While the ashes of the Brexit poll may have gone cold, the ghost of the US elections is not quite buried yet as the spectre of de-globalisation and post-truth politics looms large over the world. However, a more rational and less emotional analysis of Brexit and Donald Trump’s victory offers tremendous socio-political and economic learning for India. The sharp divide visible in the voting pattern between urban Britain and the English countryside in June’s Brexit referendum or that between the average white male with high school education or less and other population groups in America in November is exactly what the Indian chatterati also loves to debate: India versus Bharat. The British vote was a victory of emotion over sound economics. Americans voted to make America great again. At its heart, however, both were cases of a deep divide between two kinds of people living in Britain and in the US, much like in India. In a delicious inversion, the developed world's advisory of “inclusive growth” to the developing countries, has come back to haunt it.
The similarities are striking, and hold a beacon to our own future. As per The Economist, broadly, the 48 per cent who wanted to remain in the European Union (EU) tended to be young, well-educated, liberal-minded and confident of their place in the new global order. They came from London and other cosmopolitan centres like Bristol, Manchester and Cambridge. On the other hand, the 52 per cent people who voted against and won, tended to be older, poorer, less educated and live in rural Britain or in provincial towns. For them, it was a vote against multiculturalism, liberalism, capitalism and the internet. American voting patterns have traditionally been more predictable.
The fact that the promise of protectionist trade policies by Mr Trump to working class families swung even some of the Democrat strongholds in the Midwest like Ohio, Wisconsin and Michigan is a testimony to the fact that there is simmering disquiet that is beginning to bubble to the surface all over the world. The growing popularity of Marine Le Pen in France is yet another example.
These are all lessons we can ignore only at our own peril. The young, confident and educated work in India’s big cities, live on social media and drive policy despite being a minuscule minority. In the other corners of Bharat live the less fortunate, the less educated, underemployed people of India’s agrarian economy for whom change has not been fast enough in the seven decades since our own Brexit. The economic and social inequality as well as the digital divide between these two entities is stark and appears to be only growing wider. At the moment, India‘s ten biggest cities contribute more than 27 per cent of the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP) while being home to less than 5 per cent of the population. Agriculture employs nearly 55 per cent of India’s workforce while its cumulative contribution is less than 17 per cent of GDP. In urban-rural terms, 31 per cent of the urban population contributes 63 per cent of GDP while the remaining 69 per cent rural population contributes only 37 per cent.
As per a McKinsey Global Institute report, by 2030, there will be 61 cities in India with a population of more than one million, 13 cities with a population of more than four million and six megacities with a population of 10 million or more. The report predicts that these cities alone will account for more than 70 per cent of GDP. This means that around 12 per cent of the population or around 6 per cent of the workforce will account for 70 per cent of GDP. There is also widening regional imbalance, visible both in terms of per capita income as well as social indicators.
India has had an impressive growth rate over the last 25 years and is today the fastest growing large economy in the world. Yet economic and social inequality has only grown. The relatively disadvantaged citizens of Bharat have been patiently casting their votes in the hope that somebody cares about their aspirations too. It is a pot that is on the verge of boiling over.
Against this backdrop, it is extremely challenging for the policy makers to take India towards a more inclusive growth. However, notwithstanding the strong global headwinds, a truly inclusive development and growth agenda with greater reforms is the only solution to the growing divide. There is a need for a multi-layered strategy and a nuanced approach if we have to overcome the centrifugal tendencies of the various marginalised groups and regions.
Voters are not always rational and logical. They can also be myopic, emotional and capricious, getting carried away by sloganeering, posturing and “confirmation bias”. However, if several sections of people get left out of India’s growth story, eventually someone will want to “take back control” in the name of “making India great again”.
The writer is principal secretary to the chief minister, Chhattisgarh. Views expressed are his own
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