The signs of change are everywhere in India--and are reflected in the cost of everything. 10% inflation over a few years has caused prices to shoot up, so much so that the price of even a modest hotel room in Bombay is now noticeable--about $30. A meal at a good restaurant costs $10. The corresponding rates five years ago would have been a fifth as much. To put this in context, average salaries are only 5-10% of American wages--a top computer software designer would make no more than $8,000 a year. Thus plenty of things are beyond the grasp of even the middle class, to say nothing of the poor. In particular, it is in real estate that inflation has been most spectacular: a 1,000 sq. ft. apartment in Bombay can cost $500,000, for example. Admittedly, the less urban parts of India are not so expensive, but land is getting pricy: even in the remote port city of Cochin, land values have quadrupled in the last five years.
The thing that strikes the returning Indian most forcefully is the fact that the people, who are notoriously skeptical and pessimistic about their country, are now beginning to believe that there is a future for India. Business confidence is growing, and the number of people investing in the stock market, and the number of newspapers specifically oriented at the capital markets, are staggering. Everywhere you turn, there are advertisements for previously impossible-to-obtain foreign goods such as cars, cosmetics, clothes, etc. You turn on the TV and you find CNN and BBC-TV; sometimes there is MTV as well. The country has dropped its isolationist, fortress-like stance with a vengeance.
But is all this foreign media and multinational influence eroding the values that have enabled Hindu Indians to survive several thousand years of invasions with their culture intact? It is hard to tell. The traditional values of thrift and modesty are challenged by what people see on imported TV soap operas. But something I noticed with considerable surprise was the fact that Indian TV is no longer mesmerized by the west. In years past, my acquaintances would quiz me in detail about the latest story lines from "Dallas" or "LA Law" of whatever other soap was in vogue. Not any more. There are plenty of locally produced soap operas: admittedly these are often Indian only in name and setting, for they would have lifted their storylines wholesale from some American series. Nevertheless, even though it is kitsch, it is quintessentially Indian kitsch. This is probably an indication that any obituaries of traditional Indian culture are a bit premature.
The other factor that I found interesting is the upsurge of nationalism. For the first time--and I do realize this is a relatively trivial event--I saw bumper stickers on cars that said, "I love India". This too in the tricolor of the Indian flag--saffron, white and green. In my days as a student in India a few years ago, a self-respecting Indian would rather have died than proclaim something as crassly jingoistic as that. The fact that people are now willing to openly admit to being proud of their country is almost shocking. Another instance of this nationalism was perceptible in a major sex-and-spying scandal that rocked my hometown, Trivandrum, where India assembles its rocket launchers. Although the rockets are primarily meant for civilian space research and satellite launches, nobody denies their potential military use as IRBMs and eventually ICBMs. The Trivandrum center was the focus of the spying scandal where a foreign woman (from the Maldives, an island nation in the Indian Ocean) is alleged to have played a modern-day Mata Hari role in offering sex and money to senior engineers, to acquire space secrets for unnamed foreign powers. While this stuff is racy and kind of Len Deighton-ish, I found the reaction of the local populace remarkable. My neighbor, an engineer at the space center, said that ordinary people who used to be extremely proud of the accomplishments of our space scientists, would now make loud and snide remarks about the sleazeball, treacherous people who worked there. Some scientists had even been spat at on the street, and had death threats issued. The newspapers had a field day making allegations about the dark hand of everybody from Pakistan to France to Sweden to the United States, as being behind the effort to steal "our" secrets. Yes, nationalism is fashionable.
The industrial sector is undergoing a sea change. I visited a couple of industrial areas: the Santa Cruz Electronics Promotion Zone in Bombay, and the high-tech city of Bangalore, both thriving centers for computer software. The young engineers who work in the comfortable buildings live in a virtual Silicon Valley, complete with satellite links to their peers in the US, low-rise cubicles and a powerful computer on most people's desks. They are well-paid by Indian standards, very technically savvy, and increasingly entrepreneurial. It used to be that the majority of India's talented engineers, especially from the elite Indian Institutes of Technology, would make a beeline to the US. This is not the case any more. Encouraged by entrepreneurial successes such as Infosys (now valued at $200 million, it was started with a stake of $3000 ten years ago by three engineers), many engineers are now electing to stay on in India. Bangalore is already the world's second largest producer of computer software, after the Silicon Valley, and indications are that it has reached the sort of critical mass necessary to ensure that it is a regional, indeed Asia-wide center of technical excellence in computing, as well as a contender in aerospace and in biotechnology.
Another pleasant surprise is the industrial revolution in the making in India's eastern provinces. Mineral and oil-rich eastern India has been handicapped by the decline of the region's locomotive, the state of West Bengal and in particular the city of Calcutta. Once the second city of the British Empire, Calcutta has been reduced to a metaphor for urban squalor and decay. The Marxist government in West Bengal has been in power for seventeen years, and trade union-led labor unrest had caused much industry to abandon the state. However, Mr. Jyoti Basu, the Chief Minister of West Bengal, has taken a leaf out of Deng Xiao Ping's book by reinventing the Communist Party in a capitalist-friendly mode. The radical socialists who once named the street where the US consulate stands, Ho Chi Minh Street, recently named a street after George Siemens, the German industrialist. The recently concluded Conference of Indian Industry Centennial meeting in Calcutta was an opportunity for Bengal to reassert its new-found identity. Investors are convinced: US fund manager George Soros is considering investing $1 billion in the state, and Singapore is setting up a high-tech industrial park outside Calcutta.
So far so good. However, there is much yet to be done. The state of Bihar, in centuries past the domain of the Buddha, and part of the Gupta Empire in the 4th century--one of India's Golden Ages--is now in virtual anarchy. It is India's most backward state, although with its coal and iron ore deposits, it ought to be India's equivalent of Germany's Ruhr valley. There is an astonishing amount of lawlessness, and the state government's writ does not extend beyond urban centers. The villages are ruled by private gangs and armies raised by landlords, who keep their low-caste and tribal laborers in effective slavery. Crushing poverty, exploitation, caste-based thuggery-- Bihar has it all. A particularly alarming incident recently was the murder, in cold blood, of a district magistrate, the putative upholder of the Federal Government's power in a remote part of the state. Bihar is an object lesson in what, but for the grace of God, the rest of the country could deteriorate into.
The grinding poverty that is the most enduring image of India in many people's minds is still very much with us. As you drive from Bombay's modern international airport to the city, for example, you travel through one of the world's largest slums, grim acres of shanties where people eke out a miserable existence. India has, quite conspicuously, failed to provide for its poverty-stricken masses. There may be hope, yet, however. By all accounts things are improving in rural areas, as generous government policies are enabling farmers to prosper; India has the potential to be one of the world's largest exporters of agricultural products. China, of course, has similarly improved its citizens' lot by concentrating on uplifting the rural poor. India may follow suit.
The issue of the growing gap between the haves and the have-nots is of considerable social and political interest. Recent electoral setbacks for the ruling Congress Party have been blamed on policies that are perceived as unfriendly to the poor. In the large southern state of Andhra Pradesh, where the Congress Party suffered a humiliating defeat, a local leader won with a populist message that included subsidized rice for the poor. The Congress Party under Prime Minister Narasimha Rao and Finance Minister Manmohan Singh put into effect wide-ranging measures in 1991, that have had the effect of opening up the Indian market to outsiders, and allowing a lot of people to make a lot of money. However, there are fears that the have-nots, as in many IMF-induced austerity schemes, are taking a disproportionate share of the bitter medicine. This is dangerous, both for Mr. Rao's government and for the country's booming international commerce. Mr. Rao has to tread a thin line that neither causes widespread social disruption internally nor causes jitters amongst the foreign investors whom he is assiduously wooing.
The final issue that seems to occupy the Indian mind is that of corruption; and indeed the entire political machinery. Politicians in India are held in extremely low esteem; perhaps rightly so because nepotism and petty corruption are absolutely endemic. The democratic system has also been perverted by considerations of religious, caste and linguistic chauvinism. The average politician needs to raise so much money to contest elections that it is impossible for anyone, unless independently wealthy or severely beholden to vested interests, to run for office. I suppose this is not altogether different from the situation in the US. The only ray of hope on this scene is in the person of a portly, pugnacious gentleman named T.N. Seshan. As the Chief Election Commissioner, Mr. Seshan has become universally admired by the common man, and universally loathed by politicians of all stripes. Mr. Seshan, who is a bit of a tyrant, has put very strict limits on election spending and electoral practices. Now electioneering has to be clean and has to proceed on a shoestring, thus, it is hoped, reducing the need for corruption. Mr. Seshan's one-man crusade is one of the most hopeful signs in India--that a lone man, if he is honest and committed, can hope to make a difference.
As the 2000th year in the Christian calendar approaches, India, then, is struggling with the fundamental question of sustainable and equitable development: how to integrate itself with the world economy without decimating its poor. The signs are promising: within just a few years, with some dedicated and talented leaders such as Mr. Seshan and Mr. Manmohan Singh and Mr. Narasimha Rao, the country has come a long way. Instead of muddling through, it appears that India is finally beginning to realize the long-wasted potential of its hard-working people and its rich land.
Rajeev Srinivasan, San Francisco, U.S.A.
rajeev@rahul.net