The sociologist Ashis Nandy once noted that “in India the choice could never be between chaos and stability, but between manageable and unmanageable chaos”. He wrote this in the 1980s, a decade marked by ethnic strife, caste violence, and bloody religious riots. But it applies even more so to the India of today, and is being made worse by the steady deterioration and corruption of India’s ruling political elite.
Throughout India’s history the manifestations of its chaos have been largely social and political: from secessionist movements and sectarian pogroms, to its enduring territorial conflicts with China and Pakistan. The bomb blasts in Mumbai last week are but the latest example. The perpetrators are as yet unidentified: like the 2008 Mumbai attacks, they may have originated from Pakistan, but whoever they turn out to be, this was a familiar example of one of India’s pervasive and long-standing fault lines.
Yet the Republic of India today faces challenges that are as much moral as social or political, with the Mumbai blasts having only temporarily shifted off the front pages the corruption scandals that more recently dominated. These have revealed that manner in which our politicians have abused the state’s power of eminent domain, its control of infrastructural contracts, and its monopoly of natural resources, to enrich themselves. Rectifying this is now arguably India’s defining challenge.
These scandals implicate many of the country’s most powerful leaders. They include the large scale looting of mineral resources in southern and eastern India; graft during the organising of the Commonwealth Games in New Delhi; the underpricing of mobile phone contracts to the tune of billions of dollars; and also numerous property and housing scandals in Mumbai. Corruption is not new in India, but the scale and ubiquity of these problems is genuinely unprecedented.
This activity cuts across political parties – small and large, regional and national. It has tainted the media too, with influential editors now commonly lobbying pliant politicians to bend the law to favour particular corporations. But while journalists may collude, and many companies and corporate titans have benefited, the chief promoters of this malaise have been the politicians themselves.
There is a curious paradox here; for India is the creation of a generation of visionary and selfless leaders who governed it in the first decades of freedom. These men and women united a disparate nation from its fragments; gave it a democratic constitution; and respected linguistic and especially religious pluralism, out of the conviction that India should not become a Hindu Pakistan. Today’s scandals, however, have their origin in the steady deterioration in the character of this Indian political class.
Surging growth is another proximate cause. Economic liberalisation has created wealth and jobs, and a class of entrepreneurs unshackled by the state. But its darker side is manifest in rising income inequalities and sweetheart deals between politicians and favoured businessmen, leading to the loss of billions of dollars to the public exchequer.
Was this necessary or inevitable? Perhaps not. The truth is that since 1991, the word “reform” has been defined in narrowly commercial terms, as meaning the withdrawal of the state from economic activity. The reform and renewal of public institutions has been ignored. It is this neglect that has led to a steady corrosion in state capacity, as manifest in the growing failure to moderate inequalities, manage social conflict, and enforce fair and efficient governance.
This could have been anticipated. Over the past three decades, a series of commissions have highlighted the need for institutional reforms, that, among other things, would insulate administrators and judges from interference by capricious politicians; prohibit criminals from contesting elections; curb abuse of the power of eminent domain; provide proper compensation for villagers displaced by industrial projects; make more efficient the now mostly malfunctioning public health system.
Many, perhaps all, of these reports have been read by Manmohan Singh, India’s scholarly prime minister; indeed, several were commissioned by him. Which is why the inaction on their recommendations is so disheartening. When Mr Singh became prime minister seven years ago, his appointment was widely welcomed. He was seen as incorruptible, and with the added advantage of a lifetime of public service. Tragically, in terms of concrete institutional reform these have been seven wasted years.
To single out an honest and intelligent man when corruption and criminality flourish may seem unfair. But W.B. Yeats was right: it is when the best lack intensity and conviction that we must fear for ourselves and our future. Mr Singh has been content to let things ride. He has not asserted himself against corrupt cabinet colleagues, nor has he promoted greater efficiency in public administration. Whatever the cause – personal diffidence or a dependence, in political terms, on Sonia Gandhi, his party president – this inactivity has greatly damaged his credibility, not to say India itself.
If nothing else, the current wave of corruption scandals will put at least a temporary halt to premature talk of India’s imminent rise to superstardom. Such fancies are characteristic of editors in New Delhi and businessmen in Mumbai, who dream often of catching up with and even surpassing China. Yet the truth is that India is in no position to become a superpower. It is not a rising power, nor even an emerging power. It is merely a fascinating, complex, and perhaps unique experiment in nationhood and democracy, whose leaders need still to attend to the fault lines within, rather than presume to take on the world without.
The writer is a historian whose books include India after Gandhi and Makers of Modern India. He lives in Bangalore.
India’s biggest problem is its old and tired leadership
Corruption in India is not only pervasive but threatens to reach predatory levels. This has spurred pessimism in some quarters about India’s future. Such gloom, however, misses the larger picture.
No nation’s potential can be measured by one yardstick alone. Corruption poses a serious challenge to India, but to contend that it will block India’s great-power ambitions is to forget history. The United States, for example, rose as a world power in spite its robber barons. And now China is demonstrating that rampant corruption is no barrier to a country’s dramatic rise on the world stage.
The pessimists also miss out one key development in India – there is already a public backlash against corruption that has galvanised judicial activism, sent several important politicians to jail, put the government on the defensive, and created new crusading icons. Contrast this with the Chinese system, which reeks of unbridled and unchecked corruption, with the public helpless.
In world history, periods of rapid economic growth have often been accompanied by rising wealth and income inequality and widespread corruption. It took the US more than half a century to bring the era of robber barons to an end, although big-bucks corruption still remains a challenge. In India, the backlash against crooked politicians and entrepreneurs – and the public campaign for cleaner politics and business practices – has started in earnest barely two decades after the advent of rapid growth.
India’s economic and military rise is threatened neither by corruption nor by its ethnic diversity. India has demonstrated that unlike the traditionally homogenous societies of East Asia, a nation can manage diversity – and thrive on it. As one of the oldest and most-assimilative civilisations in the world, India can truly play the role of a bridge between the East and the West.
Rather, India’s rise is threatened by a political factor – a leadership deficit, which is compounded by a splintered polity. India is still governed by a pre-independence leadership – an anomaly even in Asia, where age is supposed to be wisdom. India today boasts the world’s oldest head of government and oldest foreign minister. Old, tired, risk-averse leadership can hardly propel any country to greatness. Worse, India’s coalition federal governments, which have become a norm, tend to function by the rule of parochial politics – in fact, by the lowest common denominator.
Yet, democracy remains India’s greatest asset. It not only helps instil fear among the corrupt, but also makes India’s future less uncertain than China’s.
The writer is professor of strategic studies at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi, and the author of ‘Asian Juggernaut’ and ‘Water: Asia’s New Battlefield’.
