Our biggest problem in the next fifty years will be to find Indian solutions to Indian problems
Jay Dubashi continues our reflections on fifty years of freedom
There are many reasons why the economy remained weak. The government
at the Centre simply would not let go of economic power for fear
of losing its hold on the country. Now that the state is strong
enough, it can afford to relax. There are also forces that compel
it to do so.
Economic liberalisation has to go hand in hand with
political decentralisation, but not in a way it can disrupt the
polity as it did in the Soviet Union and destroyed that country.
Economic decentralisation is intrinsically disruptive of forces
that hold a country together. It is basically a philosophy of
permissiveness in which you are allowed a free hand in whatever
you think if profitable. The buzz words are profit and market,
not family and nation.
This is why the West is now talking of
family values and also of keeping the country together. Insidious
forces are at work even in old established countries like UK and
Canada, where there are demands for smaller nations, as small
as Wales and Quebec. It can happen in India too.
At the same time, economic decentralisation can also be a strong
binding force, holding in its grasp a multicoloured, multi-cultural
society, like in the United States. What matters is not decentralisation
or liberalisation per se, but whether its fruits are perceived
to be spread equitably to everyone, or nearly everyone in society.
There are also other problems. We are not a creative society.
We simply ape the west, as we have done for the last two or three
hundred years. They have railways, we have railways. They have
motor cars, we have motor cars. They have computers, we have computers.
When it was fashionable to be a Communist or Socialist in the
West, it was fashionable to be so here. When they ceased to be
Marxists, we dumped Marx too. And because they talk about the
free market all the time, which comes naturally to them, it has
also become some kind of religion with the westernised elite in
India.
Also, we lack their inventiveness. So we end up using western
solutions to what are peculiarly Indian problems. If we want a
mass transit system in Delhi, the first thing the chief minister
does is to make a trip overseas to 'study' mass transit systems
in western cities. Indians also go abroad to 'study' power problems,
health problems, school problems. And we end up with solutions
that create more problems.
Our biggest problem in the next fifty years will be to find Indian
solutions to Indian problems. We cannot do so by running to McKinsey
& Co all the time, or to the IMF or the World Bank, as we are doing
now. The Tatas can do it, and so can the Ambanis, because they are running
businesses that are basically copies of the West.. Their product
is borrowed, their technology is borrowed, their capital is borrowed,
and now even their management systems are borrowed. But the Tatas and
Ambanis are not India. India is something else. No great country
can live on leftovers from other tables, and yet remain a great
country.
I have said that the Indian nation-state is stronger today than
it ever was in recent history. But it is also true that it has
so far not faced the kind of pressures it is going to face in
the coming years. There are people going round saying that India
cannot hold together unless the economy is liberalised, but there
are also people who say that India cannot afford to go the free
market way and still remain Indian.
I want India to remain in one piece. I also want it to go modern
and remain Indian. India has to change, for change is a fact of
life. But how fast do we do, and who or what sets the pace?
That, I think, is the $ 64,000 question we face as we prepare
to enter the second half after Independence. I am quite sure that
India will throw up enough wise men and women to do the necessary
delicate piece of tightrope walking towards modernisation. I have
also a hunch that we shall survive, but surviving is not enough,
unless we survive as an independent nation that is still recognised
as India.
Jay Dubashi, the wellknown columnist and economist, is also a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party's think-tank
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