Accidental India- Shankkar Aiyar

The book by Shankkar Aiyar narrates transformative changes that shaped India post Independence. Seven of them to be precise.

Shankkar Aiyar is a political economy analyst, columnist and author and his 1991 scoop on India pledging its gold reserves to the IMF drew international attention to the crisis in the economy, which consequently compelled liberalization.

The book, while discussing the transformative changes in India, is not however a breathless eulogy of giant leaps taken by a modern-soon-to-be-superpower India. Rather it’s a bare faced indictment of how India has always moved on ahead in fits and bursts, with our backs literally against the wall. 

The sneaking suspicion that the Country is directionless with no concrete ideology nor exalted vision to propel us?  Well. The book underscores the argument pretty well. We do appear rudderless.

The major transformative changes in India thus far has been, as the author puts it, purely accidental.

Either we got our arms twisted resulting in the  90s liberalisation. Or sometimes it was merely politicians being politicians when Indira Gandhi  nationalised banks to put the 'syndicate' in its place and show who’s boss.

In the Preface the author wonders why. Why does India attempt to change only when it teeters on the brink of catastrophe? Why do Indian leaders not anticipate adversity and act before being engulfed by catastrophe?

‘Are India’s failure to respond with alacrity to challenges dictated by the peculiarities of its culture? How true are theories about the slow rhythm of river-valley civilizations, bountiful geography and the somnolent climate to explain most Indians’ tolerance of the dysfunctions in their society?’

Aiyar finds resonance in a theory put forth by Daron Acemoğlu and James Robinson, authors of ‘Why Nations Fail’.

 ‘The destiny of a country, they said, is largely determined by its choice of political and economic systems. The countries that have succeeded chose inclusive politics and inclusive economics. Indian politicians -influenced less by pride and more by prejudice and paranoia-chose a combination of incompatible ideas. That is, inclusive politics and extractive economics. In other words, political freedom was granted and economic freedom denied.’

The seven transformative changes covered by Aiyyar are the 90s liberalisation, the Milk revolution, the Green Revolution, Mid day meal scheme, Nationalisation of banks, IT revolution and the RTI act 2005.   

Liberalisation of 1991

By 1991 India was already living much beyond her means. The overall deficit was 8.4 % of GDP. Close to 20% of expenditure went to paying interest and repaying debt.

More than Nehru, Indira Gandhi has been blamed by the author for the downward spiral of the Indian economy. With her leftist policies Indira Gandhi brought home to business the real power of the State. On 19 July 1969 the government nationalized fourteen major banks and brought them under state control. This in itself was not an unwelcome step, but Indira Gandhi did not stop there.

Under Indira, the Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices (MRTP) Act was enacted which monitored and controlled the expansion of business houses. The provisions of the MRTP were used to bring recalcitrant big business to heel. 

To appease powerful trade unions and win political brownie points, she further nationalised the coal industry, troubled textile mills and steel units. In 1973, Indira Gandhi also pushed through the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act (FERA). Under this Act, foreign companies were obliged to bring down their stake in Indian operations from 51 per cent to 40 per cent.

By the 80s, Rajiv Gandhi recognized that the Indian economy was in doldrums as did VP Singh. But they merely paid lip service. It was only Narasimha Rao who did something about it and the credit should go to him.  At least he did something. The dream team chosen by him delivered-Manmohan Singh, P Chidambaram, AN Verma and Rakesh Mohan.

Rao also instituted a steering group within the PMO which met every week to discuss and debate the architecture of what would eventually be defined as the liberalization of 1991.

But the fact is India had no choice but to institute reforms. The foreign exchange reserves had dried up to the point that India could barely finance three weeks worth of imports. With India’s foreign exchange reserves at $1.2 billion in January 1991 and depleted by half by June, barely enough to last for roughly 3 weeks of essential imports, India was only weeks way from defaulting on its external balance of payment obligations.

To secure an emergency loan of $2.2 billion from the IMF, India pledged 67 tons of India's gold reserves as collateral security. The RBI airlifted 47 tons of gold to the Bank of England and 20 tons of gold to the Union Bank of Switzerland to raise $600 million.

 A chartered plane ferried the precious cargo to London between 21 May and 31 May 1991, jolting the country out of an economic slumber.

The scoop by Aiyar who broke the story of gold being transshipped by stealth abroad enraged national sentiments and thus kick-started Rao’s economic reform process.

As per the author however, two decades later, the lessons of 1991 have scarcely been learnt. ‘The license-permit-quota raj has been replaced by the clearance raj. It takes between three to five years before the scissor meets the ribbon for any industry to start.’ ‘Industry accounted for 25 per cent of the GDP in 1991. Two decades later, it continued to lag at 27 per cent of the GDP in 2011. Employment in the organized sector in manufacturing-which was supposed to absorb surplus labour after liberalization-is, in 2012, stagnant at around 6 million, the same as it was in 1991.’

The Green Revolution

The historic roots of the endemic poverty in India has been nicely chronicled in the book.

The problem of poverty in India, the author says has its roots in the business model adopted by the Raj.

Just the statistics of famine in India gives an idea of how callous the Raj was. Between 1860 and 1909, famines struck various parts of India twenty-two times, claiming millions of lives. In 1897 alone, famine affected eight provinces which killed three million.

The East India Company, however, was unconcerned. ‘The recurrence of famine in India was a problem that did not exist. The Company’s sole objective was the maximization of revenue from the land, not the health of the colony. The profit it made was based on the rent it was able to extract from farmers. And as the rent itself was calculated not on actual produce but on an estimate of future harvests, it didn’t matter what the eventual production would be. This callous system paid scant attention to the welfare of farmers.’

‘In the early days of its tenure, the Company bartered goods imported from England for Indian spices, crafts and commodities which were then sold for a profit. However, once it had acquired the right to collect revenue, the Company converted the right to collect tax into a zero-capital, high-profit business model. It collected revenue and then used the same money to buy commodities to export to Europe. Or to put it differently, it took money from the farmers and then used a part of it to pay them for commodities. It was a brilliant business model from the Company’s point of view, but grievously exploited Indian farmers.’

One of the root causes of impoverished farmers in India has been on account of the ‘Zamindari’ system, prevalent in India during the time of Independence and indeed even today in various parts of the country.

Land in India, historically, belonged to local communities and the rights of those who worked their land was well understood. However the Mughals, and the British who followed them, altered this structure.

For ease of  collection of levies, the Mughals appointed favoured gentry to collect levies for them in return for the right to retain a fixed proportion of the levy as fee.

Over a period of time, as the Mughal Empire went into decline, and the rights of the farmers, thus far guaranteed by the monarch, were diluted and taken away from them.

Thus evolved the Zamindari system and farmers became tenants at the mercy of the Zamindars.

This system suited the British, and the Zamindars became the new aristocracy of the country.

Nehru was well aware of the plight of the farmers and was convinced that the Zamindari system had to abolished. The land system, he said, ‘cannot endure and an obvious step is to remove the intermediaries between the cultivator and the State. Cooperative or collective farming must follow’.

However removing the well entrenched Zamindars was complicated. Hence in spite of  introduction of Zamindari (Abolition) Act and bringing in constitutional amendments to this effect , nothing changed on ground.

The problem was that the Congress, through the struggle for independence, had carefully nurtured Zamindars as important cogs in the movement for freedom. ‘Typically, the basic unit was built at the local level with members of the dominant caste and the land-owning gentry making up the foundation of political mobilization. A collection of these units, from village to district to state, made up the national party pyramid in which every unit was intricately linked to the other by various alliances on issues and votes.’

The Zamindars turned out to be too powerful and could not be dislodged. Hence, the author says,’ barring Kerala and West Bengal, land reforms floundered everywhere else. The success of land reforms in Kerala and West Bengal is largely explained first by its acceptance by civil society and the influence of competitive socialism between the Left and the Congress.’

But Zamindari system was just part of the reasons for poverty in Inida. The other reason the author cites was the sub optimal allocation of funds for the agricultural sector on which 70% of the people depended for survival.

In the first  five year plan, Nehru made it clear that he wanted to build a nation that built world-class industries in metals, power and heavy machinery. He rejected the premise that endemic poverty required an absolute focus on agricultural development and placed his faith on a model in which import substitution and investment in heavy industry would lead to growth. Agriculture thus received a substantial allocation, but did not command the entire focus of government.

In the second five year plan, out of a total sum of 4,800 crore just 568 crore was allocated for agriculture and community development.

This inspite of India being a recipient  of food aid under PL 480 since 1954. Between 1955 and 1971, India received over 50 million tons of grain-almost half of all food grains given under the PL 480 programme.

By the end of 1956 it was clear that the template for agricultural revival was a failure. By the time the Third Plan was to be drafted in 1961, the nation was drifting and the Congress was in disarray.

In 1963, a study conducted by the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) stated that India was struggling to supply food to a rising population that had shot up from 361 million in 1951 to 438 million in 1961.

Notwithstanding the writing on the wall, it was not enough to propel Indira Gandhi to adopt course correction measures.  

By the 60s on account of  friction in relationship with America, the Lyndon B Johnson administration, which had promised 3.5 million tons of food aid, had placed all shipments under despatch control, shipping only just enough food every month which led to the coining of the term ‘ship to mouth’-a policy where food would be released just in time to reach consumers and couldn’t be stored or used as a buffer.

‘At one point in December 1966, Indira Gandhi had to personally call President Johnson to push for food aid. At the end of the conversation, she clenched her fist and angrily told C Subramaniam, (the Agricultural minister) who was present at the time, that she never wanted India to ever have to beg for food again.’

The humiliation inflicted by the US and the lessons of the 1962 and 1965 war finally brought home to politicians the imperative of food security.

C Subramaniam was the man behind the Green Revolution in India. Born in Senguttaipalayam, a small village near Pollachi in Tamil Nadu, Subramaniam graduated in physics from Presidency College and later took a degree in law. Soon after he graduated in 1930 and then plunged into the freedom movement.

Indira Gandhi backed Subramaniam on the revival of agriculture and thus began the Green revolution which refers to the period when agriculture in India changed to an industrial system due to the adoption of modern methods and technology such as high yielding variety (HYV) seeds, tractors, pump sets, etc

In 1967, as the first reports on that year’s harvest came in, they stunned the world. India had produced 17 million tons of wheat, 5 million tons more than the previous highest yield.

Even though India achieved food sufficiency on account of the Green revolution, crisis looms in the agricultural sector today.

Investment in agriculture dropped to barely 3 per cent of the GDP between 1980 and 2005. ‘Nearly two-thirds of farmers have no access to credit from banks and depend on moneylenders. The impact of neglect is most visible in its human aspect. India has the largest number of farmers committing suicide-between 2004 and 2010 over 120,000 farmers committed suicide.'

Nationalisation of Banks

On 19 July 1969, the Banking Companies Ordinance was promulgated by acting President V. V. Giri.

Ordinance 8 of 1969 transferred ownership of fourteen commercial banks to the State.These banks together controlled 70 per cent of the nation’s deposits.

However nationalisation of the 14 banks in 1969 took place when the Congress party was undergoing an internal crisis, marked by a bitter conflict between Indira Gandhi and the Syndicate, which ultimately led to its split in the same year.

 The syndicate led by K. Kamaraj, included Atulya Ghosh, member of parliament from West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Sanjiva Reddy, S. Nijalingappa from Mysore and Srinivas Mallya from Mangalore.

‘Indira Gandhi, post the 1967 drubbing, began the conversion of the party-one in which, historically, decisions were arrived at after consultation-into an instrument of top down decision making. However, the syndicate was not giving up. She understood this as an attempt to clip her wings. Her retaliation began with the formation of the government. The composition of the 1967 cabinet, in many ways, set the tone for events to come. Indira Gandhi rewarded those who supported her with ministerial berths and used merit, experience and integrity as criteria where convenient. She virtually bypassed the organizational leadership.’

Bank nationalization may well have been born out of political necessity, as it sidelined the Syndicate and established the supremacy of Indira over the Congress party, but it paid dividends as far as the economy was concerned.

‘In 1969, after twenty-two years of independence, the Indian banking system had barely 6,900 bank branches. By 1979 India boasted 30,202 branches and by 1989 the number had increased to 57,699 branches. Between 1969 and 1989 the number of branches in rural India, in villages, shot up from 1,833 to 33,014. The average number of customers per branch, which was 63,000 in 1969, was down to 14,000 customers per branch in 1989.’

The Milk Revolution

The template for self sufficiency in milk had already been on display by the success of Verghese Kurien's Amul that he set up in the 50s.

Verghese Kurien was born on 26 November 1921 in Kozhikode, to a Syrian Christian family. He joined Loyola College, in Madras at the age of 14, graduating in science with physics in 1940, and then got a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from the College of Engineering, Guindy, Madras, in 1943.

‘Kurien won a scholarship to study dairy engineering at Michigan State University. But being the maverick that he was, when he got there he chose to study metal casting, metallurgy and nuclear engineering. Upon graduation, Kurien was recommended by the dean of his university for a job with Union Carbide. There was a hitch, though. When he signed up for the scholarship, he had committed to the Government of India that on returning he would serve the government in the Department of Dairy Development at the ministry of agriculture for five years. Kurien thought he would be able to sidestep this bond. He approached John Mathai and pointed out that since he didn’t study what he was sent for he was not qualified for dairy development. Mathai not only refused to help but said he would ensure that Kurien fulfilled his obligation to the government.

So here he was in Anand, armed with a thesis on the heredity in iron castings, a degree in metallurgy and a fascination for nuclear engineering, stuck with the responsibility of managing a milk creamery. Life on the professional and the personal front looked dismal. A Malayali Syrian Christian and a non-vegetarian, the place he found himself in was conservative, mostly Hindu, Gujarati-speaking and predominantly vegetarian.’

Amul owed its success to the institution of the Kaira Cooperative by Kurien and the way in which it empowered individual farmers. The Amul dairy was owned by the farmers, their elected representatives managed the cooperative, and Kurien, and everyone else, were employees and accountable to them. Almost all countries with developed dairy systems had followed the cooperative route.

But inspite of the Amul success, India was not following the cooperative route, inspite of Kurien personally meeting and impressing upon Nehru of the same. The result was that till late 1960s we were importing 70% of our milk requirement.

‘Milk production of 17 million metric tons (MMT) in 1950 rose to just 21.2 MMT after three Five Year Plans. In 1952, 74 per cent of the demand for milk and milk products was met through imports. In 1967, some fifteen years later, as much as 55 per cent of the demand was fulfilled by imports. The irony is that the government didn’t need to invent a plan, it just needed to follow the successful Kaira model engineered by Kurien. It did not.’

The death of Nehru was fortunate in a sense, because Lal Bahadur Shastri when he visited Amul sometime in 1965 realised how the idea of cooperatives can be emulated all over India.

He gave orders and wrote to all chief ministers to have the same set up in all the states.

But then there was no support for Kurien.

Kurien met chief minister after chief minister, many ministers for agriculture and sundry bureaucrats. The general response was cynical and negative.

The idea of self-sufficiency threatened the network of patronage fueled by imports. Moreover, as cooperatives would promote the cause of small and marginal farmers, politicians who were allied with large land-holding farmers were determined to scuttle the idea. Many in the state governments, while mouthing support for the idea, did their best to stall it.

No state was willing to provide the seed money to get the cooperatives functional.

But Kurien was of a different mould.

He said he did not want money from the states. And that the National Dairy Development Board that he set up would provide the money instead.

How he managed the money is an amazing story.

He approached the the European economic commission, which  had announced that they had surplus dairy products with them that they wished to donate.

He got in touch with them and got the milk powder and butter surplus stocks held with them at low rates.

He then sold them for a profit in Indian markets.

Then with the profit so generated he was able to generate funds to get the NDDB going and he created a national network of cooperatives in every state.

When Kurien came to Anand in 1949, India was producing around 17 million tons of milk every year. Between 1947 and 1968, milk output grew to barely 21.2 million tons.

After his launch of cooperatives-called operation flood-from 1970 to 1996, India’s milk production shot up from 31 million tons in 1981 to 54 million tons in 1991 and to over 66 million tons in 1996 at the culmination of Operation Flood-3.

Midday Meal Scheme

MG Ramachandran, who was instrumental in introducing mid day meal on a large scale in Tamil Nadu, ‘was born in Kandy in Sri Lanka to magistrate M. Gopala Menon and Satyabhama. MGR lost his father early. The family moved to Tamil Nadu where his mother was forced to find work with a drama company in Kumbakonam. When the drama company folded up, Satyabhama couldn’t feed MGR and his brother, M. G. Chakrapani, every day. She would often lock up the two brothers fearing they would take to begging to feed themselves. Satyabhama was MGR’s inspiration. She brought her children up in great hardship and was a strict disciplinarian. Her constant strictures to the two brothers were: don’t lie, don’t steal and don’t be abusive. MGR never forgot them. Throughout his film and political career he made sure that he was seen to be a man who valued these principles above all else. They won him a devoted following.'

Mid day meal scheme of MGR in Tamil Nadu  fed everyday at noon, over 6 million school children between the ages of two and fifteen in over 20,000 child welfare centres and over 35,000 schools across Tamil Nadu. The scheme would not only fund the feeding of millions of poor children, it would also provide employment to over 200,000 people who would cook for and feed the children. It was easily the largest employment-generating idea of its time.

Even the mid day meal scheme was however launched by MGR to reclaim political capital. In 1981, MGR was haunted by his failure to keep a promise he had made to the people. One of the biggest reasons for his victory in the elections of 1977 was the word he had given to the women of Tamil Nadu that he would free their men from the oppression of alcoholism.

‘He promised he would come down hard on arrack and toddy bootleggers, and while he did his best to deliver, he was fighting a losing battle. Prohibition required action against both bootleggers and drinkers. When their menfolk were arrested, the women often had to borrow money, even pawn family silver, to bail out the principal wage earner of the family. At public meetings, MGR was besieged by women who petitioned him for the release of the men incarcerated under prohibition. MGR realized he was being failed by the system. In June 1981, MGR admitted defeat and allowed the sale of arrack and toddy.’

The failure resulted in loss of face and political capital. MGR wondered how he could make good on the promise he had made to women voters, his biggest support base. It struck him that he must compensate the family, give back what seemed to have been taken away. The reparation, he decided, would be made to children through a mid-day meal scheme.

There was no disputing the impact it had on education, particularly enrolment. According to studies conducted two months after the scheme was launched, enrolment in primary schools across Tamil Nadu shot up-by one estimate 2 million additional children enrolled in schools-and truancy or absenteeism among students dropped by over 80 per cent.

But national mid day meal took a lot of time to take off. 
On 15 August 1995, thirteen years after Tamil Nadu had implemented its mid-day meal scheme, the Government of India followed suit. Its scheme, grandly christened the National Programme of Nutritional Support to Primary Education, aimed to boost the ‘universalization of primary education by increasing student enrolment, retention and attendance and simultaneously reduce malnutrition of students in primary classes’. Unfortunately, unlike the MGR initiative of 1982, the Centre’s programme was not ambitious enough as it was limited to students from Classes I-V only.

.

By 2010, the national mid-day meal scheme had led to a substantial increase in enrolment and attendance and a decrease in dropout rates in primary and secondary schools.

The IT revolution and the RTI Act of 2005 are the last two transformative changes that are covered by the author.

IT revolution has helped India grab nearly 67% of the current global IT market, provides employment to 2.5 million people and indirect employment to 8.3 million people.

The enactment of the RTI act has encouraged citizens, journalists and activists to question the state of affairs and government policies.  It has the power to promote accountability and can be used as tool to collect trustworthy information.

In the epilogue, Aiyar further dwells into the future shocks that the nation will be subject to if we do not anticipate and prepare ourselves for. These are Water, Energy, Poverty, Corruption, National Security and Centre-state relations.

The book is a fascinating read. Aiyar backs his narration with data and references and provides interesting titbits on the main charcaters and the compulsions faced by them.

The Next Hundred Years : George Friedman

George Friedman is a US geopolitical forecaster, and the founder and chairman of Geopolitical Futures, an online publication that analyzes and forecasts the course of global events.
He was earlier Chairman of Stratfor.

The future predicted by the author is somewhat contrary to conventional wisdom floating around to say the least.

Most surprising is his prediction the collapse of China sometime in the 2020s.
The book was written in 2009. And it's 2018 now. The aspect of any imminent collapse by China in the near future seems slightly farfetched.  The collapse of China as per the author would be on account of the internal divisions caused between the prosperous coastal regions and the hinterland. India too is given a role by the author in precipitating the collapse due to its active support in causing the breakaway of Tibet.

He also predicts that the collusion of the West with hardline Islam/ Al Qaeda to be relegated to a footnote of not much significance, which seems likely.

A return to a cold war with Russia is predicted in the 2030s.

Rise of Poland, Turkey and Japan is predicted by the mid 21st century leading to a high tech world war sometime in 2050s.

Mexico will also be a power to reckon with in the 2080s.

The book is interesting however due to the insight provided into contemporary geopolitics. 

Predicting the future is hard and one shouldn't let the author's flight into realms of fantasy to be taken too seriously.

One aspects which was interesting is his take on the 50 year US presidential cycle -one that "usually begins with a defining presidency and ends in a failed one".

The crises  defined by the struggle between a declining dominant class linked to an established economic model and the emergence of a new class and a new economic model.

The author's theory of Presidential cycles makes him theorize as follows:-

#George Washington Cycle(1776 to 1829; 53 years):
This ended in 1829 with the failed presidency of John Quincy Adams and the rise of Andrew Jackson in which  "Founders give way to Pioneers".
"Andrew Jackson's predecessors had favored a stable currency to protect investors. Jackson championed cheap money to protect debtors, the people who voted for him."

#Andrew Jackson Cycle(48 years): Ended in 1877 with the failed presidency of Ulysses S. Grant  when the "Pioneers give way to Small-town America". 

"Rutherford B. Hayes championed money backed by gold, which limited inflation, raised interest rates, and made investment more attractive."

#Rutherford B. Hayes Cycle(56 years):
Ended in 1933 with the failed presidency of Herbert Hoover when "Small Towns give way to Industrial Cities".

Franklin D Roosevelt, FDR, "championed the industrial urban workers at the expense of the declining small towns and their values."

#FDR Cycle(48 Years):Ended in 1981 with the failed presidency of Jimmy Carter when "Industrial Cites give way to Service Suburbs".

Ronald Reagan maintained "consumption while simultaneously increasing the amount of investment capital." "...reducing taxes in order to stimulate investment." "...which favored the suburban professional and entrepreneurial classes."

So as per the author we are currently in the  Ronald Reagan Cycle, predicted to end in 2028 or 2032 with the failed presidency of---- who knows?

The author also predicts that the US will be actively  wooing immigrants to overcome its labour shortage problems in the 2030s- something which seems to be at odds with the current Trump era policies.

Overall a good read. 

The Silk Routes by Peter Frankopan

The title proclaims it's a 'New history of the world'.
After reading the book, one wonders what is new in the book.

The book is Euro-centric,  despite disclaimers.Or it is a book with a  perspective as to how the European powers shaped the region between China and the Mediterranean over the ages - the silk routes.

There's scant reference to China or the Americas, the Ottoman empire etc however. And India gets just about touched upon while   covering the rise of the East India Company in the subcontinent.

The author has however strong views on the imperial powers. Indeed he even cites the invasion of Iraq by US in 2003 as a continuation of the imperial policies as had been followed in another age. So maybe Europe and US bashing is what is probably new in the book.

He is critical of the polices of the imperial powers, firstly British and then the US, pursued relentlessly  for their self interests and which has created an area torn with strife from Afghanistan to the Mediterranean.

An interesting read however, even though it falls short of expectations.

Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India--by Shashi Tharoor

This book is an outcome of a debate at Oxford where Tharoor took part in May 2015 on the proposition 'Britain owes reparations to her former colonies'.

The power of  social media ensured that the snippets of the debate went viral with gushing support and appreciation galore for Tharoor.

and thus the idea of the book was born.

One wishes Tharoor had just stuck to the debate and not made a book out of it. Sound bytes in a glamorous clipped accent makes for better feeling of simplistic vacuous nationalistic pride than somber reading of 300 odd pages of how the Empire lorded over us filthy natives for over 200 odd years.

The book is a depressing read. It depresses me no end as to how India had been subjugated so easily and so thoroughly by the British with seemingly little effort.    Just a paltry 70000 Brits is all it took keep a country of 250 million natives in check in the late nineteenth century, a number which increased to 1.7 Lacs versus 300 million at the time of independence.

As Tharoor writes eloquently:

"It was an extraordinary combination of racial self-assurance, superior military technology, the mystique of modernity and the trappings of enlightenment progressivism-as well as, it must be said clearly, the cravenness, cupidity, opportunism and lack of organized resistance on the part of the vanquished-that sustained the Empire, along with the judicious application of brute force when necessary. The British in India were never more than 0.05 per cent of the population. The Empire, in Hobsbawm’s evocative words, was ‘so easily won, so narrowly based, so absurdly easily ruled thanks to the devotion of a few and the passivity of the many.’

Tharoor essentially lays bare the argument that there was anything altruistic in the British rule of India and 200 years of  Colonial rule simply devastated the country economically and morally. The British ruled over us for their own self-interest - much like any other country- and there was nothing special about them, and there is simply no grain of truth in the least in that notorious verse by Kipling of the ‘White man’s burden’ eulogizing the Englishman and his travails:

‘Take up the White Man’s Burden, Send forth the best ye breed

Go bind your sons to exile, to serve your captives’ need’,

 despite the ingratitude of the heathens they were ruling;

 the White Man had to bear his Burden despite ‘his old reward:

the blame of those ye better, / The hate of those ye guard’

All for the needs, as Kipling wrote, for the resentful ‘sullen peoples, half-devil and half-child’.

But I felt the thrust of the books argument was a no-brainer. I mean, the Brits ruled for their own self-interest, who would want to contest that? They ravaged the economy, broke the back of pre-industrial India, wreaked havoc on the thriving textile, ship building industry etc, forced huge swathes of fertile land to be used for cultivation of opium, ensured that there was a ready market for British goods while devastating centuries old Indian export market with high tariffs laid on goods…the list is endless. And of course the so called benefits of railways, english language, establishment of Schools and Universities etc were simply to enable them to subdue and lord over their subjects in a more effective fashion.

Isn’t this a no-brainer?

But Tharoor delves at length to thwart the notion of any redeeming benefits of the Empire on the Indian Sub-continent, and he crams loads and loads of data to make his point.

To be fair, there are a section of Indians and not just a few Englishmen who believe in the myth that the British rule was actually good for India. Tharoor especially goes to great lengths to demolish the arguments for the empire raised by Niall Fergusson in his book ‘Empire: how Britain made the world’.

So I guess the arguments set forth in the book forcefully by Tharoor deserves to be told. And it’s a fair book.

Having said that, I think there were two points that Tharoor could have dwelt on while discussing the Empire, which are slightly thorny issues, and maybe the reason why Tharoor the politician, has avoided them.

Firstly, would modern India have the boundaries we see today if it were not for the British rule? Would there have been a nationalistic movement and leaders of such mettle as a Gandhi to forge a united polity in the absence of an external enemy?

It is no one’s argument that India existed as a Civilizational entity for more than 3000 years. But were we ever a political entity, (apart from brief interludes of the Maurya, Gupta and Mughal Empires) in the sense that China was? Even during the century long subjugation of China starting in the 1850s, the European imperial powers dealt with the Qing dynasty, the unquestioned rulers of the Middle kingdom. Not so in India’s case.

So a closer look at whether the Indian polity that we see today would have remained the same without the ravages on its soil by the Imperial rule for over 200 years would have been an interesting debate.

Secondly, given that huge swathes of the globe were under Colonial rule beginning the nineteenth century, and India happened to be a ripe fruit waiting to be plucked, (given the lack of unity amongst warring princely states) how would the Country have fared if it was any other Colonial power in place instead of the Brits? What if it were the Japanese or the Nazi Germans?

The moot question being, given that India would have been colonized in any case, and if we had any choice in the matter, which Colonial power would have been better for the Indians?

The above points raised are contentious and I don’t blame Tharoor for not touching them.

Do read the book only if you are one of those who really believe, that the colonial rule had been good for the country in any manner whatsoever..

Else, avoid. Just stick to the sound bytes of the debate and feel good about it.

Age of Anger - Pankaj Mishra(2016)

The prologue of the book captures the essence of bewilderment felt by the modern man. The slow but all too certain steady march of mankind into everlasting prosperity and freedom riding on the back of liberal capitalism and democracy, Pankaj Mishra says, seems to have come to a grinding halt. The party is over. This is the Age of Anger.

The author paints a pretty picture of the hopeful period of the sepia tinted 80s and 90s,  which in retrospect appears to be an unbelievable period of stability and optimism, as the the world now seems to be slipping back into its default mode of being on the brink of chaos and mayhem.

With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and collapse of communism, the universal triumph of liberal capitalism and democracy seemed assured. Free markets and human rights appeared to be the right formula for the billions trying to overcome degrading poverty and political oppression; the words globalisation and Internet, inspired in the age of innocence, more hope than anxiety as they entered common speech.

The author sums up this hopeful period in history when the world seemed to be moving in the right direction:

"American advisers rushed to Moscow to facilitate Russia's makeover into a liberal democracy; China and India began to open their economies to trade and investment; new nation states and democracies blossomed across a broad swathe of Europe, Asia and Africa; the enlarged European Union came into being; peace was declared in Northern Ireland; Nelson Mandela ended his long Walk to freedom; the Dalai Lama appeared in Apple’s ‘Think Different’ advertisements; and it seemed only a matter of time before Tibet, too, would be free."

  

But the promised Utopian world that the author believed was just round the corner was simply a mirage which quickly faded, as Pankaj Mishra believes that today:

"Demagogues of all kinds, from Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan to India’s Narendra Modi, France’s Marine Le Pen and America’s Donald Trump, have tapped into the simmering reservoirs of cynicism, boredom and discontent. China, though market-friendly, seems further from democracy than before, and closer to expansionist nationalism. The experiment with free market capitalism in Russia spawned a kleptocratic and messianic regime. It has brought to power explicitly anti-Semitic regimes in Poland and Hungary. A revolt against globalization and its beneficiaries has resulted in Britain’s departure from the European Union, sentencing the latter to deeper disarray, perhaps even death. Authoritarian leaders, anti-democratic backlashes and right-wing extremism define the politics of Austria, France and the United States as well as India, Israel, Thailand, the Philippines and Turkey.”

The root cause of the anger

So what changed? Why has the optimism and the belief in promised universal civilization-one harmonized by a combination of universal suffrage, broad educational opportunities, steady economic growth, and personal advancement - not apparently materialized?

Pankaj Mishra says that its actually nothing new. What the world is experiencing toady is a continuation of the chaos and turmoil the world experienced with its first brush with modernity way back in the eighteenth/nineteenth century Europe. The author states that the unprecedented political, economic and social disorder that accompanied the rise of the industrial capitalist economy in nineteenth-century Europe, and led to world wars, totalitarian regimes and genocide in the first half of the twentieth century, is now infecting much vaster regions and bigger populations. The rest of the world is now plunging deeper into the West’s own fateful experience of that modernity.

The apparent crisis that the World witnesses today had its roots in the age of enlightenment- the age of Voltaire and Rousseau- says Pankaj Mishra. Yes- true that the French Revolution had indeed introduced the world to revolutionary ideas of equality, fraternity and liberty. World politics thus long monopolized by absolutist elites, began to open up to commoners with talent and skill. The world was introduced to the earth-shaking idea that human beings could use their own reason to fundamentally reshape their circumstances. Intellectuals and artists rose as a class for the first time to lend a hand in the making of history, and locate the meaning of life in politics and art rather than traditional religion.

But the author says the new society, though free of irrational old hierarchies wasn’t meant to be democratic or bring in social equality. On the contrary, access to power and prestige still required money, property, connections and talents.These educated men of the Enlightenment who led the revolution with the post-religious notion that men make their own world - belonged to a tiny minority of the literate and secular-minded. The image of the new elite as summed up by Voltaire was: worldly, witty, freethinking, devoted to reason, and especially contemptuous of the Church.

The new society, was primarily meant- as Rousseau bluntly stated-to provide freedom and social mobility for the man of talent, and provide him the means, of ‘acquiring without obstacle and possessing with security’. Hierarchy would still mark the new society: the mass of the people would remain necessarily subordinate to the authentically enlightened at the top. A powerful ruler was thus  not only needed to check the power of churches, estates and corporations; he was required to repress the ignorant and superstitious mass of people who threatened civilization.

Voltaire, who the author characterizes as the one who represented the modern elite, had disdain for the common people- “the ignoble masses who respect only force and never think”.  “We have never claimed," Voltaire wrote, “to enlighten shoe-makers and servant girls.” What Voltaire wanted was hardly a revolution or even representative govt but a wise monarchy that would sideline aristocrats and clergy and create space for people like himself.

Mishra’s thesis is that our contemporary misery and hyper-nationalism can be traced to Rousseau’s romantic reaction to Voltaire’s Enlightenment -a callow elitism that produced Rousseau’s romantic search for old-fashioned community. Today's oppressive elite are Voltaire’s children and Trump and Brexit voters are Rousseau’s new peasant hordes, terrified of losing cultural continuity and clan comfort.

Democracy and Communism

The idea of a future rational and enlightened society in which all men are equal, however caught fire and had radically egalitarian implications. The program of reform by a tiny literate minority escalated into a ferocious assault on all social inequality, culminating in the public execution of  the French monarch and later his consort, Marie Antoinette.

The two concepts, ‘nationalism’ and ‘communism’, were invented to define the aspirations for fraternity and equality and ‘Democracy’ came into vogue around 1830s. Almost as soon as they came into circulation in the West, the ideas traveled, with varying interpretations, to Russia and further East. Western imperialism, spread of literacy and improved communications spread the ideas to the remotest corners of Asia, Africa and Latin America.

The world plays ‘catch up’

Germany, Russia and Japan set out to catch up with Britain and France in the nineteenth century. Two world wars eventually resulted from nations desiring the same objects and preventing others from trying to appropriate them. But by 1945 the new nation states of Asia and Africa also started on their own bumpy road to modernity.

Non-Western men and women educated in Europe or in Western-style institutions despaired of their traditionalist elites as much as they resented European dominance over their societies. In this quest to give their peoples a fair chance at strength, equality and dignity in the white man’s world, China’s Mao Zedong and Turkey’s Ataturk as much as Iran’s Mohammad Mosaddeq followed the Western model of mass-mobilization, state-building and industrialization.

A world adrift

One aim united all these ideologically divergent regimes. Socialist as well as capitalist modernists envisaged an exponential increase in the number of people owning cars, houses, electronic goods and gadgets, and driving the tourist and luxury industry worldwide.A consumerist society, with the world moving to a slow but steady progress towards increasing equality.

By the 1970s, however, it had become clear that Western prescriptions were not working. On the contrary, the Colombian anthropologist Escobar put it, ‘instead of the kingdom of abundance promised by theorists and politicians in the 1950s, the discourse and strategy of development produced its opposite: massive underdevelopment and impoverishment, untold exploitation and oppression.’ Truth dawned on the in-applicability of the communist mode and the growing awareness that the Western history of modernization is just one of several possible courses.

In 1992, a year after the Soviet Union imploded, The Economist editorialized ‘that there was no serious alternative to free-market capitalism as the way to organize economic life’. Today, however, the early post-Cold War consensus- that a global capitalist economy would alleviate ethnic and religious differences and usher in worldwide prosperity and peace-lies in tatters. The era of ‘free-market triumphalism’, The Economist now admits, ‘has come to a juddering halt’. But no plausible alternatives of political and economic organization are in sight.

In 2014 The Economist said that, on the basis of IMF data, emerging economies - or, most of the human population - might have to wait for three centuries in order to catch up with the West. In this assessment, the last decade of high growth was an ‘aberration’ and ‘billions of people will be poorer for a lot longer than they might have expected just a few years.'

The implications are sobering: the non-West not only finds itself replicating the West’s trauma on an infinitely larger scale and also that the non-West have no real prospects of catching up with the West.

But it is not just the Non-west that have been left disenchanted. For the American middle class, after a series of economic crises from the 1970s onward, the American Dream, seemed less and less credible. Jobs commensurate with their sense of dignity seemed hard to find.  Brought up by a culture of individualism to consider themselves unique, the middle class began to suffer from a sense of diminishment and they felt that the vast political and economic forces were working against them.

This is the how the support for Donald Trump’s white nationalism connects with middle-aged working-class men, who feel left behind in the race for prosperity.

The media hype of success stories of a few young graduates and dropouts turned billionaires overnight, and users of Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp briefly appeared to be toppling authoritarian regimes worldwide. But the drivers of Uber cars, toiling for abysmally low fares, represent the actual fate of many self-employed ‘entrepreneurs’. Today defeat, humiliation and resentment are more commonplace experiences than success and contentment.

The root cause of modern day troubles thus arises from the individual dissatisfaction with the actually available degree of freedom which becomes explosive as inequalities rise and no political redress appears to be in sight.

  

Katherine Boo in Behind the Beautiful Forever: (2012) talks of the stark inequality of Mumbai which brings its attendant problems:

“Mumbai was a place of festering grievance and ambient envy. Was there a soul in this enriching, unequal city who didn’t blame his dissatisfaction on someone else? Wealthy citizens accused the slum-dwellers of making the city filthy and unlivable, even as an oversupply of human capital kept the wages of their maids and chauffeurs low. Slum-dwellers complained about the obstacles the powerful erected to prevent them from sharing in new profit. Everyone, everywhere, complained about their neighbours.”

The author states that in the age of digitization today, individuals find themselves herded by capitalism and technology into a common present, where grossly unequal distributions of wealth and power have created humiliating new hierarchies. This proximity, is rendered more claustrophobic by digital communications, the improved capacity for envious and resentful comparison. An existential resentment of other people’s being, caused by an intense mix of envy and sense of humiliation and powerlessness, and as it lingers and deepens, poisons civil society and undermines political liberty, and is presently making for a global turn to authoritarianism and toxic forms of chauvinism. 

The age of anger

Mishra says that the people most disaffected are not the poorest of the poor, or members of the peasantry and the urban underclass. They are educated youth, often unemployed, rural-urban migrants, or others from the lower middle class: 

"Regardless of their national origins and locally attuned rhetoric, these disenfranchised men target those they regard as venal, callous and mendacious elites. Donald Trump led an upsurge of white nationalists enraged at being duped by globalized liberals. A similar loathing of London technocrats and cosmopolitans led to Brexit. Hindu nationalists,who tend to belong to lower middle classes with education and some experience of mobility, aim at ‘pseudo-secularist’ English-speaking Indians, accusing them of disdain for Hinduism and vernacular traditions. Chinese nationalists despise the small minority of their West-oriented technocratic compatriots. Radical Islamists spend much time parsing differences between who they decide are genuine Muslims and nominal ones, those who have surrendered to the hedonism and rootlessness of consumer society."

The book is thought provoking, but does not provide a suggested alternative. If not liberal democracy and free market capitalism then what model should one follow? 

Should it be Rousseau’s(who the author obviously admires) ideal society that world should adopt, which was  essentially the Spartan society: small, harsh, self-sufficient, fiercely patriotic and defiantly uncosmopolitan and uncommercial. In this society at least, the corrupting urge to promote oneself over others, and the deceiving of the poor by the rich could be counterpoised by the surrender of individuality to public service, and the desire to seek pride for community and country.

One hopes not. The root cause of the modern world is the ever widening chasm of inequality between the elites and the toiling masses. It is hoped that society evolves to address this pressing issue and humanity continues to move to a liberal world sans borders, where narrow parochialism and stark lines being drawn across different races, communities and cultures are wiped out slowly but surely.

The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche by Henri Louis Mencken

Nietzche is dated. The book is dated. Written by Henri Louis Mencken in the early part of 20th century, the book feels like a product of a bygone era.

The Nietzsche philosophy had regular sexist,  racist undertones but the author doesn't question them, as the  book is from another era when casual racism and misogyny were rampant.

Nietzsche is a good read for those who still want find a reason to question the existence of religion. If not then the book will appear  a bit dated and feel stale.

Nietzsche of course has his place in the development of human thought.

Nietzsche’s questioned as to why all ideals, whether explicitly religious or not, presumes an afterlife that is better than the ‘here and now’.

In Nietzsche’s eyes, such a fabrication negates us from seeing the beauty of  life on Earth.

He condemned attempts to deny actual truth in the name of false realities, instead of accepting the real as it is.

Nietzsche accuses all the grand scientific, metaphysical and religious systems, of having systematically ‘despised’ the body and the senses in the interests of reason and rationality.

Hence Nietzsche says:  “I entreat you, my brothers, remain true to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of extraterrestrial hopes.”

Nietzsche came under the sway of Schopenhauer when young and he imbibed much of the what the eternal pessimist expounded. If Schopenhauer proclaimed on Will to Live , Nietzsche borrowed his ideas and padded it up in his Will to Power.

Schopenhauer  explained that the universe and everything in it is driven by a primordial will to live, which results in a desire in all living creatures to avoid death and to procreate. For Schopenhauer, this will is the most fundamental aspect of reality – more fundamental even than being.

Schopenhauer’s negation of the will was a saying "no" to life and to the world, which he judged to be a scene of pain and evil.

Schopenhauer saw this world as the product of a malignant Will.

Schopenhauer renounced life, he said the world is Hell, don’t seek happiness in it.

Nietzsche on the other hand affirmed life and espoused earthly values. He rejected Platonic/Christian ideals of the “other world” being more real than this one, and argued forcefully for living fully here.

Nietzsche's  formula for greatness in a human being was  ‘Amor fati’.

That is “ to want nothing to be other than as it is, neither in the future, nor in the past, nor in all eternity. Not merely to endure what happens of necessity, still less to hide it from oneself – but to love it…“