Sixty five years of Independence is a good time to introspect, not to gloat about achievements, but the likely directions that the country is moving. Generalising about India is like to be a terrible mistake. This is not merely because it is too big, but largely because it is too diverse. I will attempt to put together all my incoherent thoughts into a posting that will also serve as a reflection of the present.
A dose of history is in order to understand the pathetic stage we have reached. We denigrate the person (Mahatma Gandhi) who played a pivotal role in the independence movement ironic ways. Criminal elements (street level ganglords) adopt his name as their nickname. Political leaders are proud to have his photo on their publicity material without even knowing what he stood for or what his contributed to Modern India. We denigrate the man who built the framework that has enabled India to survive this long despite all its contradictions. We easily forget history and Gandhi is no exception. While it is easy to criticise him for his innumerable short-comings, we often forget that among all the de-colonised countries India has been the only country that has over the years largely remained a country with a functional democracy. All the other countries that gained independence from Colonial rule have lapsed into dictatorships or now resemble failed nation States. India remained an exception - except for a brief period of emergency by a leader who despite assuming Gandhi's name, inaugurated the process of subverting the framework he built. Indira Gandhi started the process of criminalisation of politics and her proteges have fine tuned the process into a fine art.
I believe, despite his many drawbacks, Gandhi was accepted as a leader because of two important contributions: (a) he brought the masses into politics and (b) he created a powerful framework which enabled the rulers to assimilate different contesting claims. Fundamental to the framework he built was the system that was sufficiently decentralised in order to accommodate various local interests.Indian National Congress (INC) before Gandhi's ascent was little different from a farce comprising of Macaulay's chamchas who were desperate to line up for the crumbs thrown by the colonial authorities. The INC sessions were contemptuously called 'three day tamashas'. Gandhi had the unique distinction of being the person who single-handedly forced the INC to broaden its base. He literally forced them to 'go to the people'. Thanks to Gandhi's legacy, today in contemporary India, we have everybody threatening to go the people: this list includes murderers, swindlers who fleeced the public exchequer to the tune of hundreds of billions of rupees to small time crooks hope to gain a few seconds in the electronic media.
Gandhi believed that the new State had to be built on innumerable compromises within a broad decentralised framework that would gradually assimilate various contesting claims and give them a powerful reason to remain within the broader Union. The INC he helped build was an organisation that was sufficiently broad-based to accommodate even those with diametrically opposite thinking across the spectrum of social, economic and political thought. This accommodating structure simply supplanted the elaborate British structure. Within a few years of Independence India was ruled by a bureaucracy that in essence functioned like its colonial predecessors. But, it has done a fantastic job of ruling the country that is essentially nothing more than a brilliant idea. The bureaucracy transformed the idea into a geographic entity by re-building a army (after it was routed by China), a force that also polices its people, a fantastic railway system and above all assimilating the dissenters (people or regions) through massive transfer of public wealth into private hands.
Sixty five years after independence everybody has a stake in the system. That is the good thing: a revolution is unlikely for the reason that despite its dysfunctionality everybody benefits : from the billionaires to those below the poverty line. To those who are poor, we organise them into self-help groups and give them sufficient doles so that any challenge to the might of the Indian State are stamped out (remember one chapter of our history: long long ago there were some people called Naxlites who vanished into the night and never came back in AP). Within the next decade or two this story will be repeated in all the 16 States. To the ever protesting, never working middle classes the bureaucracy gave them some doles (called subsidies) they myth of a emerging super power, the goal of becoming a billionaire by following the work ethic that is present in capitalism: work hard and who knows you may become a billionaire. The global boom helped fuel these dreams and myths. It hooked a whole generation of Indian who can barely write even a few paras in any language without mistakes, who have near zero productivity, who protest corruption because they may never get a chance to be corrupt.
In other words, the boom has created a generation of India who are unemployable but would like first world salaries. A recent newspaper editorial stated that nine out of ten who completed professional education are unemployable. We have built an education system which has absolutely no idea that the world has moved beyond Indus Valley Civilisation that they would like to teach. We have a government apparatus that works because a few visionaries still think it should work. The rest of them push files satisfying their ego about their exalted rank and kow-towing by 'beautifully useless' petty officials, who are experts at following procedures and suffer from a remarkable poverty of intellect. We have a 'dynamic' stock market where price rigging is the norm rather than the exception. Our stock market regulator has to be forced into action only because the regulator of another country threatens to embarrass it sufficiently to take action. Our corporate sector is full of riddles: companies that claim to have thousands of crores of 'cash and equivalents' on their balancesheets but prefer to borrow a few crores from the banks at higher cost than the returns they earn. There are companies that rig stock prices and with the proceeds actually build businesses, etc (these are the 'good' guys). We have companies that are essentially no different from a land grab and which thrive because of the a century old model. The Bombay textile mills that survived due to their land holds now inspire a legion of 'new economy' companies that loot in a very old fashioned manner: dispossess petty landholder of their asset at a pittance but always complain that they do not get any subsidies.Indians are experts in changing the way the world thinks about them. Global Cutting edge companies that make money by selling technology products to the whole world invest in moneylending (microfinance) companies in this country - nothing beats rent as a source of income.
The end result is that we have a system that works when the visionary official forces it to work. But, even in those times, it lumbers along with all the attendant problems that combine the worst of the first and the third worlds. Our political and economic class is adept at siphoning off public wealth through a complex mechanism that includes stock exchange listed companies, transfer pricing and simple old fashioned hawala carting off money. Almost all the important politicians control listed companies directly or indirectly. Each ruler has revolutionised corruption. They now protest because they realise the next one has carted out more than they had ever imagined.
Yet, we consider ourselves a regional power because we can bully
irrelevant countries like Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and Maldives. The
best we can do is to compare ourselves to a neighbour which is
essentially a failed state (Pakistan).
After sixty five we have a system that is wilting under its own weight but hopes that it can continue blissfully unaware that globalisation that enabled it clock growth rates which in turn helped it overcome the social and economic upheavals is about to change direction. We are blissfully unaware that reverse globalisation has started and it is likely to gather steam in the next five years. Once that starts, capital will start to fly out (now it is only flowing out). The edifice of the bureaucracy and other sections (Army, Police and Railways) that we have cited above, that were built on complex assimilation of contesting interests is being stretched unlike any time in the past. The police and Army which are so vital to the law and order mechanism is seething in indiscipline. Imagine this is happening during a period of economic well being. Imagine, our position if we enter a recession.
This is not to claim that we will have a revolution in India. Far from it, since everybody has a stake in the status quo all we need to do is to simply increase doles and we will be able to tide over the problems. We have done this in the past and there is no reason why we cannot do it in the future. Who needs Gandhi for that.
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