The Hindu Business Line : Relevance of India@60

India today is considered to be an important player in international affairs, which is not only a sign of its overall maturity but also an important signal that the ball has been set rolling and any backtracking now would inevitably spell disaster for the nation.

Ranabir Ray Choudhury

“India at Sixty” can easily become one of those cliches which serves a purpose for the specific event it is created (August 15, 2007), only to be discarded the moment the event concerned has become a part of history. In other words, come August 15, 2008, “India at Sixty” is all set to become a memory, leaving no footprints of interest or importance for the years ahead.

But, of course, this will be tragic for the nation if only because India today has acquired the reputation of being an emerging Asian Tiger, a process that has just begun. Indeed, for a human being, the age of 60 is a good enough point to look back on life — at what has been achieved in one’s lifetime and what has been left unattained. For a nation — especially for an ancient civilisation like that represented by the Indian Republic — the juncture is one when a worthwhile attempt can be made to ascertain whether republican nationhood is all set to take off on to a higher plane of worldwide perception and recognition or whether a course correction is required to tap fully the nation’s true potential.

So, where are we on the path of nationhood — both domestically and in the international setting? Talking of domestic concerns first, can we say that the Republic is in a better position at the age of 60 than it was when the journey began in 1947? To this writer, the answer is a mixed one, with both pluses and minuses.

The economy front

To take the economy first, there is no doubt at all that we have progressed far beyond the point where our British rulers had left us. Indeed, this writer remembers the time when, on his first visit abroad (to Bangkok) in 1972, one was overwhelmed by the feeling that India was far better off than Thailand (which was then being run by the military practically on an institutional basis) as far as economic self-reliance was concerned.

Just a visit to the neighbourhood stationery shop provided enough proof that the daily life of the average Thai citizen was totally reliant on imports, which was not the case in our own country. And it was not only items of daily use that were imported.

The development of the Thai capital’s infrastructure (at that time booming because of the American presence in Vietnam) was also totally dominated by foreign interests. Roads, cars, buildings (including a flood of hotels solely geared to the R&R requirements of the thousands of American GIs pouring into Bangkok from Saigon every weekend), bridges, power, traffic-signalling equipment — everything came from outside or was produced within the country with the help of foreign collaboration. One wondered what would happen to the average Thai if there was a sudden clampdown of imports of these items. Briefly, life would come to a standstill.

Not so in the case of India which, using the path of self-reliance (sometimes, admittedly, to absurd levels), had fashioned its domestic production activity since the mid-fifties in such a way that, even if imports were scaled back severely, the impact on the daily life of the average Indian would be far less than in the case of, say, his Thai counterpart. This achievement was not confined only to the life of the individual but extended to other sectors as well, particularly heavy industry (the Mahalanobis Approach of the First Plan and all that) which, in many ways, laid the base of economic self-reliance in other sectors as well.

Clearly, this was a feather in the cap of the Republic’s political leaders, whose overriding policy of liberalised socialism encouraged the economy to grow in a way leading to its striking deep roots in Indian soil itself.

Certainly, even at the cost of economic efficiency (in the Western sense of the term, in the sixties, seventies and eighties), this was a great leap in republican nationhood, in many ways laying down the foundations for what was to come later, in a more liberal epoch.

Political development

But the scene is quite different when it comes to the political development of the Republic. Looking back, one can perhaps say with some confidence that our politicians (with honourable exceptions) have not been able to serve the nation in a way befitting the rich heritage of the Indian Republic.

In other words, one cannot say — as one can regarding the development of the national economy — that the nation’s political structure today is in better shape than what it was during the first 40 or 50 years after Independence.

There seems to have been no change at all in the public perception of the performance of politicians in general. If there has been any, it would probably be a deterioration in the acceptability of politicians as a tribe which, clearly, is a failure in the task of nation-building which the Republic set for itself in 1947.

It is the same with some other institutions of the Indian State. In other words, the average citizens will not be able to say that they have become stronger and more efficient with the passage of time.

Setting the ball rolling

The domestic picture is, therefore, a mixed one. The silver lining, however, is that it would have been depressing if the nation’s political and other institutions were doing better than the economy (perhaps an impossibility, to many observers) which, among other things, would have projected a less attractive image of the Republic to the world at large than is decidedly the case now. In fact, this is the other aspect of the Republic’s achievement at this juncture in its short life.

Briefly, India today is considered to be an important player — with an indispensable role — in international affairs, which is not only a sign of its overall maturity but is also an important signal that the ball has been set rolling and any backtracking now would inevitably spell disaster for the nation.

Indeed, this seems to be the principal message of the “India at Sixty” slogan. The opportunity is beckoning for the Indian Republic to fulfil its historical role both on the world stage as well as at home. To look back because of problems of political instability, increasing corruption at home, and so on, would be plain and simple insensible.

The way ahead is clear: Press on with economic development — which is being perceived in a good light by the international investors’ community — while at the same time exerting every sinew to improve the political content of life at home, a goal which may appear to be far away at times but is nevertheless attainable but not without paying the price of perseverance.

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