Despite our fairly impressive achievements in the first 25 years of independence by way of preserving democratic institutions, doubling food production, building an extensive base which is wide enough to sustain industrial development and expanding educational facilities to make the objective of a generally literate society in the foreseeable future a practical proposition, it would be idle to deny that we enter the 27th year of freedom in an atmosphere of unrelieved gloom.
In the immediate context, this gloom is the product of food shortages resulting from last year’s drought, a rise of 20 to 25 per cent in prices in twelve months, the spread of indiscipline from one walk of life to another, the lack of growth in industry, the inability of the government to control its non-productive expenditure and the consequent inflation, the revival of factional in-fighting in the Congress party and the increase in corruption among the bureaucratic-political elite.
The situation would have been serious enough if this was all. But the tragedy is that this list does not include the two basic causes of our difficulties – population explosion and the inability of the Indian intelligentsia as a class to come to terms with harsh realities. In intellectual terms it continues to hark back either to the ‘twenties and the ‘thirties when precious little was known in this country about the costs of economic development, the negative features of the communist revolution, the deficiencies of centralised planning, the innovative capacity of free enterprise, the difficulties of managing public sector projects efficiently or to the fifties when it was assumed all too easily that we could move into an era of distributive justice without going through the heart-breaking hardships of what has come to be known as primitive accumulation of capital. The “gharibi hatao” slogan in 1970-71 was a logical culmination of this kind of thinking.
Controls
But whatever the Indian intelligentsia’s response to the country’s problems, one does not need to be particularly perceptive to recognise that we can at best look forward to small improvements in the pitiably low general standard of living so long as the population explosion continues and that the steady expansion of bureaucratic controls in the name of socialism can only stifle initiative, further aggravate our economic difficulties and gravely undermine democratic institutions.
The havoc that the massive increase in population – it has risen from 350 million to 570 million in the last 26 years and it continues to grow at the rate of 13 million a year – is playing with the country’s economic and social life is so evident that it is truly surprising that the problem should have attracted scant attention. It is particularly shocking that the government should even today give so low a priority to family planning that it has no great hesitation in cutting down the allocation for it.
The more or less steady increase in food production and the availability of US wheat under PL 480 could have concealed the dangerous consequences of population growth in the past. But what ground can there be now for easy optimism when, unlike in the fifties, there is not much cultivable land waiting to be brought under the plough and unlike in the late sixties, it is to longer rational to believe that high-yielding varieties of cereals have banished the Malthusian spectre forever? It will indeed be nothing short of a miracle if agricultural technology can cope with the rapidly increasing numbers in our already overpopulated country which does not possess the necessary resources for investment.
That is just one facet of the problem for the growing millions will not only need to be fed but also to be housed, clothed, educated and given some form of employment. Where is all this to come from when already we face colossal shortages?
Formidable
The traditional answer to all such problems has been industrialisation. Today there are good reasons to doubt its validity. But even if inconvenient questions are set aside, industrialisation requires massive investment and an increasingly well trained work force. The first difficulty is serious enough. But the latter may turn out to be even more formidable. The numbers have overwhelmed general education, and in several places even specialised institutions like medical and engineering colleges, with the result that we are having doctors who know little about the human anatomy and engineers who cannot be entrusted with any job.
It can be argued that since China’s population is even larger than India’s, it is not the numbers but the system that is responsible for the country’s predicament. In a sense this is true because Peking has been able to mobilise far greater resources for investment than New Delhi and to dispense with foreign aid altogether. But China’s effort is still in the experimental stage. The Chinese themselves do not claim that they have solved the problem of economic growth or of social and political organisation. But even if it is assumed that they have, their path is not open to us for the simple reason that our ethos is totally different.
India produced what in terms of present-day concepts must be described as the most hierarchical society in the world and, instead of being overwhelmed by the western impact, the system has disposed of the challenge partly by adapting itself to the new values and partly by changing them almost out of recognition. This is, of course, not a peculiarly Indian phenomenon. Islamic and other oriental societies have reacted in a similar way to the western onslaught. But almost all of them have suffered greater dislocation than the Indian system.
This is not to suggest that social changes have not taken place or are not taking place in our country but that their sweep is much more limited than many of us would like to believe. By and large the social structure and the attitudes that have gone with it remain intact. The external forms may have changed in some cases but not the quintessential contents.
In this regard also the growth of population has had a devastating effect. Members of scheduled castes and tribes, for instance, have not been able and will not be able to move away from their despised and low-paid activities in significant numbers because the upper castes have no compulsion to promote their entry into other fields – enough recruits are available for the lowest paid “clean” jobs from among themselves – and, to overrule their inherited prejudices. No upper caste Hindu need employ Harijan as a domestic servant because enough Brahmins are available.
Similarly, the growth of numbers has ensured that land reforms, however efficiently implemented, will not greatly benefit the landless, majority of whom are members of scheduled castes and tribes; that they have not been honestly and efficiently administered is a different matter.
On this reckoning the political competition in India has in effective terms been an inter-elite if not an intra-elite affair and the choice is not between a socialist revolution (even a social one does not appear to be on the horizon) and the so-called monopoly capitalism but between the present system which arms the upper caste bureaucratic and political elite with powers it more often abuses for personal benefit than uses for public weal and a relatively freer economic set-up which at least holds the promise of a more efficient use of the limited resources the country can mobilise. Even this may be an unduly optimistic view in that it is not at all inconceivable that the drift will continue till the system collapses into chaos and anarchy.
Alliance
Before the present crisis produced by overall shortages and inflation resulting from the reckless printing of currency notes, it would in any case have been unrealistic to talk of such a choice. The issue had been settled in favour of a system which kept production low and profits high enough to keep the alliance between business houses and the political-bureaucratic elite going. The system has doubtless come under pressure. But even so it is too early to say that the issue has been reopened or that the ruling elite will not return to the old formula once the pressure eases a little.
It is easy enough to blame Mrs. Gandhi for the present difficulties. Indeed she is being attacked both from the right and the left, though some among the latter find it expedient to maintain the pretence of sparing her by pinning all responsibility on her “reactionary” colleagues in the Congress party and the bureaucracy. But as in the case of the military debacle at the hands of China in 1962, more than an individual or a group is accountable for the tragedy. Most of us have accepted partly or wholly the philosophy that has led to economic stagnation, industrial indiscipline, inflation and the consequent misery, specially for the poor and those with fixed incomes.
The Times of India, 15 August 1973