By Swapan Dasgupta
India’s national days—Republic Day and Independence
Day—have become occasions for both celebration and despondency. There is a bout
of flag waving, some pageantry and lots of Manoj Kumar-type patriotic films on
TV. At the same time, and ever since I can recall, they are taken up a great
deal of existential anguish. Ponderous articles with depressing headlines such
as “Nation at the crossroads” and “Whither India” appear to dominate the
newspapers and these themes resonate in the talk shows where anchors shed their
dark suits for more desi
apparel.
It is unlikely to be substantially different this
January 26. With a general election round the corner, a hint of amateurish
‘anarchism’ in the Capital and growth rates down to a sluggish five per cent,
citizens will be forgiven for looking at the future with a measure of
trepidation. Even the Bharat Nirman ads boasting of India’s dramatic
transformation from shoddiness to the glitzy 21st century are
unlikely to lift the mood. Not when something as monumentally trivial as the
transfer of four SHOs threatened to derail the official Republic Day parade in
Delhi.
‘Crisis’, it would seem, is a permanent state of
mind in India. In the early days of the Republic, the optimism of the Nehruvian
intelligentsia was invariably offset by a fear that things would somehow fall
apart. The crippling shortages of everything from food and cooking fuel to
telephones and cars defined Indian existence. The only solace was Bollywood and
its regional variants that enabled Indians to momentarily escape the drudgery
of life.
Some of these problems were inherited but many were
politically determined and a consequence of the wrong choices made by the
decision-makers. Periodically, some great leader would throw up a great hope to
either banish poverty or take India into the 21st century.
Unfortunately, these great projects would be derailed through a combination of
incompetence, venality and plain bad luck. Yet India muddled through.
More important, India’s institutions endured,
although battered and in serious need of repair. And above all, India didn’t
lose faith in itself. As democracy struck deep roots, Indian elections were
dominated by two big themes: protest and hope. Each alternated with the other
for popular endorsement. The only occasion the two themes combined in 1984,
Rajiv Gandhi won the most impressive majority ever. It can happen again.
History suggests that Indians loath turbulence. They
may be temperamentally fatalistic, hoping for a better after-life, but they
combine it with a quest for basic sureties. It was the fear and revulsion of
the anarchy post-Aurangzeb that facilitated the transition of the East India
Company from merchants to rulers. Likewise, for much of post-Independence
history the Congress became the default party because it promised stability
with creeping change. In the 1970s, many India-watchers prophesied that the
Green Revolution would inevitably turn Red. It never happened because even a
poor country found radical breaks too unsettling.
The past is not always a reliable guide to the
future. In the past 25 years, India has witnessed profound changes. In
statistical terms, the economic growth since 1990 has matched the growth spread
over the preceding 100 years. The timeless and unchanging India which
fascinated romantic Orientalists is now history. There is now a new India that
is discernibly less fatalistic and considerably more impatient for a better
life that their parents and grandparents never enjoyed. Above all, there is a
growing India that measures itself in global terms. To economists India may be
a “developing” country but the aspirations of a significant section are on par
with that of a “developed” economy. It is this mismatch that marks India on the
64th anniversary of the Republic.
It is a moment to cherish. On the surface and in the
TV debates India may seem a voluble but confused country. Underneath the
surface, however, the country is being presented with clear alternatives:
between low but seemingly growth and an audacious bid to be a truly breakout
nation by removing the brakes on self-motivation. There is also a third choice:
to wreck the present in the hope that out of the debris will emerge an
alternative India.
For a change, the options are real and meaningful.
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