘infrastructure’ bonds, National Savings Certificates, etc.; apparently, the funds thus collected will be spent, among others, to improve infrastructure (roads, electricity, water connection, etc., without which no economic enterprise is possible).

Two, foreign investments. This could be foreign govts investing, foreign companies (like today we have so many brand name foreign companies producing and selling their goods like consumer electronics to cars to myriad other wares) and international financial institutions like the Asian Development Bank, the World Bank, IMF, etc.

With capital thus accumulated, from both domestic and foreign sources, a developing country can hope to start the process of ejecting itself from the poverty circle and kick-starting the growth cycle.

However, a note of caution here. Merely accumulating and investing capital may not produce commensurate results. There are many variables (factors), both economic and non-economic, which may interfere with the economic growth process sketched above. An obvious example for India and other developing states is ‘work culture’. As long as a lackadaisical attitude prevails towards work (the long prevailing ‘license-permit raj’, the still prevailing red-tape, bureaucracy, the fact that files do not move from one table to the next without palms being greased!), no amount of capital can help economic growth. It is an open secret, as periodically seen in ‘scams’, that much of public money is wasted or pocketed by vested isnterets throughout the developing world. Swedish scholar Gunnar Myrdal wrote his classic Asian Drama in the 1960s to explain these cultural and other institutional bottlenecks to economic progress. Hence, the economic model offered by Lerner from classical economics is just an ideal, ‘other things remaining equal’! But these ‘other things’ (like work culture, superstition, ‘bandhs’ and strikes on  the slightest pretext) are often not equal in the developing countries! That is a problem where development of a ‘modern’ outlook is urgently needed.

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