The local approach

NEW THINKING

The Covid crisis is the story of two global solutions to a medical problem: one was lockdowns; the other, vaccines. Lockdowns with social distancing were implemented in all countries on the advice of medical experts. They prevented the virus from spreading.

Lockdowns also had many side effects from which people suffered greatly. Businesses closed down and people lost incomes. In crowded Indian cities, where poor people had no place to stay locked in, they had to venture out even to fetch water, and were harassed by police enforcing the lockdown.

The single-minded focus on the treatment of Covid shut out patients of other ailments from hospitals. Doctors estimated that more people died from lack of treatments they were getting, but could not any longer, than the numbers who were treated for Covid. Closure of schools caused concerns about the long-term impacts on the development of children. In many countries—the US, the UK, the Netherlands, and others—citizens ailed by lockdowns refused to follow the rules.

The rollout of new vaccines is a remarkable story of innovations produced by scientists and organisations in many countries. Citizens waited anxiously for the vaccines to become available. However, governments followed protocols established by medical scientists for testing new vaccines very strictly to ensure there would be no side-effects. The contrast between how the two solutions were implemented raises important questions: about scale, centralisation and the scientific approach. These must be addressed urgently because humanity has large challenges and needs effective ways to meet them.

Problems such as persistent poverty and inequality, poor health and environmental degradation that the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) aim to solve are systemic issues. They have multiple inter-acting causes and cannot be solved by any one actor. Centralisation is the wrong approach for solving complex problems which manifest in different shapes in different places. For example, environmental problems combine with livelihood problems in different ways in the Himalayan mountains in North India, in the dry lands of Rajasthan, and in the lush coastal regions of Kerala in the South. Therefore, local systems solutions are necessary for such global systemic problems.

The solution: responsibility for the governance of complex systems must be devolved to communities in their localities. However, not only politicians, experts at the top also are reluctant to let go of their power. They claim that the locals will not have the capability to manage, and so the Centre must take on the burden of managing the locals.

Clearly, we cannot carry on the way we are. Therefore, we must examine some prevalent beliefs driving models of growth. For one, the paradigm of progress has swung too far towards the global and has forgotten the local. And another: in their drive for ‘economies of scale’, economists and managers are overlooking the need for ‘economies of scope’. Economies of scope emerge when diverse capabilities, even on small scales, are easily accessible to each other, can produce innovations together, and improve the overall performance of the system.

Large global supply chains create economic efficiencies. Food is grown in large farms across the world. However, these large global chains consume more energy, cause more damage to environment, and create more risk than local networks.

The average morsel of food eaten by an American travels about 1,500 miles from these large farms to reach his fork. On the way, large quantities of oil are burnt for refrigeration and transportation and lots of carbon is spewed into the atmosphere. Such global chains increase other risks too.

When bad tomatoes were suspected to be the cause of a salmonella problem in the USA, it was impossible for retailers to pinpoint their source. So, supplier farms had to be shut down in many places across the world. The ‘sub-prime’ financial crisis was another example of risks in large inter-connected supply chains. The theory was that the financial system would be safer by spreading risky loans across a wider system.

Fashions in ideas

When Thomas Friedman launched his paean to a global world, The Earth is Flat: A Brief History of the 21st Century, in Delhi in 2005, I was invited, along with Mani Shankar Aiyar, then Union minister for panchyat raj, to discuss Friedman’s book with him at the launch. Aiyar pointed out the flaw in Friedman’s thesis.

Friedman said the world was flat because he observed that people in Bengaluru could now talk to anyone, anywhere in the world. Aiyar retorted that people in Bengaluru, while becoming integrated with the world, did not know what was happening in villages just 50 miles away. They were flying around the world connecting with people in New York and London but losing touch with those nearby.

Big is not always better. Ecologists explain how small systems, with diversity within them, have the ability to adapt and evolve. They are more sustainable than large systems. They may not have ‘economies of scale’ but they have powerful ‘economies of scope’. Diversity makes life more interesting also. Thus, life within city neighbourhoods that have their own groceries, cafes, bookshops and doctors is more pleasant than in cities which are segregated into large zones dedicated for different uses.

Several foresighted people in the last century have suggested that we should look for more local solutions to what have become global problems. In their book, Winning the Oil Endgame, published in 2004, Amory Lovins and his colleagues in the Rocky Mountain Institute explained how ‘a legion of small, fast and simple microgeneration and efficiency projects’ could be the answer to the world’s energy problems.

In Deep Economy (2007), Bill McKibben made a compelling case for local food networks. There are many examples from India and elsewhere that show that local community solutions for water are more effective and sustainable than gigantic storage and long-distance transportation schemes.

(The writer is a management consultant and former member, Planning Commission of India) (The Billion Press)