Imagining India

Reservations for backward castes in our jobs and colleges have become a seemingly indispensable part of our politics, and I think the big reason for this has been the process of inclusion of India’s backward communities into our mainstream. Indian political scientists such as Ashutosh Varshney have pointed out that as the Industrial Revolution took off in the West, backward communities were rapidly absorbed into the growing economy and the expanding factory system. The right to vote and political clout came later, after decades of urbanized living and jobs.

But in India, our progress has been the other way round. In a country where growth stagnated for decades, and development has only recently begun to make inroads into the rural countryside, backward communities have had access to political power before economic power. Hence the demand for reservations - the Dalit voters who support the Bahujan Samaj party for instance, see political power as ‘the master key’ that will open all doors.

Had economic access come first, we would have probably followed the pattern of other countries that had  caste hierarchies - Japan for example, had a fairly rigid caste system, and the most backward group, the burakumin, were highly ostracized. Development and urbanization however, helped absorb these caste groups into the general population (although the Japanese burakumin still face some discrimination). The rise of cities in fact, have been particularly powerful in dissolving caste barriers, as it becomes impossible to observe the silly notions of purity and untouchability in the anonymous, crowded city.

This has made our struggle in India with caste and backwardness fairly unique. And as our politicians balance the questions of better access for all versus more reservations, we are likely to see many more twists and turns on this issue.

Today is the day of the ‘people’s car’ launch, and its no exaggeration to say that this car is likely to transform the face of India’s traffic, both for better and for worse. The good: If creating widespread access to better services and products is the aim of free markets, then the Nano car is a triumph. It has made the dream of owning an automobile attainable for millions in India. The bad: The car will probably increase overcrowding on roads and pollution. But as long as our cities lack viable mass transit systems, people have no choice but to resort to private vehicles, and poorer Indians should not be denied a choice that the middle and upper classes have had for so long. 

For Indian companies, the Nano is only the most recent success when it comes to making products and services suited to the Indian market.  C. K. Prahalad has written about these low-cost approaches many Indian companies have adopted in his book The fortune at the bottom of the pyramid  - of companies targeting the poorest citizens and turning them into consumers, by selling them two rupee sachets of detergent and shampoo, bringing them internet access through community kiosks, providing loans through Self Help Groups and even providing low-cost health care, such as Arvind Eye Hospital. 

And as we weather the global recession, I think this approach is only going to gain steam - India’s countryside has not been as affected by the recession, and rural India is even showing signs of above-average growth. Hopefully, this will draw our markets into the villages,  help address our long-lamented ‘urban rural divide,’ and do its bit in empowering our rural poor.  

So far, the word for 2009 is “stimulus”. The government has come into the spotlight in the business pages, as different sectors put in appeals for interest breaks and sops. Some of these are likely necessary. But this is also probably a good time to consider the elephant in the room, which has fundamentally held back our growth - the lack of access to India’s economy for many of its citizens, a theme I revisited in my book and in this blog . A piece written by Arjun Swarup in the Indian Economy blog in October, titled  - ‘The Indian Political Business Complex‘ is worth rereading - he discusses the same issue: 
 

If there’s a place that can be described as ground zero for New India, it is my home town Bangalore. This is not because of  its identity as India’s IT city, or its aspiration to be the ‘Silicon Plateau’ of the world, the next stage after California’s Silicon Valley. What gives the city this promise is that in its successes and its struggles, Bangalore is a microcosm of the new, emerging India.  

Nehru had once called Bangalore ‘India’s city of the future’. For him, the city was untainted, relatively unburdened of the imperialist architecture that dominated the Bombay, Delhi and Calcutta skylines. And for the entrepreneurs entering Bangalore in the 1970s and 1980s, the city – then a hub mainly for the textile and public sector industries – was also untouched in another way. Bangalore was distant from the chaos and politics of Bombay and Delhi, which had limited the rise of firms without the connections and clout to get past the red tape and old boy networks.

For this new breed of first-time entrepreneurs – and Infosys was among them – this city was a refuge. The companies that came here were therefore, disproportionately young and new-industry. The focus of both IT and the textile industry on the international market also meant that Bangalore developed as a city with a global outlook, welcoming to outsiders and strongly aware of international standards and practices when it came to doing business. The city’s firms, especially in the IT industry, have tried to envision a more responsible role for the private sector, focusing on transparency, fairness to their stakeholders, and ethical management. And they made early efforts to expand the role of business within the broader community, by participating in India’s first public-private partnership, the Bangalore Agenda Task Force (which I chaired), which worked to improve the city’s governance systems. 

A different kind of business also attracted a different kind of community – a large proportion of Bangalore’s workers are educated, white-collar, and middle-class. These workers have often either lived or travelled abroad, and have a global outlook, fully aware of best practices when it came to public services, governance and social welfare. 

With these entrepreneurs and workers have come new possibilities, and a potential framework for reforms in India. Civil activism is vibrant and thriving in Karnataka – from MYRADA’s work in microfinance lending to the poor, to Srikanth Nadhamuni’s egovernments Foundation which is working towards technology for urban management and Akshara Foundation’s work in primary education. New experiments in entrepreneurship and government are also seeing success here, from Sriram Raghavan’s Internet community kiosks, to the Bhoomi land reform project led by the bureaucrat Rajiv Chawla. In these efforts, we are seeing a push for positive change that is reshaping the growth of the city. 

Even the struggles that Bangalore faces foretell what India shall encounter as we develop. The whispers of future conflict are right here – as the city faces the influx of millions of migrant workers.  It is telling for instance, that the death of the Kannada actor Rajkumar in 2006 triggered violence across the city, with cars and buses attacked and glass-fronted offices pelted with stones. Rajkumar was an icon for many of the older city, a quieter, less modern and chaotic place, one whose identity was unequivocally Kannadiga. Bangalore today, with its growing migrant middle and working classes, its industries and restaurants that are so obviously cosmopolitan, has become an uneasy melting pot. The challenges of inequality emerging across the country are also all too visible here. Nowhere is the secession of the middle classes as stark as it is here with the walled gardens of corporate campuses and gated communities. And the rapid growth has laid bare the complete inadequacies of our urban governance.      

But this city is exceptional in that it is also relatively young, and has the opportunity to tackle the challenges of inequality and of housing and land shortages that left unaddressed has sharpened inequality so severely in cities like Bombay and Delhi. Bangalore’s entrepreneurs, NGOs and civil activists are fighting for better urban planning and infrastructure, with the support of the city residents. Citizen groups pressure the government towards better environmental practices; a variety of organisations have cropped up to manage waste and sewage disposal issues that the government has ignored. 

We can thus see tentative steps forward to the future as Bangalore searches for better solutions, and attempts to overcome its divisions. Rural politicians have tried to capitalize on the urban-rural divide by championing the ‘common man’ of the rural country while inveigling the city ‘elites’. In recent years however, this pitch has had far less power over Karnataka’s voters, as even our farmers aspire to educate their children, and send them to the city for a better life. The 2008 state elections, the first after delimitation has also increased urban voice. 

Bangalore is where we will have to look closest when we try to predict the long-term success of India’s rise – in how we address our divisions, the tensions of large-scale migration, provide equitable access to education, health and housing, build infrastructure and reform governance. It is our weathervane, when it comes to imagining a new India.

Adapated from an article written for the Bangalore edition of the DNA [15 December '08]