Chanakya's New Manifesto: To Resolve the Crisis Within India (4 page)

Our defence establishment is being denied an appropriate level of financial resources, and our defence chiefs their due role in strategic planning. Defence infrastructure (including border roads) isn’t up to scratch because of unproductive wrangles between the Centre and state governments. Few people are aware of how incompetent our defence research and arms manufacturing establishments have been. Most projects, of critical national importance, are delayed almost beyond credible redemption, and suffer from unacceptable cost overruns. The performance of the Defence Research Development Organization (DRDO) is so below par that it should surprise no one if an objective enquiry led to criminal charges being filed against its leadership and management.

Finally, well-meaning but misplaced intervention by the judiciary and human rights groups is increasingly hamstringing our already ineffective security response. The fight against the extreme left-wing Naxalite uprising is a case in point. An unnecessary, even sterile polarity has been set up between countering a violent, anti-constitutional uprising with issues of development and human rights violations.

This is also the reason why we are not bringing in strong laws to deal with terrorism and, instead, are diluting what already exists. The US enacted the Homeland Security Bill after 9/11, and implemented it ruthlessly. As such, there has been no terrorist attack in that country since. We in India have no comparable legislation. This is all the more outrageous, since we are far closer to a global terrorism hub and the threats to us are, if anything, greater. Tragically, the attempt by the Centre to introduce the National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC) has also been derailed, not only because the proposal was badly steered by the government, but also due to the misguided and politically motivated considerations of ‘federalism’ raised by some states.

5. BUILDING AN INCLUSIVE SOCIETY: If Mahatma Gandhi made the development and well-being of the poorest of the poor and the dispossessed an integral part of the freedom struggle, why have we, after all these years, emerged as one of the most socially insensitive societies in the world?

We do not notice it ourselves, but any foreign observer is appalled by the complete lack of concern shown by the privileged sections of the populace in India to the poverty, squalor and deprivation surrounding them. Our mega-cities have some of the largest slums in the world. There are roughly 300 million Indians who live in extreme poverty, but are seen only as forgettable statistics by economic planners and the upwardly mobile.

My criticism here has to do with our apathetic attitude towards the poor. People walk into five-star hotels oblivious to the slums adjacent to them. Shopping malls overflow with the representatives of a swelling middle class, but few notice the homeless living on pavements just outside.

We may produce the world’s largest number of engineers, but we are also home to the largest number of illiterate people. Luxury hospitals are proliferating, and for those who can afford them, it is of little concern that millions do not have access to even primary health care, and that half our children suffer from malnutrition, or die of avoidable diseases like malaria and dysentery. This social insensitivity negates the very basis of our claim to be a civilized country. We need a revolution to change the way we are, but there are no signs of it happening.

An inclusive society may be the goal of all governments, but the notion of community welfare is conspicuously missing from the psyche of most Indians. This must change, because unless that happens, no amount of statements of intent or policy initiatives can remedy the situation.

Current government policies are based on outdated notions of state intervention based on short-term or populist considerations, where a fraction of every rupee spent reaches the intended beneficiary. Worse, each of these schemes spawns an elaborate structure of corruption down the line.

I have nothing against the generation of wealth, provided it is done legitimately. We are a nation of entrepreneurs, and our resilience, flexibility and ability to override adversity in making money is a great asset. However, there cannot be two Indias in perpetuity: one wretchedly poor, and the other callously rich. Nor can we condone people enriching themselves at the expense of the country, which is why corruption should be fought at every level; the corrupt are not entrepreneurs, they are criminals who are bleeding the country.

Except in fantasy novels, one cannot build an enduring and happy society without laying down a foundation that is morally unimpeachable and is based on values that embrace the poor and the needy.

These five areas cumulatively constitute the crisis India is going through. Is ‘crisis’ much too dramatic a term? After all, any government of the day can argue that it has engaged with precisely these issues and, given time, will deliver adequate solutions. However, the elasticity of the time factor is precisely what has created the crisis. The problems outlined have been allowed to fester for far too long. The time to act is now, or it may become too late.

It is also clear that the crisis is bigger than the ability of existing institutions to tackle, unless a serious attempt is made to overhaul them. The crisis that we are going through is not seasonal, nor is it the result of the actions of one individual or the other. The crisis is
systemic
and, therefore, it needs a systemic response.

Unfortunately, it appears that this fact is difficult for our leaders to grasp fully; they seem to believe that a bit of tinkering here and there will help them resolve the problem. But now the sheer magnitude of the crisis, and the change it demands, requires radically new thinking.

India has the largest number of people below the age of twenty—more than half a billion. At the same time, 93 per cent of our workforce is in the unorganized sector. This underlines the need for optimum economic growth to create jobs and a skilled workforce. If the growth rate falls below 6 per cent—in the April-June quarter of 2012 it was down to 5.5 per cent—the demographic dividend we boast of will turn into a nightmare, with millions of the educated unemployed rioting or agitating on the streets, a spectre that is already beginning to happen with alarming regularity. The difference between a growth rate of 5 per cent or thereabouts and 7 per cent is approximately three million jobs.
⁴
The crisis is, therefore, very real for our young, at a time when it is absolutely imperative that they keep faith in the system. Besides, we also live in a competitive world.

‘People’s power’ as articulated by the middle class has also become a reality. Traditionally, the middle class was defined as an inchoate mass between the poor and the rich. But, if we take a strictly economic criterion of defining it as any household that has a monthly income between
20,000 and
100,000, the middle class starts to look very substantial. Estimates reveal that in 1996, the size of such a middle class was around 25 million. Today, it is in excess of 160 million. And by 2015, its numbers are expected to go up to 267 million. This new middle class is angry, but not because it hasn’t benefitted from economic progress. In fact, it would be fair to say that the middle class has been the largest beneficiary of the rising incomes and productivity of the last two decades. The irony is that, with greater money in its pockets, it wants more.

What has changed then? In the past, the middle class was inexcusably insular, concerned only with its own welfare. This is what I criticized in my book,
The Great Indian Middle Class.
Today, for the first time since the struggle for Independence, the middle class seems to want to engage with the issues that affect the country as a whole. Consider these facts. There were 80,000 protesters, mostly from the middle class, out on the streets on 19 August 2011, the day the Gandhian leader Anna Hazare was released from Tihar Jail and drove to the Ramlila Ground in New Delhi. The protests that he sparked engulfed over two hundred cities across the country. There were close to four lakh people supporting his campaign on Facebook. One-and-a-half crore calls were made to the designated phone number in Mumbai in his support. And, in blasé South Delhi, as many as twenty Resident Welfare Associations held candlelight vigils to join their voice to his. Even if his subsequent agitation in Mumbai, and other venues, drew diminished crowds, and even if the movement has now split, it would be wrong to believe that the chord he touched in the collective psyche of the middle class has disappeared.

The venting of people’s anger is a positive development inasmuch as it enhances the cause of a more participative democracy. However, if the required change does not come about as a result of such expressions, there is the real danger of anarchy, which might sweep away even those institutions which are actually doing good work. If the middle class is willing to come out onto the streets today, who is to say that if the situation remains unchanged, the poor and the dispossessed will not agitate as well in a far more lethal manner than anything that is prevalent now. The Naxalite movement seeks to overthrow the State, but there could be other forms of expressions of public anger which are equally subversive.

What is required, therefore, is a new resolve on the part of our government, its leaders, those who run our institutions, and every one of us. That resolve must be based on a new mindset, a mindset that allows us to see the present situation for what it is.

The revolution of 1947 served us well in the first decades of our journey as a young nation and democracy. The time has now come for a second revolution, building on the legacy of the first, but bringing in radical change where required. To be able to do so, we must be able to objectively assess what we have already achieved, so that it can be built upon. This is what we discuss in the next chapter.

1947 AND AFTER

Nations seeking to fashion a new future cannot do so without objectively interrogating the past. This is extremely important because history does not unfold in watertight compartments: past, present, future. And although the challenges and priorities of each historical phase are different they are integrally linked.

For India, and Indians, 15 August 1947 will always remain a foundational milestone. It signified the culmination of a unique freedom movement, as also the beginning of a new project of nation building. We owe a debt to the founders of our nation and, in particular to Mahatma Gandhi, the father of our freedom movement. Our current sense of alienation and anger should never make us unthinkingly reject the bequest of this period of our history. The desire for change, which is undeniably much needed, must not lead us to reject everything in our past. The reverse is also true. Often nations end up deifying their past, giving it a near mystical legitimacy. Young nations, which have struggled and sacrificed much for their freedom, tend to do this more than others. The nineteenth century is replete with examples of newly independent countries that built a state-backed cult on the personality and legacy of their first leaders: Nasser in Egypt, Kenyatta in Kenya, Sukarno in Indonesia, Nkrumah in Ghana, Tito in (then) Yugoslavia, to give just a few examples. History is deliberately cast in a heroic mould and questioning its legacy is tantamount to blasphemy.

Today, both these extremes must be eschewed. We have to draw up the right balance sheet, between appreciating and preserving what has come down to us, and unsentimentally figure out what needs to be done differently to effect change. What are the main elements of the bequest of 1947 and the decades that followed? First, it gave us a democratic system, and set up the institutions that are a logical accessory to it. Our founding fathers chose parliamentary democracy as the basis of our polity, modelled generously but not entirely on the system that prevailed in the United Kingdom. This was not unusual, because colonized nations more often than not opted for the political system practised by their erstwhile rulers. Thus, countries ruled by the French have mostly chosen the presidential system, while the choice of those governed by Britain has been parliamentary democracy.