<p>On 15 August this year India will turn 65. In contrast to many other parts of the world and notably its neighbour China, it has an abundantly young population. Over 50 per cent of Indians are under 25; in 2020 the median age in India will be 29 (compared to 38 in China); and by 2050,with 1.6 billion people, India will be by far the world’s biggest nation. By definition it is a global “heavyweight”.<br /><br />Prior to some reflections on where India may be going to, some perspectives on where it has come from. When Gandhi was asked what he thought of Western civilisation he famously replied: “I think it would be a good idea”. His point was that there was a chasm between the ideals of western civilisation and the practices of the west. This is well illustrated in another of his comments: “If Christians would really live according to the teachings of Christall of India would be Christian today.”<br /><br />I first visited India in 1962 and have frequently returned in the ensuing half-century. What Gandhi said about Western civilisation could equally be said about Indian civilisation. It is magnificent and more than any other contains a superb combination of spirituality and humaneness. It is extremely rich in the arts and the sciences, in mathematics and philosophy, in architecture and literature. It is remarkably innovative. It is very much “alive”, not a dead civilisation composed of tourist monuments as with erstwhile civilisations such as Greece, Egypt, Cambodia and Peru.<br /><br />But for all the brilliance of its civilisation, contemporary Indian society stands out for its corruption, its hundreds of millions of poor, its malnourished children, its inefficiency, its inequality, its injustice and its more than occasional sheer cruelty. Indian novels such as Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance or Aravind Adiga’s The White Tigerdescribe these tragic conditions very powerfully.<br /><br />It has to be said that the beginnings in 1947 were not auspicious. British colonial rule of 190 years above all sought stability and continuity. There was very little reform. Consequently the traditional “feudal” social arrangements of Indian society were maintained over which British colonists were superimposed.<br /><br />In the five decades that preceded independence India remained unreformed and economic growth was zero. As Britain departed, the vast majority of Indians were peasants, poor, illiterate and living in an obsolete feudal hierarchical social system. In addition there was the great malediction of Britain’s “divide and rule” policy, the Partition creating two states: Pakistan (which initially included West and East Pakistan, now Bangladesh) and India. The exchange of populations between the two new states constituted the greatest forced migration the world had ever seen and resulted in deaths estimated in the hundreds of thousands. The trauma and its consequences are brilliantly evoked in a must read for anyone wishing to understand the origins of this deep scar on both Indian and Pakistani societies: Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie.<br /><br />For the first four-and-a-half decades following Independence India’s society and economy were composed of a vast agrarian base on which were superimposed a centrally planned import substitution industrialised policy run by a combination of state and oligopolistic family enterprises. India’s weak growth throughout this period contrasted increasingly with its reformed, dynamic, export-oriented East Asian neighbours, which also invested significantly in mass education and a solid infrastructure.<br /><br />Then in 1991, India finally embarked on a reform programme resulting in what author and businessman Gurcharan Das described asIndia Unbound (the title of his book). India’s hour seemed to have come: its economy boomed, its Bollywood film industry gained global notoriety, it revelled in the reality and rhetoric of being the leading IT power, it became a major global policy player and nuclear power, and it established close geopolitical ties with the US. Thus the self-anointed labels initially of “shining India” followed by “incredible India”.<br /><br />On the eve of India’s 65th birthday, regrettably, things are not looking so good. Growth has plummeted, politics are mired in corruption, deep poverty remains and India’s image is tarnished.<br /><br />The somewhat dire perspectives notwithstanding, India remains a unified state; it is the world’s biggest democracy and likely, even if in a somewhat raucous manner, to remain so; it has a highly talented global diaspora;it is a laboratory of technological and scientific innovation; andIndian authors and scholars produce some of the most thought-provoking English language literary and academic publications. Indians have tremendous soft power and it is likely to grow.<br /><br />Yet the “mess” remains. As Ed Luce lamented in his excellent study of India, "In Spite of the Gods", whereas poverty in Africa may be a tragedy, in India it is a scandal. Thus, while 50 per cent of children under five go to bed hungry, as Sumit Ganguly has pointed out at least 30 per cent of Indian agricultural produce spoils because the country has failed to develop aviable supply chain.<br /><br />There is no secret to how the potential of India can be unlocked and how the massive demographic youth dividend it will be receiving in the decades ahead can be properly exploited. Social, political and economic reforms need to be pursued, indeed intensified, and especially huge investments are called for in developing infrastructure and mass education. These in turn also require a mindset change on the part of Indian social elites; so that, for example, they might pay taxes. Executing by 2020 the “good idea” of Indian civilisation into practice will be tremendous not only for the 1.4 billion Indians, but also for the remaining 6.2 billion inhabitants of planet earth. Indian civilisation, not only its past but also its present, is more than a good idea: it is a magnificent idea. We must hope and urge Indians to make it happen.<br /><br />(<em>Jean-Pierre Lehmann is Emeritus Professor of International Political Economy, IMD, and Senior Fellow, Fung Global Institute, Hong Kong).</em></p>
