India Unbound

"India will never be a tiger. It is an elephant that has begun to lumber and move ahead. It will never have speed, but it will always have stamina" 

When, during subprime crisis and subsequent recession in world economy, India and China performed much better that their developed counterparts, suddenly everyone started saying... this century belongs to India and China. Some went further predicting fall of USA and emergence of India and China as superpowers. But now as the world economy is recovering, there is a sense of realization that these predictions were just rhetoric. Both these so called future powers are struggling with their problems and as far as India is concerned, I am pretty sure we are not going to be even near that dream in next 3-4 decades.

But it doesn’t mean that everything is wrong with India. India is progressing at a rapid rate, size of middle class in increasing and there is hope in the air. People have started to think that there are opportunities in the country and they can make a fortune in-spite of many hurdles. Many Indians are returning to their mother land to try their luck. It won't be wrong to say that all these started with 1991 economic reforms. India Unbound tries to highlight this point only. It tries to capture the history of post-independence Indian Economy.

I have always wondered whether Nehru’s policies were practical or they were just the result of his idealism. After independence he had a mammoth task of uniting India, stabilizing democracy and instilling secularism. Whole world was looking towards India and there was no dearth of people saying that India won't survive. But Nehru proved them wrong and insured that these goals, crucial for survival of India were achieved. At that time if he chose for socialist structure and then mixed-economy, it can be justified considering India was in rule of a capitalist nation for 200 years and all the newly independent nations were implementing similar economic policies. Even intellectual class of that era was supporting government control over economy. But our failure to liberalize economy during 70-80’s cost us dearly. Lal Bahadur Shastri made some attempts to restructure Indian economy but his sad early demise pushed us back again. Indira Gandhi's failure to deliver on economic front what India needed at the time made sure that we will not be front runner in this race of economic development.  

I have always admired Indira Gandhi for her leadership, defeat of Pakistan in 1971 war and first Pokhran Test-1974. During my school days I used to think she is the best prime-minister, India has ever had. But now, Indira Gandhi symbolizes dismantling of democratic system, political corruption, nepotism, strengthening of red-tapism and destruction  of each and every avenue of free public and economic life .

We have always been taught that uniqueness of Indian society is Unity in Diversity. But this diversity has not always played a positive role. Some sections of Indian society have fallen behind in this race of development. Their success is of utmost importance for inclusive growth. As Das mentions a new middle class is rising, we can be hopeful. During license and Inspector Raj, few like Dhiru Bhai Ambani, who were able to bend law in their favour could do something. Indian bureaucracy has always opposed reforms and even now, they try to ignore the reality.  But now reforms are creating level playing field. The lines demarcating our so called elite classes are now getting blurred. There are new rules governing the game.

Gurcharan Das is Harward educated and former CEO of P&G India. This gets perfectly reflected in the book and sometimes, I feel that he hasn’t done justice with opposite ideas. But as Das himself said that this book is about his personal encounters with Indian economic system.

A lot of things have happened since this book was first published in 2000. So some ideas may feel old. Nevertheless, it is a must-read for everyone who is even slightly interested in the story of Indian economic progress. It gives us a hope ...India will rise and one day, we may become superpower in true sense. 

Reforms Vs State of Indolence

India is a country where people need to be poked to make them work, to make them think. Indolence has become part of our identity. We need PILs to get administrative works done. We need PILs to make amendments in laws. There are cases where PILs have been filed just to make the government to notice something important. And, what happens once PIL is filed? There will be hue and cry for some days and as soon as media attention is gone, we are back to our perpetual state of indolence. As soon as the matter is gone from the pages of our newspaper, we are looking for something new in those pages to discuss.

One thing that everyone irrespective of which class,caste he or she belongs, faces is corruption. Even then we need a Janlokpal movement to make us realize magnitude of corruption in the country, in our day to day lives. We need a Janlokpal movement to debate on corruption. We need a Janlopal movement to do something about this corruption. And now once this movement is out of our front pages and news feeds, suddenly the whole debate is gone. We are back to our business of criticising government, criticising this system.  I am not sure how many of us have really been motivated against corruption after this Janlokpal movement and I am talking about real motivation, not just wearing 'I am Anna' cap or 'India against corruption' t-shirts.

As Anna ended his fast, in his final speech he talked about electoral reforms, to bring Right to Recall, Right to Reject. And again there were debates about electoral reforms for some days on all the channels, in all the newspapers, in our discussion sessions. But as usual, it’s now gone.

This state of indolence is not only making our democracy slow, ineffective but also not allowing us to see the root causes of our problems. We are unable to understand our problems. We are ready and in most cases, we jump to support any solution which gives even a little hope.  And this is the reason for most of the problems, we are trying to cure cancer using aspirin. I support Lokpal Bill but to think that it will really remove corruption from our lives, will be foolish [1]. Everyone is talking of corruption but no one is talking of a comprehensive approach towards tackling it. No one is talking about administrative, judiciary, economic reforms which are required along with setting up a Lokpal institution.

Similarly when we talk of electoral reforms we only hear some fancy words like Right to Recall, Right to Reject, decriminalization. We never talk about what are the reasons behind these. Why criminals are entering into politics? Why criminals are seen as leaders of their castes? Why have we not come out of caste politics even after 65 years of independence? Why our representatives are not working even when they have to come to us for next election? We talk about mandating educational qualification without considering that more than 80% of our MPs are graduate. We talk of Right to Reject without even considering that even when a honest person contests, he loses election to a criminal. Why do people think that an honest person can't tackle other politicians and hence is not suited for politics? We never consider that Govinda defeated a seasoned politician like Ram Naik. We talk Right to Recall. We say that 5 year is a too long period without even considering that this is the standard term for legislature in most of the countries. We never ever consider that why it’s not working in India if it can work in other countries. Why do we never consider that a person with merely 20% votes gets elected as representative? We discuss about youths not entering into politics. We discuss about setting  a retirement age for politicians but we never talk of internal democracy in political parties. When we see that women’s representation is less in legislature, we talk of women reservation bill. When people don’t come to vote, we discuss about making voting mandatory. There is no discussion on educating people about electoral processes.

There are millions of examples in other sectors as well. We talk of solutions but only at surface level. No one dares to go into root as India is a very complex democracy. This complexity has been discussed so many times that it has become an excuse to stay away from total reforms.

We need better laws and there is no doubt about that. Considering the present condition of Indian democracy, there is an urgent need to modify our out dated laws, processes and institutions. But we also need to understand our problems with holistic approach. We also need to make people realize their importance and duties in functioning of this democracy. We need to understand that we have been given the ultimate power to decide the course of our country. Unless steps are taken keeping people in centre, no reform is going to be successful.  

Abraham Lincoln said, “Democracy is the government of the people, for the people and by the people.”

The preamble of Indian constitution starts with “WE, THE PEOPLE OF INDIA, having solemnly resolved…”.

We need to understand that we the people of India are supreme and behave like that. We need to remember 'with great power comes great responsibility'.