Is there an India Dream?
This is what a Japanese executive asked me at a talk that I was giving on India. In the midst of what I thought was quite an informative discussion on the homeland, he said: “Thank you for telling us where India is today. But where does it want to be tomorrow? What is the India Dream?”
While scratching my head in search of an answer, what came to mind fairly quickly was Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “Make in India” dream, which is the idea that India is open for business, especially manufacturing. The Modi dream is a good one. Without a solid manufacturing base, the Indian economy cannot generate enough jobs for its growing, aspiring population.
My Japanese interlocutor was not terribly impressed by this answer. In his view “Make in India” could not be the sum total of the India Dream.
Reflecting on the matter, I suggested that in addition ,Indians dreamed of a modern India, a moderate India, a middleincome India and a well-managed India. This seemed to satisfy him better.
To say that most Indians want a modern India is quite a claim in a country where there are so many remnants of the medieval: child marriage, the dowry system, female infanticide and neglect, honour killings, purdah, caste discrimination, anti-rationalism, quackery in medicine, superstition, khap fatwas, and on and on.
Yet there is one clear, discernible, modern value that is spreading unstoppably, and that is the yearning everywhere in India for education. If there is one quintessential feature of a modern society, it is the desire to have every child going to school. For the first time in Indian history, all Indians dream of being educated. This is the greatest hope of India.
Indians want modernity, but they also want moderation — in personal and in social life. As far as I know, historically, there is no body of thought in India that encourages personal excess. A moderate life is widely regarded as a good life.
Indians also want social moderation. They want moderation in their political institutions and practices. In Nehru’s “Idea of India”, moderation meant constitutionalism, socialism, secularism, pluralism and non-alignment. Today, all these words are regarded as old-fashioned and somewhat misguided. But the idea of moderation is still a powerful one, and no Indian leader should forget this if he or she wants to prosper.
Indians have more material dreams too. They dream of India as a middle-income country. Most Indians are quite realistic about what their government, business executives, workers, farmers, professionals, intellectuals and civil society organisations can deliver. They are also aware of the limits of the natural world around them. Deep down they know that a rich, first-world India is neither feasible nor desirable in the next 20-30 years (perhaps ever). The majority of Indians will settle for a middle-income country, a country of say Thailand’s or Brazil’s per capita income and general prosperity over the next quarter of a century. Today, Thailand’s per capita GDP in purchasing power parity terms is roughly three times that of India, Brazil’s is roughly four times.
Finally, Indians dream of a well-managed country. Modi’s victory in the last general elections was engineered on the promise of good governance. India was fed up with illconceived, corrupt, chaotic, rudderless governance. The Prime minister still has a strong sense that Indians want clean, purposeful, efficient and effective administration. Whether he can deliver, is the great challenge.
There is an India Dream. It is not Amit Shah’s notion of a strutting “Vishwa guru”. Most Indians hold to a different dream — of a modern, moderate, middle-income and well-managed India, taking its modest place in the international society.
(Source: Extracts from an Article by Mr. Kanti Bajpai in The Times OF India dated 18-07-2015.)
