I will be posting the papers I write for Champlain courses. I am required to maintain the "academic standards" and thus my language in these kind of posts might be dry and boring. But I have really done research for these. So take them seriously.
The India Story
Hrishikesh Choudhari ID#0525248 – COR-240-03
There has been a lot of disconnect between different countries. In today’s connected age, when stock traders transfer billions from one country to another within minutes, culture still takes decades to move from country to neighboring country. The social networking sites that proliferate today help us bring together people that think alike; act alike and aspire alike. But what about people who are different? What about those differences in our cultures and behaviors that make us what we are. India has a long tradition of ‘Unity in Diversity’. Such themes are very good in pompous times; when things go bad the animal instinct in everyone takes over and each tribe then protects what it loves. If young people today want to learn and speak about universal love they should also be prepared to lose their nationality as they know it. Love and respect cannot be universal if you describe yourself as an American or Indian or European. For Platonically speaking, if you love America, they you need not love non-American territories.
I shall consider my Exchange Program to go waste if I don’t highlight where we are going, and how we can go there together. I want to talk about four major issues today.
1. Middle class
India has a burgeoning middle class. While the upper class of rich kings and the bottom layer of poor farmers have always existed, it is the middle class that is pushing India forward. More and more people from the poor classes are joining the middle class to dream the Great Indian Dream; more and more rich people and middle class people are sharing the influence to run the country.
2. Government
India has long been known as colonial territory. Democracy was a gift by the West to India (and to the rest of the world). While there have been many blocs favoring many different ideologies, India is firmly retaining its stand as the largest democracy in the world. Also, I shall highlight how the ‘1991 Vintage’ shall wrest control from ‘Midnight’s Children’ and reshape India. I shall also highlight how ‘true democracy’ functions.
3. Entrepreneurs
India has been on a dream run since the early 90s, and in this section I shall introduce the main players of the Indian industry. These are the people who are putting India on the world map, and are playing an extremely vital role in global politics.
4. India-USA relations
Being a democracy, India is the preferred partner of the US in Asia. Both countries operate on the same principles, but in vastly different ways. The intent of both countries is the same, but the implementation of their intents is different. And we shall see how it is.
An old Arab proverb declares: he who speaks about the future lies even when he tells the truth. No one can predict the future.
The Great Indian Middle class.
There will always be rich people, and there will always be poor people; but as Aristotle once said, a good society is one where the middle class outnumbers everyone else. India has its share of the super rich that might put even the most flamboyant western billionaires to shame, and India also has a quarter of its people 'living on less than a $1 a day'. We shall soon see how the living standards of this class measure up to their counterparts in America.
Much of the clamor about economic reforms has focused on this group. The conventional wisdom is that this middle class is some 300 million strong — larger than the entire domestic market of the United States, say the marketing gurus — and, together with a very rich upper class, has both the purchasing power and the inclinations of the American middle class.
Now what does this middle class look like? What are its characteristics, what are its metrics, what are the aspirations and needs and wants and desires of the people who make up this middle class?
The most fundamental characteristic of a middle class family is to live a life of sufficiency. Not a life of extravagance, or of starvation. And to reach this sufficiency, the annual income of that family has to be in a certain range. That range is put from Rs. 200,000 to Rs. 900,000. It is in this range of annual income that you will find the vast majority of the middle class. While their incomes would place them below the poverty line in the United States, things are much cheaper in India.
This range encompasses workers from traditional factories to IT companies, and professionals practicing diverse professions, and millions of small time traders and merchants. Families having this kind of income can avail of many facilities that are at par with their western counterparts. A family car, a computer, a laptop with internet connection, mid-range mobile phones, eating out on the weekends, movie nights at the local multiplex, and the occasional splurge at the shopping mall – are a few of the facilities that such a family can enjoy. Of course the cost of goods and services produced locally are often extremely cheap as compared to western economies. For example, the monthly grocery bill of a mid-sized family is often equal to what an American teenager might spend on a large pizza. Middle class families are the largest users of public transportation, and all tickets are within the reach of even the poorer sections of society. City buses, suburban buses, metro trains, taxis and auto rickshaws form the total spectrum of public transport available.
As the seismic wave of income growth rolls across Indian society, the character of consumption will change dramatically over the next 20 years. A huge shift is underway from spending on necessities such as food and clothing to choice-based spending on categories such as household appliances and restaurants. Households that can afford discretionary consumption will grow from 8 million today to 94 million by 2025.
The weakest area of modern life is that of non-ascribed associations. Professional relations rarely metamorphose into deep friendships and, when they do, are strictly status and gender bound. The average male flees from interaction of even the weakest sort with female colleagues. When family meets family, sex and status are sharp dividing lines. Woe betide the single professional woman (and modern India has many of these and few single men) who tries to establish friendship with a male colleague. She can be tolerated in the corridors of the professional arena, rarely admitted into the sacred portals of the home.
The Entrepreneurial Spirit
Thomas Friedman said it right - the flattened world can spring competition for existing businesses from any corner of the world. Here I am not talking just about competitive businesses but new, creative and innovative businesses. The knowledge economy, where overheads are low, is a fertile playground for Indian entrepreneurs. The success stories of businesses built on a great idea executed by a talented team have great appeal in India, where access to capital is scarce and regulation has often created barriers to success. I believe India has an extraordinary talent pool with virtually limitless potential to become entrepreneurs.
In some sense people in the Indian entrepreneurial societies are running faster than their rules and laws can keep up. So they are creating the rules as they go along. And entrepreneurship is, after all, doing things in new ways, ahead of social norms and customs, and establishing the rules and laws. These processes are unfolding not just in the mainstream business sector but in society writ large and even in politics and civil society. So what exactly is different about entrepreneurship in America and India?
The extent and type of government involvement and the nature of openness are 2 dimensions in which the countries are different. These dimensions pervade all aspects of societal existence, whether that means raising capital to start a new business, the nature of markets, copyrights, the media, movies, and religion, as well as the ways in which both countries themselves project their power, the way they deal with each other, and the way the village economy works.
In India, some islands of excellence notwithstanding, the government remains inefficient for the most part, and most pockets of entrepreneurship—interesting, vibrant new ways of doing things—are in the private sector or civil society, staying far away from government intervention. So here the private sector leads many significant initiatives; in China, the lead is often provided in a top-down manner.
The Indian Government
There are two distinct voices among India today. One of these voices is a louder voice. It is that of empowered India, an India that has shown the world what it is capable of doing, an India that is educating, an India that is moving forward rapidly. There is another voice in India today. It is a deeper voice and it is reverberating around the country. It is not as loud as the first voice. It is the voice of the disenfranchised people of India. This voice is no different than the people who have done well. These people too have the potential that other people have. They too are hard working and self-reliant and they ask only to be given an opportunity.
Some believe that the progress of these two Indias is not just separable but mutually exclusive. some believe that India can shine only if direct attention and resources to only those Indians that have already soared while ignoring the aspirations of the disempowered. Others believe that the poor can flourish only if we stifle the entrepreneurial spirit of our nation. Our government believes that India’s development is symbiotic and that these two Indias are inseparable. Our philosophy is not to choose as to which India to nurture, but to grow together.
There are two reasons for this view. First, the poverty of our people is an assault on our principles. Freedom from poverty is not a matter of charity or luck. It is a right. I am proud that under the leadership of our prime minister, our government has recognized and institutionalized this idea. The Tribal act, delivers private ownership of land as a right, the Right to Information Act of 2005 delivers information as a right. And the Rehabilitation And Recycling Bill seeks to resettle those who have been displaced. Second, the speed and continuity of our economic growth depends on inclusion. A small resource-rich section of India cannot grow indefinitely, while a vast disempowered nation looks on. If opportunity is limited to a few, our growth will be a fraction of our capability as a nation.
Somewhere in the mass of frustration - understandable frustration - I think we've lost track of a fundamental reality: just how challenging India is to govern. It's not just the size - it's the diversity, along every dimension you choose to name. We're linguistically and culturally more diverse that Europe; our people fit economic profiles that range from feudal-era serfdom through to 21st century technopreneurship; we're ethnically more diverse than the United States. The challenges, consequently, of developing policy and governance mechanisms that are general enough to be relevant across this diverse spectrum - and yet flexible enough to address specific elements within it - are truly immense. And remember that we're trying to do this within the framework of political and economic freedoms that have yet to be paralleled anywhere in Asia (save perhaps post-war Japan) - no short cuts.In short, we are attempting a level of achievement that is frankly rare - historically, and geographically. This is simply because the demands of governance in India are often more complex than they are in many other regions. Of course we've been less than successful in achieving this; we've been striving for a very long time, without always seeming to get anywhere; and we can most certainly do better. But these challenges can't be wished away, and they take time to overcome. Look at the US in the 1900s, over a full century after its founding - was the Tammany Hall Machine representative of the world's greatest democracy? Did Victorian England's economic achievement always translate into better quality of life, for the urban or rural masses? That took a century to sort out too. I'm not making excuses for our truly second-rate politicians. I know the frustration of having to live under them, and of wanting to make a difference in our often sclerotic system (especially if you're young, and want to get cracking!). But I do think we should retain our sense of perspective here, amidst the frustration.
Indo-American Ties
Across a range of measures, Indian public opinion is consistently pro-American. The 2005 Pew Global Attitudes survey found that about seven-in-ten Indians (71%) have a favorable view of the United States. Of the 17 countries polled in the survey, only Americans themselves hold a more favorable view of their country. And while U.S. favorability ratings have plunged in many countries, Indians are significantly more positive about the United States now than they were in the summer of 2002, when 54% gave the U.S. favorable marks.
Concluding remarks
The past twenty years have probably seen some of the greatest changes in human history. The biggest shift is that the 88 percent of the world’s populations who live outside the West have stopped being objects of world history and have become subjects. They have decided to take control of their own destinies and not have their destinies determined by Western-dominated global processes and institutions. They believe that the time has come for the West to cease it continuing domination of the globe.
Sadly, despite such a huge shift in history, Western intellectual life continues to be dominated by those who continue to celebrate the supremacy of the West, not by those who say that the time has come for the West to give up its global domination and share the power gracefully. Power is rarely ceded easily. It is perfectly natural to resist any transfer of power. The West will find it difficult. First, there is a near-universal refusal by most Western minds to even acknowledge that the West dominates and controls the world in order to serve Western interests. If you deny you are in power, you cannot cede power. Second, there is an even more deeply held belief in Western minds that Western civilizations represent the apex of human civilization, and that any alternative would portend a new dark age. Any people who believe this must also believe that they have a moral duty to preserve the supremacy of Western civilization. They cannot conceive that a better world could emerge without Western supremacy.
The era of Western domination has run its course, bringing good as well as harm and destruction to human history. It is futile for the 12 percent of the world’s population who live in the West to imagine that they can determine the destinies of the remaining 88 percent, many of whom feel newly energized and empowered. For now, the majority is willing to work with the West. However, if the West tries to continue its domination, a backlash is inevitable.
This is why humankind stands at a critical crossroads of history. So far, the West has refused either to admit its domination of the world or to contemplate sharing power in the New World Order. This is a prescription for eventual disaster. The clash between Western values and Western interests has brought the current administration to its knees. In the short term – that is to say, now – it will produce a progressive delegitimization of Western power, accompanied by a matching cultural backlash. We have entered the turbulent era of de-Westernization.
Works Cited
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Friedman, Thomas L. The World Is Flat A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005.
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