1

Transplanting the British privatization of railway policy in India: Mapping the cultural

paradigm and assessing suitability

Tariq Abdul Muhaimin and Naiyanad Songbandid

Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands

Author Note

The authors are students pursuing Masters in Engineering and Policy Analysis program at

TU Delft. Tariq Abdul Muhaimin – 4297237, Naiyanad Songbandid – 4312813.

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Contents

Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... 3

Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 4

1. Conceptual framework ............................................................................................................ 6

1.1. Hofstede’s dimensions of national cultures ........................................................................... 6

1.1.1. Power Distance Dimension. .......................................................................................... 7

1.1.2. Uncertainty Avoidance Dimension. ................................................................................ 7

1.1.3. Individualism versus Collectivism Dimension. ............................................................... 7

1.1.4. Masculinity versus Femininity Dimension. .................................................................... 7

1.1.5. Long-Term Orientation Dimension. ............................................................................... 7

1.2. Theory of Institutional transplantation .................................................................................. 8

2. Railway policies: A comparison ............................................................................................ 10

2.1. British Railways ................................................................................................................. 10

2.1.1. Evolution of privatization policy. ................................................................................. 10

2.1.2. Structure of British railway administration. .................................................................. 10

2.1.3. Performance. ............................................................................................................... 12

2.1.4. New structure. ............................................................................................................. 12

2.2. Indian Railways .................................................................................................................. 14

2.2.1. Structure. ..................................................................................................................... 14

2.2.2. Performance. ............................................................................................................... 15

2.2.3. Failure of privatization policy. ..................................................................................... 16

3. Discussion: Mapping the cultural paradigm and assessing suitability ..................................... 18

References .................................................................................................................................... 23

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Abstract

Policy transplantations and borrowing processes at the national level are often hasty and messy

because transplanters fail to give due importance to the understanding of cultural and structural

contexts of both donor and host nations. This paper explores the suitability of transplanting the British

railway privatization policy in India by mapping the cultural and structural settings in both countries.

To perform this, Hofstede’s (2010) cultural dimensions and the theory of Institutional transplantation

presented by De Jong, Lalenis and Mamadouh (2002), have been used. Although the findings in this

paper indicate that this transplantation attempt is not impossible, it has been concluded that the

suitability of this transplant can come under question under different scenarios.

Keywords: Policy transplant, Hofstede, Institutional transplant, Railway privatization,

Indian Railway, British Railway

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Transplanting the British privatization of railway policy in India: Mapping the cultural

paradigm and assessing suitability

Transport strategy and policy of a country depends upon the underlying political and

philosophical underpinnings of the society concerned, and often what scientists consider as a rational

choice gives way to beliefs, norms, and prejudices that are inherent in the institutions of the country

(Button and Hensher, 2005).

But, in a post-mediatized and globalized society, nations tend to look across the border

for favorable policy solutions developed elsewhere in the world. Today, policy borrowing happens at

different levels and in different scales. It is more often a story of imitation and emulation than physical

transplantation. These borrowed institutions are very malleable and can be transformed to fit the local

circumstances (De Jong, Lalenis, & Mamadouh, 2002).

However, a careful analysis of the compatibility between the transplanted institution and the

existing structures is not done, especially from both the cultural and structural perspectives. Because

of this, transplantation processes are often hasty and messy.

Indian railways, the 4th largest railway network in the world (“The World Factbook – Country

comparison”, Central Intelligence Agency) – transporting 7651 million passengers and over 921

million tons of freight annually, as of 2011 (“Indian railways yearbook 2010-11”, Ministry of

Railways) – enjoys a near monopoly when it comes to the management of this rail network. Although

there are a few private rail networks, mostly small sections on private estates, Indian railways is

largely a public enterprise.

Till date, several attempts have been made to try and privatize the Indian railways. However,

almost all attempts were subjected to failure. While there seems to be a strong resolve in the Indian

administration, to try and save the Indian railways from privatization, the Indian railway network does

not seem to be doing well in terms of maintaining quality, ensuring safety and generating economic

growth. For this reason, we wish to explore the possibility and compatibility of a privatization policy

transplant into Indian railways.

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Through this paper, we will present a brief overview of railway policies in India and Britain.

While doing so, we will also explore the structures of railway organization in both nations. Given the

structures and policies, we will then map their relation with the cultural contexts within which these

two institutions function. This mapping is done from the perspective of assessing the suitability of

transplanting the British privatization policy into Indian railways.

To map the cultural contexts of both nations, we will use Geert Hofstede’s (2010) national

cultural dimensions. Then, to briefly discuss about the suitability of this transplant, we will consider

the “actors pulling in” and “goodness of fit” perspectives presented by De Jong, Lalenis, and

Mamadouh (2002) in the book The Theory and Practice of Institutional Transplantation.

Keeping in view the importance of understanding different aspects of the privatization policy

itself, for the purpose of transplantation, a considerable portion of this paper will deal with the railway

policies of both nations. The mapping of cultural contexts and the assessment of suitability is done in

the last section of this paper.

However, it is important to note that the paper does not attempt to provide methods

or alternatives for transplanting the privatization policy successfully. It only seeks to make explicit

the privatization policy along with its different facets, while also initiating a discussion into the

transplantation process from a cultural and structural perspective. A Critical review of the findings

and furthering of research into this topic is encouraged.

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1. Conceptual framework

For this paper, we have adopted the paradigm of cultural dimensions introduced by Geert Jan

Hofstede in 1980. Although the process of operationalizing culture and behavior was – and continues

to be – subjected to criticism, we have adopted Hofstede’s cultural dimensions (Hofstede,

Hofstede, & Minkov, 2010) because of their relativistic nature. It is important to keep in mind that,

while considering these cultural dimensions, the values and implications for a particular nation only

exist in relation to other nations.

According to Hofstede (2010), culture is “the collective programming of the mind that

distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from others". Due to the presence of a

common set of software programs, people belonging to a certain collective often exhibit similar

behavior or response to a problem or situation. Hence, the role of culture in policy framing and

analysis cannot be ignored.

Although culture functions at different levels, for this paper we are particularly interested in

national cultural patterns due to their relevance in the policy transplantation process. This is another

reason for adopting Hofstede’s (2010) theory of national cultural dimensions.

1.1. Hofstede’s dimensions of national cultures

A dimension is an aspect of a culture that can be measured relative to other cultures; it groups

together a number of phenomena in a society which were empirically found to occur in combination.

The dimensions of national culture, as presented by Hofstede (2010), are power distance,

individualism versus collectivism, masculinity versus femininity, uncertainty avoidance, long-term

orientation and indulgence versus restraint.

Here, we present a brief understanding of all these dimensions. Their relevant implications

for the policy transplantation process are discussed in the third part of this paper. The indulgence

versus restraint dimension, which was only added recently, has not been considered in this paper

because of the absence of its measure for our chosen country.

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1.1.1. Power Distance Dimension. Power Distance is defined as "the extent to which the

less powerful members of institutions and organizations within a society expect and accept that power

is distributed unequally. This represents inequality (more versus less), but defined from below, not

from above" (Hofstede, 2001).

1.1.2. Uncertainty Avoidance Dimension. Uncertainty Avoidance is defined as "the extent

to which the members of institutions and organizations within a society feel threatened by uncertain,

unknown, ambiguous, or unstructured situations" (Hofstede, 2001).

1.1.3. Individualism versus Collectivism Dimension. Individualism pertains to societies

in which the ties between individuals are loose: a person is expected to look after himself or herself

and his or her immediate family only. Collectivism on the other hand pertains to societies in which,

from birth onwards, people are integrated into strong, cohesive in-groups, which continue to protect

them throughout their lifetime in exchange for unquestioning loyalty (Hofstede, 2001).

1.1.4. Masculinity versus Femininity Dimension. Masculinity pertains to societies in

which emotional gender roles are clearly distinct: men are supposed to be assertive, tough, and

focused on material success; women are supposed to be more modest, tender, and concerned with the

quality of life. Femininity pertains to societies in which emotional gender roles overlap: both men and

women are supposed to be modest, tender, and concerned with the quality of life (Hofstede, 2001).

1.1.5. Long-Term Orientation Dimension. Long-Term Orientation (LTO) stands for a

society that fosters virtues oriented towards future rewards, in particular perseverance and thrift.

Short-term orientation stands for a society that fosters virtues related to the past and present, in

particular respect for tradition, preservation of “face”, and fulfilling social obligations (Hofstede,

2001).

While culture is very important from the perspective of transplantation, one should not

overlook the formal administrative practices and methodologies existing within a political/legal

system. Thus, to analyze the successfulness of transplant, we have also used the theory of institutional

transplantations introduced in the book The Theory and Practice of Institutional Transplantation by

De Jong, Lalenis and Mamadouh (2002).

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1.2. Theory of Institutional transplantation

Using ‘institution’ as a container concept for all possible transplants, such as institutions,

policies, programs, procedures, ideologies, justifications, attitudes and ideas, De Jong, Lalenis and

Mamadouh (2002) make a distinction between formal institutions, which are legal rules of the game

telling who is allowed (or not) or obliged (or not) to undertake what actions and under what conditions,

and informal institutions, which are social practices and rituals based on underlying cultural values

and norms.

According to De Jong et al. (2002), there are three different levels of action in which the

transplantation process can occur: The constitutional level, the level of policy areas, and the

operational level. The transplantation attempt, being studied in this paper, operates at the level of

policy areas.

Combining these levels of actions with the formal and informal classification of institutions,

De Jong and Mamadouh also list a table showing different domains of institutional transplantations

(see Table 1).

Table 1: Different domains of institutional transplantations (Source: De Jong and Mamadouh, 2002)

Level of Action Formal Relations Informal Practices

Constitutional level (ground rules) Legal systems Value orientations

Level of policy area (relations between governmental

bodies)

Formal regulations Informal codes

Operational level (daily activities) Procedures Roles

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De Jong et al. also present a contrast between two different perspectives that are often used

to describe and assess transplantation processes. These are the “actors pulling in” perspective and the

“goodness of fit” perspective. We will use both these perspectives in this paper to briefly discuss the

potentiality of the privatization of railway policy transplant.

The “actors pulling in” perspective involves different types of actors that can set a transfer in

motion. These can be bureaucrats, pressure groups, political parties, policy entrepreneurs etc. This

perspective is used to warn potential transplanters against thoughtless transplantation attempts that

leave no room for participation of local actors. It underlines the importance of the process of

adjustment.

The “goodness of fit” perspective, on the other hand, is an influential perspective to predict

the suitability of an institutional transplant. The concept of ‘families of nations’ is introduced to help

in gauging the goodness of fit. This perspective relies on the assumption that (1) families of countries

can be distinguished, and (2) the characteristics of each of these families are influential in assessing

the suitability of any potential institutional transplant.

A group of nations are said to belong to one family based on the common style of formal

legislation and informal social conventions in politics and policy-making. The ‘families of nations’

concept is further theorized through ‘legal families’ and ‘cultural families’. Legal families are groups

of countries that share a common legal framework, while cultural families are the clusters of nations

that are grouped together based on several cultural dimension scores or value orientations.

Hence, from the perspective of a policy transplantation process, it is important to clearly

identify the type of institution being transplanted, the level at which it is to be transplanted and the

manner in which it is to be transplanted. If the legal or administrative frameworks of a nation are not

suitable for a certain institutional transplant, then measures of adaptability need be thought over.

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2. Railway policies: A comparison

To present a brief comparison between the performance and structure of railway policies in

India and Britain, we will explore the post-privatization policy and structure of Britain in the first

section of this part; and in the second section, we will touch upon the policy and performance of

Indian railways.

2.1. British railways

In this section, we will firstly discuss the evolution of railway privatization policy in Britain

and then the resulting structure of British railway organization. Performance issues related to the post-

privatization structure are summarized in the second sub-section. Then, the newly adopted structure

is presented.

2.1.1. Evolution of privatization policy. In 1993, a legislation known as the Railways Act

was passed by the British parliament. This legislation laid the foundation of privatization policy within

British railways. It was to be implemented by fragmenting the railway into a large number of private

businesses, linked to one another by a network of service contracts.

According to Glaister, Burnham, Stevens, and Travers (2006), the Railways Act ushered in

three-and-a-half years of intensive activity as some 80 separate companies were formed, and train

services were franchised out to 25 operating companies. Railtrack, a group of companies that owned

the track, signaling, tunnels, bridges, level crossings and all but a handful of stations of the British

railway system from its formation in April 1994 until 2002, was set up.

2.1.2. Structure of British railway administration. To understand the structure within

which the railway was managed and regulated, and how it changed over time, let us look at figures 1

and 2.

As per the arrangements shown in figure 1, the structure of British railway organization was

very complex and led to the concentration of power at the higher levels. The powers to appoint the

Rail Regulator and the franchising director and to give direct capital grants for freight facilities, if

justified on public interest grounds, were retained by the Secretary of State.

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Figure 1: The post-privatization structure of the British rail (in 1997), Source: Glaister et al., 2006

Railtrack was responsible for central timetabling, coordination of all train movements

and signaling, planning investment in infrastructure, and safe operation of the network under the

supervision of the Health and Safety Executive.

The Rail Regulator, appointed by the Secretary of State, was highly independent and was

responsible for granting approval for all access agreements between Railtrack and passenger and

freight train operators. The Regulator was also responsible for granting, monitoring and enforcement

of licenses to operate railway assets; the enforcement of domestic competition law; and approval of

railway line closures (Glaister et al., 2006).

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On the privatized railway, freight services were always intended to be openly accessible by

competitive companies. But, the passenger rail franchises were subsidized.

2.1.3. Performance. In terms of the maintenance of infrastructure, the failure of Railtrack is

popularly termed as the best known difficulty experienced by UK rail privatization. According to the

National Audit Office (NAO 2004), Railtrack failed to put in place adequate contract management

arrangements. During the renewal of contracts, there seemed to be a lack of uncertainty about how

procurements should be managed and what should be the nature of contractual arrangements.

The accidents at Hatfield in 2000, Potters Bar in 2002 and Kings Cross in 2003 also

cumulatively cast doubt on the ability of Railtrack to manage private companies in implementing

infrastructure maintenance contracts safely. This led to the withdrawal of some private sector

providers from the railway maintenance sector. Hence, one of the major potential sources of efficiency

gain from rail privatization – competition in the labour market for civil engineering work – was not

achieved (Glaister et al., 2006).

Thus, in July 2004, the government published a White Paper, The Future of Rail, to review

its railway policy and also to propose a change in structure.

2.1.4. New structure. Glaister et al. state that the changed structure of rail industry brought

Railtrack into Railway Administration and replaced it with Network Rail, a new not-for-dividend

company answerable to a Board of 115 stakeholders drawn from the train operating companies, and

representatives of passengers and the public sector. Network Rail subsequently took back the

infrastructure maintenance work, whose contracting-out to a range of private companies had failed to

deliver good value for money, under its control.

According to the new structure, Franchising Director was brought under the direct control of

the department. The independent role of the Rail Regulator was also absorbed into an enhanced Office

of Rail Regulation (ORR), which was established to oversee safety, reliability, efficiency and cost.

Thus, the new structure of the rail industry in 2005 became as shown in figure 2.

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Figure 2: The structure of rail industry in 2005. Source: Reproduced from Department for Transport, The Future

of Rail (TSO, 2004e), p. 62.

When compared with the 1997 post-privatization structure, this new structure led to

distribution and decentralization of power within railway organization. The concentration of power

at certain levels had proved to be fatal for efficient functioning of this organization. This experience

of the British railway industry can surely serve as a lesson for its Indian counterpart.

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2.2. Indian Railways

The Indian Railways is a unique state-owned enterprise because of its size, ownership

structure, and 150-year-old history. These attributes, among others, make it a complex intriguing, and

thus fascinating subject to understand. It is one of the world’s largest state-owned enterprises, a utility

under a single management, second only to China’s (Kumar and Mehrotra, 2009).

Covering over 63000 kilometers and operating approximately 13000 trains each day, the

Indian railway network has around 1.4 million employees and 1.1 million pensioners. It carries over

two million tons of freight and about 17 million passengers between 7000 railway stations each day.

A fleet of 200000 wagons, 4000 coaches, and 8000 locomotives is used to achieve this (Kumar and

Mehrotra, 2009).

However, the Indian Railways has been managed as a departmental undertaking of the

Ministry of Railways, under Government of India, following their structural re-organization after

independence in 1947.

2.2.1. Structure. The Indian Railways is structured by a functional team of the Indian

Railway Service, owned and run by the Government of India through the ‘Railway Board’, also called

the ‘Ministry of Railways’. The head of this board is a Chairman who reports to the Ministry of

Railways. The board itself has six other members. However, the rail system in India has been

separated into 16 zones. Each zone is led by a General Manager (GM), just as the production units

and other units, reporting directly to the Railway Board. Each zonal railway is then sub-divided into

69 divisions and each division is headed by a Divisional Railway Manager (DRM) who reports to

GM of the zone. An average track length of around one thousand kilometers is under the charge of an

ordinary division with about 15000 staff (Kumar and Mehrotra, 2009).

The structure of Indian railways is shown in figure 3.

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Figure 3: Structure of Indian railways. Source: Ministry of Railways (Railway Board) CMS Team.

2.2.2. Performance. The revenue budget of the railways is fixed every year based on specific

performance targets for movement of freight and passenger traffic. Parliamentary financial control is

designed to keep taking care of the performance of managers entrusted with managing and disposal

of public funds. The parliament votes on budget grants, which are then approved by the President.

Several positive performance indicators are cited to rationalize the progress of Indian Railway

network. The important and generally used performance indicators are Freight traffic, Wagons,

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Engines, Train operation and Rolling Stock repairs (Management accountability, Codes manual

Admin finance, Ch. 5, Ministry of Indian Railway, 2010).

In terms of these factors, the Indian Railways has counted its best-ever performance in rolling

stock occupancy in 2010-11. According to the Hindustan Times, a leading news daily in India, during

this period, the coach factories of Indian Railways made 3079 passenger coaches, the highest-ever

production in a single year. Moreover, the locomotive production units reached the highest-ever

production of 497 locomotives during this fiscal period, which includes 267 diesel and 230 electric

locomotives (“Indian railways’ record performance”, Hindustan Times, April 10, 2011).

However, a 2012 report by a High Level Safety Review Committee set up by the Ministry of

Railways provides a different outlook. This report reveals a grim picture about the inadequate

performance by Indian Railways, largely due to lack of resources, poor infrastructure and lack of

empowerment at the functional level.

According to the report, passenger fares were not increased in the last decade, while many

passenger carrying trains were introduced on the existing overloaded infrastructure. This has strained

the infrastructure way beyond its limit and all the safety margins have been eaten up, pushing Indian

Railways to a regime of adhocism in infrastructure maintenance. The Committee has strongly

recommended the stoppage of the introduction of new trains without commensurate inputs to

infrastructure.

Another important finding of this committee is that the form of railway organization in India

seems to be highly centralized, top-heavy and hierarchical along departmental lines. The commitment

and passion of the 1.4 million strong workforce could not be translated into productive action

due to the present environment. A change is needed in the work culture, to empower the functional

levels and to simplify processes and procedures (Report of High Level Safety Review Committee,

Ministry of Railways, Government of India, February 2012).

2.2.3. Failure of privatization policy. The broad policy agenda of the Indian administration,

with regards to the railways, has been ‘no privatization, no retrenchment, and no fare hike’. Owing to

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many socio-political reasons and costs, the strategy of private organization has not been adopted by

the Railways till date.

The three main constraints for implementing the privatization policy in India were financial

limitations, natural monopoly attribute and the national responsibility of this service.

When there are extremely high fixed costs, for instance, large-scale infrastructure is required

to ensure supply to the railway service. It might lead to huge sunk costs that might be bigger than

what a private firm could handle. The investment cost would then not be recoverable within few years,

thus leading to serious damage on cash flow.

In regards to the natural monopoly attribute, the argument that competition would lead to

unnecessary duplication of investment in infrastructure is cited; and this is related to inefficiency.

Lastly, due to the socio-economic condition of India, ‘national responsibility’ of this service

is given a lot of weightage. The most possible effect of privatization would be ‘increased cost’, which

will in turn have a huge impact on Indian masses. At present, the profit of the railways comes from

shipping and freight. Passenger fares are largely supported by this cross subsidy. This aspect is likely

to undergo change with privatization; and the masses will have to end up paying more.

The Indian Government had to be certain that their policy in this web of life will not burden

millions of poor Indian travelers. Therefore maintaining railways public was necessary to keep

providing services to the general masses of India (Kumar and Mehrotra, 2009).

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3. Discussion: Mapping the cultural paradigm and assessing suitability

The usual expectation is that similar positive results as the ones found in other countries can

be achieved at home. Policy makers, legal practitioners and planners regularly hear media stories,

listen to informal talks during conferences and business visits or check the internet and are intrigued

by levels of effectiveness, efficiency or innovativeness realized elsewhere and propose to copy these

models. Yet which models are worth following? Which are suitable for the domestic situation? (De

Jong, Lalenis, & Mamadouh, 2002)

Whilst comparing the organizational and political contexts of both British and Indian railways,

we saw that there are many lessons to be learnt from the gradual changes that British railway

privatization policy underwent. The performance of Railtrack proved that privatization does not

necessarily lead to economic progress, nor does it help in curtailing fare-hikes.

While stating this, it is not our intention to present privatization as a problem or a solution in

the Indian context. We only wish to explore and present different caveats of the privatization argument.

As Glaister, Burnham, Stevens, and Travers (2006) stated in the book Transport Policy in

Britain, the demand for privatization of railways stemmed from need to solve a familiar problem: how

to reduce the demands on the national taxpayer without unacceptable reductions in the scale of railway

services.

Hence, reflecting over the performance of Indian railways in recent times, one would find that

certain aspects of deregulation and competition that were introduced into the British system are

needed for the development of Indian railways.

However, the biggest challenge in policy borrowing (or transplantation) processes is that the

real decision makers usually do not perform this task in a structured manner. Hence, the borrowing

process turns out to be hasty and messy, inviting criticism and opposition from political opponents as

well as masses.

To map the cultural and structural aspects associated with this transplant, let us now look at

Hofstede’s cultural dimension scores for both India and UK, as shown in figure 4.

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Figure 4: Hofstede’s national cultural dimensions. Source: Hofstede, 2010

We can see that India scores very high compared to the UK in power distance and long-term

orientation dimensions. There is only a small difference between the uncertainty avoidance scores of

the two nations; and with respect to individualism and masculinity, UK scores very high with India

lagging behind somewhere near the central value of 50.

The differences in power distance and uncertainty avoidance scores primarily affect the

political processes. According to Hofstede (2010), larger power distance implies political

centralization, lack of cooperation between citizens and authorities, and more political violence.

Stronger uncertainty avoidance implies more rules and laws, more government intervention in the

economy, and perceived incompetence of citizens versus authorities; stronger uncertainty avoidance

implies more perceived corruption, after elimination of the effect of national poverty.

From the structures of railway organizations, presented in this paper, we could see that indeed

India has high level of centralization as well as high government intervention in economy. This aspect

will have a large impact on the transplantation process.

Individualism-collectivism and masculinity-femininity primarily affect issues that countries

will defend. Individualism implies concern with human rights, political democracy, and market

77

48

56

40

61

35

89

66

35

25

P O W E R

D I S T AN C E

I N D I VI D UAL I S M M AS C UL I N I T Y UN C E R T AI N T Y

AVO I D AN C E

L O N G -T E R M

O R I E N T AT I O N

India UK

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capitalism; collectivism implies concern with group interests. Although India does not score very low

on individualism, the relatively collectivistic aspect of Indian culture was also reflected through our

analysis; the Indian administration is mainly hesitant to implement the privatization policy because

of the ‘national responsibility’ that it supposedly carries.

Masculinity implies a focus on economic growth and competition and a belief in technology;

femininity implies a focus on supporting needy people in the country (welfare) and in the world

(development cooperation) and on the preservation of the global environment. If we were to measure

the level of economic prosperity in terms of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita, then UK has

about 36901 USD (2012) GDP per capita while India has about 3876 USD (2012) GDP per capita

(World Bank, 2012). This vast difference in national wealth validates, to an extent, the relation of

masculinity and the importance given to economic growth. In this specific case, we could say that the

Indian administration is less concerned about its performance than their British counterpart, thus they

continue to overlook the state of performance in Indian railways. However, the relative femininity of

the Indian nation can be seen as a positive aspect for possible transplantation, because feminine

cultures are more open to participatory methods of decision making.

In our analysis, we have seen that the assessment of British railways’ performance, after the

privatization policy was implemented, showed several structural dysfunctionalities in terms of

regulation and structural implementation. Thus, it would be inappropriate to associate ‘implicit

successfulness’ with the privatization policy of Britain ‘as it is’.

Thus, from the ‘actors pulling in’ perspective, the transplantation process would be more

successful if the domestic actors – who are pulling in the transplant – reframe the policy according to

their own utilities by engaging civil society for generating modifications in the policy.

According to K. G. Balakrishnan (2008), India is a common law country that derives most of

its modern judicial framework from the British legal system. There exists a uniform system of justice

dispensation in India, with the Supreme Court at the apex and High Courts in the States (provincial

units in India), as well as numerous other subordinate courts.

21

Therefore, when we look into the legal and constitutional framework of India, we find that

India and Britain have a lot of similarities owing to the British colonial rule to which India was

subjected from 1858 to 1947. As a consequence of this rule, several institutional and legal frameworks

were transplanted by the British administration in India at that time. Although these transplants were

established by pressure, they have been retained to a large extent even till today.

Thus, while considering the ‘legal families’ framework for conceptualizing ‘families of

nations’, we find that India and Britain more or less belong to the same family. This is a positive

indicator for gauging the ‘goodness of fit’ argument presented by De Jong, Lalenis and Mamadouh.

However, the ‘cultural families’ framework for conceptualizing ‘families of nations’ indicates

that India and Britain belong to two different clusters of nations. By using Hofstede’s cultural

dimension scores (see Figure 4) of India and Britain, we find that India is classified as a Less

developed Asian country and Great Britain is categorized among the Anglo countries. Countries

belonging to these two clusters have different social and political structures.

Hence, if we were to agree with the empirical validity of the ‘goodness of fit’ argument, we

could say that the suitability of this transplant is reasonably high because of the compatibility at

legal/constitutional level, but could face severe challenges if cultural differences and public consensus

are not taken into consideration during transplantation.

Lastly, if one were to consider the historical interaction between India and Britain for analysis,

the suitability of choosing the British policy as a model for transplantation would certainly come

under question. Nationalist (and even ultra-nationalist) political and apolitical groups in India, which

thrive on the history of conflict between the two administrations during colonial rule, would certainly

pose a challenge to the transplantation process.

However, careful and slow adaptation of certain borrowings is undoubtedly possible, if the

cultural and structural differences between both nations are examined in detail before developing the

most suitable method for the transplantation process.

To end this paper, we would like to stress on the fact that when borrowing is locally induced,

the sense of acquiring is even stronger. Borrowing institutions from a successful country should be

22

seen as a means to share in that success. Transplantation or borrowing is always less costly and more

likely to succeed than innovation proper.

EPA 1432/ EPA 7021 23

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