By Chris Devonshire-Ellis

So runs the summarizing headline in the Financial Times new “India & Globalization” special report (January 25). It’s a report will worth reading, covering as it does relations with Pakistan, competition with China, ties with Washington, and the concepts of transparency, openness and better corporate practice, not to mention moving up the value chain, and India’s participation in global M&A deals.

However, it’s pretty much a ‘mid-term’ report than a longer term analysis of India’s development, and one that is not always accurate. For sure, calls for a stable Pakistan are a given – India certainly does not want a massively failed State on its doorstep, even given the history of antagonism between the two countries since partition. Indeed, it is relevant to note the Indian government’s current policy of restraint concerning news coming from Islamabad – the assassination of Benazir Bhutto for example being handled in a sensitive and low key manner by the Indian government – and its media. Signs here are positive then that in times of grave danger, India will reach out to its estranged neighbor and seek to secure the future of Pakistan rather than antagonize.

Concerning China, the FT takes an interesting tack. “The Chinese Road To Nowhere” the headline proclaims, and justifies itself by commenting on a perceived lack of moral leadership in the PRC against a backdrop of Indian moral leadership without ever saying exactly what that is. Indeed, ending with statements eulogizing “the fine example set by Gandhi” makes me wonder exactly the moral issue at stake here. Gandhi for sure was much loved and is remembered for leading the country to independence from the British. But he was also responsible for introducing some disastrous agricultural policies – reminiscent of Mao’s insistence the Chinese peasants manufacture steel; Gandhi evoked every farmer to spin cotton, with no methodology in either unifying the production, or instilling any uniform quality control or any sense of the repercussions. In both cases, millions starved. Plus the partition of India and Pakistan, while not entirely Gandhi’s fault – resulted in loss of life on an unprecedented scale amidst the greatest movement of people across borders ever seen and an open wound that has led to three border wars, hardly a legacy that deserves complete and utter credibility today when trying to fix the nations economic problems.

No, the future for India does not lie upon following a Gandhiesque path of moral superiority and relying purely upon that when others in the region are not necessarily playing by the same rules, and I am rather turned off when the spirit of Gandhi, holy as he was, is invoked as a solution for modern India’s problems. As Einstein noted, “We need a different set of intellect to solve our problems from that of those who created them”. Gandhi’s time for influence in a modern India has now passed.

Further commentary reflects upon Washington’s deal to permit India’s nuclear program to continue for progressing civilian energy usage, yet without previously agreed systems of checks and balances, and impresses upon the reader a new closeness between India and the US. While that no doubt is true, no mention is made of Indian ties to Moscow, and the Indian government are likely to use both relations to make its own way in the world rather than rely upon American benevolence.

Pieces written by expatriate academics based in the US still possess an alarming tendency to view America as the savior, possibly placing within their arguments structure a debt to their own fortune as possessor of a green card and professorial status at a leading US University. Yet such views are again outmoded – India is quite capable of moving ahead through it’s own devices and the new order dictates a more sophisticated and confident India than those who would automatically rush the nation under the skirts of the United States realize. India’s future is bound intrinsically by what India decides, not upon the policies of the US, EU, Russia or China. So Washington, while important, is nowadays a component part of, and not the entire paratha.

But back to the headline, the premise is that business and consumer optimism is driving, rather than the government, and that a resurgent manufacturing industry has lead to record levels of growth. The latter, while true, was starting from a fairly small base, so record growth isn’t hard to maintain when developing from a smaller platform. Much in infrastructure still needs to be done, and as Kamal Nath, the Indian Minister of Commerce himself told me last year – India expects the private sector to be part of that. Not that is in marked contrast to China, where the State has had to take on the burden, a legacy of communism. So – commerce is driving reform, and the government follows. That should not be unusual in the world’s largest democracy and is a sign that the government is truly accountable to its citizen’s wishes, and not the other way around.

There is the difference with China; and the truth in Indian globalization: If Indians want it, the government will support it. There’s nothing wrong then with “optimism outpacing hesitant reforms” – reform will also be hesitant under such a system and the government has to both understand and implement the new direction its industries are going in – and this takes time. India’s rebuilding is entirely based on the energies and direction of it’s people, not it’s government, and that is a stronger base to have than a purely government led position. China, in the words of Mao, may have stood up politically, but in India it’s the very people whose desire for change, prosperity and connection with a more global world that are at the soul of its destiny.

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