Is anybody up there listening?

This Nobel Prize in economics awarded for innovation comes at an interesting time in the political history of the world. Much of the world today is dominated by what authors Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way call “competitive authoritarianism.” Levitsky and Way define it as a hybrid regime where democratic institutions exist, but are undermined by authoritarian practices, making elections real but most often unfair. They introduced the concept in their influential 2002 essay and expanded on it in their 2010 book of the same name.

Recently, the authors argued in Foreign Affairs magazine that the US has now become a poster child of competitive authoritarianism. The primary feature of such regimes is that they use the power of the executive and state to keep the chimera of elections alive, but then game the electoral competition with self-serving biases.

The usual blueprint for this is to use the state and its agencies as instruments against free and fair rivalry. Political incumbents routinely abuse state resources, manipulate the media, harass the opposition and thereby skew electoral processes.

During these last two decades, journalist and commentator Fareed Zakaria has also written about “illiberal democracy” taking root in many countries. Broadly speaking, competitive authoritarian regimes and illiberal democracies are similar concepts, except for emphasis. Zakaria’s emphasis is on the erosion of liberal rights after elections and the abuse of power after gaining office.

The idea of competitive authoritarianism extends that argument not only to the exercise of power, but also the imperative to “remain in power” by altering the nature of competition. German American political scientist Yascha Mounk extends these ideas to “populist governments” that threaten both liberalism and democracy by weakening institutions and delegitimizing dissent.

Beyond media and other independent institutions like the judiciary, an important ‘voice of truth’ in society emerges from science, technology and innovation. While the main pillars of populist regimes do not specifically include an anti-science mindset, many of them have adopted such an attitude to court an anti-establishment electoral base.

In the US today, we see attitudes that combine an anti-science disposition in some areas, like vaccination and climate change, with a pro-innovation one in others, like blockchain (or crypto) and artificial intelligence. Both AI and crypto are being used as instruments of power for either national security or crony capitalism.

It is in this context that last year’s Nobel prize in economics, which was awarded to James Robinson, Simon Johnson and Daren Acemoglu for pioneering work on the importance of institutions, and this year’s award for work on innovation both seem particularly ironic.

It is either a post-facto award for a remarkable seven decades since World War II of institutional development and innovation, or a signal from the Nobel Committee that democratic backsliding needs to be countered with robust support for institutions, science and innovation.

As an economic historian, Mokyr showed that cultural openness to new ideas and institutional support for science were essential for transforming inventions into sustained growth.

The operative words are ‘openness’ and ‘institutional support.’ Among the key contributions of Aghion and Howitt is the proposition that dynamic competition is critical to the process of innovation through creative destruction. At a semantic level, dynamic competition is intimately tied to both fairness and an even playing field.

In many parts of the world, including in the US, science has become a national project, endowed with the objective of entrenching incumbency, rather than an earnest and open pursuit of new knowledge.

Paradoxically, China has leaned into this with a dramatic pro-science attitude. Shing-Ting Yau, one of the world’s leading mathematicians from Tsinghua University, says that “China’s mathematical progress lags the US, but the gap is not insurmountable. Chinese middle and high school students, as well as university students, possess abilities comparable to, or even surpassing, their peers in the US and other countries.

This potential provides a strong foundation for advancement, provided there is sufficient funding and minimal government interference. By fostering a more pluralistic approach, China can better harness the potential of its brightest minds.”

If India is to realize its aspiration of becoming an upper middle-income country in 25 years, it cannot afford to confine science to a national project. What professor Yau says applies to India as well. The government must fund science but get out of the way of deciding its direction. Science policy, unlike industrial policy, requires enablers, incentives and non-interference.

P.S: “Science, my lad, is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes [that are] useful to make, because they lead little by little to the truth.” said Jules Verne.

The author is chairman, InKlude Labs. Read Narayan’s Mint columns at www.livemint.com/avisiblehand