From Poverty-Haunted Bharat to Great India
A woman dressed as Mother India poses with
India’s national flags during the country’s
Independence Day celebrations in the southern
Indian city of Hyderabad August 15, 2012
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Doctor of History, Professor of the Oriental Studies Department of the MGIMO University
In Russia they have a great deal of respect for India, and yet, they still regard it as part of the developing world. However, the steep rise of this Asian giant has been so impressive that the country has really turned into a great power. In spite of the immense problems that it faces today, in the social sphere above all, India’s clout in the world political and economic system in the coming 25-30 years will steadily increase.
In Russia they have a great deal of respect for India, and yet, they still regard it as part of the developing world. However, the steep rise of this Asian giant has been so impressive that the country has really turned into a great power. In spite of the immense problems that it faces today, in the social sphere above all, India’s clout in the world political and economic system in the coming 25-30 years will steadily increase.
Socio-Political Development
For all the significant contrasts that differ it from the Western model it was its contact with Western civilization in dealing with fundamental issues that led India to setting up a political system that in comparison with almost all non-Western countries corresponds best of all to most of Western parameters.
Establishment of the system of representative democracy in its classical Western version more than half a century back may be regarded as an overly hasty evolution. It was bound to provoke a fallback, but in India’s case this proved to be considerably less protracted as compared to the overwhelming majority of developing countries. Most of the elements of this anticipatory development have taken root firmly on Indian soil, which is undoubtedly associated with specific traits of India’s civilization.
The obvious strong points of India’s political make-up include electivity of government at local and all the way down to the grassroots levels, the genuine independence of the judiciary, and the well-known Indian consensus that implies unity of views in society regarding fundamental key issues in domestic and foreign policies. There is no doubt that democratic principles will in the future take root ever deeper on Indian soil.
However, India is still, as before, faced with highly complicated social problems. Since the time India gained independence, the government policy in the fight against caste discrimination has been directed towards improvement of the situation of the destitute and underprivileged in political and socio-economic spheres. As one of the elements of this policy, they established a system of quotas reserved for the Dalits and lower-caste at educational institutions, in civil service and elective bodies. Furthermore, the poor are issued with coupons to buy prime necessity goods at symbolic prices. The state is also active in promoting development of small businesses and creation of new jobs. Over the half-century, the living standards of the lower strata have increased considerably, and this has largely been instrumental in the integration of people in these strata in the country’s political and social life. It should be pointed out here that after the country gained independence, the share of non-Brahman varna has been gradually increasing in the political elite, and this concerns especially members of commercial castes and mid-size landholders. They have joined political parties, won seats on executive and legislative bodies, and risen to ever higher positions both at the level of states and nationally. Furthermore, so-called “dominating castes” have emerged, different in their make-up in various states. Even former untouchables take an active part in the political process: they have formed their own political party that won fourth place at the last general election.
Dalits Children of Communities Rising after-
school program. Tamil Nadu, 2011
This notwithstanding, the disparities in the socio-economic development still persist among castes, between rural and urban areas, and from region to region. Caste encapsulation and endogamy have led to a situation where a person from the Brahman varna has, as a rule, hundreds of generations of forebears engaged in intellectual activities. In the meantime, an average Dalit cannot find a single member in his or her family tree over the millennia who had any education at all or was engaged in an intellectual profession. Moreover, the Dalits’ instruments and objects of labor have been primitive and uniform. The result is that India today has a contingent of highly qualified specialists at the world’s top level and a vast intellectual potential in the higher strata of society, but lags considerably behind other countries in the quality of the average-skill work force.
On the whole, the caste system in India is in a process of erosion today. The process may be regarded as positive from the humanitarian viewpoint, but quite negative in socio-political terms. The point is that the caste system has worked as a steel clamp keeping society together and played a crucial role in alleviating social tensions. With its erosion, the activity of the underprivileged may bring about a social explosion.
An extremely acute problem in the country is that of poverty: 41.6% of Indians live off less than $1.25 a day [1], and 75.6% - less than $2 (according to the World Bank’s data, 29.8% of the population were in the “poor” bracket in 2010. Moreover, while inequality (by Gini coefficient) was smoothing out over the period of bi-polar world system, it has been increasing in the course of the last two decades, especially in urban areas, returning as it did in 2005 to the level of the early 1980s [2].
In accordance with such fundamental notions as karma (the sum total of actions by an individual in previous births and lives, and reward at present and in the future) and dharma (a person’s duty, status, rights and obligations), a person cannot impose the responsibility for his or her own failures and misfortunes on society or concrete people, but rather should only blame his or her own self for incompliance with the norms in the present or previous lives.
In another development, the socio-economic situation in the country suffers from disparities in the growth levels among its regions. The economic growth indices of the country’s poorest states in the past forty years have proved to be below the average national indicator, while they are considerably higher in the case of the wealthiest states. The top-wealthy state, the Punjab, had at the beginning of the century its per capita GDP four times that of the bottom-line state, Bihar, and the gap remains the same today [3]. But regional disparities in India are only considerable in comparison with developed countries. In the developing world, disproportions of this kind are nothing extraordinary. The main point is that India’s process of self-identity is based on civilizational rather than ethnic principles.
The country's integrity may only be threatened by some especially unfavorable combination of circumstances. India today demonstrates graphically “unity in diversity” which many regard as the foundation of Indian civilization. As for religious minorities, there are no compact residential areas in their settlement (except for the states of Kashmir and Punjab). In addition to civilizational unity and a certain growth of pan-India sentiment, any real spread of regional separatism is obstructed by the regions’ increasing involvement in the national division of labor that has been considerably in evidence over the years of independence. In the 1990s alone, the volume of domestic trade across the country doubled in fixed prices, amounting to more than 13% of the national GDP, and it doubled further again over the first decade of the new century. The country’s unity is in the interest of a large multi-ethnic community of business people operating all over India, and of a huge stratum of civil servants. Yet another deterrent for separatism is the uncompromising use of force in the event of any separatist attempts relying on foreign support (the Punjab, Assam).
Social conflict has been a much rarer event in India’s history than in that of other societies, which is something that they tend to attribute, in the first place, to prevalence of Hinduism in the country. In accordance with such fundamental notions as karma (the sum total of actions by an individual in previous births and lives, and reward at present and in the future) and dharma (a person’s duty, status, rights and obligations), a person cannot impose the responsibility for his or her own failures and misfortunes on society or concrete people, but rather should only blame his or her own self for incompliance with the norms in the present or previous lives.
University of Mumbai
An elite model of India’s civilization is graphically expressed in the area of education. While only one-third of the country’s population could read and write in 1970 [4], now the figure is 62.8%. It should therefore be expected that within a quarter-century literacy will cover more than 90% of India’s population.
Higher education covered 12% of India’s young people in 2012. The government sets the goal to bring the figure up to 30% by 2025. Overall, some 500 thousand young engineers graduate in India each year. The quality of higher education is higher than in China. While lagging behind many countries in the share of national budgetary spending on education in general, India ranks among the world leaders in allocations for higher education that make 18% of all spending on education (by comparison, the figure is 14% in Japan, 13% in South Korea, and 17% in Italy [5]). And these figures are increasing. Allocations for higher education in the budget for the 2011/2012 fiscal year were earmarked to a sum one-third greater than in the preceding year [6].
The point that warrants special attention is the enormous environmental problems that India will practically be unable to cope with in the foreseeable future. The need to improve the standards of living of the poorer strata of the population, coupled with the fast growth in the numbers of the middle class that looks for European standards in consumption, will further increase the burden on soils, water resources and flora and fauna. (It might be added here that even the McKinsey Global Institute, which is generally skeptical about India, forecasts that the country’s middle class will number 500 million persons in 2025.
Economic Projections
Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman,
World Economic Forum at the India in the New
Global Reality (Opening Plenary Session) during
the India Economic Summit 2011 in Mumbai,
India, 12-14 November, 2011
India’s economic growth rates in the past 20 years have been among the world’s highest. The indicators for 2011 are that India’s GDP in the purchasing power parity (PPP) was assessed at $4.46 trillion ($1.84 trillion by the official exchange rate) . India, therefore, has placed third as a world economic power, surpassing Japan (Japan’s GDP in the PPP in 2011 was $4.39 trillion). However, when it comes to the GDP per capita volume ($3,770) , India in 2011 was only the world’s 162nd.
It should be mentioned that practically all experts in the West forecast one of the world’s highest growth rates for India. The average weighted projection calculated by experts, including those connected with business structures and international institutions, predicts an annual increment of 5.6% for India in the coming 20-30 years (differences are quite considerable in the estimates of academic researchers, while they are never above 1% in the case of the rest of the experts). Along with economic and the above mentioned political and ideological factors, specialists see India’s advantages in its population parameters. In mid-2012, the country’s population amounted to 1.2 billion people. Although the growth rates that year fell to 1.35%, UN demographers, nevertheless, expect that in 2030 India will be the most populated country in the world, with1.5 billion, and by 2050 its population will have reached the 1.614 billion mark. Furthermore, the median age will be considerably lower than in China that will have a very high proportion of the pension age population. Thanks to the younger age structure, the size of the economically active population in India will be significantly larger than in China.
There are three scenarios of India’s economic development in the period till 2030:
- optimistic – if, as the prime condition, there absolutely are no economic upheavals internationally or socio-economic cataclysms within the country;
- an average weighted – these factors will be there, but with nothing critical in their scope or character;
- negative.
Probability of the average weighted scenario may be estimated at 65-70%, optimistic (or half-optimistic) at 25-30%, and negative at 5-10%.
Therefore, the most realistic forecast is that India’s GDP in the PPP will make by the end of the period around $12 trillion in the 2012 prices.
* * *
Golden Temple in Amritsar
Modern India faces a multitude of very serious problems.
In the political sphere: the growth of political Hinduism and Hindu communalism may bring about a striving for uniformity, while it is plurality that is the foundation of Indian civilization. If this foundation is subverted, the result may be very serious political consequences – this at a minimum, and in the event of the worst scenario this may set in motion a process of disintegration of the republic. In any case, any political instability will have a negative impact on the country’s economic development.
In the economic sphere: India will hardly be able to enter the phase of post-industrial development. What with the vast mass of poor population in the country, there is no possibility to apply many of the models practiced in developed countries. For example, introduction of new resource-saving technologies makes little sense, for it is not clear at all what should be done about the labor force released as a result. It is not accidental in this respect that most technological achievements in the country are export oriented in their nature, and, in addition, development along the path of industrialization comes under rigid environmental restrictions.
In the social sphere: erosion of the caste system will fuel an increase in social tensions. The process of globalization and policies of liberalization inside the country may only contribute to development of this negative trend.
In the intellectual sphere: the annual departure abroad of dozens of thousands of the best of the qualified specialists can already in the near future bring about a considerable weakening of India’s position in the area of high technologies, and in the longer run may lead to a slowdown in cultural dynamics.
In the sphere of foreign policies: the 40-year-old foreign policy consensus may be blown up if leaders calling for orientation solely towards the U.S.A. challenge the supporters of the traditional independent course.
At the same time, neither the lack of political stability, nor the growth of religious revivalist trends in the past two decades have led to any crisis, or chaos, or attempts to revise radically the course of domestic policies. India’s economic performance of late indicates that the country has good prospects in engineering and in industrial development overall, while the falling birth rates are reason to expect reduction in the long run of the poverty level.
It is obvious that India today ranks among major world powers, having turned into a specific subsystem of international relations. Along with the U.S.A. and China it has the best prospects to acquire the status of a global influence center and the future of the world will most probably be determined by development of relations within the U.S.A. – China – India triangle. Russia, the European Union and Japan have prospects to become part of the new geometric configuration, but this in many respects will depend on their political will and dynamics of economic development.
1. Доклад о человеческом развитии 2011. Устойчивое развитие и равенство возможностей: Лучшее будущее для всех. (Human Development Report 2011. Sustainable Development and Equal Opportunities: A Better Future for All), Весь мир Publishers, Moscow, 2011. P. 144.
2. Perspectives on Poverty in India. Stylized Facts from Survey Data. The World Bank. Washington, 2011. P. 190.
3. Nagaraj R., Varoudakis A., Veganzones M.-A. Long-Run Growth Trends and Convergence Across Indian States. OECD Development Centre. Technical Papers. 1998. № 131 (Feb.). Pp. 15–19.
4. Liberal Times (New Delhi). 1997. Vol. V. № 2. P. 27.
5. Human Development Report 2007/2008: Fighting Climate Change: Human Solidarity in a Divided World. N.Y.: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Pp. 265–267.
6. Cyranoski D., Gilbert N., Ledford H., Nayar A., Yahia M. Education: The PhD Factory // Nature (London), 20.04.2011. P. 279.
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