New India at age 60: special report

India at 60: special report
Published: 10 August 2007
Independent UK

Since it cast off colonial rule in August 1947, India has become one of the most powerful nations on earth. But what has it sacrificed along the way? Andrew Buncombe goes in search of the Subcontinent's soul

Ten miles south of Delhi, where the dusty scrub has been cleared and replaced by an ocean of quick-setting concrete, India is road-testing a new vision of its future. Gurgaon is a satellite city with endless shopping malls, high-rise apartment blocks and more than one million people. It is also the laboratory for an experiment with global implications.

Sixty years after gaining independence from Britain, the world's largest democracy is at a crossroads. A crucial struggle is taking place over which direction this economically resurgent nation should be taking. It may not be obvious to an outsider, but spend an hour or so in the consumer's dream that is Gurgaon and it becomes abundantly clear where the powerful and aspirational segment of the population has its collective eyes fixed as India stands poised to make the transformation from an impoverished, backward country into a superpower. And it is not on its former colonial master.

Just come away from the heat and the noise of this vast building site and step into the air-conditioned Sahara Mall. By no means the grandest of the shopping emporiums on the chaotic, fume-filled highway known as MG Road, it is already an established magnet to India's newly wealthy middle class. There are fashion shops, department stores, jewellers, sports stores selling Nike, there is a cinema on the top level showing Bollywood and Hollywood hits. Most interesting is a fast-food restaurant that offers cleaned-up versions of Indian street food, with staff dressed in baseball caps and bowling shirts; an idealised Indian interpretation of an idealised American vision of itself.

Whatever modern Britons may think of India, and despite our celebration of the fact that "curry" has become a national dish, it appears India no longer feels the same way about us. Its people are respectful, yes; polite, certainly. But whatever cultural lodestone Britain may once have represented to wealthy Indians, with their love of cricket and regard for English-style public schools, times have changed. Today, they buy into the American Dream instead.

On the top floor, Sandeep Seth and a friend are sipping smoothies. Mr Seth is 28 and works in IT. He is wearing a college-style T-shirt of brushed yellow cotton. Though his job is in another satellite city, Noida, he lives in Gurgaon and makes the 90-mile daily commute. For all his Western looks and habits, Mr Seth appears to resent the suggestion that India is becoming Americanised. Yet asked about what is happening here on MG Road and what it represents for India, he says: "It's the culture changing. There is a change in the mindset. If people go to the US they will bring things back to India. Society cannot be stagnant."

THE FORMAL return of Indian sovereignty took place at midnight on 15 August, 1947, precisely 24 hours after Pakistan, too, had become an independent nation. Two months previously, on 3 June, Viscount Lord Louis Mountbatten, the last British Governor-General of India, had announced the partition of the Indian Empire, under pressure not just to grant independence but to create both Muslim and Hindu nations.

Hours before independence was returned to India, Jawaharlal Nehru, the man who would serve as the country's first Prime Minister, spoke to the country's Constituent Assembly about what he famously framed as India's " tryst with destiny". "At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom," he said. "A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance."

In the years following Partition, when countless thousands on either side of the religious divide were killed and when millions were forced from their homes and made to relocate to the other side of a line that for them existed only on a map, India's politics were dominated by Nehru and his quasi-socialist beliefs. In its foreign policy, India sought to remain neutral from the machinations of the Cold War and was a founding member of the Non-Aligned Movement.

In economic terms India, in the post-independence period, operated under the so-called "licence raj", a complex system of regulations and bureaucracy established as part of the centrally planned economy. But, confronted with economic crisis at the beginning of the 1990s and the need to attract more foreign investment, the government of Pamulaparthi Rao liberalised the economy by removing many of the restrictions and opening up the country to foreign capital. It was those reforms - initiated in 1991 and which did everything from opening the financial markets to reducing tariffs - which are today credited as the catalyst for India's economic growth.

Not surprisingly, it has been America that has made the most of this liberalisation and become India's dominant trading partner, creating an influence it was not able to lever politically in the previous decades. In both exports and imports, the US is now India's number-one trading partner. While Britain stands in third place, its total trade with India is considerably less than that of the US. Indeed, Britain's largest export to India is scrap metal.

It is not just in terms of trade that the US is proving the dominant influence. In the field of higher education, America long ago eclipsed Britain as the most sought-after destination for undergraduates. Last year US colleges took in 88,000 students and academics, while Britain only managed to secure 20,000. Even Oxford and Cambridge are being forced to compete to attract India's best brains.

At a book launch one recent sweltering evening at the British Council's offices south of Connaught Place, a documentary film-maker who had studied in Britain was bemoaning the fact that her daughter had no interest in following the same path. "She's only interested in going to America," she said. "I'd hoped that she'd want to do the same as me."

The implications of such a shift in the ambitions of smart, young Indians go beyond simply losing the battle to attract the best students to Britain. Students travelling to the US to study, perhaps spending several years there, are inculcated with American culture while they are there. They absorb its politics, its fashions, its tastes, its clothes and music and, of course, its aspirations. They watch its news broadcasts, they listen to Fox News and to CNN. They go shopping at Wal-Mart, or spend time in shopping malls. When they leave they are likely to retain very strong bonds with the country.

"In a nutshell, it's a loss with very long-term consequences," said Frances Cairncross, the rector of Exeter College, Oxford. " Students may stay for a while and contribute their skills and intelligence to our economy [and] when they go home, their cultural and economic links are with the country that educated them. So we will feel the repercussions for a generation to come."

THERE is a new-found vigour about India that sometimes borders on the brash. You can positively sense the optimism and confidence that exists within the middle classes and political élite, a feeling that after all these years of waiting - and with the shackles of colonialism having been thrown off - India's time has finally arrived.

You can detect this in numerous ways. You can see it in the world of publishing and television, in the expansion of India as a retail destination. You even sense it when the shop assistants laugh at you when you opt for a cheap mobile phone rather than the $400 model they had selected for you. "That's what the rickshawallahs have," they say.

It is apparent in the swagger of politicians such as Kamal Nath, the country's Minister of Commerce and Industry, who declared earlier this year: "We no longer discuss the future of India. We say: 'The future is India.'" One can detect it in the sense of entitlement that imbued the reporting of the recent "123" nuclear technology deal between India and the US.

One of the most powerful indicators of India's transformation is in the world of sport. Recently India learnt that it had been chosen as the latest Asian host for Formula One racing and as a site for the European Golf Tour. In India the move was welcomed as another indication of the country's emergence on to the world stage. "It's a matter of pride for the nation and a big step towards placing India as a true sporting destination," declared Suresh Kalmadi, head of the Indian Olympic Association.

The same was true of the golf tournament. While there was some grumbling from rival organisations, most people involved in the sport were enthusiastic about hosting this event. One afternoon at the prestigious New Delhi Golf Club, where groups of women were preparing to tee off, in (American-style) golf visors, one woman official revealed that female membership had grown from 66 to 220 in two years. "Golf is more than crazy popular here," said Hanisha Daryani. "It's part of the economic boom, it's called the 'India Story'."

All the while India is busily preparing to host the 2010 Commonwealth Games, frantically building new facilities and giving Delhi a facelift that has even extended to new hygiene laws for street vendors out of a fear that the country's international sporting visitors will fall foul of "Delhi belly ". When Mani Shankar Aiyar, the Minister of Youth Affairs and Sports, suggested that India's bid to host the Asian games of 2014 would do little to help the country's ordinary citizens, there was outcry. When India lost out to the South Korean city of Incheon, Aiyar was branded a traitor. " There is a segment of Indian society which is extremely rich and which wishes to see itself in the international league," Aiyar later told me. " I wish to see all the people of India benefit rather than just a segment of our people."

Many Westerners, especially those whose view of India has been hazily shaped by holidays that have left an overwhelming impression of India's " spirituality", may be surprised by the readiness of large swathes of the public to adopt this new incarnation so readily.

And yet Indians see no problem. In his seminal book Being Indian, The writer Pavan Varma devotes a chapter to the "myth of otherworldliness". " Indians have deliberately promoted an otherwordly image," he writes. " They've always had a down-to-earth relish for the materialistic world. Far from being disdainful of the temptations of money and wealth, they have consistently given value to these goals."

It is an important lesson. Varma explains there is nothing in Hinduism that ideologically leads a follower to reject the material world for the spiritual. "Contrary to the notion that Indians are 'spiritual', they are really 'material-minded'," he adds. "They are materialists, believing in substance. There is a continuity, a constant flow of substance from context to context, from non-self to self - in eating, breathing, sex, sensation, perception, thought, art or religious experience."

AND YET for all the swagger one encounters and for all the rapacious consumerism on display, the talk of India having transformed itself into a superpower is, at least for the time being, somewhat overdone.

No one should doubt that the gains made by India's economy, currently growing at around 9 per cent a year, are not genuine and that they will not have an impact that changes the world order. Already India's place in the list of world economies is shifting. Two years ago its economy joined the world's top 10 and earlier this year a report by the investment bank Goldman Sachs predicted that within a decade it will surpass that of Italy, France and the UK to become the fifth largest. The report said that if current trends continue, the Indian economy will by mid-century have overtaken that of the US as well, leaving it second only to China.

But alongside these achievements, India is facing considerable problems as it seeks to emulate the US or even eclipse its superpower status. From a purely logistical perspective, the most serious of these is a shortfall in the infrastructure required to support its vision for the future.

This shortfall is apparent in many frustrating ways: in the water shortages and electrical power-cuts that befall even the biggest cities during the summer months, in the roads so clogged with traffic that it takes for ever to travel even a few miles and which become all but impassable during heavy rains. An investigation published by Business Week magazine included an assessment from Gajendra Haldea, an adviser to the federal planning commission, who has estimated that losses from congestion and poor roads cost India $6bn a year.

All the international companies that have come to India have realised the only way to ensure they can operate is to establish private campuses in cities such as Bangalore and Gurgaon, away from the local infrastructure, and with their own power and water supplies.

Others use planes to provide parts and materials to their factories or assembly plants, saying it is economically unviable to rely on the country's road haulage system. The same is said of the ports. And despite these provisions and despite the country's resource of a well-educated, English-speaking workforce, India's logistical capacity is so inadequate that many companies are opting for alternative countries in which to locate their plants. "We believe in manufacturing in India, but we don't believe in logistics in India - yet," said Wim Elfrink, Cisco Systems' chief globalisation officer.

Anyone taking to the skies in India receives as powerful an insight that exists into the inability of India's infrastructure to keep up with the demands of its middle class. In recent years a flood of new, cheap airlines such as Kingfisher, Sahara and Jet have started flying, based on the low-frills operations that revolutionised air travel in Europe. Journeys that once took several days by train can now be made in a couple of hours and the operation of the airlines themselves is sleek and efficient.

But recently flying has become increasingly less pleasant. Insufficient runway space, air-traffic controllers and more, mean that planes are often late taking off and are routinely required to circle before landing, wasting countless gallons of fuel and disrupting schedules.

THERE is another side to all of this. Not everyone agrees upon the future India should be taking, with the consumerist-driven project taking place in Gurgaon, with its malls and the pastel-coloured apartment complexes that come with names such as Beverley Park and an unspoken promise to satisfy every resident's aspirational dreams.

Many point out that while India's new middle-class may total two or three hundred million people, it is still only a portion of the country's population. Only a tiny percentage is employed by the much-celebrated technology sector. Most powerfully, while the statistics are hotly debated, there are clear indications that the gap between the new middle-class and the poor is getting bigger and that inequality has grown. The vigorous new India is only for some. Indeed, the reality is that hundreds of millions of Indians live in grindingly desperate poverty.

In a nation of 1.1 billion people, at least 300 million live below the official poverty line of $2 a day. Many millions more live close to this line. The adult literacy rate is around 61 per cent. Life expectancy stands at 64, while the under-five child-mortality rate is 57 per 1,000, though in rural areas the figure is closer to 62 per thousand. There is a widespread problem of child labour.

The Hindustan Times recently ran a series of articles which claimed that one in six Indians lived in an area of armed insurgency. Many of these struggles are decades old, but is it possible that some recruits to the cause are driven there as a result of the growing disparity within Indian society?

"I think these are signs of a lack of inclusion, that people do not feel involved with what is happening," said M J Akbar, a veteran journalist and editor-in-chief of The Asian Age newspaper.

Others have pointed out the environmental costs of the economic transformation. In many cities the roads, already desperately over-crowded, are becoming ludicrously clogged with new, affordable cars. In Delhi alone, the number of new vehicles being registered grows by 16 per cent every year. The implications in terms of C02 emissions and the battle for global resources are vast as India and its 1.1 billion people seek to emulate the lifestyle of the West - a lifestyle that on average consumes 26 times more energy.

In a 2005 interview with Reuters, the writer and activist Arundhati Roy said while thousands of farmers were committing suicide because they couldn't feed their families, people were too distracted by the pursuit of economic growth to think about the impact of growing cash crops such as soya beans, peanuts and sugar cane which use up scarce water resources.

"Even if you know what is going on, you can't help thinking India is this cool place now, Bollywood is 'in' and all of us have mobile phones," she said. "There is no understanding whatsoever of what price is being paid by the rivers and mountains and irrigation and ground water, there is no questioning of that because we are on a roll."

She continued: "The idea of turning one billion people into consumers is a terrifying one. Are you going to starve to death dreaming of a mobile phone or are you going to have control of the resources that are available to you and have been for generations, but have been taken away so that someone else can have a mobile phone?"

In the run-up to next Wednesday's anniversary, I sought out the wisdom of experience. Sir Mark Tully was the BBC's bureau chief in India for 22 years and has been honoured by the Indian state. Tully Sahib, as he is generally referred to, lives in a flat close to the site of a magnificent Mughal tomb that glowed in the early evening light. Though he resigned as a BBC correspondent a decade ago, he continues to work as a presenter for Radio 4 and is the author of many books about India, the country of his birth.

In his most recent book, India's Unending Journey, Tully talks a lot about the issue of "growth". He concludes that while growth is important to help the poorest emerge from poverty, growth by itself is not enough. Furthermore, he argues the growth must be suited to India's needs and requirements rather than the pressures of the globalised economy.

Tully, dressed in a long, mauve kurta, said that despite the creation of a consumer-orientated middle class, he was not persuaded that Indians had been entirely transformed. "Scratch below the surface and you will still find there is still [a lot] of spirituality - even among those going to the shopping malls," he said.

Asked about India's future, Tully chose to recall a conversation - included in his latest book - with Ravi Venkatesan, the chairman of Microsoft India. Over lunch at the company's Gurgaon offices, Venkatesan showed Tully a computerised diagram that the industrialist believed represented India's options.

The diagram showed a crossroads with arrows leading to three different elephants. The arrow leading to one elephant rose and then fell dramatically; this was the future if India continued on its current path of rapid growth that only helped a minority of people. Another arrow pointed downwards, with an elephant slipping in free fall; this was India's future if the entire global economy came to a halt.

The third elephant - its tail up in sprightly fashion - was balancing the globe on its trunk; it represented "India First" . Tully was told that this could be the outcome if everyone put the nation first, " determined that the entire country should benefit from its development".