With Greater Power Comes Greater Responsibility

In November 1956 a railway accident near Mahbubnagar in what is now Telangana killed more than a hundred people. Lal Bahadur Shastri, then the railway minister, offered his resignation, saying that he accepted moral responsibility, although he had not caused the accident. Prime Minister Nehru declined it at first and accepted it after a second, even more serious accident at Ariyalur in Tamil Nadu in the same year. The act is remembered more than half a century later, because it is rare. It illustrates the maxim of the topic, that with greater power comes greater responsibility.

The idea is among the oldest in moral thought. The Gospel of Luke records the words, to whom much is given, much will be required. Winston Churchill told the House of Commons in 1906 that where there is great power there is great responsibility, and the sentiment was repeated by many later speakers. Kautilya's Arthashastra says that in the happiness of his subjects lies the king's happiness, and in their welfare his welfare, a view that makes a ruler's authority a form of trust. The Bhagavad Gita teaches that a leader's conduct becomes the standard for others.

The logic can be stated simply. Power is the capacity to change the lives of other people. The more power a person has, the more he can help or harm, and the more his choices matter to those who cannot choose for themselves. Responsibility means being answerable for the consequences of one's actions. If power could be exercised without answerability, those subject to it would depend on mere good fortune. A moral order therefore ties the two together.

Power takes several forms, and each carries its own duties. A political leader holds the power of the state and must use it for the public good. A judge decides liberty and property and must be impartial. A doctor holds knowledge over a patient's body and must put the patient's interest first. A scientist who can unleash the atom, or alter genes, answers for the use of what he discovers. A corporation that can pollute a river or sell a risky product answers to those who live downstream and to its customers. A parent has power over a child, and a teacher over a pupil.

If power could be exercised without answerability, those subject to it would depend on mere good fortune.

The failures of responsibility are the clearest teachers. The leak of poisonous gas from the Union Carbide plant at Bhopal in December 1984 killed thousands and injured many more. The company had cut costs on safety while running a dangerous process in a crowded city, and the question of who answered for the disaster took decades to settle. In the United States, the Watergate scandal showed a President using the machinery of government against political opponents, and Richard Nixon resigned in 1974 when his party made clear that he would be impeached. In 1986 the Chernobyl accident in the Soviet Union, followed by an initial attempt to hide it, spread radiation across Europe. In each case, the powerful acted without regard for those exposed to the consequences.

Examples of responsibility rightly borne also exist. T. N. Seshan, as Chief Election Commissioner in the 1990s, used the powers that had long been neglected to enforce the model code of conduct and clean up the electoral rolls, and changed the practice of Indian elections. Ashoka, after the war in Kalinga, turned his authority to welfare and wrote edicts urging officials to treat the people like their children. After the Second World War, the victors tried the leaders of Nazi Germany at Nuremberg, and rejected the plea that they had only followed orders, thereby establishing that those in high command bear a special duty.

The principle also operates at the level of nations. The strongest countries have the greatest effect on the world's affairs, and the question is what they owe to the weak. The Rio Earth Summit of 1992 accepted the idea of common but differentiated responsibilities for the environment, which holds that all countries must protect the climate, but the ones that have emitted most and are richest should do more. India's debate over its own emissions turns on the same logic. Nuclear states carry the duty to prevent catastrophe, as the doctrine of no first use declared by India in 1999 is meant to show.

How does a society make the link between power and responsibility real? Through institutions that check power, such as courts, a free press, audits, the Right to Information Act of 2005 and elections. Through laws that attach liability, for example the principle that a polluter must pay, upheld by Indian courts. And through professional codes and the formation of conscience. Max Weber, in his lecture on politics as a vocation in 1919, distinguished an ethic of conviction from an ethic of responsibility and argued that a political leader must weigh the consequences of his actions. Without institutions, responsibility depends on the virtue of the powerful, which is unreliable. Without conscience, institutions can be evaded.

Ordinary life offers the same lesson at a small scale. A driver with a licence is responsible for the lives of pedestrians, a teacher for the confidence of a class, an official for the file on his desk, and a voter for the use of a vote. People do not ask for power as a burden, but it comes with one, and this is where the maxim is most often forgotten.

A caution is needed. Responsibility must not become an excuse for control. Those who claim to wield power for the good of others, as paternal rulers and censors have done, can cite responsibility to justify tyranny. The responsibility that goes with power includes respect for the freedom of those it affects, and humility about one's own judgement. Power that listens is more responsible than power that only cares.

Shastri's resignation made no difference to the dead, and did little to improve the railways. Its weight lay in what it said about the office, that it was held on terms. The reason so few have followed him is not that the terms are unclear. It is that those who hold power are seldom the ones who decide how it is counted, and the habit of counting it honestly has to come from somewhere else.