Thursday, February 5, 2009

Rules or no rules.

Rules have high concentration at the edges. There are the informed ones on one side and the ignorant ones on the other.One understands them well enough to manipulate them and the other is flummoxed by its complexities.The sanity that still seems to prevail though for a limited time before more appropriation is required is according to me due to voluntary compliance.When Ostrom argues a system of self-governance when there are no constraints,he basically advocates a stand away from the vicious cycle of rules and appropriation and more rules and more appropriation.
The heterogeneous evolution of mankind stands witness to the transformation from simple mutually adjustable societal structure (if i can say like Scott's moral peasantry) to the complex monitoring through CCTVs which have failed to contain human kind's unquenchable desires of differentiation.My argument therefore is that wouldn't the society and the structure be a better place to live without formal or effective rules.
Looking from Raju's sir perspective, who benefits from the rules?Or rather why do rules come in existance to begin with? Well, let's say that when acceptable norms of behaviour are not maintained, rules have to be framed.Two questions arise here, acceptable norms according to whom and rules to check whom?In a tenancy farming which is being practised since ages, the landowner has various motivations to lease his land to a landless farmer and everytime the government has come up with various acts to grant more access to the tenants, the landlord's have manipulated the rules to their advantage.It wouldn't be inappropriate to say that those who threat to or have already broken the threshhold are the ones for whom the rules are made,and they are the ones who will be manipulating the rules thus created.I mean rules made to address a certain section ends up being transformed in ways which make it ineffective as before but in the process increasing the complexity for the bottom class.The gap therefore widens and the concentration gets more acute.This is true in my view for both restrcitive as well as facilitative rules.The question therefore worth asking is wouldn't the stucture of no rules right from the beginning have created a society with instinctively much more co-operation?I welcome you all for your views.

1 comment:

Joseph Kalassery said...

very deep question nitesh...

but i would think ur question directly points to the need for collecitve action. i would argue as follows

if there are inequalities in society and no collective action, then the powerful find ways to misutilize the rules..also if no rule's exist, they define new rule's to benefit them.

on the other hand, if inequalities exist then collective action can act as an opposing power to exploitation...it may also ensure tat the existing rules are made less exploitative...or the new rules are atleast neutral...

once again, excellent question..

thanks.