Reforms need a push

Recently, the Esplanade concert hall in Singapore put up a delectable musical evening featuring Pandits Shiv Kumar Sharma and Hari Prasad Chaurasia who, along with their tabla and pakhawaj accompaniments once again projected to the world at large the cultural excellence of the subcontinent. It is, of course, another matter that the impressive hall was half-empty, which would in all probability not have been the case had Bollywood entertainers occupied the stage. But this is not the point of this column. At the end of the performance, Pandit Hari Prasad Chaurasia, with his inimitable sense of humour (which, incidentally, reminds one of the straight-faced Buster Keaton), told the audience — among whom was the President of Singapore, Mr S. R. Nathan, and his wife — that when he was young and about to begin on his life's journey with the flute, he had imagined that there was no India beyond Allahabad, where he was born and grew up. But now, after his many travels spreading the message of Indian culture through the medium of his flute, he had come to discover that India is present everywhere in the world.

Successful abroad

Briefly, what this means is that Indians are to be found in every nook and corner of the planet, which in a way reminds one of an empire in recent world history over which, it is said, the sun never set. That empire, however, was won with the help of muskets and artillery, at least in the subcontinent, which were preceded by traders and merchants working for a private company operating under royal charter. But India today has colonised the world not with the help of arms but with the help of business acumen and a remarkable spirit of entrepreneurship and tenacity, facets which the world has recognised today to such an extent that, in some places, Indian communities have become indispensable in the economies of which they form a part.

The inevitable question that arises is: why cannot Indians, as a community, be equally successful within India itself when they have shown beyond doubt that, as a people, they can match the economic and business strong points of any other group anywhere in the world? Admittedly, this is a much-flogged subject, having been debated no end since 1947 when India became independent and Indians came to be seen as a national community excelling themselves in specific fields while living abroad. So, why bring up this subject once again, especially when it has been discussed threadbare over the past decades?

Briefly again, it is important to focus once again on the policy-shackles binding the Indian Republic because there are firm indications today that, unless one more “big push” — much like the one which Dr Manmohan Singh set in motion in the early 1990s, when he was the Union Finance Minister — towards reforms and a further opening up of the national economy is given by the Government of the day in New Delhi, there is a strong likelihood of the India growth story stagnating in the 7-9 per cent range, which is just not adequate for the country to be truly propelled into the big league among the world's economic powers. Can Dr Singh do an encore, this time as PM?

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