This is an article that I wrote for New Age in Bangladesh. It'll probably provoke a few angry emails from Indian friends, but I hope they see the wider point.
Looking through the hype
INDIA’S cricket team, it is fair to say, have been victims of their own hype in the past few years. Like football in England, Indian cricket’s financial orgy has had a very specific effect on the national team. The team – and indeed much of the nation – have come to the conclusion that the national side’s ability to play decent cricket is directly proportional to the number of brand endorsements each of the players have, and how many crudely triumphalist adverts can be wedged into TV airtime. There is a belief that vast sums of money and a great deal of pomp can replace good organisation and infrastructure as a means to success. That illusion was shattered when India, after one of the most sustained and mind numbing media campaigns in the history of sport, were unceremoniously dumped out of last year’s cricket World Cup in the first round. This exercise in collective delusion would be amusing, were it not symptomatic of a wider delusion: India’s economic miracle.
Certainly, India’s economy has never been more relevant or exciting. India is not grabbing headlines and magazine covers for no reason. But like the nation’s boys in blue, it looks as if India’s government and business community believe their own hype, and are hence doing little to lay the foundations of an evenly developed society. At present there is no society on earth that bares naked inequality on such a grand scale as India. The country’s economic boom is restricted to a few tiny pockets of ferocious prosperity. But between the much trumped renaissance of cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and Chennai lies a nation of 800 million people who still live in abject poverty. Take Mumbai as an example. If you take a train only two hours from Victoria Terminus you will find yourself in impoverished rural Maharashtra, where suicide rates among farmers are among the highest in Asia, if not the world.
Only two sections of Indian society are profiting from this boom: the established business classes, for whom the boom means widescreen TVs and more holidays abroad, and the English-medium educated middle classes, who instead of entering the civil service, now spend their days and nights in call centres being shouted at by irate western bank customers. None of this new-found wealth disseminates to the nation’s hidden majority. As if this social inequality were not enough, the pitiable lack of investment in the most basic infrastructure will hobble India’s chances of becoming a superpower. Bangalore, the nation’s IT town, can barely provide an adequate electricity supply to its ever expanding hi-tech legions. The city’s road system is creaking under the combination of vastly increased volumes of traffic and no initiatives to try and solve this growing problem.
India also seems to take curious barometers as signs of development. Much has been made in the press recently of Tata’s acquisition of Jaguar and Land Rover. This purchase has been heralded as a great sign of the times, an Indian corporation taking over a classic British brand. But did it make much business sense? After Ford’s failure to make a profit with the Jaguar brand, it seemed like only a madman would take on a financial albatross like Jaguar. But that is not the point: it is the symbolism that is important.
Many times have I heard Indians cite the sharp rise in mobile phone use as a sign of progress. And it is true that mobile phone companies (and the Reliance group in particular) have revolutionised communications in the country. Furthermore, the mobile phone boom is remarkable because a huge spectrum of Indian society has been empowered by it. Ten years ago such a development would have been unthinkable. But is there not something deeply awry in a nation where the same millions who have been empowered by the mobile phone are dogged by unreliable electricity supplies, and a chronic and widespread lack of potable water?
On broader a state-to-state basis, development is also appallingly lopsided. Eastern states such as Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Orissa are notoriously poor and a far cry from economic powerhouses such as Gujarat. Even within economically successful states there are terrible social problems. Andhra Pradesh may boast the remarkable success of its capital Hyderabad, but it is also one of the main bastions of India’s Maoist insurgency that Manmohan Singh branded as ‘the greatest internal threat to national security.’ How has this political anachronism survived in ‘Shining India’? The existence of such a movement illustrates how removed the rural poor are from the development of the state. If there was even the most minimal of investment into rural areas, groups such as the Maoists would be instantly discredited. This is a battle that needs to be fought through development, rather than through the gun, which it currently is. Moreover, India’s underdeveloped heartland boasts a lower quality of life than many of its poorer neighbours. Recent research by the international charity Save the Children showed that infant mortality rates in India are not only higher than in Bangladesh, even without the meteoric economic growth that India has seen in the past decade, the latter has achieved deeper cuts in infant mortality.
The conditions that have made India’s economic growth possible thus far are an English speaking labour force who work long hours for a fraction of the cost of their counterparts in the west. The issue of language has been up until now as the one major advantage that India has had over China. But this can be – and is – rapidly changing, as Chinese youngsters are learning English, and as youngsters from other nations around the world are learning Mandarin and Cantonese in record numbers. An English speaking China, with its even, steady development would fast become a more attractive destination.
In addition, the same logic that dictated that it made business sense to shift operations from the west to India may in turn boomerang on India. It is not inconceivable that English speaking nations in Africa such as Ghana, Tanzania or even Uganda could – in the not-too-distant future – be just an attractive proposition for businesses seeking a cheap labour force.
India’s desire to run before it can walk is wholly understandable after years as one of the world’s largest economic hermits. But it must make sure that the money earned in this boom is invested in development throughout the country, and not just in the tiny electronic islands of profit that have fuelled this current boom.
Patrick Pringle is a freelance journalist and writes for New Age from London
