India on the
Cover Pages
By Dr. Khan Dawood
L. Khan
Chicago, IL
India
received substantial coverage in the press last
month. First, there was a 14-page cover-story
(‘Can India Fly?’) in the British
magazine, ‘The Economist’ (1 June
2006), then the ‘Time’ magazine feature
June 26 (‘India, Inc.’) with the picture
of an Indian woman on the cover (She, Gunjan Thiagaraja,
29, did represent the Indian diaspora and globalization.
She grew up in Nigeria, married a Sri Lankan,
went to school in UCLA, and now lives in California
and works for an LA Biotech firm. She is also
an Indian classical dancer). And, just recently,
‘Foreign Affairs’ (July-August 2006)
devoted 54 pages for four comprehensive reports
on India.
India is a ‘new friend’ of the US
and, as of 2004, also a ‘strategic partner’,
with proposed bilateral nuclear plans now being
debated in the Congress. After a few hesitant
starts since the collapse of the Soviet Union
and the end of the cold war, this level of interest
obviously reflects the growing prominence of India
in, among other fields, information technology.
India’s massive English-speaking workforce
has also made that country in recent years a hub
of out-sourced US industries. To be ‘Bangalored’
has entered into the lexicon -- suggesting that
your job has been outsourced to Bangalore or elsewhere
in India. It is likely, if not now but in near
future, India would pass the jobs further on to
Romania and other countries, and that's because
the average annual salary of a software engineer
in India has increased by 11% within a year (from
US$ 6,310 in 2004 to US$ 7,010 in 2005), according
to India’s National Association of Software
and Services Companies. All this and the pockets
of economic prosperity and progress have to be
weighed against the massive problems India faces,
including the infrastructure, still prevalent
poverty and a frustratingly sclerotic bureaucracy.
The magazine reviews try to put things in perspective.
No discussion of India seems complete without
its neighbors, China and Pakistan, the regional
politics, three different systems of government
and three nuclear powers.
India is not Pakistan: as a democracy in most
of its independent life, India is a self-reliant,
resilient country, with an increasingly strong
economy (since economic reforms of the 1990s)
and a power to reckon with in information technology.
India’s main stock exchange, Sensex, more
than tripled in just the last three years. However,
after peaking in May, it did drop 30% in a few
weeks. Foreign institutional firms have invested
$30 billion in the Indian market in the last three
years, doubling the amount they had in the last
decade. In Pakistan, however, democracy was never
able to take roots, and apart from its dismemberment
in 1971, Pakistan also seems riddled with debilitating
internal disputes: regional (among the provinces,
the latest being Balochistan threats of 'second
Bangladesh), Sunni-Shia, fundamentalist extremism-liberal
tolerance, military rule-democracy, etc. What
seems to unify the country is the all-consuming
Kashmir issue, which still seems to provide endless
fuel.
India is not China either, though both are fierce
competitors: China, still under communist rule,
adopted economic reforms in the 1970s that have
been attractive to the West (India changed its
economic policies as late as in the 1990s). Though
both countries have huge bureaucracies, the US
and other western countries find India’s
less challenging, less suffocating by comparison.
Recent magazine reviews are fairly comprehensive
on India, and get into a lot of regional comparisons.
Some of the interesting highlights follow:
In terms of modernizing the systems, China seems
way ahead of India. In India, per capita income
last year was $3,300, which was slightly less
than half of China’s ($6,800). While China
has been dealing successfully with its hunger
and poverty problems over the decades, prosperity
and modern age have not touched some 650,000 villages
in India where two-thirds of its 1.1 billion people
live. India may have more billionaires than China,
but about 81% of India’s population lives
on $2 or less/day, compared to the 47% of the
Chinese, according to UN Population Reference
Bureau Report (2005). China has done more toward
educating women than India did so far, which gives
China some edge. India has more HIV/AIDS cases
than any other country in the world, but only
recently did its government start doing something
about it. But by far, the major deficiency seems
to be India’s infrastructure (electrical
grids, roads, transportation, etc.), much too
inadequate to serve its own interest in the 21st
century technology, including IT. It is estimated
that $200 billion may be needed to make adequate
improvements. But, despite that burden, India
does make its place in world economy, and literarily
on its own.
The four articles in Foreign Affairs are fairly
comprehensive. In ‘The India Model', Gurucharan
Das talks about India’s reliance on domestic
consumption and high technical services, a model
that has brought India an admirable record of
growth in the past 25 years – that is, despite
the heavy-handedness of the government. He thinks
that the government should admit that its economic
policies from 1950-1990 were disastrous to national
growth. Since half of India’s population
is under 25, there’s a lot of promise, but
growth can continue if both the government and
the society modernize accordingly. He doesn’t
think that India would be a traditional ally of
the US, like UK and Japan have been, but Washington
should try to build on ‘Indian exceptionalism’,
because helping India along might be in Washington’s
own interest.
In ‘India and the Balance of Power’,
C. Raja Mohan sees India – a non-Western
democracy -- playing a pivotal state in the international
arena in coming years, and the Indo-US friendship
would have a great potential over the long haul,
if India is dealt with on its own terms. How realistic
this expectation is, however, another question.
Ashton Carter, in his article, ‘America’s
New Strategic Partner?’, sets the tone by
the question mark in the title itself. He thinks
the US gave up too much in reaching a nuclear
agreement with India, and it may cost the non-proliferation
efforts dearly in the long run. He agrees that
India could become a great security partner of
the US, and, despite flaws, suggests US to go
forward in its efforts in India.
Sumit Ganguly raises the obligatory question in
‘Will Kashmir Stop India’s Rise?’
a question that has rankled the region for over
half-a-decade. It is possible that India can continue
to live with the problem without a significant
impact on its growth – much better and longer
than Pakistan could. India’s GDP, despite
the high oil prices, was highest ever in the last
quarter of 2005, and is projected over 8% for
the year (compared to Pakistan’s 6%, next
year). India’s military is regularly modernizing
itself, whereas Pakistan’s faces financial
and other difficulties. India’s growing
prosperity and technology (with a middle class
estimated between 100-300 million) can continue
to afford a substantial military presence where
needed. Future favors India whether or not Kashmir
stays on the table. But recognizing the potential
risk of a nuclear war over the issue, he thinks
it would be best for India to get it resolved,
now in view of the Indo-US partnership deal.
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