CHAPTER 1

A New India?

'O, how this spring of love resembleth/The uncertain glory of anApril day,' says Proteus in The Two Gentlemen of Verona. The recentachievements of modern, democratic India are not inconsiderable,and have been widely recognized across the globe over the last decadeor more. India's record in pioneering democratic governance in thenon-Western world is a widely acknowledged accomplishment, as isits basic success in maintaining a secular state, despite the challengesarising from its thoroughly multi-religious population and the hugelyproblematic history of violence around the ending days of the Raj. Tothis can be added the achievement of rapid economic growth in thelast decade, when India became the second fastest-growing largeeconomy in the world.

And yet – despite these great achievements – if the much talked-aboutglory of today's India is deeply uncertain, it is not because anunblemished sunny day stands in danger of being ruined by a freshlyarriving shower, as was feared by Proteus of Verona. The uncertaintyarises, rather, from the fact that together with the sunshine, there aredark clouds and drenching showers already on the scene. It is importantand urgent that we try to evaluate both the achievements and thefailures that characterize India today. To what extent have India's oldproblems been eradicated? What remains to be done? And are therenew problems that India has to address?

In historical perspective, the accomplishments are large indeed,especially in light of what the country was at the time of independencein 1947. India emerged then from an oppressive colonial rule,enforced by dogged imperial rulers; there was little devolution of realpower until the British actually left, and it was not unnatural at thattime to doubt India's capacity to run a functioning democracy. Asecond challenge was to avoid the danger of chaos and conflict, oreven a violent break-up of the country. There is a long history – stretchingover thousands of years – of cultural affinities across India,and the struggle for independence generated a great deal of popularunity. And yet the diversities and divisions within India – of many languages,religions, ethnicities – gave sceptics good reason to worry aboutthe possible break-up of the country in the absence of authoritarianrule. More immediately, the chaotic partitioning of pre-independentIndia into two countries – India and Pakistan – gave justified cause foranxiety about whether further violent splintering might occur.

Supplementing and in some ways overshadowing all these concerns,the poverty of India was perhaps the most well-known factabout the country – with little children in Europe and America beingasked by their parents not to leave food on their plates because of themoral necessity to 'think of the starving Indians'. And indeed, in 1943,just four years before colonial rule ended, India did actually have agigantic famine in which between 2 and 3 million people died.

India had not always been a symbol of poverty and hunger – farfrom it – and we shall turn, in the next chapter, to the question of howthe country became so poor. What is not in doubt is that the economyof British India was remarkably stagnant, and that living conditionsaround the time of independence were appalling for a large proportionof the Indian population, and not just in famine years.

ACHIEVEMENTS AND OPPORTUNITIES

Despite that grim beginning, newly independent India rapidly wenton to have a cluster of significant political and economic successes. Itsbold decision to go straight from centuries of colonial rule to resolutelydemocratic government, without a pause, has proved to besound and sustainable. In India as in other democratic countriesaround the world, democracy in the full sense of the term (that of'government of the people, by the people, for the people') has notbeen achieved, and there remain many gaps to fill in Indian democracy.1 Nevertheless, after more than sixty years of largely successfuldemocratic governance, India has earned its status as a leading democraticcountry. The army has not moved to take over civilian affairs ashas happened in many newly independent countries in the world – notleast in South Asia. The country has also shown quite powerfullyhow democracy can flourish despite a multitude of languages, religionsand ethnicities. There are, it must be noted, confined departuresfrom democratic norms, for example in the use of military powerordered by the civilian government at the centre to quell discontentat the periphery (on which more later), and there is need for changethere – and not just on the periphery. But taking everything together,there are good reasons for seeing a major accomplishment in thebroad success of secular democracy in India. Also, the relativelyhealthy state – overall – of democratic institutions in the country providessignificant opportunities for reasoned solutions to the problemsthat remain as well as for further extending the reach and quality ofdemocratic practice.

On the economic front, even though the growth of the Indian economywas quite slow – about 3.5 per cent annually – for several decadesafter independence, this slow growth was nevertheless a very largestep forward compared with the near-zero growth (and at times eveneconomic decline) that occurred in the colonial days. This prolongedeconomic stagnation ended as soon as the country became independent.However, to reverse a zero-growth performance can hardly beadequate, and there is much to discuss about the real as well as imaginedreasons for the forces that held India back for decades afterindependence. Happily, things have changed in that respect as wellover the recent decades, and India has now been able to establish anew position as one of the fastest-growing economies in the world.Table 1.1 presents a summary picture of the growth of the grossdomestic product (GDP), from the colonial time to now.

There has been some slackening of the growth rate of the Indianeconomy very recently – partly related to the global slump (there hasbeen a similar slowing in China as well, though from a higher base).India is still – even with its diminished growth rate below 6 per cent peryear – one of the fastest-growing economies in the world. While that bitof reality check is useful, it is also important to consider the policychanges that could make India's growth performance perk up more.The country's growth potential remains strong and robust and it can bea major source of strength for India – particularly if the fruits of economicgrowth are well utilized for the advancement of human lives andthe development of human freedom and capabilities (a subject on whichthere will be much to say as the book proceeds). We shall take up the'growth story of India' more fully in the next chapter.

After two hundred years of colonial domination, combined withalmost total economic stagnation, the economy seems well set to remedythe country's notorious and unenviable condition of poverty. The factthat there has also been, at the same time, maintenance and consolidationof democracy in one of the poorest countries in the world, makesIndia's achievements particularly noteworthy. India has also establisheditself as an innovative centre of some significant departures in the worldeconomy, not just in the application of information technology andrelated activities, but also – no less significantly – as the great supplier ofinexpensive but reliable modern medicine for the poor of the world. Asthe New York Times put it in a recent editorial, since 'India is the world'slargest supplier of generic medicines', in the pharmaceutical field, 'itspolicies potentially affect billions of people around the world'.

Along with economic progress, there has also been significant socialchange. Life expectancy in India today (about 66 years) is more thantwice what it was in 1951 (32 years); infant mortality is about onefourth of what it used to be (44 per thousand live births today asopposed to 180 or so in 1951); and the female literacy rate has goneup from 9 per cent to 65 per cent. There have certainly been majorimprovements in the miserable levels of social indicators that prevailedat the time of India's independence (see Table 1.2). All this isin contrast with the predictions of doom, gloom and famine that wereoften made about India in the 1950s and 1960s. It is also a substantialpolitical achievement that many of the leaders of democratic politicshave tended to come from neglected groups – women, minorities anddisadvantaged castes. As we will discuss, enormous inequalitiesremain, and many divisions have not diminished at all, but the factthat some significant changes have occurred even in the political arenaof hierarchy must be a reason to believe that more – much more – shouldbe possible. B. R. Ambedkar, the champion of the socially andeconomically discriminated (who did not shy away from challengingthe Indian nationalist leaders for their absence of engagement with'economic and social democracy'), insisted that we have reason topursue, rather than lose faith in, the power to 'educate, agitate andorganize'. Since India's political democracy allows plenty of roomfor that engagement, its absence or its timidity cannot be blamed onany prohibition imposed by 'the system'.

In this context we have reason to rejoice in the massive expansionof a free media that has taken place since independence. We shallargue, as the book progresses, that there are nevertheless huge failingsof the Indian media, but these limitations do not arise from governmentalcensorship nor from the absence of a sufficiently large networkof print or oral or visual journalism. India can be proud of its hugecirculation of newspapers (the largest in the world), and a vast andlively stream of radio and television coverage, presenting – amongother things – many different analyses of ongoing politics (many ofthem round the clock). This is surely something of a triumph of democraticopportunity – at one level – that adds much force to the workingof other democratic institutions, including free, multi-party elections.

The failings of the media, which we will discuss presently, concerna lack of serious involvement in the diagnosis of significant injusticesand inefficiencies in the economic and social lives of people; and alsothe absence of high-quality journalism, with some honourable exceptions,about what could enhance the deprived and constrained lives ofmany – often most – people in the country, even as the media presentsa glittering picture of the privileged and the successful. There is surelya need for political and social change here, which we will discuss (particularlyin Chapters 7–9). By enriching the content of the coverageand analyses of news, the Indian media could certainly be turned intoa major asset in the pursuit of justice, equity, and efficiency in democraticIndia.

AN UNFINISHED AGENDA

The record of India's achievements is not easy to dismiss, but is thatthe whole story? An agreeable picture of a country in a rapid marchforward towards development with justice would definitely not be acomprehensive, or even a balanced, account of what has been actuallyhappening: indeed far from it. There are many major shortcomingsand breakdowns – some of them gigantic – even though privilegedgroups, and especially the celebratory media, are often inclined tooverlook them. We also have to recognize with clarity that theneglect – or minimizing – of these problems in public reasoning istremendously costly, since democratic rectification depends cruciallyon public understanding and widespread discussion of the seriousproblems that have to be addressed.

Since India's recent record of fast economic growth is often celebrated,with good reason, it is extremely important to point to thefact that the societal reach of economic progress in India has beenremarkably limited. It is not only that the income distribution hasbeen getting more unequal in recent years (a characteristic that Indiashares with China), but also that the rapid rise in real wages in Chinafrom which the working classes have benefited greatly is not matchedat all by India's relatively stagnant real wages. No less importantly,the public revenue generated by rapid economic growth has not beenused to expand the social and physical infrastructure in a determinedand well-planned way (in this India is left far behind by China). Thereis also a continued lack of essential social services (from schoolingand health care to the provision of safe water and drainage) for ahuge part of the population. As we will presently discuss, while Indiahas been overtaking other countries in the progress of its real income,it has been overtaken in terms of social indicators by many of thesecountries, even within the region of South Asia itself (we go intothis question more fully in Chapter 3, 'India in ComparativePerspective').

To point to just one contrast, even though India has significantlycaught up with China in terms of GDP growth, its progress has beenvery much slower than China's in indicators such as longevity, literacy,child undernourishment and maternal mortality. In South Asiaitself, the much poorer economy of Bangladesh has caught up withand overtaken India in terms of many social indicators (including lifeexpectancy, immunization of children, infant mortality, child undernourishmentand girls' schooling). Even Nepal has been catching up,to the extent that it now has many social indicators similar to India's,in spite of its per capita GDP being just about one third. Whereastwenty years ago India generally had the second-best social indicatorsamong the six South Asian countries (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, SriLanka, Nepal and Bhutan), it now looks second worst (ahead only ofproblem-ridden Pakistan). India has been climbing up the ladder ofper capita income while slipping down the slope of social indicators.

Given the objectives of development and equity that India championedas it fought for independence, there is surely a huge failure here.It is not only that the new income generated by economic growth hasbeen very unequally shared, but also that the resources newly createdhave not been utilized adequately to relieve the gigantic social deprivationsof the underdogs of society. Democratic pressures, as we willdiscuss in later chapters, have gone in other directions rather thanrectifying the major injustices that characterize contemporary India.There is work to be done both in making good use of the fruits ofeconomic growth to enhance the living conditions of the people andin reducing the massive inequalities that characterize India's economyand society. Maintaining – and if possible increasing – the pace of economicgrowth will have to be only one part of a larger – muchlarger – commitment.

POWER AND INFRASTRUCTURE

If the continuation of huge disparities in the lives of Indians from differentbackgrounds is one large problem on which much more publicdiscussion – and political engagement – are needed, a far-reachingfailure in governance and organization is surely another. Indians facethis problem, in one form or another, every day, even if global awarenessof the extent of this systemic failure comes only intermittently, aswhen on 30–31 July 2012 a power blackout temporarily obliteratedelectricity from half of the country, wreaking havoc with the lives of600 million people. Intolerable organizational chaos joined handswith terrible inequality: a third of those 600 million never have anyelectricity anyway (an illustration of the inequality that characterizesmodern India), whereas two-thirds lost power without any warning(an example of the country's disorganization).