Thats not a tall claim. Look at the freedom dividend. The countrys economy grew by 1 per cent per annum in the first half of the 20th century; and by 4 per cent in the second half. Life expectancy has doubled; infant mortality has halved. Famines have been banished. Literacy levels have nearly doubled. More electricity generation capacity is added each year in India than existed in the entire country in 1947. No other half-century has brought such progress.
Other countries have done more in this period, but none of them started with a society in which life expectancy was 32 years, and in which the citizen has the right to throw out his ruler. In totality of achievement, the record is hard to beat.
The even more real dividend is in the change of mindset with each generation. The generation that fought for, and won independence, worries constantly about the state of the nation, its cohesion and unity, the external dangers. The midnight generation frets about economic security, making ends meet, having enough to cope with expanding wants. But the new generation, brought up in the last decade-and-a-half of an annual average growth of nearly 6 per cent, has a natural self-confidence that comes from knowing that this elephant of an economy has a better future than many tigers of yesterday. For, if one takes the past decade as a whole, India ranks among the dozen fastest growing economies in the world.
If the past half-century saw 4 per cent annual growth, the next 50 years might well see 8 per cent growth. Now, therefore, should come the second tryst with destiny: the end of absolute poverty for the first time in this nations history; average incomes that are 10 times todays level; and with the economy as a whole reaching what the World Bank classifies as upper middle income. When that happens to one-and-a-half billion people, it changes the face of the world. The challenge is to get there.
The problem (and the most glaring failure) has been that the dividend has gone only to some shareholders of India Inc. This is odd, considering that equality has been one of the more sought-after ideals through this entire period. Not just India, all societies have grappled through the centuries with four big ideas: freedom, equality, authority (or statism) and elitism (or if you will, excellence). Recent times have added a fifth: competitiveness. The big idea for India in 1947 was freedom. Linked to it, through both Gandhian and Fabian thought, was the strong urge for equality.
The 50 years since then have fashioned a society that has got used to freedom (individual and societal) and which has rejected statism. The notion of equality has been the second pole star, accepted as both an idea and an ideal. It is the other two ideas that have got relatively short shrift: authority has got diminished or simply crumbled in countless ways, and the sense of excellence that prevailed (at least among the elite, among craftsmen, and so on) has given way to a drab shoddiness in everything. A central challenge for the next 50 years is to redress this balance: to bring back a respect for law, and to reject the second-rate. In the process, the country will gain a new and very real freedomfrom all the harassments and irritations of everyday life in India. Also gained will be a new equality. Today only the privileged can hope for quality treatment in a hospital, or expect a decent education for their children. A pursuit of excellence will change the way Indians see themselves.
With a thriving pluralistic democracy and an economy which is coming into its own, only the fainthearted would be dismayed by the periodic spasms which the country experiences. After all, some upheaval or the other is only to be expected in a country with almost a billion people who are undergoing social, political and economic change of an order never before experienced. Of course scores of problems remain unsolved and in many ways the country seems to have moved back instead of forward. Laloo Yadav and Rabdi Devi are metaphors of the 1990s in a way that could not have been the case in the 1950s; yet they also speak of a social churning that comes back to the contest between equality (social in this case) and elitism (the brahminical order).
A central issue is whether the state is capable of rising to the occasion. The gradual decline in moral authority, the slow dissipation of peoples goodwill, and the rapid decay in the standards of public conduct have all combined to weaken the Indian state and erode its legitimacy. Those with long memories and a sense of history shudder silently when reminded of the previous occasions when the state was similarly enervated. But they forget one thing: India today has strong institutions which it did not have in those far-off days when a decline in central authority inevitably led to terrible consequences. This is a signal achievement of the last half a century.
There is, naturally too in view of the on-going antics of Indias political leadership, a legitimate worry that a political system is only as good as its politicians. True enough, but as the prosecutions launched against a former prime minister and the jailing of two former chief ministers suggest, the system is still resilient. It may not work perfectly all the time and sometimes it may not work at all. But the periodic breakdowns and the imperfections of what is a still evolving system should not dominate the horizon to the exclusion of all else. There is little reason to believe that the mess will not sort itself out.
There remains the business of competitiveness. Economic reform is seen all too often as the plaything of a certain intellectual and business elite. The fact is that it is about survival in a world where the rules dont allow for dissenters, and where no one has either time or sympathy for the losers. Winning means becoming efficient, and that means getting the rules right, creating the right environment, and focusing on the core issues. Sadly, the Indian system remains among the most difficult not just for the foreigner but for all local players. How do you compete without guaranteed electricity, proper transport, good communications, a flexible labour market and all the other essentials? That is what reform is about. It is an idea that needs to be embraced if the future is to see fewer wasted opportunities, and no wasted years. It is also the idea that will deliver freedom from poverty, equality of opportunity, and a sense of being an excellent country in which to be.
