Independent India....Going on 60

Conceived in a partitioned cradle of blood and uncertainty, it would not have been difficult six decades ago to foresee a future for India similar to the macabre chaos in countries like Iraq and Rwanda, or even neighbouring Pakistan. Instead she embraced the tenets of secular democracy, and found her awkward way through it, and thrived.

She’s turning 60! Turn up the volume, bring out the band baja and let’s call it a celebration. As she steps into a new decade, India has a lot to be proud of, and a lot more that she still has to do.

Conceived in a partitioned cradle of blood and uncertainty, it would not have been difficult six decades ago to foresee a future for India similar to the macabre chaos in countries like Iraq and Rwanda, or even in neighbouring Pakistan. Instead she embraced the tenets of secular democracy, and found her awkward way through it, and thrived.

As easy as it is in hindsight, to criticize the founding fathers of the nation, they did shape in words, in actions, and in the constructs of our democratic system, a higher goal - a shared vision of a future that was better than the past. Subsequent generations of different spots and stripes left their own mark, testing the threads with which the country was sewn together. Imperfect as it is, our democracy is better than none at all.

A few numbers that flashed on Reuters two days ago piqued my interest. 60 years ago, agriculture accounted for 56.5 per cent of India’s GDP. The figure today is only 20 per cent for a population that has tripled over that timeframe. Services have expanded dramatically from 28.5 per cent of the economy to 61 per cent. Life expectancy at birth, then 32 years, is now 64 years. All good things, now let’s see the bad ones.

India’s infant mortality rate, then 146 per 1,000 live births is a much diminished 56 today, but that is still a far cry from Singapore’s 2.28 (India is ranked 152nd of the 208 countries for which data is collected, which puts her even behind countries like Nicaragua and Kazakhstan). The poverty rate, then 45 per cent is now supposedly at 28 per cent, which I find hard to believe, looking at the penury that the vast majority of the country lives in. Lastly, the sex ratio, a numerical testament to the daily murder of thousands of female foetuses and babies, then 946 women per 1,000 males, now stands at 933, and in real terms is much lower for the current generation as this number captures older women who outlast their male counterparts. These are just a few statistics.

I don’t mean to rain on the parade, but this threshold in time, this rite of passage, needs to also be a moment of introspection. I can’t believe how the ‘national conscience’ has been more concerned with the collapse of the U.S. sub-prime mortgage market, than with the millions of Indians dying, starving, and left destitute by the floods that have inundated parts of the country. Will it take the proverbial water at our feet for us to realise that we are in a flood?

India has done well on many fronts, and for that the Nation deserves credit. The software services industry has achieved more than anyone had dreamed of and manufacturing and resource-based businesses have slowly and steadily grown and matured on the world stage over a very short span of time. But, if India has to prosper, it is not going to be with superficial gimmickry like "India Shining" and our slick TV adverts that try and bait the finicky vagaries of international tourism and portfolio investments to fuel a nation this large. India has to pass up short-term, flashy fame for a steadier, focussed, and slower effort to create a self-sustaining, stable economy that relies not on consumption, but on economic, environmental and material sustainability, coupled with investments in human capital, education and health. An economy that is its own engine and driven from within, not without.

The Government must play a more active role too, not in tinkering with caste-based mechanics, fidgeting with investment quotas and subsidies, and pandering to the greed of overweight, local autocracies, but by getting into and staying in the business it was created for- ensuring access to water, shelter, health and education, keeping law and order, using taxation to deliver services, creating jobs, and redistributing wealth to achieve equity in every sense of the word.

For those that are proponents of the "trickle down" economic theory for India’s future prosperity, my own take is that it is akin to expecting the water dripping out of your leaky toilet flush tank to fill a lake. I’ll take the example of India’s second-largest bank, ICICI, which has prospered iconically on the country’s newfound energy. With 74 per cent of its equity in foreign hands, barely 26 per cent of its distributable profits stay within the country. How will this residue ever trickle down to have any meaningful impact on the poorest villager who lives from hand to mouth?

On this 60th anniversary of nationhood, Indians need to take a good, hard look at their personal and collective futures and enter into a covenant that rededicates the National interest and our secular ideals, not to just one more generation, but to several more. It might seem difficult, and many will ask "why?"… In our personal lives, we fret that in the crucible of the present, in the heat of its immediate desires and disappointments, our hearts will perish, unaware that they are being tempered in that furnace of passion and fullness for stronger things. Nationhood is no different.

It is in the present spirit of euphoria, in this flame of ascendancy, that Indians must mould the promise of a stronger, better future. India’s silent majority have given us more than we could ever have hoped for- 60 years of unquestioning, dedication to the idea of a nation. We now owe it to them to deliver…