Professor Steven Wilkinson, Nilekani Professor of India and South Asian Studies, and Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at Yale University, delivers the inaugural lecture
10 July, 2019, Bengaluru: “India’s civil-military success and the country’s happier history compared to other post-colonial states is an even bigger achievement than what you think,” observed Professor Steven Wilkinson, Nilekani Professor of India and South Asian Studies, and Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at Yale University. He was delivering the keynote lecture on ‘Army and Nation: Explaining India’s Civil-Military Success’, at the Foundation Day Inaugural Lecture of the Centre for Public Policy (CPP) at Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB), on July 10 (Wednesday), 2019, at the NIMHANS Convention Centre.
Many post-colonial states inherited unrepresentative and conservative armies that have posed a real threat to democracy. India has succeeded in avoiding such a situation. Exploring the reasons for this democratic success, Professor Wilkinson said, “India looked ahead towards the end of British rule, and addressed the deep nationalist concern over the imbalanced colonial army. India gauged the kind of impact that the role of the pre-1947 army may have on independent India’s democracy and saw this imbalance as an urgent problem. The country also devised effective civil-military strategies. Political conflict moderation was also adopted. India's regional hegemony and strategic position also helped the country deal a better hand.”
Professor Wilkinson also pointed out that such policies did not rule out some amount of military and strategic inefficiency on India’s part. “Even after defeat by China in the 1962 War or the Kargil War, and the desire for jointness, there is little change in the situation and the post of Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) is yet to be created.”
Discussing India’s achievements vis-à-vis its neighbouring countries, the professor said that civil-military balance in Pakistan is unlikely to change without growth of a cohesive political party or movement, and significant domestic or external military reverse that discredits its military as in 1971.
Professor Hema Swaminathan, faculty and Chair, Centre for Public Policy, IIMB, while welcoming the audience, introduced CPP and highlighted its tremendous progress through its 20-year journey. “Today, IIMB offers a doctoral programme in public policy that provides rigorous training in various aspects of policy processes. CPP faculty serve on government committees and task forces. CPP, through its contribution to cutting-edge research, teaching and training, capacity building, its international collaborations, the annual conference on public policy and management, and other activities, provides a vibrant academic ambience for scholarly engagement and a platform for ideation, debate and exploration.”
IIMB Director, and faculty of Public Policy, Professor G. Raghuram also addressed the audience and explained the relevance of IIMB’s CPP as a centre and an area. “The past decade has seen a strong push towards research where publication in high-end journals is an expected outcome and impact. CPP promotes such endeavours.”
Prof. Chiranjib Sen, Founding Chair, CPP, currently faculty at Azim Premji University, stated that CPP as a centre, through sheer outstanding performance, has survived, flourished and is moving to better days. “CPP worked on the belief that the country’s bureaucracy should move away from the old system towards public management. The focus should be on boosting capacity building for government, teaching public policy, how policies should be formulated and implemented, and how to remain abreast. A lot of people worked together to make CPP a success, people outside the IIMB community like practitioners, who contributed as visiting faculty, and there were other forms of external support. The attitude towards building the centre was openness – to external review and supervision. Long-standing external collaborations were also instrumental.”
He went on to say that with the changing times, focus on bureaucracy has to be moderated; public policy today is an established field and means different things now. “We must at this stage focus on engaging the private sector, NGOs, research institutes, political actors and aspirants, etc. in the field. From bureaucracy, we need to move to citizen and society linked governance. CPP should strengthen its think tank functions; the centre can incubate and develop other programmes, contribute to policy building, internationalize the faculty and student body, broaden views, remain open to criticism like before, engage with more people, and with more vigour”, he recommended.
The CPP was created in the year 2000 through a partnership agreement between the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), Government of India (GoI), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and IIMB. It works on improving development outcomes across the country and has pioneered the application of management disciplines for influencing public policy and improving governance.
About the keynote speaker: Professor Steven I. Wilkinson is Nilekani Professor of India and South Asian Studies and Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at Yale University, and Henry R. Luce Director of the Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University.
Prof. Wilkinson has worked on the causes of ethnic violence, and his first book, ‘Votes and Violence: Electoral Competition and Ethnic Riots in India’ (Cambridge, 2004), examines the political roots of communal conflict in South Asia. That book was awarded the Woodrow Wilson prize of the American Political Science Association in 2005, for the best book on government, politics or international affairs. He is also interested in corruption in politics, and edited the book ‘Patrons, Clients and Policies: Patterns of Democratic Accountability and Political Competition’ (Cambridge, 2007) with Herbert Kitschelt. Wilkinson’s most recent book is ‘Army and Nation’, which came out in January 2015 from Harvard University Press (Permanent Black in South Asia), and examines India’s success in managing the imbalanced colonial army it inherited in 1947. The book has been widely read in India as well as in Pakistan, where in 2017 new army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa reportedly recommended his top officers read it to learn from India’s success in keeping the military out of politics.
Prof. Wilkinson is currently working with Saumitra Jha (Stanford GSB) on a book on War and Political Change, the first part of which, on the role of veterans in the partition of India, has been published in article form in the American Political Science Review. The next part of this project uses archival looks at the role of returned veterans from the American War of Independence in the French Revolution.
Prof. Wilkinson is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.