Our biggest problem in the next fifty years will be
to find Indian solutions to Indian problems

Jay Dubashi continues our reflections on fifty years of freedom

There are many reasons why the economy remained weak. The government at the Centre simply would not let go of economic power for fear of losing its hold on the country. Now that the state is strong enough, it can afford to relax. There are also forces that compel it to do so.

Economic liberalisation has to go hand in hand with political decentralisation, but not in a way it can disrupt the polity as it did in the Soviet Union and destroyed that country.

Economic decentralisation is intrinsically disruptive of forces that hold a country together. It is basically a philosophy of permissiveness in which you are allowed a free hand in whatever you think if profitable. The buzz words are profit and market, not family and nation.

This is why the West is now talking of family values and also of keeping the country together. Insidious forces are at work even in old established countries like UK and Canada, where there are demands for smaller nations, as small as Wales and Quebec. It can happen in India too.

At the same time, economic decentralisation can also be a strong binding force, holding in its grasp a multicoloured, multi-cultural society, like in the United States. What matters is not decentralisation or liberalisation per se, but whether its fruits are perceived to be spread equitably to everyone, or nearly everyone in society.

There are also other problems. We are not a creative society. We simply ape the west, as we have done for the last two or three hundred years. They have railways, we have railways. They have motor cars, we have motor cars. They have computers, we have computers.

When it was fashionable to be a Communist or Socialist in the West, it was fashionable to be so here. When they ceased to be Marxists, we dumped Marx too. And because they talk about the free market all the time, which comes naturally to them, it has also become some kind of religion with the westernised elite in India.

Also, we lack their inventiveness. So we end up using western solutions to what are peculiarly Indian problems. If we want a mass transit system in Delhi, the first thing the chief minister does is to make a trip overseas to 'study' mass transit systems in western cities. Indians also go abroad to 'study' power problems, health problems, school problems. And we end up with solutions that create more problems.

Our biggest problem in the next fifty years will be to find Indian solutions to Indian problems. We cannot do so by running to McKinsey & Co all the time, or to the IMF or the World Bank, as we are doing now. The Tatas can do it, and so can the Ambanis, because they are running businesses that are basically copies of the West.. Their product is borrowed, their technology is borrowed, their capital is borrowed, and now even their management systems are borrowed. But the Tatas and Ambanis are not India. India is something else. No great country can live on leftovers from other tables, and yet remain a great country.

I have said that the Indian nation-state is stronger today than it ever was in recent history. But it is also true that it has so far not faced the kind of pressures it is going to face in the coming years. There are people going round saying that India cannot hold together unless the economy is liberalised, but there are also people who say that India cannot afford to go the free market way and still remain Indian.

I want India to remain in one piece. I also want it to go modern and remain Indian. India has to change, for change is a fact of life. But how fast do we do, and who or what sets the pace?

That, I think, is the $ 64,000 question we face as we prepare to enter the second half after Independence. I am quite sure that India will throw up enough wise men and women to do the necessary delicate piece of tightrope walking towards modernisation. I have also a hunch that we shall survive, but surviving is not enough, unless we survive as an independent nation that is still recognised as India.

Jay Dubashi, the wellknown columnist and economist, is also a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party's think-tank