Tuesday, 31 January 2006
Prize-winning author and activist Arundhati Roy says during an interview with Reuters in New Delhi that India’s economic boom is driven by policies which are causing unsustainable environmental damage and blinding people to the misery of hundreds of millions of poor.
NEW DELHI - India's economic boom is causing unsustainable environmental damage and is blinding people to the misery of hundreds of millions of poor, prize-winning author and activist Arundhati Roy said.
"Even if you know what is going on, you can't help thinking India is this cool place now, Bollywood is 'in' and all of us have mobile phones," Roy told Reuters in an interview.
"But it is almost as if the light is shining so brightly that you do not notice the darkness," she said. "There is no understanding whatsoever of what price is being paid by the rivers and mountains and irrigation and ground water, there is no questioning of that because we are on a roll."
"India shining" was the campaign motto of the Bharatiya Janata Party which lost last year's election, unable to capitalise on the fast-growing economy and failing to convince the rural poor that economic reforms were benefitting them.
Roy won the 1997 Booker prize for her first novel "The God of Small Things". Since then, she has become a leading environmental activist and opponent of big dams, which have displaced millions.
She said India's environment faced a major crisis, caused by industrial pollution, by big dams, and in particular by unsustainable use of ground water to irrigate thirsty cash crops such as soyabeans, peanuts and sugarcane.
"When the only logic is the market, when there is no respect for ecosystems, for the amount of water available... then we are in for a lot of trouble," she said. "You have to have a system where people have access to some amount of water to grow whatever is sustainable for them to survive."
Falling water tables in states such as Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra have forced millions of farmers to the brink of ruin. Buried under unpayable loans, thousands have committed suicide.
Roy said the poor were being sold a dream of consumerism which was impossible to deliver economically or environmentally.
"The idea of turning one billion people into consumers is terrifying," she said.
"Are you going to starve to death dreaming of a mobile phone or you going to have control of the resources that are available to you and have been for generations, but have been taken away so that someone else can have a mobile phone?"
Since the BJP was replaced by a coalition led by the center-left Congress party, Roy said she felt less targetted for speaking out, and some of the "vulgar and vicious" facets of BJP-rule had gone.
"But in terms of what is happening on the ground economically, I don't think anything has changed at all."
Choosing between parties was increasingly like choosing between brands of washing powder made by the same manufacturer, she said.
"It was so clear that the mandate for the Indian elections given by millions of people who came out to vote ... was one against the so-called neo-con liberal reforms," she said.
"But the minute that mandate was given to Congress, it is almost like the cameras shifted from the electoral field in India to outside the stock market, where stocks were plummeting, including the media's own stocks. And people were forced to come out and say they were not against privatisation."
Recent court decisions in favour of dams and slum clearances had tipped the playing field further against the poor. "It is so easy for people who are on this side of the line to climb the ladder. The middle class has expanded and is having a good time, but for people who are on the other side it is becoming impossible to survive," Roy said. "There are no jobs, there is just nowhere to go, no way out of it at all."
Simon Denyer, Reuters in New Delhi June 9, 2005
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0610-04.htm
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
Monday, January 30, 2006
79 % of Indian don't have access to credits from a formal source
Monday, 30 January 2006
World Bank economist says more reforms needed for an inclusive financial sector
# Problem of access is more severe for rural poor
# India's financial system stabilised at the cost of efficiency
# Private credit to GDP ratio in India is under 40 per cent
# India's financial sector not very successful in allocating resources
CHENNAI: Large segments of the Indian economy such as small and medium enterprises and rural households are still excluded from the formal financial system and the problem of access is even worse for the rural poor, according to Priya Basu, an economist at the World Bank (WB).
A recent WB study showed that 59 per cent of the rural households [inclusive of the rich and the poor] in India did not have a deposit account and 79 per cent had no access to credit from a formal source.
Around 70 per cent of rural households [only the poor] did not have a bank account and 87 per cent did not have the access to credit from a bank or other formal institutions, she said while releasing her book, `India's Financial Sector: Recent Reforms, Future Challenges,' at a function organised by the Institute for Financial Management and Research here on Monday.
Ms. Basu is a lead specialist, Finance and Private Sector for India, at the World Bank.
Though rating agencies had said that India's financial system stabilised after the economic reforms, this had been at the cost of efficiency.
India's financial sector had not been very successful in allocating resources to finance higher levels of investment needed to sustain growth and alleviate poverty.
The Government's deficit financing had driven banks to divert financial resources to safer Government securities.
This had led to the private sector not receiving credit at expected levels. Private credit to GDP in India was under 40 per cent as against more than 100 per cent ratio of countries such as China, Korea and Malaysia, Ms. Basu said.
A new wave of reforms was needed to create a better functioning and inclusive financial sector. This would require rethinking on how to merge the objectives of the financial sector with profitability. The key words were commercialisation, competition and efficiency, she added.
A panel discussion on salient aspects of the book was also held. Published by Macmillan India Ltd, it is priced at Rs. 350.
World Bank economist says more reforms needed for an inclusive financial sector
# Problem of access is more severe for rural poor
# India's financial system stabilised at the cost of efficiency
# Private credit to GDP ratio in India is under 40 per cent
# India's financial sector not very successful in allocating resources
CHENNAI: Large segments of the Indian economy such as small and medium enterprises and rural households are still excluded from the formal financial system and the problem of access is even worse for the rural poor, according to Priya Basu, an economist at the World Bank (WB).
A recent WB study showed that 59 per cent of the rural households [inclusive of the rich and the poor] in India did not have a deposit account and 79 per cent had no access to credit from a formal source.
Around 70 per cent of rural households [only the poor] did not have a bank account and 87 per cent did not have the access to credit from a bank or other formal institutions, she said while releasing her book, `India's Financial Sector: Recent Reforms, Future Challenges,' at a function organised by the Institute for Financial Management and Research here on Monday.
Ms. Basu is a lead specialist, Finance and Private Sector for India, at the World Bank.
Though rating agencies had said that India's financial system stabilised after the economic reforms, this had been at the cost of efficiency.
India's financial sector had not been very successful in allocating resources to finance higher levels of investment needed to sustain growth and alleviate poverty.
The Government's deficit financing had driven banks to divert financial resources to safer Government securities.
This had led to the private sector not receiving credit at expected levels. Private credit to GDP in India was under 40 per cent as against more than 100 per cent ratio of countries such as China, Korea and Malaysia, Ms. Basu said.
A new wave of reforms was needed to create a better functioning and inclusive financial sector. This would require rethinking on how to merge the objectives of the financial sector with profitability. The key words were commercialisation, competition and efficiency, she added.
A panel discussion on salient aspects of the book was also held. Published by Macmillan India Ltd, it is priced at Rs. 350.
Friday, January 20, 2006
Disparities Sharpen as GDP Grows in India
Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, IPSNEWS.
NEW DELHI, Jan 29 (IPS) - That the first, second and third worlds coexist within India has long been known. A new academic report corroborates this but also speaks of a 'fourth world' left behind in this country of a billion people, that aspires to be a global leader.
Even as the gross domestic product (GDP) picks up an impressive clip, the authors of the country's first ever ‘Social Development Report' warn that, since the economy was liberalised 15 years ago, disparities and inequalities have sharpened and regional imbalances widened to a point where social instability has become a serious threat.
The 225-page volume, released on the weekend by the autonomous Council for Social Development (CSD) and published by Oxford University Press, essentially discusses issues related to poverty and unemployment in a compilation of more than 170-odd ‘development reports' on India.
But the authors' focus is on challenges in the health sector, education, urban governance, the condition of women, communal relations, social integration, inequality, population mobility, decentralisation and social security -- using startling facts based entirely on official statistics.
While the proportion of poor people in the total population came down from 55 per cent in 1973-74 to 26 per cent by the turn of the century, the progress was impressive in only three states -- western Punjab (from 28 per cent to 6 per cent), northern Haryana (from 35 per cent to 9 percent) and Kerala (from 60 per cent to 13 per cent).
On the other hand, in three poor states in eastern India, the poverty ratio declined far more slowly -- from 66 per cent to 47 per cent in Orissa, from 62 per cent to 42 percent in Bihar and from 51 percent to 36 percent in Assam.
Also, ironically, Punjab and Haryana were the worst performers when it came to their child sex ratios indicating a high incidence of female foeticide which is illegal in India. There were only 796 female children for every 1,000 male children in the under-six age group in Punjab, 808 in Haryana and 837 in another prosperous state, western Gujarat -- a classic case of mismatch between economic and social indicators.
The report also highlights the distribution of poverty in India's hierarchical society which remains skewed against traditionally disadvantaged sections of the population, including tribals and dalits (so-called untouchables) . These disadvantaged sections accounted for 75 percent of the total number of poor people in India in 1999-2000.
Whereas India accounts for 17 percent of the world's population, 36 per cent of the world's poor surviving on less than one US dollar a day live in the country, as do 68 percent of those afflicted with leprosy and 30 percent of people suffering from tuberculosis. India also accounts for 26 percent of the deaths that take place all over the world that could have been prevented with vaccinations during childhood.
''The social problems of contemporary India are the result of a complex nexus between the factors of exclusion and inclusion that are rooted in the history, values and cultural ethos of the country," says social scientist Amitabh Kundu, chief editor of the volume.
''Many of these problems are based on policies of segregation that have not been addressed by the development strategies followed by successive governments," he adds. ''The incidence of poverty has certainly come down but not uniformly and the same is true for the spread of primary education and healthcare."
''The policies of globalisation and economic liberalisation have undermined the role of larger societal norms as well as the state apparatus that could have countered exclusionary forcesà keeping social tensions simmering," argues Muchkund Dubey, former career diplomat and current president of the CSD.
''As a matter of deliberate policy, the government has started scaling down, if not retreating from, its constitutional responsibility of providing public goods in such crucial areas as education, health, sanitation and housing," he adds, pointing out that this has resulted in ''a sharp deterioration in the conditions of the poorest and marginalised,'' Dubey said.
The different chapters in the volume point towards an Indian society that is becoming increasingly polarised not just along class lines but also across regions and states. ''If the gap between the richest and poorest states were roughly around 1:3 during the 1990s, this gap has now widened to around 1:5,'' says N J Kurian, who is on the editorial board of the report.
Pointing towards the yawning gap between policy prescriptions and implementation of programmes, Neera Chandhoke, professor of political science at Delhi University, said government policies ''meant for the poor have been indiscriminately generalised" and the situation has been compounded by ''rampant corruption and mismanagement of scarce resources''.
She said the cases of Punjab and Haryana clearly indicated that ''economic growth does not necessarily lead to social development" and that ‘'the relationship that is often sought to be drawn between democracy and social development is rather tenuous''.
Commented well-known social scientist Amit Bhaduri: ''India is a political success and an economic failure despite its eight percent GDP growth rate, simply because there are between 280 million and 300 million people in the country who live in sub-human poverty."
India continues to confound many with its crazy contrasts. Its cities glitter and its elite talk of the country becoming a knowledge superpower. It is a nation with 17 languages on its currency notes.
A report prepared in April 2004 by the United States-based financial services leader Goldman Sachs observed: ''India is often characterised as a country of contradictions. This idea is exemplified by the popular phrase that India accounts for close to a third of the world's software engineers and a quarter of the world's undernourished".
Coexisting in the country is a range of political and economic systems, including different forms of feudalism, capitalism and socialism.
But the good news is that India has defied the contention of doomsayers that say such a deeply-divided country can never survive as a single nation-state. After independence in 1947, India not only stayed in one piece but has emerged as one of the fastest growing countries of the world.
Indians bribe 21,068 crore Rupees in 2004
Hindustan Times, 19 January 2006
For those who believe that corruption in India is almost an industry, here’s proof.
A survey conducted by Transparency International India (TII) says Indians paid bribes amounting to Rs 21,068 crore in the past year. And no one would have guessed it, but the biggest chunk of this money goes to schools till the Class XII level.
“The money was paid for either getting admission or certificates,” said Navin Sarangpani of the Centre for Media Studies (CMS), which carried out the study. The police (crime/traffic) were second in terms of collecting bribe money, accounting for Rs 3,899 crore.
This is not to say that schools are the most corrupt. That honour goes to the police who have been ranked the most corrupt according to a ‘corruption index’ prepared by the CMS. The reason schools receive the biggest chunk of bribe money is that “(the) proportion of citizens interacting with schools is much more than the police or municipalities,” said Sarangpani.
For those who believe that corruption in India is almost an industry, here’s proof.
A survey conducted by Transparency International India (TII) says Indians paid bribes amounting to Rs 21,068 crore in the past year. And no one would have guessed it, but the biggest chunk of this money goes to schools till the Class XII level.
“The money was paid for either getting admission or certificates,” said Navin Sarangpani of the Centre for Media Studies (CMS), which carried out the study. The police (crime/traffic) were second in terms of collecting bribe money, accounting for Rs 3,899 crore.
This is not to say that schools are the most corrupt. That honour goes to the police who have been ranked the most corrupt according to a ‘corruption index’ prepared by the CMS. The reason schools receive the biggest chunk of bribe money is that “(the) proportion of citizens interacting with schools is much more than the police or municipalities,” said Sarangpani.
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
Hindu 'sect' mother starved herself to death in London
By Sukhi Anand, This is Local London Network
Saturday 16th December 2006
A MEMBER of a Hindu "sect" starved herself to death, just two years after her daughter died from malnutrition. Nirmala Vashram, 44, of Scarle Road, Wembley, weighed just under four stones when she was found in her bed last March.
Police believe the mother-of-two had been dead for some time when they found her emaciated body, an inquest heard yesterday morning. Mrs Vashram's daughter, Dina Premji, was only 20 when she also died of starvation in 2003.
Both women were devoted followers of Mataji, a little known branch of Hinduism and had been depriving themselves of food since a trip to India in 1999 when they met a "holy-man".
DS John Cardow, of Brent police, told Hornsey Coroner's Court: "Nirmala was a member of a sect. She was known to have extreme religious beliefs. Last March, her son called 999 and said his mother had stopped breathing. When the ambulance arrived they found her emaciated body. She looked skeletal and was in the foetal position. "She was regularly being supplied with food but refused to eat or drink."
It is believed Nirmala promised not to accept any form of western medical treatment as part of a penance she undertook in India. Doctor Michael Jarmulowicz, who carried out the post mortem, gave the cause of death as malnutrition and said: "She was the lightest adult I have ever examined.
"We could not straighten her legs at all."
The complex case was delayed by the remaining family's refusal to believe Dina or Nirmala were dead. Speaking after the inquest, DS Cardow said: "The family would never go against their mother's wishes and believed her death was god's will. Their concept of death is very different to ours, they were sending cards and gifts to the mortuary for months after her death.
"We believe Nirmala intended to return to the holy-man to have the penance removed but for some reason she took it to the extreme." Nirmala and her daughter were finally buried in a double funeral last year, which was carried out on behalf of Brent council.
Coroner Dr William Dolman recorded a verdict of "natural causes aggravated by self-neglect" and said: "Nirmala Vashram had voluntarily decided not to take food, clearly for some time. This was in response to a religious belief."
Saturday 16th December 2006
A MEMBER of a Hindu "sect" starved herself to death, just two years after her daughter died from malnutrition. Nirmala Vashram, 44, of Scarle Road, Wembley, weighed just under four stones when she was found in her bed last March.
Police believe the mother-of-two had been dead for some time when they found her emaciated body, an inquest heard yesterday morning. Mrs Vashram's daughter, Dina Premji, was only 20 when she also died of starvation in 2003.
Both women were devoted followers of Mataji, a little known branch of Hinduism and had been depriving themselves of food since a trip to India in 1999 when they met a "holy-man".
DS John Cardow, of Brent police, told Hornsey Coroner's Court: "Nirmala was a member of a sect. She was known to have extreme religious beliefs. Last March, her son called 999 and said his mother had stopped breathing. When the ambulance arrived they found her emaciated body. She looked skeletal and was in the foetal position. "She was regularly being supplied with food but refused to eat or drink."
It is believed Nirmala promised not to accept any form of western medical treatment as part of a penance she undertook in India. Doctor Michael Jarmulowicz, who carried out the post mortem, gave the cause of death as malnutrition and said: "She was the lightest adult I have ever examined.
"We could not straighten her legs at all."
The complex case was delayed by the remaining family's refusal to believe Dina or Nirmala were dead. Speaking after the inquest, DS Cardow said: "The family would never go against their mother's wishes and believed her death was god's will. Their concept of death is very different to ours, they were sending cards and gifts to the mortuary for months after her death.
"We believe Nirmala intended to return to the holy-man to have the penance removed but for some reason she took it to the extreme." Nirmala and her daughter were finally buried in a double funeral last year, which was carried out on behalf of Brent council.
Coroner Dr William Dolman recorded a verdict of "natural causes aggravated by self-neglect" and said: "Nirmala Vashram had voluntarily decided not to take food, clearly for some time. This was in response to a religious belief."
Sunday, January 15, 2006
Why Do Indians Flee India?
Rajiv Desai holds degrees in engineering, journalism and political science. He has worked for multinationals that include Citibank, Pepsi, Boeing, Microsoft, Intel, Cisco and Ford.
By Rajiv Desai, SikhSpectrum.com Monthly, Issue No.10, March 2003
Jhumpa Lahiri, a woman of Indian descent, won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Manoj Night Shyamalan, a man of Indian origin, won an Oscar nomination for his film, The Sixth Sense. Indians in the Silicon Valley are feted around their world for their incredible success in the information technology businesses. Kalpana Chawla from a small town in Haryana became the first woman of Indian descent to become a US astronaut. Amartya Sen won the coveted Nobel Prize for Economics for his work at Harvard University.
With all these high accolades accruing to individuals of Indian descent just in the past couple of years, Indians could be forgiven for thinking that the turn of the millennium was a special time for their kind. A quiet pride at the Indian connection of these accomplished individuals is justifiable.
However, these singular achievements by men and women of Indian origin do raise several questions about the nature of Indian society and its economic system. Why, despite a thriving democracy, do Indians leave their home to settle elsewhere? It is not as if they were running away from dictators and despots. Nor were they fleeing religious persecution. By and large, most Indians leave because of the lack of economic opportunity at home.
Since the late 1960s, thousands of bright young Indians have emigrated to become part of an exodus that came to be called the "brain drain." It is a subject close to my heart because I was among those who bailed out of India in the 1970s seeking opportunities in America.
The vast majority of us went as students and stayed on to work in American universities, hospitals and companies. Over the years, we established ourselves as first-generation immigrants, raised families, bought homes and became part of the American socioeconomic mainstream.
Despite the success we enjoyed in the United States, India remained central to our identity. Most Indians in America nurtured the thought of returning home eventually. Only a handful found their way back. The others found their way back blocked by their growing children for whom India was not the home it was to their parents. It was a foreign country. America was their home.
Their parents quickly realized that any attempt to return to India would deprive their children of growing up in their own homeland. It was a fate they had suffered and would not visit on their children.
Today, with the last hope of returning snuffed out, many are asking the question: Why did they have to leave India?
Seeking an answer to the question, I began to study the Indian diaspora in the United States. In the late 1970s, I started to write a column called "Indians in America" for a community newspaper of which I was founder-editor.
Talking to Indians in all walks of life in America, I became convinced that the key factor in the emigration of middle-class youth was the ideology propagated by the ruling elite in India.
Even three decades after Independence, India's ruling class kept alive the fear of Western colonial domination.
Thus, India turned its back on foreign trade and investment, pursuing instead a quixotic, inward-looking vision in which the government commanded the heights of the economy and Indian society.
When the privilegentsia rule
Over the years, the country came to be held in thrall by a government-anointed nexus of bureaucrats, politicians, academicians and businessmen, the so-called "privilegentsia." Under this dispensation, connections counted for more than achievement, privilege more than performance. For ordinary middle-class families, with no strings to pull, there were simply no opportunities to make a decent and dignified living.
Instead, the dead hand of government stifled the entrepreneurial instincts of the people. Both agriculture and industry declined and India came to be regarded as an economic basket case.
By 1967, India's very food security came under threat as famine stalked the land. About that time, many bright men and women from middle-class families began to flee.
The initial trickle became a torrent in the decade that followed. Meanwhile, India's economy deteriorated rapidly and with it, the fabric of Indian society began to fray. Civil strife and war took their toll. Opportunities declined even further and the "privilegentsia" tightened its stranglehold on the body politic.
India's "privilegentsia raj" weakened with the declining economy and political unrest through the 1980s.
In the early 1990s, a bankrupt government was forced to loosen control on the economy. As foreign investment flooded in and international trade increased, the Indian economy experienced an unprecedented boom. With the advent of satellite and cable television, Indian society began to change in irreversible ways. The "privilegentsia's" grip began to loosen to where today the nexus of bureaucrats, politicians, academics and businessmen has lost its authority and seeks to re-establish its hold in authoritarian ways.
Chief among those ways is the brazen attempt to whip up jingoism in recent years. This began with the opposition to foreign investment in the consumer sector, which was remarkable for the slogan "India needs computer chips not potato chips." The denouement of the process came with the nuclear explosions set off at Pokharan in in May 1998 and a year later, the military skirmish with Pakistan in the Kargil hills of Kashmir.
The costs were incalculable in terms of international opprobrium that followed Pokharan and the uncounted casualties in Kargil. More recently, the "privilegentsia" sought to appropriate the accolades showered on individuals of Indian origin in the US and elsewhere. Tub-thumping nationalism replaced rational public debate as the ruling regime wrapped itself in the flag.
Today, as the wave of crude nationalism begins to recede in the face of severe problems of governance and finance, the "privilegentsia" is up to its old tricks again. This time, it seeks to revive jingoism by projecting Indian as a "beauty superpower." This is with reference to the rash of "Miss World" and "Miss Universe" awards that have come the way of Indian contestants at mindless beauty pageants that are made for television and commercial endorsements.
Meanwhile, Indian foreign policy is reduced to disputes with OECD members about visas for Indian computer programmers, who are shipped to the Silicon Valley and elsewhere, much like indentured labor of earlier times, to perform mindless tasks for Western firms at a fraction of the cost of local employees.
On the other hand, domestic policy is exercised by such weighty issues as match-fixing and illegal betting on cricket, a game with which India's millions are obsessed. At the same time, the real issues of governance such as water, power, roads, pollution, jobs, fiscal deficits, subsidies and the privatization of the parasitical public sector are caught up in the familiar political battles over turf and spoils.
The "privilegentsia" does not give up that easily. It will try to hold on to its power as long as possible, never mind the country and its pressing problems.
By Rajiv Desai, SikhSpectrum.com Monthly, Issue No.10, March 2003
Jhumpa Lahiri, a woman of Indian descent, won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Manoj Night Shyamalan, a man of Indian origin, won an Oscar nomination for his film, The Sixth Sense. Indians in the Silicon Valley are feted around their world for their incredible success in the information technology businesses. Kalpana Chawla from a small town in Haryana became the first woman of Indian descent to become a US astronaut. Amartya Sen won the coveted Nobel Prize for Economics for his work at Harvard University.
With all these high accolades accruing to individuals of Indian descent just in the past couple of years, Indians could be forgiven for thinking that the turn of the millennium was a special time for their kind. A quiet pride at the Indian connection of these accomplished individuals is justifiable.
However, these singular achievements by men and women of Indian origin do raise several questions about the nature of Indian society and its economic system. Why, despite a thriving democracy, do Indians leave their home to settle elsewhere? It is not as if they were running away from dictators and despots. Nor were they fleeing religious persecution. By and large, most Indians leave because of the lack of economic opportunity at home.
Since the late 1960s, thousands of bright young Indians have emigrated to become part of an exodus that came to be called the "brain drain." It is a subject close to my heart because I was among those who bailed out of India in the 1970s seeking opportunities in America.
The vast majority of us went as students and stayed on to work in American universities, hospitals and companies. Over the years, we established ourselves as first-generation immigrants, raised families, bought homes and became part of the American socioeconomic mainstream.
Despite the success we enjoyed in the United States, India remained central to our identity. Most Indians in America nurtured the thought of returning home eventually. Only a handful found their way back. The others found their way back blocked by their growing children for whom India was not the home it was to their parents. It was a foreign country. America was their home.
Their parents quickly realized that any attempt to return to India would deprive their children of growing up in their own homeland. It was a fate they had suffered and would not visit on their children.
Today, with the last hope of returning snuffed out, many are asking the question: Why did they have to leave India?
Seeking an answer to the question, I began to study the Indian diaspora in the United States. In the late 1970s, I started to write a column called "Indians in America" for a community newspaper of which I was founder-editor.
Talking to Indians in all walks of life in America, I became convinced that the key factor in the emigration of middle-class youth was the ideology propagated by the ruling elite in India.
Even three decades after Independence, India's ruling class kept alive the fear of Western colonial domination.
Thus, India turned its back on foreign trade and investment, pursuing instead a quixotic, inward-looking vision in which the government commanded the heights of the economy and Indian society.
When the privilegentsia rule
Over the years, the country came to be held in thrall by a government-anointed nexus of bureaucrats, politicians, academicians and businessmen, the so-called "privilegentsia." Under this dispensation, connections counted for more than achievement, privilege more than performance. For ordinary middle-class families, with no strings to pull, there were simply no opportunities to make a decent and dignified living.
Instead, the dead hand of government stifled the entrepreneurial instincts of the people. Both agriculture and industry declined and India came to be regarded as an economic basket case.
By 1967, India's very food security came under threat as famine stalked the land. About that time, many bright men and women from middle-class families began to flee.
The initial trickle became a torrent in the decade that followed. Meanwhile, India's economy deteriorated rapidly and with it, the fabric of Indian society began to fray. Civil strife and war took their toll. Opportunities declined even further and the "privilegentsia" tightened its stranglehold on the body politic.
India's "privilegentsia raj" weakened with the declining economy and political unrest through the 1980s.
In the early 1990s, a bankrupt government was forced to loosen control on the economy. As foreign investment flooded in and international trade increased, the Indian economy experienced an unprecedented boom. With the advent of satellite and cable television, Indian society began to change in irreversible ways. The "privilegentsia's" grip began to loosen to where today the nexus of bureaucrats, politicians, academics and businessmen has lost its authority and seeks to re-establish its hold in authoritarian ways.
Chief among those ways is the brazen attempt to whip up jingoism in recent years. This began with the opposition to foreign investment in the consumer sector, which was remarkable for the slogan "India needs computer chips not potato chips." The denouement of the process came with the nuclear explosions set off at Pokharan in in May 1998 and a year later, the military skirmish with Pakistan in the Kargil hills of Kashmir.
The costs were incalculable in terms of international opprobrium that followed Pokharan and the uncounted casualties in Kargil. More recently, the "privilegentsia" sought to appropriate the accolades showered on individuals of Indian origin in the US and elsewhere. Tub-thumping nationalism replaced rational public debate as the ruling regime wrapped itself in the flag.
Today, as the wave of crude nationalism begins to recede in the face of severe problems of governance and finance, the "privilegentsia" is up to its old tricks again. This time, it seeks to revive jingoism by projecting Indian as a "beauty superpower." This is with reference to the rash of "Miss World" and "Miss Universe" awards that have come the way of Indian contestants at mindless beauty pageants that are made for television and commercial endorsements.
Meanwhile, Indian foreign policy is reduced to disputes with OECD members about visas for Indian computer programmers, who are shipped to the Silicon Valley and elsewhere, much like indentured labor of earlier times, to perform mindless tasks for Western firms at a fraction of the cost of local employees.
On the other hand, domestic policy is exercised by such weighty issues as match-fixing and illegal betting on cricket, a game with which India's millions are obsessed. At the same time, the real issues of governance such as water, power, roads, pollution, jobs, fiscal deficits, subsidies and the privatization of the parasitical public sector are caught up in the familiar political battles over turf and spoils.
The "privilegentsia" does not give up that easily. It will try to hold on to its power as long as possible, never mind the country and its pressing problems.
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