MENU
Ajay and Amit explore the nature of social progress, how meaningful change happens both within the state and society, and why lasting transformation requires patience, persistence, and person-to-person persuasion.
Ajay Shah is an economist who has held positions at various government and academic institutions, known for his work on public policy and institutional reform. Amit Varma is a writer, podcaster, and the creator of "The Seen and the Unseen," one of India's most respected long-form conversation shows. Together, they host "Everything is Everything," where they explore big ideas through the lens of first principles, books, history, and lived experience.
Change is neither inevitable nor guaranteed. In this episode, Ajay and Amit examine the fundamental question of how change happens at scale—both in the state and in society. They argue that meaningful transformation requires understanding the distinct processes that govern each domain, while rejecting the common Indian tendency toward excessive statism.
The conversation explores a comprehensive theory of how the state changes through a policy pipeline running from data collection through implementation, requiring decades of patient work across multiple specialised domains. But perhaps more importantly, they argue that social change happens through authentic one-on-one conversations in zones of truth and trust, where people update their views incrementally rather than dramatically. They challenge the myth of inevitable progress, drawing on historical examples from hunter-gatherer societies to 20th-century political catastrophes to demonstrate that regression is always possible. The discussion concludes with reflections on why individuals should still engage in the work of change despite uncertain outcomes.
Shah, Ajay, and Amit Varma. "The Long Road to Change." Episode 36 of Everything is Everything. XKDR Forum, March 1, 2024. Podcast, video, 1:16:40. https://www.xkdr.org/viewpoints/the-long-road-to-change-episode-36-everything-is-everything
The conversation begins with a fundamental distinction between change in the state versus change in the people. Ajay argues that Indians make a systematic error by being excessively statist, conflating the state with society and defaulting to government solutions for all problems.
The state should ideally serve as an agent of the people, but too often the relationship inverts with the state becoming a ruler. This confusion leads to absurd statements like "India won the World Cup" when individual athletes achieved something unrelated to either the state or the broader population.
Ajay emphasizes the primacy of social change:
"A fundamental idea for us should always be how can we the people do things ourselves? How can we form the culture, the associations, the networks, the relationships, the firms, the clubs, so that good things happen in the society. We shouldn't always run to the my baap."
Most good things—wealth creation, art, truth, beauty, creativity—happen within society, not through state action. The crushing of freedom and casual oppressive behavior that characterizes much of Indian society represents social ills that matter more than governmental ones.
India's founding approach assumed change would happen through top-down constitutional design. Even Ambedkar described the constitution as "mere top soil" over a deeply illiberal society, hoping liberal institutions would gradually reform social attitudes through pedagogical effects.
This transformative constitutional approach has largely failed because meaningful change cannot be imposed from above. Gandhi, despite being wrong about many things, correctly understood that change must emerge from within society from the bottom up.
Amit reflects on his evolving thinking about reform strategies:
"There was a time I used to think that people like you and your colleagues in the policy world would not achieve anything. My thinking was that, look, if you want change, then you attack the demand end of the political marketplace, not the supply end of the political marketplace."
However, he now recognizes that both approaches matter. Small incremental changes at the supply end (within government) can create massive social impacts, while social movements create demand for better policies. The key is understanding when each approach works best.
Ajay outlines a comprehensive policy pipeline that governs how states change, emphasizing that this sequence cannot be short-circuited despite the temptation to jump directly to solutions.
The pipeline begins with data collection. Without measurement systems, societies become vulnerable to ignorance and spectacle, where whoever has the biggest megaphone wins regardless of truth. Building proper measurement takes approximately 25 years—there are no shortcuts despite moral urgency.
Satellite imagery represents a revolutionary development in measurement capabilities. The bird in the sky sees objective truth and can bypass both government incompetence and government censorship. For example, nighttime lights data captured at 1:30 AM provides monthly pictures of economic prosperity at half-kilometer resolution across the entire country.
Ajay explains the measurement imperative:
"If you don't have data, then you are vulnerable to ignorance. Worse, you are vulnerable to spectacle. So there is a bunch of people in this world who are able to create spectacle and will just paint any nonsense picture."
Research represents the second stage, where data gets processed into knowledge through both correlations and causal analysis. This knowledge then enables the identification of genuine market failures that might justify state intervention.
The third stage requires imaginative policy design—creating solutions that achieve objectives with minimal coercion and realistic assumptions about state capacity. Universities mysteriously avoid this crucial work, leaving policy design to practitioners rather than academics.
Multiple rival solutions should always exist. When someone claims "there is no alternative," the intellectual community has failed. Vigorous contestation between different approaches produces better policies than single solutions developed without competition.
Public debate and government committee processes help legitimize unusual ideas and expand the Overton window of acceptable policies. These committees serve to mainstream radical concepts by having respected figures examine evidence and recommend previously unthinkable reforms.
The final implementation stage involves two components: translating ideas into well-drafted laws and designing organizations capable of executing those laws effectively. Both require highly specialized knowledge rarely found in the typical Indian administrative system.
Ajay emphasizes the interdisciplinary nature of this process:
"This is a wildly heterogeneous range of knowledge. Data is the knowledge of how to measure, how to build a statistical system, how to observe. Research is knowledge of statistics, economics, other social sciences."
The entire pipeline typically requires 25 years, but attempting to skip early stages leads to policy failures based on political preferences rather than understanding of reality.
The conversation shifts to challenging assumptions about inevitable progress. The Enlightenment project and scientific revolution created remarkable advances in understanding the natural world, but social and political progress follows no similar trajectory.
Modern research reveals that the traditional narrative of human advancement from hunter-gatherers through agriculture to industrialization is largely false. Hunter-gatherer life was closer to paradise—people were free, healthy, and relatively equal. Agriculture brought disease, social control, reduced physical health, and oppression of women.
Ajay describes this historical reversal:
"With the rise of agriculture, it's like all hell broke loose. We got disease, the male height, the female height shrunk. We got social control of human beings, we got the destruction of the happiness of women. Women became property, women became controlled."
Early states were projects of oppression focused on taxation and conscription rather than serving their people. For most of human history since agriculture, the rational response to state formation was to run away and live in anarchy rather than submit to tyrannical rule.
The 20th century put liberal democracy to its greatest test, and the results were mixed at best. Two world wars, communist revolutions, Nazi rule, and the constant threat of nuclear destruction characterized much of the period.
The 1989 collapse of the Soviet Union created tremendous hope that the "long nightmare" had ended and liberal democracy would spread globally. Instead, democratic backsliding is occurring worldwide in the 21st century.
Historical examples illustrate how quickly things can go wrong. Germany's Weimar Republic democracy from 1918 collapsed into Hitler by 1933. Russia's post-Soviet optimism devolved into Putin's authoritarianism. China's reform period under Deng Xiaoping has reversed under Xi Jinping's concentrated power.
Ajay emphasizes the fragility of progress:
"For me, it has become a guiding principle that social and political catastrophe is always possible. There's one thing we learn from the 20th century. It is that political and social catastrophe is always possible."
Even countries with advantages can fail. India in 1947 had exceptional post-colonial leadership with figures like Gandhi, Nehru, Tagore, and Ramanujan, yet has not achieved its early promise.
Despite the uncertain nature of progress, individuals can still work toward positive change through authentic personal engagement. Society changes through "one great conversation that generates a 10% updation for both sides at a time."
Mass media advocacy and social media campaigns achieve little compared to quiet, careful conversations between individuals in zones of truth and trust. People embody change through how they live rather than what they say, and others respond to authentic behavior more than rhetoric.
Ajay describes his evolved understanding of persuasion:
"Today, now that I'm all grown up, I have a superior understanding of the world. So I believe that if we are in a zone of truth, if we are in a zone of trust, then we'll hear each other."
People rarely admit they were wrong during conversations due to human frailty, but they will privately update their beliefs by approximately 10% when presented with cogent arguments or compelling examples. This incremental change, multiplied across many relationships, creates social transformation over time.
The process requires patience and realistic expectations. Changing 10 people's minds by 10% on important issues represents significant achievement. This person-to-person approach reflects the reality that lasting change must come from within society rather than being imposed from outside.
2024, XKDR | GSTIN: 27AAACX3640C1ZN
by Sane Difference
