Retributions  

India is finally on the march.

India turns 60 today. 60 years is but a blip in the history of a nation state. However, it is time enough to reflect on if India has kept her tryst with destiny. Has she kept the promise of freedom won after the grandest moral battle in history (as Pragati has described it) or has she faltered in its quest to deliver her millions liberty, happiness and prosperity.
Any appraisal of the last sixty years must acknowledge India’s grandest success: democracy. Despite the imperfections of her democratic system, and the dark period of emergency, democracy in India is now well established. It is no longer a system of governance imported from the more advanced nations of the West, but it is the very spirit of India—what defines her as a nation. One look at Pakistan, a country with which India shares much more than a common history is sufficient to understand the importance of Indian democracy.
For there is little doubt—if the idea of India as a nation state is now firmly established, it owes much to Indian democracy which has allowed a nation of breathtaking diversity to express its opinion in an orderly fashion. Where such expression has been stifled, India has paid the price, and in some cases, continues to do so. At the same time, Indian democracy faces many challenges ranging from criminalization of politics to increasing disenchantment of the more fortunate with the political process.
Perhaps, the time is apt to revisit Indian democracy. What India needs to do is to take the next step to a truly participatory democracy from merely a representative one. This may require fundamental changes ranging from improvements to electoral laws to fundamental reappraisal of the democratic system itself. Should it move away from the first past the post system? Will a presidential system of governance help? With increasing vivisection of Indian polity and the rise of regional parties, a new balance is required which—while, voicing local aspirations allow India to succeed in a rapidly changing and shrinking world.

While great strides have been made in the economic sphere, much else needs to be done. No doubt, India has finally broken free of the self-imposed shackles of Nehruvian socialism. The 1991 economic reforms have changed India, not only by freeing the Indian entrepreneurial spirit but more importantly, it has given rise to a new confident India. Socialism, in addition to the injuries it inflicted on India’s development, did much to enfeeble the Indian mind. By snuffing out ambition and vitality driving the Indian mind into isolation, it created an inward looking India suspicious of what lay beyond the horizon. Reforms have given birth to new generations of Indians: fiercely ambitious, unafraid, and competitive. This newly globalised India is at ease with the west and is looking for, or perhaps even constructing even as it searches, an abiding promise for the generation to come, an Indian dream so as to say. While the past still casts it shadows on the present in the form of protectionism and distrust of the ‘’outsider’’, the difference is palpable. India is changing slowly but surely.

But much more needs to be done. A new report from a government agency makes for a sobering reading: 800 million Indians survive on less than 20rs (50cents) a day. The agrarian crisis is looming and manufacturing, despite showing some encouraging signs lately, largely remains moribund. What makes it particularly galling is that it is largely a man-made crisis—the reform process has largely left agriculture and other vital sectors of the economy untouched. While the aspirations of teeming millions have been unleashed with the rising prosperity, the angst has yet found a proper voice. Here the role of civil society becomes extremely important—especially those who have benefited from the reforms. It is incumbent upon them to intervene in the policy debate and demand that the tools which have benefited them be extended to those hitherto kept out of the reform process.

Apart from political and economic reforms is the question of Indian society. In the last couple of decades, India has seen an increasing tendency among its political class to exploit the diversity which in many ways is India’s strength as well weakness. Sometimes, it is the Mandir-Masjid issue, other times it comes packaged as social justice, which is increasingly a naked attempt at divide-and-rule. If the civil society fails to stand up to such tactics, and punish those whose sense of personal aggrandizement triumphs national interest, it would not only threaten and retard India’s progress but also her very existence as a nation state. The Indian voter must not only ask the right questions of its leaders but also severely punish those who fail to deliver.

India stands at the threshold of greatness. With correct policy prescriptions and a united and vigilant society, it can–within the next 50 years–rid India of its greatest scourge: poverty.
It is a chance she must not miss.

And on that note, a very happy independence day to you all.

( First published at UPI Asiaonline)