India the Superpower? Think again India should put aside pride about its growing economy and concentrate on improving the lives of average citizens, argues Fortune's Cait Murphy. By Cait Murphy, Fortune assistant managing editor February 9 2007: 12:29 PM EST
NEW YORK (Fortune) -- Plug in the words "India" and "superpower" into an Internet search engine and it's happy to oblige - with 1.3 million hits. I confess that I did not check each one, but I suspect that almost all of these entries date from the last couple of years.
This is understandable. For the first time ever, India has posted four straight years of 8 percent growth; since it cracked open its economy in 1991, it has averaged growth of 6 percent a year - not in the same league as China, but twice the derisory "Hindu rate of growth" that had marked the first 45 years of independence.
A homeless Indian mother feeds her child in Hyderabad.
More from FORTUNE India the Superpower? Think again
Nardelli's fake bogey: earnings per share
Get outta my phone!
FORTUNE 500 Current Issue Subscribe to Fortune India has gone nuclear, and even gotten the United States to accept that status. Its movies are crossing over to become international hits. The recent $11.3 billion takeover of Corus by Mumbai-based Tata Steel was the biggest acquisition ever by an Indian firm.
No wonder the idea of India as the next superpower is fast becoming conventional wisdom. "Our Time is Now," asserts The Times of India. And in an October survey by the Chicago Council on World Affairs, Indians said they saw their country as the second most influential in the world.
Sorry: India is not a superpower, and in fact, that is probably the wrong ambition for it, anyway. Why? Let me answer in the form of some statistics.
47 percent of Indian children under the age of five are either malnourished or stunted. The adult literacy rate is 61 percent (behind Rwanda and barely ahead of Sudan). Even this is probably overstated, as people are deemed literate who can do little more than sign their name. Only 10 percent of the entire Indian labor force works in the formal economy; of these fewer than half are in the private sector. The enrollment of six-to-15-year-olds in school has actually declined in the last year. About 40 million children who are supposed to be in school are not. About a fifth of the population is chronically hungry; about half of the world's hungry live in India. More than a quarter of the India population lives on less than a dollar a day. India has more people with HIV than any other country.
(Sources: UNDP, Unicef, World Food Program; Edward Luce)
You get the idea.
The 2006 UN Human Development Report, which ranks countries according to a variety of measures of human health and welfare, placed India 126th out of 177 countries. India was only a few places ahead of rival Pakistan (134th) and hapless Cambodia (129) and behind such not-about-to-be-superpowers as Equatorial Guinea (120), and Tajikistan (122).
As these and other numbers suggest, Indian triumphalism (a notable 126,000 hits on Google) is not only premature, it is misguided. Yes, growth has been brisk, and of course growth is necessary to make a dent in poverty. But as Edward Luce, author of the excellent, "In Spite of the Gods: The Strange Rise of Modern India," noted in a recent talk, poverty in India is not falling nearly as fast as its brisk rate of growth might anticipate.
The reason for this is that Indian growth has been capital-intensive, driven by the growth in high-value services such as IT. This is a good thing, but what it does not do is create stable and reasonably paid employment for not particularly skilled people - and this matters a lot, considering eight to 10 million Indians enter the labor force every year. Luce estimates that there are 7 million Indians working in the formal manufacturing sector in India - and 100 million in China.
India is awash in private equity To look at it another way, the 1 million Indians working in IT account for less than one-half of one percent of the entire working population. This helps build reserves (and national confidence, and tax revenues) but is not the poverty buster that labor-intensive development is. As Prime Minister Singh told Luce, "Our biggest single problem is the lack of jobs for ordinary people."
The problem with India's self-proclaimed (and wildly premature) declaration of superpower status is that it reflects a complacency about both its present - which for many people is dire - and its future. Eight percent growth for four years is wonderful, but as the saying goes, past performance is no guarantee of future results. And India is not doing what it needs to in order to sustain this momentum.
Consider the postwar history of East and Southeast Asia. The comparison is appropriate because India started at about the same point, and has watched just about every country in the region get ahead of it on the economic curve. All these places developed by being relatively open to trade; by investing in primary and secondary education; and by building pretty decent infrastructure (not only roads and ports, but health clinics and water supplies). India has begun to embrace one leg of this triangle - freer trade.
Wireless Wonder: India's Sunil Mittal Even here, though, many of the worst features of the swadeshi ("self-reliance") era remain intact, including an unreformed state banking sector; labor regulations that actively discourage hiring; abstruse land laws (and consequent lack of land titles); misshapen subsidies that hurt the poor; and corruption that is broad, deep and ubiquitous. Nothing useful is being done about any of this.
As for the other two legs of this development triangle - education and infrastructure - these are still badly broken. About a third of teachers fail to show up on any given day (and, of course, are unsackable); the supply of both water and power is expensive and unreliable.
These facts of life too often go unremarked in the current euphoria about the state of the nation. "We no longer discuss the future of India," Commerce Minister Kamal Nath told the Financial Times in a typical comment. "The future is India."
Hubris, of course, is the stuff of politics everywhere. But the future will not belong to India unless it takes action to embrace it, and that means more than high-profile vanity projects like putting a man on the moon or building the world¹s tallest tower. It means showing that the world's largest democracy can deliver real progress to the hundreds of millions who have never used the phone, much less the Internet. And in important ways, that just isn't happening.
India has many reasons to be proud, but considering it remains a world leader in hunger, stunting and HIV, its waxing self-satisfaction seems sadly beside the point.
Dear Francois, U are a true secular writer. I have been reading UR artilcles regularly and U are bringing out the real true greatness of Hinduculture.As U rightly wrote in many of UR articles,Hinduism is a great culture which has spread the true meaning of Human moral values to this world. Islam amd Christianity are OK. Let them prosper, but not by demeaning and destroyng the Hindu culture. Unfortunately they are exactly doing the same every where. Hinduism is a great culture to be preserved and promoted otherwise this Human reace will loose such a great culture. Most beautiful thing about this religion is we worship all the elements of this nature(natural resources) as Gods. No other religion has sucha wonderful and scientific approach.
RE:great article
by vijay ranjan on May 11, 2007 10:02 PM Permalink
civilization of Maya. Maya civilisation has lots of similarity but the problem that it was destroyed by europeans or kept in wrap . They were not allowed to mingle with world. European mindset is something exactly like that. They felt that hindu culture is like south american or african culture but they for get that it s impossible to destroy a culture of any country which is from same mass. Eurasia. Days of europe over. ANd if they think that americans are like them then they are wrong.
Please, I understand your love of the land, but please don't be divisive by spreading fear among the people who probably see something remotely similar in one incidence and then come and read your column and believe that to be true. Instead of highlighting divisive events, I challenge you to write a column on India where you highlight just the positives of unifying events all around the country without any Ifs or Buts.
RE:What a bunch of FUD
by on Feb 12, 2007 09:01 PM Permalink
Dude...the author has written many other positive articles about India. Go read them first! Anyway, what is the point in "highlighting just the positives" and behaving like a cat that drinks the milk with closed eyes? We better be vigilant on what is changeing for good AND bad and try to take good things from outside influence and use them to take the evil out of our system. There is nothing wrong in somebody pointing to the bad that is happening and warning us.
Whatever author is saying is very true. I can tell one incident. Once in a group of colleagues everybody was discussing " what they are reading now a day". I taol Premchand and one guy said oh those "cheap novels". I had to explain him that he was a big writer and we had his stories in school. He couldn't recollect and still thought that he was a writer of some "sadakchap hindi novels". Amazingly my colleague is from hindi belt. Well how many people knew about Sukhdev and rajguru before "Rnag De Basanti" got released. We are loosing it.
RE:Very true
by Shahryar Pax on Feb 16, 2007 11:56 PM Permalink
I am a Kenyan-born of Indian antecedents (who has yet to visit India) and I am pleased to say I have read Premchand's Godaan (in English translation). I wonder if anyone reads Mulk Raj Anand nowadays ...
Is this ignorance of Indian literature due to Congress Party's domination in govt. for the last 60 years?
In Kenya we were encouraged to read African writers when studying English Literature in schools!
The following words of Aurobindo perfectly say it all: Few societies have been so tamasic, so full of inertia and contentment in increasing narrowness as Indian society in later times; few have been so eager to preserve themselves in inertia. Few therefore have attached so great an importance to authority. Every detail of our life has been fixed for us by Shastra and custom, every detail of our thought by Scripture and its commentators,%u2014but much oftener by the commentators than by Scripture. Only in one field, that of individual spiritual experience, have we cherished the ancient freedom and originality out of which our past greatness sprang; it is from some new movement in this inexhaustible source that every fresh impulse and rejuvenated strength has arisen. Otherwise we should long ago have been in the grave where dead nations lie, with Greece and Rome of the Caesars, with Esarhaddon and the Chosroes......
RE:To have a mind oif your own......
by Abhiroop Banerjee on Jun 20, 2007 08:10 PM Permalink
I'm a hindu, born and raised in 'cosmopolitan' new delhi. I did my schooling from a catholic convent establishment, and made friends with kids following practically all the major religions in the world.
My best friends are Hindu, Christian and Sikh(and I'm not even going nto regional differences!), and my point is that though (surprisingly to some) all of them happen to be devout followers of their repsective faiths, there hasnt been a single conflict of thought amongst us. Ever.
india, and Indians, are by and large, beyond communalism. Multi culturism is hard wired into our every genes.
There are stray incidents, and that is to be expected in a nation with 1100 million individuals, but otherwise, it is undeniably peaceful and I find that christianity in india is much more inclusive and respectful of hindu/muslim insert your faith traditions than in say, western europe.
The author of this article does not understand India, its history, culture, religion and people. He being from the west, the authoe can not at all understand the soul of India. It is evident from the ignorant atricles of him which appear in Rediff time to time. If he knew a bit of the history of Indian Civilisation, he could not have made the suggestion to take what is good in west and reject the bad. India has accepted the best of every culture with which she came in contact with in her long history. She has never lost her culture and tradition in the during the long rule of Muslims and West. If he loves India as he claims, the author must start studying Indian Philosophy and learn Sansrit and seintifically observe the life of the people. Then he will understand, Indians can never be westerns in their thinking, lifes philosophy and religion. He must look at reporters like Mark Tully of BBC, who lived and worked in India long time and understand India well and never writes like this author showing panic! Joseph Peedika
RE:This Person does not understand Bharat
by saikiran oruganti on Aug 22, 2007 06:06 PM Permalink
yes this author understands india better than most of us! I wonder if there will be another Francois ever for India! J.Peedika I think you have a habbit of reading only half article..half knowledge is dangerous they say and it proves to be true again and again.. as I can see where u r coming from!
RE:This Person does not understand Bharat
by VIJAYA BUDDHIRAJU on Apr 19, 2007 07:04 AM Permalink
Author is the only one who understands India. What he writes are plain facts and in many of his articles, depth of his understanding of Hindu Philosophy and the contributions of our forefathers to create a great civilization boggles my mind. The idiots who think ill treating Brahmins and putting down the Hindu contributionsis is progress are trading away the future of future generations. The jerks who want reservation after reservation, do not realize that once India becomes Hindu minority country, they will be srewed. Pak and Bangala were Hindu Nations not long ago. There they have no reservations for the these fatties. I see venom pouring out from those who got the most benefits of Indian independence. Treason became the order of the day. This will not stop with reason-it stops with only confrontation.
RE:RE:This Person does not understand Bharat
by Srijeet Chaudhuri on Feb 08, 2007 04:24 AM Permalink
The author is an erudite and sensible peron. He has not said that all that is good in India has been borrowed from the West.He has just pointed out that our modern young generation is immersed in copying the Western Lifestyle( mainly urban areas). All Gautier is praying that these WISE YOUNG MEN who flock to the westshould be trained to be mini-cultural ambassadors of India, and not copy-cats of Westerners. I find, that the author knows a lot about Idia in depth.
RE:RE:This Person does not understand Bharat
by adfasd asdasd on Feb 10, 2007 11:56 AM Permalink
I think francois has been successful in his attempts, when i read your comments. Please remember that these guys have reigned us for 250 years. All that these guys want is to limit us in our own corners and do now want to allow us to take our place on the global stage. All this talk about losing indian culture is hogwash. We indians are not losing our culture in anyway, but we are gaining economic well-being and trying to wipe out our poverty which has stricken us for the last 400 hundred years. Please beware of such writers and their ideologies. I have the utmost respect for Hinduism, but this writer wants the hindus to fall into the same trap as the missionaries and the jihadis have fallen into. He wants the hindus to believe that for hinduism to survive, all other religions must be trampled upon. This is the same philosophy of Osama, Hitler, Bush, Missionaries and maulanas.....they use the basic vice in humans of hatred and fear to make their own ends meet.
RE:This Person does not understand Bharat
by Moo Glee on Feb 07, 2007 11:01 PM Permalink
The author has been in India, been to ashrams, learned and imbibed lot of culture. The same is the reason why he elucidates Indian culture related articles so well.
Yes, there are great values in the Western world: Freedom, democracy, equality (not always though), respect for the environment, less corruption. And India must, and has already borrowed from these qualities.
Dont write as if India borrowed there things from the West. India had the first democratic kingdom as early as in the first millenium. And who doesnt respect the environment??? It is the western world which has polluted the earth. This is a particularly a imperialist attitude - an attitude which believes that the western world is the cure for the all ills of the world. Infact they are the cause....
RE:Get your history right, Mr.Gautier???
by Babloo Bhaiya on Feb 07, 2007 12:50 PM Permalink
.
thanks vivek fernando.
u gave a fitting message to types of those who have put on a green spec on their eyes thinking whatever that comes from west is the ultimate. the way the westerners have looted and destroyed the fabric of the human homogeinity is itself a slap on the human civilisation and now they r preaching social harmony and democracy.
RE:Get your history right, Mr.Gautier???
by VENURAJA Bowenpalle on May 29, 2007 03:38 PM Permalink
Even during the times of Lord Buddha , some councils (Kingdoms)came up purely on the basis of democracy and Buddha expressed his unconrolled joy when people elected its representatives. It was much before western parts of the world could even dream about and Plato was born in Greece. There is nothing , India could learn in the fields of philosophy,sprituality and politcal science from the West. Yes, it is true that India is a young country in modern sciences like mechanical engineering or aeronauticals. Still even today Indians do not know how to produce a 500 HP engine for their military and do not know how to formulate many anit-biotics. It is technologically a young country and we are progressing. The problem with Mr.Fracois is that he is more Indian than Indians. When 500 year rule of Muslims could not destroy Hindu culture, and 250 year rule of white men and their missionary jeal could not destroy Hindus and their "infidel" belief in "idols" , how come you are afraid now ? my dear Francois? Do not wory. Hinduism is not a weak relgion and it will not disappear the way its contemporaries Sumarian and Egypt cultures vanished.
RE:Get your history right, Mr.Gautier???
by rajeev on Feb 22, 2007 11:20 AM Permalink
vivek fernando, Just before commenting ,read biography of Mr Francois gautier.He is an indophile to the core.While it is fashionable for western journalists and indian intelligentsia to deride indian culture,it is Mr Gautier who, risking his career had whole heartedly faught to bring out awareness about the great culture of India.Read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francois_Gautier,http://www.rediff.com/news/franc.html among other references.
We are paying the price of progress.As Gautier rightly states, India is progressing economically on a fast track with culture taking a back seat. This may sound prudish, but just look at the craze for jeans, of different types and styles. Along with them are the fashion statements, page 3 type, in dress and style.One cannot stop progress, but its time we take a pause to look where we are headed. We have stopped teaching our mother tongue to our children. Tender two years old are being sent to the so called prestigious play schools, but they have no real time to play. Traditional Indian stories of the past are no longer fashionable, hence not recited.Its a mad rush for tution classes, making schools and colleges almost redundant. Success at any cost is the new mantra for the young generation,and fear of failiure adds to the stress. McDonalds, KFCs, and fast food joints are the new hangouts. You are considered queer if you do not join in with the so called hep crowd.Heck, the list is too vast. But traditional culture is not hep.
I think that hinduism has evolved over a long period of time and it has gone through all the rigors of time.This testing of Religion has converted it into a philosphy rather than a religion. This has ensured that the philosphy has perfected itself. Well time will allow only goods things to last. As it is said in Sanskrit "Satyam Shivam Sundaram" What is truth is shiv,what is truth is beautiful,and things which last over a longer period are the ones which are higher truths. So I guess just wait for the truth to be revealed itself.
RE:Time will make sure what you are talking
by Nandakumar M on Feb 16, 2007 03:12 PM Permalink
there is nothing in hinduism to evolve. It is perfect in all aspects since its known. The 'evolve' term used by today's english educated experts should be read as 'spoiled'. Sanathana Dharma is being changed and spoiled according to our comfort, just like how politicians create laws in parliament circumventing the supreme court. Human have done the same thing for this religion. This dharma is perfect and worked for millions of years, but we ediots think those priciples won't work now.
