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INTRODUCTION Breaking the Mould Not accustomed to initiating change India has allowed its functioning to turn dysfunctional. The alternatives weren't in place because the importance of ideas wasn't appreciated. By Swapan Dasgupta
As a society given to rituals and timelessness, India is not naturally inclined to introspection. A certain ad-hocism has defined the collective mentality of a people accustomed to letting events shape their destiny. Indians have readily accepted and adapted to change but have shown a curious reluctance to initiate it. Instinctively, the country has preferred tradition and habit to radicalism. It isn't conservatism. Intellectual laziness would be a better description. So it is after 50 years of the republic. Speaking in the Constituent Assembly, S. Radhakrishnan spoke of a new order that would "break the mould" -- an expression that held out the promise of dynamism and constant churning. The optimism proved remarkably unfounded. A new order in place, India settled into its new orthodoxies. The detached paternalism of the British Raj was effortlessly replaced by an intrusive socialist raj based on controls. "Baboo rule" -- that fear of colonial romantics like Lord Curzon and Rudyard Kipling -- became the unappetising base beneath the democratic icing. The "Hindu rate of growth" became the euphemism for institutionalised sloth and mediocrity. Success attracted 97 per cent taxes and "brain drain" became the gentle description for the first refugees from the licence-permit raj. Of course, it wasn't all gloom and doom. Remarkably adept in the art of surviving, Indian ingenuity took on the task of beating the system. The Artful Dodger ceased to be something out of Dickens; he became the archetypal Indian. Existence was relegated to a series of intricate negotiations -- whether securing a child's admission to school or purchasing a railway ticket. There was no percentage in playing with a straight bat; to remain in the game Indians had to learn bowling googlies, the proverbial wrong 'uns. Typically, the transition from a regime of shortages to one of relative abundance hasn't been conscious. Egged on by global currents, India has just blundered on. Technology has changed, economic assumptions have shifted, expectations have soared and lifestyles have altered but Indians have put their thoughts of the big picture on hold. A society that once planned the production of every TV set is today remarkably clueless about managing its new freedoms. India has been stymied by its collective incompetence to think its future through. The problem isn't one of desire. There are enough Indians who are angry, frustrated and impatient with the present. But unstructured exasperation has its limits, as the see-saw of politics clearly reveals. Needed are ideas that focus the mind on the direction of change and generate the will to effect them. Without ideas, the yearning for improvement is easily hijacked by slogan shouting charlatans. The time for patchwork is over. So intense is the systemic crisis that the functioning anarchy is in danger of turning dysfunctional. The over-bearing state is on life-support. It lingers partly because of sheer size, partly out of habit but mainly because the alternatives aren't in place. They need to be. Reform and radicalism are not abstruse doctrinaire reference points. They are imperatives of national survival. Which is why it is worth recalling the old May 1968 poster in the Sorbonne: "Be realistic, demand the impossible." For India, only audacity will pay. It's time to break the mould. |
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