CHAPTER 10 INDIA FACES THE FUTURE

‘India is an idea whose time has come.’

Ashwani Kumar, Indian minister of commerce and industry

OVER THE LAST forty years, India has seen some terrible times. Two of its leaders have been assassinated. Twice the country has been on the point of bankruptcy and once vast numbers of its people were on the point of starvation. Hundreds of millions of Indians remain in desperate poverty today. Several times the country has been on the brink of war. Once it was on the brink of a nuclear war that could have destroyed the country. Again and again, the country has been torn apart by riots with a savagery it is hard to describe. What’s more, none of the circumstances that created these problems has disappeared. And yet, despite all these difficulties, India has many reasons for facing the future with optimism and confidence.

First of all, it has developed into a mature democracy; the world’s biggest by far. Its politics are split by factionalism. Its national government is built from a coalition of over twelve parties, which are joined mostly by narrow self-interest. Many of its local governments are muscled into office by groups that play off one lot of bitter rivals against another. Corruption abounds in every corner. Men and women with openly criminal backgrounds are elected at the highest levels. Parties in power preach racial hatred. Yet despite all this, the democratic process works.

People vote regularly in free and fair elections, and the poor majority is beginning to realise its power to make real changes through the ballot box. The very diversity of views means that no extreme view can hold sway for too long. Just when it seemed the country might go down the road to Hindu fundamentalism, with the election to power of the BJP for a long term, so it pulled back again by turning them out in dramatic style in the 2004 elections. All kinds of forces are bubbling up to threaten the position of the Congress party, from parties representing Dalits and other ‘Backward’ groups to religious extremists. But this may mean that the complacency that has been such a feature of India’s ruling elite may at last be shaken and stirred. It may even mean an entrance into government for a broader range of Indians who are genuinely committed to solving India’s problems.

Prosperity and youth

Second, the process of economic liberalisation that threw open India’s doors to foreign trade in 1991 seems to have worked wonders. The economy is growing apace – each week bringing in an extra billion dollars into the country. Cities such as Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore have been transformed by the wealth flowing in. Thousands of Indians have moved into the millionaire bracket. Millions more have found themselves with the kind of disposable income to buy consumer goods that was once the preserve of the West. What’s more, the swelling economy is providing opportunities for those who are right at the bottom of the heap to break through caste barriers not merely in terms of income and career opportunities but often socially, too.

Third, India is a young country with the majority of its huge population under the age of 25. In the West, an increasing proportion of each country’s wealth will have to be spent on caring for the elderly in the future. Even in China, because of the one child policy, a large portion of the population is old, and places a burden on the rest – or at least is less economically active. In India, by contrast, the proportion of young people in the population is actually increasing. Young Indians will not simply provide a more energetic workforce. They are likely to change India fundamentally as they grow up with new ideas and new attitudes. Unlike previous generations of Indians, the current generation of youngsters has grown up in the full glare of western values – with their downside and their upside – and as they grow older and move up through the levels of society, it is inevitable that some of the old Indian traditions and prejudices will crumble.

The plague of poverty

There are some monumental challenges facing the country – the biggest of which is the extreme poverty of so many of its people. While the economic boom has been lauded, rightly, as a sign that India is on the move to better times, the plain fact is that for hundreds of millions of Indians life may actually be worse. The more complacent in the Indian government point out that the trickle-down effect is working, that by every indicator – literacy, the Human Development Index, average income – India is improving by 1 per cent a year. So things are getting better. Yet 1 per cent of very little is not much, and an Indian on a dollar a day, which so many millions are, would have to wait a century before getting two dollars. For Indians at the bottom of the scale, help must come sooner, not later.

There is no doubt, though, that there at least some people in the current government who are acutely aware of this, and Manmohan Singh’s government has introduced some of the most ambitious plans to deal with rural poverty that India has seen for some time. Besides the huge emergency package to provide one hundred days’ guaranteed work to the very poorest, huge amounts of money are to be spent on improving infrastructure and education. But the scale of the ambition does not guarantee its success, and in India large government schemes have in the past had a habit of being disappointing. There is a sense, this time, that things are changing and that some of these schemes might actually make an impact.

However, there are fundamental problems with the rural economy that government hand-outs and work schemes may not solve. By itself, farming now seems unable to provide sustenance for India’s huge rural population, and people will need other jobs. At the moment, there are far too few jobs in the villages, which is why so many villagers are migrating to the cities. But even those who move to the cities often find there are not enough jobs – certainly not enough well-paid jobs – and many end up sleeping rough or in the vast, ramshackle slums that are such a feature of cities such as Mumbai and Delhi.

Speak to many young Indians, though, and they will tell you that India is changing, and changing for the better. Despite all the poverty. Despite the environmental degradation. Despite the caste rivalries. Despite the tensions and suffering thrown up by religious and nationalistic tendencies. India is beginning to thrive. Indian cities are becoming vibrant, energetic places to live. Indian culture and Indian ideas are beginning to spread around the world – and they are not the old ideas that brought hippies here in the 1960s, but new ideas from a younger generation of Indians who feel not just optimistic about the future but excited.