In late February, Charlie Rose was in India prior to George W Bush’s visit and interviewed politicians, bureaucrats, business leaders, journalists and activists, all of whom primarily represented beneficiaries of a new India. It was really interesting to watch these interviews. With the exception of Shabana Azmi to a certain extent, the other Indias (we don’t need to specify them, do we) weren’t part of the euphoria and optimism which were the dominant mood and rasa in these interactions. Sure, there were touches of frustration, defaince and angst even amongst this elite group of interviewees, but that was about what stopped India from becoming a genuine superpower. Harish Khare wrote an interesting article in the Hindu last week about two streams of nationalism and their attitudes towards America:
“(The first stream of nationalism) define(s) its interests mostly in economic terms. These Indians have aspirations to improve their lifestyle many times over in their lifetime, and they believe that a serious and sustained economic engagement with the U.S. is the key to those aspirations. …. The second stream of Indian nationalism is to be located in the vast mofussil India. This part of India remains unimpressed and uninterested in the U.S. for the simple reason that the “American dream” has no relevance for 700 million Indians who struggle everyday with deprivations and discomforts. …. The mofussil nationalist has not been given any reason to revise his traditional view that suspects Washington of resenting our rise as a great power. ” A little sweeping, yet Khare can always be relied upon to provide a balanced perspective.
Last night in a conversation with Charlie Rose, Nicholar Burns, the Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, who negotiated the nuclear deal with India went to enormous lengths to distinguish between India and Iran, emphasizing on India’s responsible behavior as a nuclear state and making the case for rewarding such good conduct. Let me not rehash here what Richard Cohen has presented concisely in the Washington Post. Even among all its virtues, India’s democracy is the flavor for Bush’s second term, as he tries to sell democracy and freedom around the world, without ever speaking about what they mean, either for him or for anyone else. Wish my Oped for TOI hadn’t gotten bumped by Robert Blackwell last thursday, since it addressed precisely this issue. One of these days, I will do an expanded version of that essay for the inhabitants of the Land of Lime.
To return to Charlie Rose and his interviews, I wanted to share some of my impressions. Let us begin at the beginning, with the Indian Prime Minister and his optimism, which reminded me of his new friend, the Hopeful One. Unlike Bush, Manmohan Singh has at least some things going for him.
I was very struck by the language Manmohan Singh used, given the fact that he set India on the liberalization/globalization path. He began by rhetorically asking: to whom does the future of civilization belong? Questioning Huntington’s premise, Singh said what is occurring is not a clash of civilization but a dialogue among civilizations. In an increasingly multicultural world, he held up India’s own democratic experiment as a model for other societies to follow and used very interesting terms to characterize this experiment: according to him, Indians are seeking social and economic salvation within the framework of democracy.
Singh’s India is not Weber’s India, which was intent on seeking salvation from the cycle of birth and from this world. This new India seeks to realize its destiny within a framework of open society, open economy and respecting all fundamental human freedoms and pluralistic - humanistic system. Well, we know now why Bush is bullish on India and its emergence as a global power; the next century is not only an Asian century but the future of civilization too belongs to us.
While journalists and diplomats from both sides continued to be euphoric about India’s emergence as a great power, business leaders had a slightly different song: crumbling infrastructure and corrupt politicians, who are failing the country and not even get out of the way when private investors come forward to create infrastructural facilities. Kiran Majumdar Shaw and Anil Agarwal were the stars of this musical show whereas Azim Premji and Ratan Tata were somewhat subdued, since they had benefited from the old license-raj as well; Nandan Nilekani, though, was still euphoric about providing Tom Friedman with the title for the best seller ‘The World is Flat’ and contributing a new phrase to describe globalization - flattening of the world. What actually gets flattened in such ‘Business leader speak’ is truth, especially about the hundreds of thousands of crores that are written off as bad debt, all given to Indian industry by Indian public sector banks. It’s quite a popular song, Blame the Politician, but the tune is kinda old and also flies in the face of one more reality: the first world our Business leaders seek in India, we can’t afford it.
Bush has come and gone, having elicited many responses, some good and many ugly. A most prescient observation I read somewhere yesterday stated: India’s relationship with America under Bush has communalized Indian society/polity in a way our relationship with even Pakistan didn’t.
Someone announces 25 billion rupee for the head of George W Bush and we don’t raise our voice. I hope this isn’t the social and economic salvation that Manmohan Singh referred to! See again Khare’s piece on this deeply disturbing trend. Not only are such voices disturbing but also the shrillness and total absence of perspective among dissenting voices: Arundhati Roy’s interviews don’t make for pretty reading. There is something deeply disturbing when Richard Cohen and Micheal Kinsely begin to make more measured and relevant critiques of Bush than Roy and company.
Mahatma Gandhi haazir ho!
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