Maslow’s Hierarchy in Context of Nation's Governance Objective

Authored by @Ajain and @Rgov – astute political observers

Abraham Maslow’s 1943 paper on human development titled “A Theory of Human Motivation” was aimed to provide a perspective at an individual level. In this article, we will attempt to correlate Maslow’s hierarchy of needs at a national context. More specifically, we will look back at the last five years of the Modi government’s (2014-2019) accomplishment themes and plans for the next five years (2019-2024). The article is not intended to provide any critical analysis on his plans and accomplishments (we have done that in the past) but instead provide a perspective on where India was and where is India headed.

First, let’s understand the basic tenets of Maslow’s hierarchy. Maslow’s hierarchy is often represented in the form of a pyramid wherein at the bottom are the Basic needs considered to be physical needs for human survival. Physiological needs essentially are food, clothe and shelter. Safety needs essentially are personal security, financial security, and health security. Psychological needs essentially are the needs towards belonging and self-esteem followed by the last stage of Self-actualization which essentially means that “what a man can be, he must be”(term “man” is used as gender neutral) and the ultimate step in this journey is the transcendence of human consciousness.

Though it appears that these needs are to be achieved in a sequential manner, however, there is a fair degree of overlap as shown in the diagram below.

It is clear from the diagram above that needs once fulfilled don’t go away but the intensity with which the need is pursued starts to diminish as higher-level needs are being worked on. For example, one can’t be expecting to work on self-esteem if the prior needs hierarchy such as food, clothes, shelter, safety and belongingness are not met.

With this backdrop, now let’s analyze how Mr. Modi’s actions and plans are addressing the needs’ hierarchy of India as an entity.
During the first term (2014 – 2019), the Modi government launched hundreds of wide impacting initiatives. These initiatives were not random but instead were well thought out and were geared towards addressing the basic needs. Given below are some of the high-profile initiatives:

Shelter for all – This was arguably the biggest initiative designed towards meeting the basic needs of human. The Modi government constructed about 15 million homes with full facilities such as electricity connection, water supply connections and cooking gas. This impacted favorably over 75 million individuals (average family size in rural India is about 5). Plan for the current term (2019 – 2024) is to provide housing for all by 2022.
Nobody to remain hungry – When the Modi government came to power, by the estimates of World Bank, there were about 258 million people below the extreme poverty line. By the end of 2018, the number had reduced to a mere 50 million. Plan for the current term (2019-2024) is to reduce this number to about 3% of the population (about 39 million) which is at par with international standards.
Additional Physiological needs – Since 1943 when Maslow published the article, several additional physiological needs have emerged because of modernization. Considering the climate of the region, there are additional physiological needs such as electricity and harmless means of cooking food. During the first term, Mr. Modi achieved 100% electrification, provided cooking gas to 80 million households and invested in infrastructure for water supply. Plan for the current term is to provide cooking gas and safe drinking water to all.

Let’s now look at the next hierarchy of the needs, namely, safety and security needs.

Financial security – Indian family and head of the family structure is rather complex and diverse. Lack of woman empowerment in certain specific religion created financial insecurity amongst the woman populace. Finally, a lack of trust in government created an environment of “shadow economy”. During the first term, Mr. Modi took some bold and tough decisions such as the introduction of uniform code for goods and services taxes and demonetization of a certain type of currency. Through these two initiatives, the shadow economy was largely crippled. Over 320 million new bank accounts were opened through increasing access to banking. This allowed for direct benefit transfer to the recipient without the need for middlemen. Plan for the current term is to extend the provisions of secured income post retirement such as pensions etc. to all unorganized sectors and sectors such as farming etc. which are currently out of the purview of such schemes.
Health security – Health security is probably the most important safety need. During the current term, the Modi government provided medical insurance to over 500 million people. Plan for the current term is to provide affordable medical insurance to all either through government-sponsored schemes or through employment-based medical insurance. Affordable is the keyword. It will shame countries such as the USA where the medical insurance and costs constitute roughly 30% of the household budget and is the single largest reason for personal bankruptcies leading to a tremendous amount of insecurity among the populace.
National security – If there is one area where the Modi government outperformed by a huge margin then it is the handling of national security. For years and decades, Pakistan, obsessed with India, had systematically tried to destabilize India. There were routine terrorism activities carried out on Indian soil killing scores of civilians and military personnel. The previous government did precious little to contain the situation. In fact, one of the dastardliest attacks in Mumbai on 26/11/2008 had a little reaction from then Congress leadership. All the proofs were provided but the government didn’t give the go-ahead to the armed forces to retaliate. This, in turn, boosted the confidence of terrorist organizations. All that changed with the coming of Mr. Modi government. He not only resolved, hopefully once and for all, the Chinese aggression on “Doklam” border but carried out a surgical strike on Pakistan after they carried out the acts of terrorism in Uri, India in 2016. The strike demolished all the terrorists launch pads with zero casualties to the Indian forces. Subsequently, when terrorist attacks were carried out in February 2019 in Kashmir, Mr. Modi gave the nod to armed forces to carry out the non-military air strikes against the terrorist camps inside the Pakistan territory. This was the first time India had gone inside the Pakistan boundaries and carried out the strikes. About 300 terrorists were liquidated with precision. No damage to civilians or other infrastructure was done. Through diplomacy, Mr. Modi rallied international support for anti-terrorism and all supported excepting China.
Personal security – This is a difficult issue to deal with as the authority to address the issue with the State government and not the Central government. Mr. Modi could only influence the State leadership but generally can’t directly intervene. However, Plan for the current term is to eliminate article 370 and 35A of the constitution which are the source of much of terrorism in India. These articles were unconstitutionally introduced in 1954 by the then Prime Minister, Mr. Jawahar Lal Nehru. Removal of these two articles will address, to a large extent, the personal security concerns in the region of Jammu & Kashmir. Uttar Pradesh, fourth largest state from the land area perspective, after having BJP state government saw tremendous improvement in terms of women personal security and significant decline in communal and terrorist events. In the western states such as Maharashtra and Gujarat, there were zero terrorist events during the last 5 years. Law and order situation in much of Eastern states has improved after clamping down of Maoist nefarious activities.

While at grass root level planning and development work was happening to meet the basic needs, at diplomatic level seeds were already being sown in to address the psychological needs. Mr. Modi’s vision of making the whole world a better place to live instead of just focusing on India drew applauds from all the world leaders. His vision of healthy living, terrorism free nations, friction-less trade, resource conservation, space exploration, pollution control and empowering men to be what they can be has earned him the highest awards from five nations – Saudi Arabia (2016), Afghanistan (2016), Palestine (2018), United Arab Emirates (2019) and Russia (2019). In fact, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in 2019 invited India to deliver the inaugural speech. This was despite the objections by the founding member Pakistan. Plan for Mr. Modi is to break the shackles of caste, and religion and prosper together with all.

India is already part of the group who have successfully launched probes to Moon & Mars and have anti-satellite technology. India, in fact, has created the world record by launching 104 satellites in a single launch and another world record by deploying satellites to three different orbits – all through indigenously developed technology. Plan for the current term of Mr. Modi is to have probe landing on Moon and possibly a manned mission to the Moon.

India is also part of the Paris accord for climate change. Mr. Modi has emphasized the need for use of renewable energy and ultimately phasing out polluting energy plants which are coal based. Significant investments have been made in the installation of solar energy farms. Construction is already underway to have a 4,500-Megawatt capacity solar farm which will be the world’s largest solar farm. Another planning effort is underway to develop a solar farm with 10,000-Megawatt capacity. Plan for the current term of Mr. Modi is to increase the solar energy generation by 100 times.

India already is part of G20 club and has an aspiration to become part of G7 coveted club replacing weaker nations such as Italy. With its growth in GDP during the last term, at a nominal rate, India has already become the top 5 economies of the world (as per the advance data projections) and has an aspiration to join the $5 trillion club in the current term.
Even though, India has not signed the Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT), through demonstration and transparency, the world recognizes India’s use of nuclear material as purely for peaceful purposes and considers India as part of the nuclear arms club. The USA is considering having India as a part of non-NATO member ally.

Finally, let’s plot the initiatives and plans of the Modi government on the original Maslow’s needs curve. I have added the time dimension and replaced “Personal development” on X-axis with “National development”. This is to elucidate the point that Maslow’s hierarchy is as applicable to a nation as it is to a person.

The initiatives of the Modi government and future developmental priorities align very closely with the Maslow’s hierarchy. It may be noted that for a nation to progress on a continuum of development governments must mature up by initially taking up the role of a “provider” and on stabilization move on to take the role of an “enabler”. The physiological and psychological needs don’t go away but they are automatically addressed through well-governed systems and policies. For India, the magnitude of the challenge is huge primarily because prior to Mr. Modi’s government (almost 67 years), no government really intended to “walk the talk” of the campaign promises. There are still about 30% of people under the poverty line (extreme poverty is only at 4%). We believe that the pace, and the magnitude of the development that is taking place, by the end of the current term, India will have largely overcome its image of snake charmers.
Failure to recognize this shift from being a provider to an enabler creates “fat” governments which ultimately leads to society sliding back in meeting the physiological and psychological needs. A case in point is the USA. While from per capita GDP perspective, it may rank very high, but the poverty rate is as high as 17.2% and increasing. There are cities such as San Francisco, Seattle, Log Angeles, and many more “inner cities” across the nation, where one would wonder if they are moving about a developed nation. This is shocking considering that the USA gain independence over 240 years ago. The societal entropy that we are seeing across Germany, France and Great Britain is a clear indication that there is a growing number of people who feel that they are unable to meet their physiological needs.