Inconclusive India
Mini Teaser: The resolution of the paradoxes that define India will determine its future trajectory.
[India is] a living contradiction. Jewels may well be concealed in the cloaks of beggars. . . .India presents a paradox. It is profound and primitive, deeply spiritual and darkly superstitious, both universalistic and maddeningly provincial.
-Dr. Mani Bhaumik
FEW OBSERVERS comment upon India's paradoxes-whether in the social or cultural sense-as profoundly as Dr. Bhaumik, but paradox is indeed clearly central to the debate regarding the country's future. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh clearly has a very similar view to Dr. Bhaumik of India's complex society. The vaunted economist, widely credited with framing India's sharp turn to a market economy some 15 years ago, has the daunting task of making the fast-growing climate he created work, economically and socially. As one close confidant told me, "Dr. Singh faces our paradoxes several times a day, every day. Thankfully, he remains optimistic."
The conundrum facing India today is this: Which side of the many economic and social paradoxes will prevail? Can enthusiasm and determination reverse the long decline in virtually every sector so that economic-and with it, social-growth will continue? Or will the neglect of decades cause the sensational growth of the last few years to stagnate? The optimists, from Prime Minister Singh to bankers and industrialists and even to small-plot farmers in remote villages-indeed, most Indians-believe the obstacles to continued growth can and will be overcome. If they are wrong, the boom of recent years could well become a blowout.
Coming to a judgment about where India is headed is not easy. Despite year-to-year growth averaging 8.6 percent for the past three years, for every positive indicator there is a conflicting, negative sign. Much of the heavily touted investment and development has occurred near major cities, but most of the 60-70 percent of Indians living in rural areas are barely surviving. The 300 million-strong middle class has access to jobs, services and amenities; the much larger rural-dwelling population gets by, in countless cases, on less than 50 rupees ($1.15) a day.
These society-straining factors have resulted in millions of rural residents invading India's already teeming metro centers. Greater Delhi, with a population estimated at 32 million, cannot expand basic facilities fast enough to satisfy its middle class, much less the impoverished. And Delhi is not alone. In order for India to maintain its balance as it pursues reform and development, it will need the broad support of the very diverse Indian people-not an easy task.
India and China are frequently depicted as the two Asian Goliaths in hot competition for economic and political leadership. But India's democratic system has always been more deliberate than Beijing's authoritarian regime. The Chinese government can, generally speaking, tell the population what to do. The Indian government-once the divisive governing coalition agrees-must convince its citizens to support any given program.
The Gift of Gandhi
THERE IS one cultural and historic icon who could propel a rallying of support-indeed, of societal self-respect-towards Indian progress and renewal: Mohandas K. Gandhi. Respect for the father of independence, universally known as "Mahatma", or "great soul", among the people and within government circles is universal.
In addition to being the driving force for Indian independence, his support for India's downtrodden dalit-untouchables, whom Gandhi called Harijan, God's people-has seen such progress that, currently, India's president and chief justice both come from the once-shunned community. The Mahatma is held in revered esteem by virtually everyone in India, including those with reservations-or outright opposed-to his acceptance of partition (thus blessing the establishment of Pakistan), or to his idealizing of the agrarian lifestyle or to his tendency to value prospective successors' friendship more than their merit.
Properly conceived and executed, Gandhi's image could well be the catalyst that drives the society to reconcile its many paradoxes. Gandhi pervades the Indian conscience, from an understated yet magnificent memorial in Delhi, to statues throughout the land, to his likeness on every currency bill. The Mahatma represents a critical unifying element to the multifaceted society and can be leveraged as the rallying symbol for the country to address its pressing problems, and indeed to preserve the progress it has already made.
His greatest single contribution, satyagraha-holding to the truth, broadly understood as non-violent protest-has kept the country together and largely at peace over six turbulent decades. Notwithstanding at least 17 distinct languages and some 600 dialects, an Indian consciousness not only exists but continues to grow. Contrast India's experience with Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, two failed multi-ethnic nation-states. India has less intra-national discontent than exists between Quebec and the rest of Canada. Despite periodic stirrings in outlying areas, much of it fueled by extreme-left efforts to gain local power, the center has held at least as solidly as in Spain (itself coping with small, radical and annoying Basque and Catalan separatist movements).
Pivotal aspects of Gandhi's vision for India remain elusive, importantly including honesty in government and all human dealings, citizen involvement in community governance and well-being, and general cleanliness. Indeed, much of what the country has yet to achieve is ultimately reflected in the Gandhi ethos and can be communicated as such.
If the far-fetched concept of a unified, democratic India has been successful, the more mundane requirements to solidify the nation as a major political and economic entity can doubtless be achieved, utilizing the still-vibrant memory of the nation's greatest hero.
BECAUSE OF India's economic growth in recent years, a tendency to believe that a "rising tide will lift all boats" has developed. After all, the information-technology sector alone forecasts $60 billion in sales in 2010, up from $25 billion in 2005. And the country's impressive economic growth is fueling the purchasing power of India's major conglomerates, as well as many smaller businesses. Besides European steel acquisitions by the Mittal and Tata groups and Hindalco's North American purchase of Novelis aluminum, medium-sized companies are investing overseas, accounting for most of the 266 cross-border investments during 2006.
Foreign companies are returning the favor, underscored by Vodafone's $12 billion February purchase of 67 percent of the Hutchison Essar mobile-phone business. The Indian market is adding six million new users per month, and control of Hutch brand's 25 million subscribers and 16 percent market share gives Vodafone, who will invest another $2 billion to expand the franchise, a strong position from which to capture millions of new customers. Investment by major world corporations-including Accenture, Accor, Dell, Hilton, ibm, Nokia, Microsoft and Wal-Mart-continues apace, with many significantly increasing earlier investments.
All of this has locals focused on when-not whether-India will surpass China in terms of economic growth, as projected figures for 2007 estimate Indian expansion at 9 percent and China's at 10 percent.
But India still has a long way to go. Consider exports, an area receiving much government and private-sector attention: India's $70 billion in 2005 amounted to just 10 percent of China's $700 billion in products shipped overseas.
Finance Minister P. Chidambaram argues that "reforms are driving growth. They have brought in investment, fostered competition, and enhanced productivity and efficiency." Moreover, Mr. Chidambaram notes, "High growth has brought in more government revenues, which can be used to support needed infrastructure development and other services." That said, negative indicators must be considered serious warning signs pointing to corrective action.
The infrastructure-in-crisis mantra is repeated endlessly: waste, roads, electricity and so on; all are in desperate need of improvement, and there is a sense that everything must be done now.
Clogged and poorly maintained streets cause massive traffic congestion in major cities daily. The problem is complicated by a mix of traffic, including buses, auto-rickshaws, tricycle rickshaws, bicycles, ox carts and the occasional elephant. A bemused Delhi resident noted: "I bought a new car three months ago. In that period it has been in eight accidents, most of them minor but all of them making it look like it's at least three years old." The government recognizes the economic-and environmental-consequences of millions of workers stranded for hours in traffic jams. Flyovers and bypasses are being constructed seemingly everywhere in greater Delhi, with a metro system under construction. To cut high pollution levels, auto-rickshaws, taxis and buses are required to burn low-toxicity compressed natural gas.
Thousands of open sewers and very limited removal and treatment facilities make waste a preponderant issue. With more than 1.1 billion inhabitants, India is particularly challenged, especially as millions move to already enormous major cities.
State and local governments are recognizing the need to take action before the challenge becomes overwhelming. Programs are underway to encourage on-site decomposition of natural waste, with earthworms getting quizzical media coverage as a possible decomposer of choice. Plastic packaging is dramatically on the rise, with very limited landfill area. Local governments have neither the know-how nor capital to improve conditions, and the population has so far proved apathetic to the litter crisis. Executives of an international environmental consulting group-which has studied the issue in countries as diverse as Colombia, Germany and Indonesia-believe a looming safe-water supply crisis can only be solved by major foreign participation.
Two of India's major cities-Mumbai and Ahmadabad-have commissioned modern treatment plants from Excel Industries, one of a handful of Indian companies in the field. The Ahmadabad plant was contracted on a build, operate and transfer (bot) basis, giving Excel an added efficiency and quality incentive.
Chennai, home to the call-center industry and one of the country's most efficiently run large cities, is placing half its 3,200 tons of daily waste volume under modern, private waste removal and treatment. Not surprisingly, such cities are among those most interesting to prospective foreign investors, and other urban centers are getting the message.
The most banal of popular Indian practices illustrates the extent of the challenge. Despite numerous public latrines, it is common practice for men to relieve themselves against walls and for not a few women and children to squat at curbsides. Beside a wide disregard for control of human waste, there is almost universal participation in littering, whether nonchalantly dropping a used paper while walking or jettisoning an empty bottle while riding in a public or private vehicle. Such habits promise to die slowly, if at all, but the famously fastidious Gandhi can serve as inspiration.
IN ADDITION to the commitment of funds to revamp infrastructure, there is a palpable need to heighten a sense of pan-Indian responsibility-and destiny-in the spirit of the Mahatma. And that importantly includes coming face to face with the legacy of corruption.
Seasoned international businessmen place Indian bureaucracy in first position for inefficiency and close to the top in corruption, when compared with other countries. Needless demand for forms and approvals daunt the most patient prospective investor, and governmental red tape is a key reason cited by foreign businessmen for deciding not to do business in India.
Opinions are divided as to whether government inefficiency and corruption can in fact be significantly reduced, much less eliminated. Far too many Indian and foreign businesses continue to pay for "facilitation" of the complex, multi-tiered project approval process. As Indians commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of their independence, it is unfortunately fitting to note Mahatma Gandhi's wry observation: "Corruption and hypocrisy ought not to be inevitable products of democracy, as they undoubtedly are today."
The political side of government is as murky as the bureaucratic. At every level, politicians abound who are ready and willing to assist in moving projects forward-and who are equally ready to block a project if not properly "consulted." The Bharatiya Janata Party, the leading opposition party nationally, with strong support from religious Hindus, is no less a stranger to corruption than the Congress Party, which traces its roots to Mahatma Gandhi, or than the communist parties.
Indeed, in recent months D. Raja, national secretary of the Communist Party of India (CPI) has campaigned vociferously against public and private staff reductions and privatization of state activities, including private management of pension funds. Demagogic public outcry and private stalling tactics to the contrary, no one predicts either the CPI or the Communist Party of India (Marxist), known as CPI(M), will give up the perks of coalition power. The bureaucratic miasma is endemic and, so far, there is little concerted effort to rectify it.
Within the private sector, there are encouraging voices who understand the importance of values to economic success and how spirituality remains critical to India's competitiveness, underscoring key aspects of Gandhi's message. P. R. Krishna Kumar, managing director of Arya Vaidya Pharmacy (Coimbatore) Ltd.-a firm specializing in Ayurveda, the 5,000 year-old natural system of mind, body and spiritual care-believes India must regain its moral balance:
Our country's strength was its great spiritual awareness. Dharma-righteousness-was our greatest asset. Education should be focused inside, on every individual knowing who he is and why he is here, not just on knowing about everything outside the individual. Today, everything except that is taught.
More positively, Krishna Kumar sees
more and more people and institutions seeking and working on solutions. Indian and foreign companies are increasingly taking the challenge, forming educational and welfare units for their employees and the communities where they operate. There is a steadily growing social awareness.
Some public officials are successfully harnessing that emerging sense of communal responsibility and understand how promoting transparency, good governance and encouraging investment benefit everyone. While a number of communist functionaries have proved adept at little else than commanding headlines, the communist Chief Minister of West Bengal, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, has run a successful campaign for major industrial investment. Indian conglomerate Tata-in addition to numerous other domestic and foreign corporations-is investing billions of dollars in Kolkata and other Bengali districts. ibm is adding 3,000 West Bengal employees to its 43,000 national base, as a key part of a $6 billion Indian investment program during the next three years. Historically one of the poorest states in the country, West Bengal currently ranks second only to Gujarat in attracting foreign investment.
But the private sector cannot maintain India on its march to balanced development alone. Unfortunately for progressive governance, the country's two leading communist parties are members of Manmohan Singh's ruling coalition, making progress a stop-and-start affair. This serves as a drag on efforts to modernize and upgrade multiple facets of the country's economy.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in the desperate need to reform India's educational system. There is no disagreement among leaders across the society: The country cannot continue its growth without significant overhaul and expansion of academic facilities and curricula from the elementary through the university level. To do so will require extensive investment, and therefore support of and some sacrifice by well-heeled urbanites.
The country has some noteworthy institutions, including the India Institute of Technology, India Institute of Science, and Delhi and Hyderabad Universities, but there is a serious lack of facilities and quality learning at all levels. Domestic and foreign companies alike find filling more than menial positions increasingly difficult. Newspapers run pages of vacancy announcements, regularly publishing special editorial features on the need for skilled manpower.
The state system through grade twelve is in shambles, providing such bad education that although millions of children are unschooled, buildings are closing for lack of students. Scant heed is paid to student attendance and teachers take their salaries but are themselves truant. Most educational materials are sub-par, one English text for Hindi speakers that I looked at was functionally useless. At the same time, independent, privately operated schools abound and an uncounted number of families do without other necessities to provide their children a basic education at these institutions.
Higher-education requirements are somewhat better served by the state, but supply of seats at public and private institutions is far less than demand-despite there being some 18,000 colleges and universities, all but a few are pedagogically deficient.
English fluency and cricket are two of Britain's great legacies, and although India retains its numerical lead in English, regional competition abounds. The call-center business, formerly dominated by India, now significantly includes the Philippines, with its strong English-speaking base. A greater challenge, with a major impact to be felt by 2020 and thereafter, is China's decision to make English a compulsory subject. Should China surpass India in English fluency, observers concede that India will be hard-pressed to successfully challenge the giant to its northeast, economically or politically.
Educational reform, in short, cannot come soon enough. Professor Gautam Desiraju of Hyderabad University has sounded the clarion call: "Remedial measures in our science and education sectors need to be taken incisively, swiftly, and almost ruthlessly. Our fatal attraction for incremental changes and consensual thinking has been our undoing." Dr. Desiraju believes "developing 20 good universities with funding at the Chinese levels is not beyond us."
Most debate focuses on each of 17,500 mostly mediocre colleges affiliating with one of the 350 universities, plus accreditation of foreign institutions. While the latter could provide some relief to a chronic shortage of qualified teachers, curriculum restructuring must also be addressed.
Moreover, the first twelve years must be completely restructured. Prime Minister Singh has called for mandatory education through the sixth year, a laudable goal that can only be achieved if facilities, teacher and content issues are solved. "The education system needs to be expanded rapidly at all levels", Dr. Singh believes, and predicts that "the success of our educational initiatives at the grassroots level, along with India's favorable demographics, will ensure that a far greater number pass out of high school each year."
The prime minister, like virtually all informed observers, does not question that jobs will be available for the qualified. The question, rather, is "Can India actually provide sufficiently qualified workers to fuel the ever-expanding demand in the marketplace?" A retired Indian-American professor at a major U.S. university put it this way when visiting his fatherland: "There is no downside to improved education. It is in some ways comparable to what so many countries have learned about lowering taxes. In the case of education, the more and better educated the Indian population, the greater will be India's economic growth and, ultimately, its strength as a nation."
The Ayes Have It
THERE IS much to be done if India is to continue on its path to progress. That said, there is an undeniable, palpable sense of progress in India.
On my first visit forty years ago, the Indians I met were strikingly calm, courteous and resigned to the languorous, if stultifying, pace of their lives. Today, despite a geometrically faster pace, most seem outwardly calm and so positively involved that one imagines their energy and enthusiasm can be the deciding factor in keeping the economy, and the society as a whole, on the upswing.
During the three months of this most recent visit, it became clear to me that India can continue to build on its current momentum if the people and government coalesce around principles of responsibility, charity and restraint. To do so, they will need to successfully embrace a broad spectrum of issues-most particularly values that are personified by the father of independent India.
One critical press pundit concedes, "India has managed to stick together for 60 years, against all the odds. Given the record, anything is possible. Maybe we will make it!" Agreed.
Online Extra: India's Fast Diversifying Medical Sector
The Indian medical spectrum is as diverse as any nation's, if not more so. With multiple facets of it being aggressively developed across the country and abroad, the medical sector is becoming a significant foreign exchange earner. Keys to its fast-evolving success are the relatively low cost of services and products coupled with a high degree of professionalism-the latter importantly owing to thousands of Indian health practitioners who have studied and practiced in the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia and Germany. Paradoxically, a relatively new medical export that owes its rapid international growth to the ever expanding interest in natural health care is India's five thousand-year-old Ayurveda system of mind, body and spiritual care.
Medical outsourcing centers have been established in Chennai and Kolkata for the maintenance of records from doctors and hospitals in the United States, Canada and Europe. The successful archiving activity is now expanding to embrace diagnostic services. Taking advantage of the country's time differential, particularly with the western hemisphere, Indian firms offer professional analysis and overnight reporting, of examinations ranging from blood tests to MRIs, to client institutions and practitioners-at very competitive rates.
High quality, low cost hospitals specializing in western "allopathic" medicine and focused on caring for foreigners are springing up in Delhi and Mumbai, many of them staffed by doctors returning from years of practice in the United States and Britain.
The key selling point, particularly for British and Canadian patients with critical conditions, is prompt professional care. Relatively inexpensive charges allow thousands to bypass potentially fatal waiting periods in badly backlogged socialized systems. A leading position in this fast-growing sector has been taken by Apollo Hospitals group, the largest private medical group in Asia.
Apollo, which operates 41 hospitals plus a chain of retail pharmacies within India, is exploring acquisitions in Britain, including Capio UK's 21 hospitals. In addition, the group is pushing into other medical areas, including undertaking a joint study of the causes for India's high rate of heart disease with Johns Hopkins Medicare, and even hospital management as far afield as Yemen.
Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd., the country's largest manufacturer of allopathic medications, ranks among the ten largest generic drug manufacturers worldwide. The company exports to some 125 countries and operates overseas manufacturing facilities in China, Ireland, Malaysia, Nigeria, Romania, the United States, Vietnam and, as of May 2007, South Africa. Ranbaxy made eight offshore acquisitions in 2006 but dropped out of the competition in March of this year for Merck of Germany's generics arm when the bidding exceeded $6 billion.
Dabur India Ltd., India and the world's largest herbal-ayurvedic manufacturer, boasting a portfolio of more than 250 products, has a 120 year history. The company does business in more than fifty countries and has rapidly expanding toiletries and food businesses. Aggressive international expansion in recent years has been a key factor in the spread of Ayurveda beyond India's borders.
Ayurveda, an ancient and uniquely Indian medical practice, has enjoyed marked growth both domestically and overseas, particularly in the last decade. The all-natural medical system has enjoyed a significant renaissance, particularly in Kerala and Tamil Nadu states, following nearly two centuries of severe restriction under the British Raj. The Kerala state government is preparing for an increase of foreign visitors for Ayurveda treatment to 100,000 in 2010, up from 15,000 in 2005. Of India's great innovative achievements, Ayurveda is certainly the most enduring and could potentially be a significant factor in the country's export drive.
P.R. Krishna Kumar, Managing Director of Arya Vaidya Pharmacy [Coimbatore] Ltd. (AVP), is energetically leading his organization into new activities, while simultaneously seeking to preserve the rich traditions of Ayurveda,Yoga and Kalari. One of the largest and most integrated Ayurveda groups with an extensive network of hospitals and clinics, AVP is currently building a 250-bed complex in Coimbatore that will expand operations at its home base. Major proposed projects in Karachi, Pakistan and Durban, South Africa, building on extensive existing programs in Malaysia, Singapore and Yemen, indicate the group's outreach commitment.
AVP exports selected natural health medications and oils to a dozen countries including the United States and Britain. Currently building a modern manufacturing and research complex for its 500 medicines and over-the-counter (OTC) products, AVP has recently moved its thirty- year-old Ayurvedic college to a new campus. The group was awarded a grant in 2004 by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, the first Ayurveda project NIH has undertaken a pilot clinical trial of rheumatoid arthritis, comparing ayurvedic treatment with standard medical treatment.
A particularly dynamic development is AVP's partnership with Hindustan Lever to create one hundred Ayush centers throughout India, with overseas expansion overseas planned to begin in 2010. Krishna Kumar considers the partnership "very important to attract a new generation of patients to Ayurveda".
Founder and managing trustee of the internationally recognized scholarly Ayurveda quarterly, Ancient Science of Life, AVP's managing director has contrarily launched a campus of the University of Seychelles' allopathic medical college. The Seychelles institution is one of several that prepare students to practice Western medicine in the United States, but virtually all students at the campus near Coimbatore plan to practice in India. Krishna Kumar's rationale:
The western system is dominant throughout most of the world. We need to have allopathic doctors with a basic understanding of Ayurveda, and Ayurvedic doctors conversant with Allopathy.
Western medicine is strong diagnostically and in treating acute conditions; Ayurveda excels in treating chronic conditions and is equally strong in diagnosis. We have established a committee of faculty from both our medical schools to create an integrated curriculum that gives students a solid grounding in both systems.
Delhi-based ayurvedic physician Dr. Akhilesh Sharma has spread the Ayurveda message to Europe and the United States for a decade. A Ph.D. in herbal medicine, Dr. Sharma has established close links with Sweden's Karolinska Institute, Britain's Prince of Wales Foundation for Integrated Health and Harvard Medical School, and is a visiting professor at the California College of Ayurveda.
"Our challenge is to convince western authorities of Ayurveda's validity", Dr. Sharma observes,
because there are too many areas of naturopathy that have little or no scientific track record. Ayurveda is the base from which Chinese medicine was derived 2,500 years ago and Germany's Dr. Samuel Hannemann, a Sanskrit scholar, established homoeopathy 250 years ago. We have strong opposition from much of the world's pharmaceutical industry, but they cannot dispute western medicines having on average four contra-indications for every indication, while Ayurveda has five millennia of successful practice, and no contra-indications.
With its broad and well-established medical sector flourishing as never before, India has a special opportunity to both increase its exports and foreign exchange earnings, and provide much-needed health services to millions at home and around the world. As one senior hospital administrator observed wryly, "Our work may not have the financial potential of the information technology sector, but it will surely save many more lives."
John R. Thomson, a geopolitical analyst, recently spent three months in India. He has regularly traveled to the country since 1967.
Essay Types: Essay