Our Peacock Apes The Eagle

The New India?

This is a response, rambling per usual, to a thought provoking article by Akash Kapur, whose identity in a sense straddles America and India. Every day, anyone living in India is witness to any number of 'Americanisms' introduced in our day to day lives. Not all of them are bad, and not all are good.

Supermarkets and fast food such because they are killing traditional Indian (sustainable) farming and health. Shopping malls bring with them consumerism of a at times revolting magnitude. Builders of gated communities, whose projects are at times unsupported and in the long term unsupportable by existing infrastructure are building their own little fiefdoms complete with power and water grids. Any one living near a major city is witness to large roadworks and an explosion in the number of cars on the road, and all the attendant evils of pollution.


One fondly remembers greenery with nostalgia, as concrete rushes to fill the void... and as you look at this concrete jungle, you wonder how long it will be before it breaks down for lack of water, of power, of fuel, and there is blood in the streets...
Rural India or semi-urban India is where the problems are really bad though. Traditional agriculture doesn't earn a living for farmers any more. Our natural resources are being strip-mined and sold, due to a complete lack of vision and expertise in the governance structure.Corruption, a mere budgetary inconvenience to most urban corporate types has a choke-hold on people's lives. The poor are getting poorer, and are resorting to more and more extreme means - the less cynical to protest, the angry ones to overthrow, and the despondent to merely survive


And yet, India (or the 1% in India if you will) is richer, more assertive, and more ambitious than ever. Who could have imagined that an entrepreneur not born into the Tata or Birla or Ambani families would build and run a private port in India? Who could have imagined India would be an attractive services hub right on time to keep its educated young middle class employed (or at least enamored)? Indians are more connected with the rest of the world economically than ever before, with a very successful diaspora to serve as economic ambassadors.


We have, thus far, successfully resisted the temptation of American supply-side, trickle down economics. Yes, inequities are widening and 'development' is unsustainable but India remains a welfare state, albeit one defeated by scale. Our public distribution system and welfare mechanisms are breaking down where they aren't broken already, but elections are still largely free and fair and states like Bihar are setting the stage for a resurgence of good governance. Populism, arguably does actual good in India because it helped keep the government's policies Keynesian during the economic crisis, and welfare oriented in the long term.


Rural India, valid concerns about a slow cultural and economic erosion phenomenon notwithstanding, abides. The optimist in me thinks it always will. We are new to this liberal economy, and over time - perhaps tens of years - balance will impose itself on the situation. The pessimist in me of course worries that might be too long, and balance will come far too late. Another part of me thinks... well, we're still here aren't we? We have persisted - thrived - for five thousand years, why we worried about the next fifty?!

But will we ever "turn into" America, or a bad parody thereof? This was the question the article asked, before I went off on my little verbal sojourn there! I don't think so. 


There is too much history behind India for its personality to get washed away. However, as the British Raj showed us, Pax Americana will leave a huge impression on us just as Pax Britannica (and the Soviet Union, briefly).


"India" as an idea has never been static, nor has it historically been defined locally. When India was born, being "Indian" meant having an identity forged largely in reaction to having worked towards throwing off the yoke of the British Empire. Before then, there wasn't a fixed Indian identity for thousands of years as popular discourse would have you believe - we were too feudal and divided for that. The fact of the matter is, being Indian has meant different things through all the different invasions the peninsula and surrounding regions have seen - from the Greek, Mongol, and British, and a hundred other cultures we have taken elements and made them our own.


Why be overly concerned then about this latest influx?