The Hindu Business Line : Being developed is not being great

Thanks to our (alas, outgoing!) President, Mr A. P. J. Abdul Kalam's continued inspirational call, we are all having visions of India acquiring the status of a developed country by 2020, if not sooner. The much bandied about BRIC report of Goldman Sachs and other equally exhilarating pronouncements by reputed foreign think tanks, consultancy firms and financial dailies have been picturing India's economy forging ahead to become the largest in another 20 years.

Undoubtedly, they all know what they are talking about. They are hard-boiled professionals with an incomparable access to data, impressive aids at their command to interpret trends and a practised grasp of comparative development economics. They are also under no obligation to play up India. There is, therefore, every reason why all the predictions about India joining the ranks, and even being ahead, of developed countries will turn out to be true.

But wait: What will be the quality and content of that development? Is it of any worth if it is only to lead to an aping of the garden-variety that is found in the G-8 countries? What will it avail if development becomes synonymous with a process that makes the society acquisitive, possessive, grab-as-grab-can, and consumerist to an insatiable degree? Pursuit of progress and prosperity is certainly justifiable, but they should not entail sacrifice at their altar of the enviable value system and cultural heritage that has been the hallmark of India. Unfortunately, detrimental trends are already visible. It is now every person for himself or herself and Devil take the hindmost.

Money has become the phony measure of the individual, so much so, the more filthily rich one is, the more of respect and awe he commands without any questions being asked as to where the pile came from. Mention in the affidavits filed along with the nomination forms of candidates contesting election of more than 50, 80 or even 100 crores of rupees as their assets has ceased to be a matter of curiosity, or a basis for investigation.

IMITATIVE HANGER-ON

The younger generation, in particular, is sold on the manners, mores, lifestyles and attitudes imported from the West. With little awareness of, and less interest in, values and ideals that have sustained the country for ages past, it appears to have lost its social conscience or commitment. Such trends, multiplied many times over in the coming years, and aggravated by vast numbers being added to the population, will rob development of meaning, except in the most technical sense of GDP growth rate, creature comfort and vital statistics. Or, even if India is taken to be developed, it will not be able to lay claims to greatness.

India was at the pinnacle of affluence and abundance when most other parts of the world were still primitive. The advances it had made long before other civilisations in spiritual, cultural, scientific and material domains have elicited the unstinted admiration of towering personalities of the likes of Max Mueller, Romaine Rolland, Albert Einstein, Aldous Huxley and Lin Yutang. By virtue of being a pace-setter and path-breaker in many-splendoured development in its true connotation, India was unmatched in being a great country as well.

If India has to blend development with greatness, it should soar like an eagle in all fields of activity, especially in science and technology, to the highest ends of innovativeness and inventiveness, instead of being an imitative hanger-on and merely picking up the crumbs left by the industrial nations. The West has spurred the knowledge, communications and technological revolutions, and been behind all the discoveries, inventions and innovations.

Until India takes over the mantle in these respects, it may be developed, but it cannot be great.

B. S. RAGHAVAN