…argues Madhav Nalapat. But only if Barack Obama takes a leaf out of George W. Bush’s book and treats India as a partner.
When US President Barack Obama comes calling on India early next month, he’ll be visiting a country even more conscious of skin colour than his own. The frequency with which fair skin is mentioned in Indian newspapers’ matrimonial adverts is widely noted, as is the expanding market for (often toxic) skin bleaching face creams.
Sadly, it’s hard to imagine that Congress President Sonia Gandhi wouldn’t have had a harder time exercising her almost dictatorial powers over her party had she been the native of an African rather than a European country, or that Rahul Gandhi would have been as much of a voter favourite if his skin wasn’t so fair.
So India should be willing to learn something from the transformational nature of its guest of honour’s election in 2008. The fact that millions of white US voters opted for Obama rather than John McCain went a considerable distance towards affirming a truth about the United States—that this huge melting pot of a country has given the world not just a vibrant people, but a truly composite culture.
Yet there’s more for India to learn from the United States (and fellow Anglophone country the United Kingdom) than the power of a president who transcends race—given that India is still a work in progress, closer association with the Anglosphere would likely help nudge the country's ruling elites towards the legal and institutional reforms needed to deepen our democracy.
An obvious candidate for change in India would be the structure of political parties, each of which is dominated by either a single family or a self-perpetuating clique of individuals. Until the Election Commission is given the power to enforce transparent and free elections for party posts in India, there are zero prospects for anything like an Ed Milliband taking over from a Gordon Brown or a Julia Gillard from a Kevin Rudd. In the meantime, the political system here will continue to be skewed in favour of family rather than societal interests.
A related issue is the need to dramatically increase transparency in political expenditure. Given the absurdly low levels of legally permitted spending in Indian elections, the overwhelming bulk of the money spent by candidates comes from undeclared sources. These sources are often, it’s reasonable to infer, far less savoury than those who are forced to declare their cash, and by refusing to implement electoral reform the political class in India is simply strengthening the nefarious influence of such interests.
Photo Credit: Uniphoto Press
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Leonard R.
I am pro-India. But India’s government needs to learn how to be a reliable partner. Quite often, deals mean nothing.
Hariharan (above) makes some pretty good points. Yes. India is in the so-called ‘Anglo-Sphere’. But expectations differ. The best sign is the Indians immigrating to the US & UK. They come back and they bring different expectations to India. And we all learn from each other.
Nathan
Unfortunately for Indians the west knows how easy it is to massage the Indian Ego and will use its sway over India for its own self interest in Asia and Indians are all to happy to go along for a pat on the back and some fancy phrases which include the words “super” and “power”!
elambend
@Stammy,
India fits as an Anglospheric country for more than just the commonplace use (in some places) of English. It is also shared cultural and legal systems and ways of thinking; a lot of which was not so much imposed by the British Raj as embraced my Indian elite back in the day. This has been reinforced by immigration ties to other major Anglosphere countries.
Praveen Kumar
Most of us Indians thank our stars, for the one good thing destiny has given us and denied China. A legacy of English, but this is not something we can be very happy about in the long term. China is training people in English by the thousands and will keep doing it, and make access to English more universal where India, as i see, will continue to bask in its self lighted lamp of middle class slogan – yes we know English( so we can work only in BPOs). The point to moot is English is not the game changer, science is..so that we can an educated workforce good enough to produce quality applied research rather than do back office jobs and be happy with the few comfortable grands it brings.
daulat ram
India won’t even exist in 20 years. If its government cannot cope with 10000 badly armed Maoists today, how will it cope with 300 million Indian Muslims in 20 years?
Not a hope.
Stammy
Why would India be part of the Anglosphere? It’s not an English speaking country. It just happens to be a country with a large bi-lingual with one of the languages being English.
Hariharan
India’s biodiversity is a tapestry with various hues of skin tones — nothing more than a gift of nature to a tropical nation. Unfortunately, India is yet to fully achieve its dream of “unity in diversity.” The main reason is a culture which still cherishes a ridiculous medieval ideology evidently embedded in every part of Indian society. America through its affirmative action programs, school education, and pop culture [brainwashing] has successfully destroyed the relevance of skin color in public life. Not to say that skin color is irrelevant in American society, it still is, but the impact is largely muted, and cannot stop a determined individual from realizing his or her potential.
Don’t wait for Obama — the cure is simple — unleash a barrage of radio and TV programs to communicate with the masses as to why education is more important than using skin bleaching creams, ads of which are so ubiquitous. Media is powerful and can be put to use to subliminally affect collective thinking of the people to start taking responsibility for the population bomb. The religiously dangerous notion of children as a “gift of god” instead of one’s personal actions is a more severe social problem than lusting for fair skin. And yet the content of television soap operas is about mother-in-laws pressuring daughter-in-laws to reproduce until a son is born to the clan. This needs to consciously change.
India doesn’t need closer association with the Anglosphere. India has one of the largest English-speaking population in the world and is squarely a part of the Anglosphere. Neither should India’s elite need any nudging, which wrongly affirms a stereotype of Western elites as being somehow better, even when many are rather mediocre at best. Here’s an interesting book: “The Anglosphere Challenge: Why the English-Speaking Nations Will Lead the Way in the Twenty-First Century”
http://www.amazon.com/Anglosphere-Challenge-English-Speaking-Nations-Twenty-First/dp/0742533336/
I do agree that institutional reforms need more depth if a democratic India were to lead the world in a few decades. What has been totally missed out is utilizing IT to solve difficult social problems. Nandan Nilekani’s National ID Card program is a good start. It is a large project but it should be seen as the tip of the iceberg, not the iceberg itself as portrayed by Indian media. A lot more can be done. IT leads to dramatically increasing transparency not only in political expenditure but ultimately “transparent government” — the secret sauce of the wealthy Western nations. Connecting the dots of how black money moves should be tracked by computers rather than other humans who are prone to corruption, lying, or plain laziness.
The socialist era is a stark reminder that the government should not try to do everything. The scale of privatization should increase dramatically and the government should opt to eagerly play the role of only a facilitator, instead of being a blocker that it is today. There has been a lot of talk about reduction in red tape but ground reality doesn’t indicate it as such.
The reason why corruption is not so bad in the West is because of massive programs in the last few decades which transformed paper records into electronic records from health to social services to trade to banking to crime and so on. On the other hand, while India has the largest pool of IT talent in the world, Indian politicians never invested much into digitization programs with an assumption that India has other more important probems to deal with like food, water, electricity, education, etc. and also perhaps from an inherent fear that IT would lead to loss of jobs.
The result is so apparent as soon as you land at any international airport in India where corrupt customs officers are ready to swindle tired passengers and India’s government, simply because the possibility exists due to paper records. What India needs to learn from the West is that initially there may be some loss of employment but that workforce is then put to use on more meaningful and constructive efforts. The long-term reward is strengthening the backbone of the nation. Without a spine, India will not become any power. Or as Ramachandra Guha suggests — India should not contemplate becoming a superpower.
Nepotism is practiced openly in Indian circles which also reminds me of Guanxi in China. My take is whether it is the Congress Party (or say the Communist Party in China), common sense reforms to establish “meritocracy” from the bottom up is the way to go. There is no need for anywho outsiders to come and nudge for something as simple as that.
For transformation of the legal system, the main problem needs to be identified — bureaucratic obesity. I can’t begin to understand why relatively simple court cases go on for decades. Add corruption to the mix and the result is anarchy. That’s just plain silly and shows the deep cracks in the system left behind by the Brits. A civil society exists but if it functions only marginally, the best solution is to restructure it completely. If the architecture of the replacement system is such that it still can’t handle a majority of cases within a year or two at max, something is terribly wrong. Instead of tailoring something new, a copy-paste from Switzerland’s or Singapore’s proven systems could prove to be a smart way out.
English education? I’d say go full force with it. India can harvest a big demographic dividend over the next 3-4 decades if India gets its act together on education. I hope Indian politicians aren’t so dumb that they actually want to turn it into a demographic debt by restricting English education. I wonder why people elect stupid politicians in the first place? Or perhaps democracies were meant to fail. The US is a democracy but that’s what you see on the surface. It is actually a one-party rule pretending to be a democracy. Little wonder then that America leads the world.
India can maintain good diplomatic ties with the US and the UK, while also being friendly with China and Russia. That’s what a widely anticipated multi-polar world is all about. The key balancing act for India is to be tactful enough and to keep a flexible stand on various issues. That’s how India becomes a benign fulcrum that balances world power, as it plays the role of a “bridging power” rather than that of a dictating superpower.
IMO, strategic interests of the West today intersect with that of India more than anytime before. However, the sad irony is that Western think tanks have been slow to realize that. Secondly, instead of engaging its neighbors, China has been way too myopic and self-interested as it continues to not only disengage but greedily infuriate its neighbors with land grabbing overtures. Until China gets past that, no one is going to take China as a serious partner, let aside the consideration of being a suitable candidate to lead the world. A balance of power tilted in favor of China would be disastrous for the world. Brahma Chellaney says that a sinocentric world order is unlikely, but I wouldn’t rule out irrendentist sentiment and keep an eye on Chinese intent.
India’s asymmetric military capabilities (including nuclear) should be strong enough for all kinds of scenarios, especially if China accidentally gets cocky and engages in pre-emptive military misadventures in Asia. Given how the demographics are shifting rapidly, the West is finally coming to terms that empowering India is the only way out going into the future. If Bill Clinton thinks otherwise, that simply reflects the failure of American think tanks which are still in denial mode. A good example of the horn of retreat from a string of strategic failures and miscalculations is Steve Clemons article: “Time to Rethink US Bases in Asia.”
India needs to move beyond the legacy of a colonial past and start looking at the UK as a pacifist, declining, reluctant outpost of the EU and a US-vassal state. India’s focus should be on working with the EU as much as the US for that could turn out to be a truly powerful and equitable trinity.