Sunday Posts

I am now in Mumbai, the sprawling commercial capital of India. 16% of the country's GDP is in this one city, where 70% of its capital transactions take place. This is one of those big populous metropolis, home to more than 20 million people, that represents whatever the popular perception of India is. Even before the flight touched down, a perceptive traveller can clearly see the islands of California-esque prosperity in the middle of Sub-Saharan poverty, the apt expression Amartya Sen used to describe India. Professor Sen surely touched a raw nerve when he said that. The comment came just before the last year's General Elections, at a time of resurgent Indian nationalism. He was accused of selling out, undermining India in front of the world for personal gain. Anyone flying into Mumbai can indeed see what Professor Sen meant - the metaphor would appear quite literal - but such acts of truthfulness are usually considered unpatriotic. It was only coincidental that to...

If India has to grow to the next level, it must look beyond its Middle Class. In a classic case of narcissist obsession, India seems to think of itself in terms of what the outside world sees of it - the immense consumption potential of the middle classes - but its own reality is both richer and more diverse than that. So, the model of development that the country must pursue is one that must look beyond the middle classes, and release the enormous human waste that the country continues to endure through poverty. In short, the New India needs to be new, not the old one in some shiny garb. Everyone seems to admit that India's biggest problem is its politics. It may be blasphemous to say so, but democracy has failed India. May be more correctly, India has failed democracy. For all the fine rhetoric and a constitution written in fine English, Indian citizens have little rights or respect from the state. The state that Nehru built ended up being a Desi replica of the Raj, a distant p...

I am in Delhi. I shall make my third, and final, train journey in a few hours time. This one, on a Super-fast express, is expected to be different from the ones I have done so far. I am told that this is an 'elite' train, used by Ministers and MPs, and hence, everything will be first class. Indeed. This is a two speed country and I am reminded of this one more time. In this visit, it was always about this contrast. India is no longer just the land of opposites, but the battleground of different ideas of the nation and progress. Silently, all over India, as the old divisions supposedly crumbled, new zones of exclusion have been built. Indeed, there is this 'elite' India and a vast 'non-elite' one. Then, there are urban and rural India, Hindu and Non-Hindu India, Young and Old India: These are not self-containing groups, surely, but for each identity, there are certain privileges or the lack of it, there is exclusion and inclusion: Any visitor will be reminde...

I am visiting India, reconnecting with it after a long absence. Indeed, such absences change perceptions significantly, and as I start again, I am rediscovering everything afresh. My family context in India has irreversibly changed with deaths and divorces within my immediate family, and there is quite a bit of emptiness I have to deal with now. The same spaces, which I grew up in and to which I automatically assign some meaning, have transformed - and each encounter with them is torn between the inevitable fresh messages that they convey now and the nostalgia I associate with them. However, India, so far, having an opposite effect to nostalgia on me: It is allowing me to feel the inevitable lightness of being. I am being slightly eccentric this time, by choice. I have kept myself away from Internet, mostly, except this one day when I checked an week's worth of mails etc. I have spent a lot of time in our family temple, not out of a new-found religiosity, but a sense of duty in m...

Today, as India celebrates its independence day, let us return to the derelict house in Beliaghata in Kolkata , where Gandhi took refuge on the day of independence of India. There he was, frail and all of his 78 years old, not in a celebratory mood. The independence, celebrated with pomp in Delhi, where Nehru read out his famous speech, delivered in English, was nothing alike what Gandhi visualized. This is what Faiz Ahmed Faiz would write in his 'Dawn of Freedom', which assumed a different view from Nehru's awakening of a nation: These tarnished rays, this night-smudged light -- This is not that Dawn for which, ravished with freedom, we had set out in sheer longing, so sure that somewhere in its desert the sky harbored a final haven for the stars, and we would find it. We had no doubt that night's vagrant wave would stray towards the shore, that the heart rocked with sorrow would at last reach its port. Friends, our blood shaped its own mys...

As you step out of Mumbai airport, India meets you at the door. This is not the India you saw on movies, chaotic and poor; not the one you suspected it to be, from the slums you saw from the sky. But, neither it is the sleek Dubai-like feature which it should have been, if you just trusted the analysts above all else: After all, this is where the next game of Global Capitalism will be played. The experiences at the door, on both counts, are bound to be anti-climactic. With the new shiny Mumbai airport coming into being, the disorderliness of beggars and scavengers of the past are gone: In its place, now, are security barriers, taxi counters and glass doors. The noisy crowd waiting for homecoming relatives and friends are now spread over a large area rather than a tiny door front: The scenes of emotion are therefore much diffused. It is rather a quiet experience, compared to whatever you have heard about Mumbai from those who have gone there before. But, one thing will still strike y...

The world seems to be discovering India. At least, the cityboys are. The talk is that India is that 'emerging' nation now, which will put China behind. My taxi driver says so, one may assert. Besides, the Indian growth rate, compared to the anemic European and North American ones, looks stellar. There are two reasons about this excitement regarding India. The first is Demography. After all, China is ageing, and India is full of young people. Lots of commentators, Nandan Nilkeni among them, talks glowingly about the 'demographic dividend'. The idea is that with so many young hands to work, this is indeed India's moment to lose. The second factor, though a bit cliched, is democracy. Indian democracy is a crowded, chaotic circus, but it is still the country's most crucial asset against the social discord that is bound to happen when a country changes course so dramatically. While the Chinese migrant labour may have to suffer in silence, only to rebel with force and...

Since I wrote about Lord Macaulay in 2008 and praised the brilliance of his scheme, I have been engaged in the debate about Macaulay endlessly. If anyone has any doubts about how profound the effects of an education reform can be, Macaulay is a case in point. He used English Language as a weapon of empire building, and helped dominate a much larger country, India, through the creation of a franchise of privilege based on the language. Indeed, India was divided and had no sense of nation, as John Stratchey would later say. With the breakdown of state power, the indigenous education system was dying. These factors made Macaulay's passage rather easy - he did not have to engineer any full scale cultural revolution. Besides, his scheme was not an original invention as some would like to say. An education system based on the language of the state was an established way of dividing and governing a society, somewhat since the Roman time. In all fairness, Macaulay was only applying the l...

Context: I am back from India, last of my business trips. Unusually, I spent most of the time in Mumbai this time. As usual, I was excited by the possibilities I encountered. But then, I am the glass half-full sort of a person. Of course, that optimism is only appropriate: The Indian way is to see the possibilities inside a problem. The classic example of the Indian imagination is the perception of an uniquely Indian phenomena which Western tourists jeer at most - the four people Indian family on a scooter - which reportedly triggered the imagination for Tata Nano , a $2000 compact car. This, and many more innovations like this, represent the modern India - of not accepting what has been handed down, but to imagine a different future with confidence and passion. However, all said, I would also acknowledge that the path ahead for India is fraught with enormous risks. The possibilities are in sight, but the optimism is obscuring the challenges. That will be a big mistake, because Indi...

I am in India, as reported, and in the middle of my usual cycle of passion and depression, accentuated by an odd migraine and excitement in discovering various possibilities. It is hot, in both senses of the word, and we are in that opportune, supreme moment, Kairos in Greek, Mahakshan in Sanskrit, where we shall script India's future - either to greatness or to abyss. I am conscious that it is easy to get carried away in India. A country's future is not the property prices in Powai , which has gone up by 40% year on year, or the BSE Sensex , which seems to be soaring again to that 20,000 mark, making a lot of paper millionaires across the country at this time. Despite the excitement of the English language press, which is intent on selling the India story 24x7 to whoever cares, this is still a very poor country, with intractable problems. Full of possibilities, though, as I keep mentioning in this blog, but so far, we have failed to imagine and failed to act. I am reading ...

I am in India, doing my last business trip for my current employers. I am always very proud about the work I do, and hence, always wanted to be a good leaver: Leaving things in order as far as possible. India, as usual, is always enjoyable, and compellingly different from my rather bland life in Britain. Here, I experience none of the solitude that, strangely, bores me these days. Here, it is almost the other world, full of people, ringing phones, friendly strangers, business contacts who become friends, people who know people who know people I know - a constant stream of events, noises and the feeling of being in the middle. Every time I come to India, I feel like staying back. Interestingly, the current national obsession of India is the Indian Premier League, a football-like version of Cricket, packed with cheerleaders, glitz and glamour. Conveniently packed into 20-overs, 3-hour variety, along with a sprinkling of celebrity businessmen and actresses, IPL is a bold, and failed, att...

Duality, as in Dualism, is an essential part of the India experience. I said before, whatever you find in India, you will also find the opposite. It is the coexistence that both of opposing, chaotic and diverse world views is the only thing that is truly Indian. India is not an EITHER-OR country, it is mostly an AND country. This is not to say there are no conflicts in India; those tales are just too well known. But the idea that opposites can coexist, non-violently, is an important idea which remained at the core of the idea of India. I have talked about this again and again while talking about democracy and diversity, but the dualism, coexistence, is quite central to Indian cultural ideas as well. But duality is different from diversity, which we already discussed. India's huge diversity brings the idea of reconciliation to the fore all the time, but it is still not the variations of caste, class, religion and language which makes you see two Indias at the same time. Rather, it ...

My initial guilt about using the word Divinity is now gone. Initially, this was word play, I meant religiosity, but to keep up with my 5 Ds , chose this word, which is actually quite different in meaning. But more I dwelt on India, the word sounded more and more appropriate. Sorry Kerala , India seemed to be the God's own land. That was flippant, indeed. But, more flippant will be not to believe in God, if you happen to be in India. A British friend told me that she came to believe in God when she saw the traffic in Mumbai . I am now used to the signature British sarcasm, but there are more reasons than just chaos which brings you close to God in India. God is omnipresent in India. You will always find a shrine, small or big, beautifully maintained or just makeshift, in India. You will watch thousands of people touching their head and muttering a silent prayer as they pass by even a roadside stone which, by chance, looks like an idol. Most Indians, 80% of them, are Hindus, and Hind...

Diversity is the most obvious dimension of the Indian experience, yet it is the most sublime. Yes, India indeed looks like an endless fancy dress party, a bewildering combination of languages, dresses and appearances. Yet, everyone also keeps telling you about a sense of 'unity in diversity' all the time. That expression comes from Vincent Smith, a British historian who wanted to understand the broad concept of India, in European terms. Since then, the theme of any study of India was to see this 'unity' in all diversity, making a rather tortured effort to root all elements of diversity into an universal Indianness . These attempts are so common that the apparent diversity has become sublime, at least in the interpretative literature, and in the name of political correctness, the sublime unity seems to have become all pervasive. It does not have to be so confusing though, at least if we accept that India is not a nation in the European sense. That should not offend any...