Into the 60th

As India cranks up the energy""not easy in the humid heat of August""to celebrate its 60th Independence Day, there is one thing that it cannot deny even to itself: that all the alibis for doing badly on this or that score have now disappeared. A country that has the second-highest rate of economic growth in the world, which is seen as something of a supply-king when it comes to technologically trained manpower, which manages to feed its own people without fuss, which is sitting stoically on $160 billion, where the people have the right to peacefully remove governments they do not approve of, where more than a billion people live together more-or-less quietly, where a multitude of religions flourish, where diversity unites, where the institutions of the Constitution function as well as anywhere else, which fires rockets and satellites, which is a nuclear "have", which is being wooed by the rest of the world as the latest Cinderella on the block, can't afford to keep bursting into tears that someone else is responsible for its many problems. So, as we look to the next 60 years, the time has come to acknowledge in what might be termed a Bosworthian way, that we are our own tormentors.

To put it differently, if there is one thing that stands between India and the greatness that constantly eludes it, it is the way the country is governed. All other problems and issues pale into insignificance""because the people are able to find their own solutions to them""when contrasted with the monumental failure of governance. J K Galbraith famously said that India was a functioning anarchy. Some 43 years later, that is still regrettably true. Those in office feel unable to do what is required because of the constraints they face, while the frustration of the ruled increasingly gets channelled into positive directions, through the proliferation of civil society organisations. Milovan Djilas in another context pointed to the problem of the "New Class" of politicians and others 'more equal' than the rest. The General Electric chairman Jeff Immelt's hypothesised recently that in India the micro works, the macro does not. Or, if you are a fan of Michael Kalecki, we are some way to proving his hypothesis, that the unholy combination of politicians, bureaucrats and businessmen (read crony capitalism) does the people out of their due.

In India, amazingly, it is the businessmen who are delivering the people their due in the form of a massive supply-side revolution. As the World Bank's report on the government's record of public service delivery points out, it is the politicians and the bureaucrats who have failed us. Cut it anyway you like, and toss it in whichever directions you please, in the end there is but one conclusion left: in its 60th year as an independent country, India is governed no better than in the past. Some things have improved, but others have got worse. The results of misgovernance, malgovernance and non-governance, in spite of the many successes trilled out by those who enjoy the results, are too obvious to be listed in counterpoint. If we define good governance as being no more than the simultaneous presence of both justice and equity, on the one hand, and the enjoyment of multiple freedoms (including from want), on the other, India has a long way to go. It is to moving quickly down that road that the country must now commit itself.